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Buck had finally fallen asleep an hour ago.
Not the light, twitchy kind of sleep where every creak in the house made him jolt up in bed with wide blood-shot eyes and a heart rate far above what it should ever be in bed. Not the kind where Eddie would hear his breathing change from the couch and just know, without even looking, that Buck was somewhere bad again. That he was back in the dark, in the dirt, in the helplessness of being trapped and unable to claw his way free. It’d been like that for weeks now. Buck had been unable to let Eddie go back to his own home, refusing to be alone, unable to get more than a small nap. But, finally. Finally. This was sleep.
This was real sleep.
Deep enough that when Eddie had stood in the doorway to Buck’s room ten minutes ago, checking in on him for the third time in twenty minutes because apparently he’d become incapable of not doing that; Buck had been sprawled diagonally across the bed, one arm flung over the empty side like he was reaching for something in his sleep. His mouth was slightly open, the angles of his face finally smoothed out, and the harsh shadows under his eyes softened by the afternoon light filtering in through the blinds.
He looked younger when he slept like this. Less frayed around the edges. Less like someone who had been through too much in too short a time and was still somehow trying to smile through it. It was almost peaceful and Eddie stood there longer than he probably should have.
Long enough to categorize the easy rise and fall of Buck's chest, the faint pink lines of healing scrapes along his jaw, and the still yellowing bruise that stretched across his temple. Long enough that he felt his own chest go tight as he thought about that day and not just what he went through, but what he hadn’t been able to save buck from. It was that awful, aching tenderness that had only sharpened since Nashville, since the accident. Since the word he still wasn’t able to say out loud. Not even to himself in the mirror and definitely not to Frank or any of their friends.
Kidnapped.
Buck, taken.
Buck, hurt.
Buck, almost–
Eddie shut the thought down before it could finish itself. Before it could make him collapse under the weight of that reality. He’d gotten good at that lately. Or, maybe not good, but practiced.
He tore himself away from the door and made his way into the kitchen, looking for something to do with his hands. He took up at the sink, rinsing out the mug Buck had abandoned that morning after three sips of coffee and a half-hearted promise that he’d drink the rest later that never came to fruition. The house was quiet except for the soft rush of water and the distant hum of the fridge.
Chris was still at school and going to Hen’s for the night, which had become more common in the recent weeks. It wasn’t ideal, but he wasn’t going to leave Buck alone. Not like this. It wasn’t even a thought that had crossed his mind. Eddie dried the mug and set it on the dish rack, then glanced instinctively toward the hallway again.
Still quiet.
Good.
He was reaching for the container of soup in the fridge, debating whether to heat it now or wait until Buck woke up, when there was a knock at the door. He froze instinctively, turning towards the sound, his hand out like he was ready to defend himself. He shook himself out of it, crossing the living room in three quick strides and checked the peephole. He released a breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding when he saw Maddie’s mailing face on the other side, a tote bag blanched on one shoulder and a paperbag clutched in her left hand.
He opened the door carefully, keeping his voice low, as if Buck would wake if he didn’t whisper. “Hey.”
Maddie took one look at him and gave him the kind of soft, knowing smile that made something in his chest tighten. “Hi. I texted Buck, but I figured he was sleeping when he didn’t answer.”
“He’s out.” Eddie stepped back to let her in. “Actually sleeping. Little bit of a miracle, really.”
“Then I definitely brought the right thing.” She held up the paper bag a little. “Protein muffins for the person who is definitely not sleeping.”
She slipped off her shoes by the door, moving with automatic quiet, and Eddie took the bag from her. It smelled like cinnamon and sugar and something blueberry. He set it on the counter while she leaned to peer down the hallway toward Buck’s room.
“He’s okay?”
The question was simple. The answer wasn’t. And he didn’t know if it would be for a long time. Longer than he wanted to think about. Because if he was honest? No. Buck wasn’t okay. Neither was he. But explaining that? To Maddie of all people. That was an impossible task. Especially when Buck had asked him to be careful about the information he shared, careful about what he told Maddie and the rest of the 118 family. Because explaining what happened in that desert? That was an impossibility. For both of them.
