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Hour One
The car Eddie bought smells like stale cigarettes and mildew, and the seat creaks ominously when Buck heaves himself gingerly into it. He watches Eddie limp around to the driver's side and ease himself behind the wheel with the kind of studied caution that suggests he's in a lot more pain than he's letting on. The engine coughs as it turns over, but it starts. Buck watches through the rearview mirror as Los Nietos fades into the distance with a sense of relief that feels so enormous he could choke on it.
"Figure we can hit up a rest station once we're on the highway, grab some coffee and breakfast," Eddie says as the I-40 sign flashes past. The windows are down because the A/C is broken, and the air smells of dust and asphalt. It itches at Buck's nose. Or maybe that's the busted blood vessels.
"Sounds good to me," he says. Neither of them floated the idea of stopping at the diner for breakfast. The food was great the other night. Earl was a good cook, when he wasn't helping his ex-wife run passing motorists off the road to bring home a replacement son. "I can take a turn driving, if you want."
"Fat chance," Eddie scoffs.
Buck rolls his eyes. "You were hurt too."
"I'm fine, Buck."
He sort of wants to argue, but there's a set to Eddie's jaw that's less angry than it is deliberately contained, like he's holding himself together with chewing gum and bits of wire. Buck can't be the one to snap that. Not now.
"Okay," he says, slumping in his seat, holding up his hands. "Well, if you change your mind."
"I'll let you know," Eddie says, and it's softer.
"Okay," Buck says, turning his eyes toward the road as the on-ramp comes up, because looking at Eddie right now hurts, just a little. "Okay."
Hour Two
There's no bluetooth adaptor, or even an aux port; the car is old enough that it's got a tape deck, and there is, as it turns out, a shoebox of cassette tapes jammed under the shotgun seat, which Buck discovers once his coffee cup is empty and his cinnamon roll is picked to crumbs and the boredom is really starting to get to him. He really wishes Eddie would give him a turn at the wheel, because at least then he'd have something to focus on.
"You think any of those even still play?" Eddie asks, glancing sidelong at the box, open in Buck's lap as he rifles through it.
"Only one way to find out." He holds up a pair of jewel cases, the cover art so faded and begrimed that it's hard to make out. "Are you feeling more Judas Priest or Blue Öyster Cult?"
"I'm feeling like silence sounds pretty damn good right now."
"Bzzt, wrong answer. BOC it is." He flips the case over in his fingers, then opens it to pull the cassette out. "You know my dad used to listen to them? When I was little, I mean. In the car, mostly."
"Huh," Eddie says.
"Yeah, he doesn't really seem like the type, huh?"
"I guess I wouldn't know."
"Yeah," Buck says, and doesn't add, me neither. The unknowable nature of parents isn't something he feels like getting into right now. Not when his mouth still tastes like metal and he can still close his eyes and see a dead boy who never got to be a man, hooked up to machines in a house with bars on the doors. He didn't even really look like Buck. That was the craziest fucking part, somehow.
He slips the tape into the player, fiddles with the volume knob until the jangling guitar intro to the first track starts coming out of three of the four speakers. The back left just hisses and pops, but it's not bad enough to turn it off.
Eddie shakes his head exasperatedly. His jaw has unclenched, though. Buck still wants to press his fingers to it, feel the warmth of Eddie's skin under the bruises. Instead, he rattles them on the edge of the shoebox, humming along off-key as the singer growls, Feeling easy on the outside, not so funny on the inside—
Buck breaks off, laughing breathlessly, which fucking hurts with four cracked ribs. Eddie glances at him. There's a little knot in his brow that Buck has always wanted to soothe away with his thumb. So much of Eddie that he's wanted to touch in ways he can't.
"I'm okay," he says, before Eddie can ask.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Should probably pull over pretty soon anyway. Stretch our legs."
He appreciates the way Eddie says our, probably more than he should. "Yeah, alright. Sounds good."
Hour Three
They stop for lunch once they're out past Albuquerque, the city falling away behind them. A roadside taqueria in some town that Buck missed the name of, picnic tables peeling under the hot desert sun. He eases himself down onto a bench while Eddie gets their food, chatting with the man behind the window in Spanish too soft and quick for Buck to follow. He looks easier here than he did in Los Nietos, raw and sparking like a live wire even before it all went wrong. Even if this isn't home yet, it's closer.
"For you," Eddie says, depositing a foil-wrapped burrito and a paper cup in front of him. "Carne asada. Hope that's okay."
"Sounds good to me," Buck says, though the truth is almost anything would right now. The cup turns out to be lemonade; Eddie's got a bottle of watermelon Jarritos dangling from his free hand as he sets his plate down, because he has something wrong with him. Buck watches him twist the lid off and set the bottle down, watches him unwrap his fork and knife and tuck the napkin under his plate so it doesn't blow away. The familiar motions of his hands.
"C'mon, eat up." Eddie glances up at him, and he's smirking a little, sharp and teasing. "Don't want you to get hangry."
"Uh, pretty sure that's you."
Eddie shrugs with one shoulder. He spins the plastic fork between his fingers, then abruptly starts laughing.
"What?" Buck says, but he can feel the smile pulling at his own mouth.
"Stab you in the neck with a fork?" Eddie says, and for an instant Buck has no fucking clue what he's talking about, and then a moment later he's laughing too, because what the hell. What the hell. It hurts, but he can't help it.
"I don't think you could break the skin with that one," he gasps, once he's calmed down a little, and that sets Eddie off again, burying his face in his hands, shoulders shaking. If not for the sound, he'd look like he was crying, and when he finally lifts his head his eyes are wet.
"There's something fucking wrong with you," he says.
You love me anyway, Buck doesn't say. It's true and he knows it's true, but it feels too big, too raw, too real to say out loud right now. Instead he shrugs, grinning, and unwraps his burrito. "Yeah, I know."
Hour Four
He's dozing when they cross over into Arizona, wakes when Eddie reaches out to jostle his knee gently. Buck startles hard enough to jar basically everything, then curls in on himself with a pained groan.
"Sorry, sorry," Eddie says, jerking his hand back like he's been burned. Or like Buck has.
Cattle prod, he thinks, then