Eddie folded his arms, then unfolded them a second later. “He’s… better than he was two days ago.”
Which was true.
Two days ago, Buck had been trying so hard to act like himself that it had almost been painful to watch. Cracking jokes that fell flat. Brushing off every flinch like it was nothing. Pretending the shadows under his eyes were just exhaustion. Pretending the way he froze when Eddie accidentally shut the front door too hard wasn’t something that made Eddie want to be sick all over the living room floor.
Yesterday he’d finally snapped at a spoon clattering into the sink and then looked so stricken, so furious with himself, that Eddie had wanted to gather every sharp edge in the world and take them away before they could touch him again.
Today, at least, he’d slept.
So… better. And that was what he would continue to cling to.
Maddie nodded, but her eyes lingered on Eddie. “And you?”
He almost laughed at that. Instead, he simply shrugged. “I’m fine.” It came out automatically, far too fast and they both knew it. He could barely handle the way Maddie titled her head with too much motherly affection.
“Right.”
Eddie busied himself pulling mugs down from the cabinet because it was easier than being looked at like that, at trying to explain or put words to everything swimming around in his mind. “You want coffee?”
“Please.”
He poured it out for both of them, adding too much sugar to Maddie’s cup because Buck did whenever he’d made coffee for her when she visited the stations, and he’d apparently learned that by osmosis, which was a ridiculous thing to notice and maybe even more ridiculous to have stored away somewhere in his head. But, he shoved that away for now. He could come back to it later. Maybe.
Maddie accepted the mug and followed him into the living room. They settled into opposite corners of the couch, both unconsciously angling their bodies toward the hallway as if they could push away anything threatening to hurt the man curled up in the main bedroom, looking far too small for the person they knew.
There was silence at first, the easy kind. The kind built from years of being around each other, of family dinners and hospital waiting rooms and birthdays and emergencies and all the messy, intimate things that knit people together.
Eddie had always liked Maddie.
He liked her even more now, for the way she’d been giving Buck space without really giving him space at all. The way she was checking in, sending food, texting Eddie instead of pushing Buck when she knew he’d shut down if he felt smothered. She’d always known how to handle him, known how to know what he needed even when he wouldn’t admit it. And as much as she could do that for Buck, she had been doing it for Eddie too. Which was probably why he should have been more prepared for what came next.
Maddie set her mug down on the coffee table and said, very quietly, “Did you tell him?”
Eddie blinked.
For one stupid second, his brain scrambled uselessly through a dozen possible interpretations. Tell him what? That he needed to take his antibiotics with food? That he was being stubborn about resting? That he’d promised the doctor he wouldn’t try to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk when they’d discharged him earlier than they’d wanted to after his “episode” last week?
But Maddie was looking at him too steadily for that. Too gently. Too knowing.
And Eddie knew.
“Maddie–”
“Eddie.”
Just his name. Soft, but direct.
He stared at the dark surface of his coffee, watching it tremble faintly under the unsteady grip of his fingertips. The living room felt too warm all of a sudden, like the walls were caving in around him.
“No,” he said finally.
The word sat between them in the easy silence, Maddie not answering him right away, just humming as she took a sip from her mug. She didn’t say I knew it or Why not or anything that would have been easier to deflect. She just waited. And because she waited, because she didn’t fill the silence for him, Eddie found himself saying more.
“I was going to.”
Her expression shifted. It was small, but there. Something akin to relief maybe. Or confusion. He couldn't quite tell.
He let out a humorless breath and leaned back against the couch, tipping his head up to stare at the ceiling. “I think I’ve been going to for, like… a year.”
“At least,” Maddie murmured.
That got an actual laugh out of him, brief and disbelieving. “Wow. Okay. Brutal.”
“I’m not wrong.”
“No,” Eddie admitted. “You’re not.”
The truth of it had settled into him slowly and then all at once.
There had been years of things he hadn’t named right. Years of Buck being Buck and him taking that for granted. The too bright, too loud, too much in all the ways that somehow never felt like too much to Eddie that made up his personality. Years of looking for him in a room first. Of wanting to call him before anyone else when something happened whether positive or negative. Of building routines around him so naturally that one day Eddie had looked up and realized his life had rearranged itself around Buck without asking for permission.
There had been years of denial, too. Excuses. Rationalizations. Best friend, work partner, family. Things that were true, but not the whole truth. Not the truth that Eddie had to grapple with. The truth he didn’t want to and so he shoved it down. Let it fester there. Let it rot.
Then Buck had come out to him.
And Eddie, sitting across from him, had felt the world tilt on its axis in a way that should have terrified him and instead only made one thing devastatingly clear. He was too late.Or maybe not too late, exactly. Just… unprepared. Still catching up to a truth Buck had somehow already outrun. A truth that Buck had somehow found in himself and had taken to with gusto, while Eddie just told him that nothing would change, while trying to bury it all further than he ever had before.
After that, the feeling had only gotten harder to ignore.
By the time they were in Nashville, by the time the air between them had gone strange and close and charged with too many things neither of them knew how to say, Eddie had known. By the time they’d rerouted themselves to the backroads, Eddie had known. By the time they were benign chased off the road by a truck they didn’t recognize in the middle of New Mexico, Eddie had known. By the time he fought through hunger and injury in the middle of a god forsaken desert thinking his best friend was dead, Eddie had known.
He loved Buck.
He was in love with Buck.
And he wanted to say something. He did. He was waiting, bidding time, ready for just the right moment. And then–
“I didn’t want to do it last year,” Eddie said, dragging himself back to the room, back to Maddie.
Her brows knit. “Because of…Tommy?”
Buck and Tommy were over now–done, cleanly, if painfully. That had happened well before the kidnapping, before everything had gone sideways in ways Eddie still couldn’t think about too hard. But at the time when he'd slowly been thinking about all the things he wanted, it had still felt messy. Unfair. Like the last thing Buck needed was Eddie dropping that in his lap while he was still trying to figure out what he wanted, who he was, what the hell he was doing.
“And partly,” Eddie continued, “because it didn’t feel… like I should. And things just…it wasn't an option after a while. And I didn't want to do it in Nashville and I– it wasn't right.”
Maddie watched him carefully. “Not right how?”
Eddie swallowed. “I don’t know. Too much was already happening. He was already off-balance. And if I was gonna say it, really say it, I didn’t want it to be because we were stuck in some weird emotional pressure cooker on a work trip. I didn’t want him wondering later if I only said it because of the moment.”
Or if Buck only answered because of it. But he didn't say that part out loud. Because this wasn't about him and he didn't have to. Maddie understood anyway, her face softening in the way that told him she heard it even if he didn't say it.
“So I thought,” Eddie continued, “we’d get home. Things would settle down. I’d find the right time.”
He laughed again, and this time it sounded rougher. “And then–then it all went to hell ”
The words were blunt, ugly in the quiet living room even if Eddie couldn't put it fully into the correct terminology. Maddie closed her eyes for a second like hearing about it, even without details, still hurt. Maybe it always would. Maybe none of them would ever truly heal. Maybe he and Buck would always be looked at like this now, held carefully like they may break apart at any moment if left alone for too long.
Eddie looked toward the hallway again, eyes dragging across every shadow.
Still quiet.
Still sleeping.
It made his chest ache.
“After that…” Eddie scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “How am I supposed to do that now? How am I supposed to look at him when he’s barely sleeping, when he’s jumping at every sound, when he’s trying so hard not to fall apart, and make this about me?”
“It wouldn’t be about you.”
“It would.” His voice came out sharper than he intended, and he lowered it immediately, glancing towards the bedroom again.
“It would be me putting something on him. Something huge. Something he’d feel like he has to deal with. And he can barely deal with what’s already in his head.”
Maddie was quiet for a long moment.
“Do you think Buck would see it that way?”
Eddie opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Because the honest answer was…no. Probably not. Buck would probably see Eddie telling him as some kind of gift, no matter how complicated it was. He’d probably be gentle with it. Gentle with Eddie. He’d probably try to make it easier, even if it cost him. Even if Buck didn't feel it too. Even if he wasn't in a place to risk it all.
Which was, maybe, its own kind of problem.
“I think,” Eddie said slowly, “that Buck would try to take care of me about it. Even now.”
Maddie’s eyes went soft. “Yeah.”
“And I don’t want that.” His throat felt tight as he spoke, like his body wanted to cram the words back down. “I don’t want him feeling like he has to–to be okay for me, to perform like that. Or figure out how he feels before he’s ready because I said something at the worst possible time.”
He could picture it too clearly. Buck, raw and shaken and trying to steady himself, hearing Eddie say I’m in love with you and immediately straightening under the weight of it. Trying to be what Eddie needed. Trying to answer. Trying to fix it if he couldn’t answer the right way.
Buck always tried to fix things.
Even when he was the one broken on the floor. And Eddie hates the idea of being yet another wound to add to the pile for both of them.
Maddie leaned back, folding one leg beneath her. “Can I tell you what I think?”
He snorted softly. “You’re gonna anyway.”
That got him a small smile. “Probably.”
“I think you’re right about some of it. If you tell him today, right now, while he’s still in the middle of the worst of it… yeah, maybe it becomes one more thing he feels like he has to manage. Maybe it’s not fair.”
Relief flickered in Eddie’s chest albeit brief and unwanted.
And then Maddie kept going.
“But I also think you’re using that as a shield.”
He stilled.
“Maddie–”
“No, listen to me.” Her voice stayed low, but there was steel in it now. Not anger. Just certainty and a maternal type of harshness that Eddie was weak against.
“You love my brother. You have for a long time. And I think a part of you is relieved that right now, you have a really good reason not to say anything.”
The relief died, replaced by something hot and embarrassed and too close to being caught.
“That’s not–”
“It’s not the only reason,” she said. “I know that. I know you. You’re not trying to manipulate him. You’re not waiting because you want him vulnerable. That’s not what I’m saying.”
Eddie looked away.
“But you are scared,” Maddie continued softly. “And if you wait until the timing is perfect, until he’s fully okay, until there’s no chance of making things harder, until you know exactly how he’ll react… you might be waiting forever.”
The words landed somewhere in his chest, like a blow directly to the most vulnerable parts of him. Because God, hadn’t he already been waiting forever?
He thought of every almost over the years.
Every time Buck had looked at him too long and Eddie had looked away first.
Every loaded silence in the truck.
Every brush of hands that lingered just enough to be noticeable and then got filed away under nothing because naming it would change everything.
Every moment in Nashville when it had felt like the air itself was begging one of them to say something in the safety and comfort of a place where no one truly knew them.
And then every moment after, sharpened by fear.
Waking up in the hospital. Fighting through a desert he barely remembers. Buck crawling across the ground. Holding his face, feeling for a pulse he was scared he'd lose.
Buck in the hospital bed next to his.
Buck pale under fluorescent lights.
Buck waking up angry and shaky, but alive.
Buck trying to laugh while Eddie stood laid feeling like he’d had his heart ripped out and shoved back in crooked.
“I almost lost him,” Eddie said, so quietly he barely heard himself.
He swallowed hard. “Again.”
Because it wasn’t just the kidnapping.
It was the lightning. The blood clots. The tsunami. The collapsed ladder truck. The shooting, years ago, the one that still lived under Eddie’s skin in strange ways, because he knew what it was like to close your eyes and the last thing you saw was the person you loved most in this world, begging you to stay when you just can't fight anymore.
There had been so many moments. Too many.
And every time, Buck had come back.
What if one day he didn’t?
What if one day Eddie was left with all these unsaid things curdled inside him, with a life full of evidence and no confession to make sense of it?
Maddie reached out, just enough to touch the back of his hand where it rested on his knee.
“Nothing is promised, Eddie.”
He shut his eyes.
“You know that,” she continued, voice thickening just slightly. “Better than most people. You already almost lost him more than once. Do you really want something to happen and you were never honest?”
The room went still around them as he exhaled. Eddie stared at their hands. At hers, pale and steady. At his, rough-knuckled and tense under her gentle touch.
No.
The answer rose up immediately, fierce and absolute.
No, he did not want that.
He didn't want a world where Buck was gone and Eddie had to live with the silence he’d chosen. Didn’t want to replay every almost and every missed chance until it hollowed him out. Didn't want Buck to never know, to close his eyes thinking that Eddie didn't want him, didn't love him.
But wanting to tell him and knowing how were two different things.
“What if he doesn’t want it?” It came out more raw than he meant it to. More vulnerable.
Maddie didn’t flinch.
“What if I say it, and he–” Eddie forced himself to keep going. “What if he loves me, but not like that? Or what if he doesn’t know? Or what if he would have known, before all this, but now it’s all tangled up with everything that happened and I just make it worse?”
He laughed, once, hollow. “What if I tell him and I become one more thing he can’t look at without thinking about how bad things got?”
Maddie was quiet long enough that he finally looked up. She looked heartbreakingly kind.
“You don’t get to control how he feels,” she said.
“I know.”
“You can try to protect him from pressure. You can try to choose a moment that’s fair and gentle and gives him room to breathe. That’s good. That’s loving him.” She squeezed his hand once before pulling back. “But you can’t make the choice for him because you’re afraid.”
He looked down again.
“Also,” Maddie added, and there was the faintest edge of dry humor in her voice now, “for what it’s worth? If my brother has somehow made it this far without realizing you’re in love with him, then he is even more oblivious than I thought.”
A startled laugh escaped him before he could stop it.
“Maddie.”
“I’m serious. You look at him like he hung the moon.”
Eddie groaned and dropped his head into one hand. “Please never say that to me again.”
She laughed softly. “You know I’m right.”
He did, which was the problem.
He looked at Buck like he was something precious. Like he was a miracle Eddie still didn’t entirely understand how he’d been trusted with. Like he was sunlight and disaster and home all at once.
He looked at Buck like a man in love.
Maybe he always had. And maybe, just maybe, it was far more transparent than he had thought previously.
The house settled around them in a quiet that felt almost sacred. A car passed outside. Pipes knocked somewhere in the far back. The fridge hummed.
From the hallway, there was no sound.
Eddie let himself imagine it for one dangerous second.
Buck waking up rested, if not fully healed. Padding into the living room in one of those old soft t-shirts and sleep-mussed hair. Rubbing at his eyes. Looking at Eddie with that open, fond confusion he got when he was still halfway between sleep and waking.
Eddie saying it then.
Not dramatic. Not a grand gesture. Just the truth, plain and terrifying. In the kitchen, where they always managed to find themselves. Staring at his best friend as he back himself into a corner, silhouetted by soft light from the small window above the sink.
Buck, I’m in love with you.
He could picture the moment after too vividly to breathe around it.
Buck going still.
Those blue eyes widening.
A thousand possible futures branching from there–some beautiful, some unbearable.
“I don’t know if I can do it,” Eddie admitted.
Maddie’s voice was very gentle when she answered. “Yeah. You can.”
He looked at her.
She smiled, small and sad and full of more understanding than he knew what to do with. “You don’t have to do it this second. But don’t decide for him. And don’t wait so long that life decides for both of you.”
Eddie’s chest felt too full with that and he nodded once, because that was all he trusted himself to do.
Maddie stood after a moment, gathering their empty mugs. “I’m gonna put these in the sink before I go.”
“You don’t have to–”
“I know. But you've done a lot, Eddie. Let me help.”
She carried them into the kitchen anyway, and Eddie stayed on the couch, elbows on his knees as he stared into nothingness.
The conversation kept replaying in loops.
You’re using that as a shield.
Nothing is promised.
Do you really want something to happen and you were never honest?
Don’t decide for him.
He scrubbed both hands over his face. He hated that Maddie was right.
He hated even more that she wasn’t just right, but that she was right in a way that left no clean answers. There was no perfect time. There was no version of this where Buck’s life had stopped being complicated enough to make confession convenient. There would always be another call, another injury, another emotional landmine, another reason to wait until next week, next month, when things were calmer, easier, safer.
And Buck…
Buck, who had always thrown himself headfirst into the hard things because waiting didn’t make them less real.
Buck, who would tell Eddie to stop being a coward if their positions were reversed and he was talking about someone else.
Buck, who deserved the truth.
A floorboard creaked in the hallway.
Eddie’s head snapped up.
Maddie reappeared from the kitchen at the same moment, both of them turning toward the sound instinctively.
Buck stood in the mouth of the hallway, barefoot with his hair a mess, blinking sleepily against the light.
He was wearing gray sweatpants and the dark blue Henley Eddie had helped him into that morning when lifting his arms too high had made him wince. The top two buttons were undone, exposing the faint bruise blooming near his collarbone. His face was creased from the pillow, a line from the seam pressed into one cheek.
He looked wrecked.
He looked adorable.
He looked alive.
His eyes moved from Maddie to Eddie, confusion slowly giving way to something softer.
“Hey,” he said, voice rough with sleep.
And God, just that–just one sleepy hey, made Eddie’s entire body go warm and helpless.
Maddie’s expression transformed instantly, all serious conversation wiped clean. “Look who finally joined the land of the living.”
Buck squinted at her. “Maddie? How long have you been here?”
“Long enough to bring muffins and be deeply offended you slept through my visit.”
He frowned, then looked at Eddie as if this was somehow his fault. “You let me sleep through muffins?”
Eddie opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Because Buck was looking at him now. Really looking.
Still groggy, still soft around the edges, but focused. Concern threading into the fondness.
“Hey,” Buck said again, quieter this time. “You okay?”
Eddie stared at him. At the tousled hair. The sleepy eyes. The healing bruises. The man he had nearly lost. The man he loved so much it felt like standing too close to the sun.
Maddie’s words rang in his head like a struck bell.
Do you really want something to happen and you were never honest?
Buck took another step into the room, slower this time, as if sensing something had shifted. “Eddie?”
And there it was.
The moment.
Not perfect or clean. But planned. But real. And Eddie felt his pulse thunder in his throat at the idea.
He could tell him.
Right now.
He could.
His mouth parted.
Then Buck yawned so suddenly and so hugely that his whole face scrunched up, one hand lifting instinctively to cover it halfway through, and the sheer ridiculousness of it hit Eddie so hard he almost laughed.
Buck blinked afterward, dazed and sheepish. “Sorry. I—why are you both looking at me like that?”
Maddie snorted.
Eddie looked at Buck—at all that impossible, infuriating, yet endearing pieces that made him everything Eddie had ever wanted–and felt the fear still there, yes, but tangled now with something steadier.
Not certainty. Not yet. But maybe the beginning of courage he didn't know that he had.
“Nothing,” Eddie said, voice rougher than he wanted. “Come sit down. We saved you coffee.”
Buck’s face brightened immediately, easy and open in a way that made Eddie’s heart ache. “You’re my favorite people.”
He shuffled toward the couch, dropping down beside Eddie with the graceless care of someone still sore in places he didn’t want to admit to. Their shoulders bumped.
Buck leaned into him automatically.
Like it was nothing.
Like it was everything.
Eddie went still, then let himself relax into the contact.
Across the room, Maddie caught his eye over Buck’s head. She didn’t say a word, but she didn’t have to.
Eddie looked down at Buck, who was already reaching blindly for the paper bag of muffins and muttering something about blueberry better not be gone, and thought–
Maybe soon.
Maybe not today.
Maybe not while Buck still startled awake and reached for walls that weren’t closing in.
But soon.
Before life stole the chance again.
Before fear turned into silence so old it felt permanent.
Soon, Eddie would tell him.
And when Buck looked up at him with sleepy, puzzled affection and a smear of sugar at the corner of his mouth, Eddie thought, with a clarity that made his chest hurt…
He really, really had to.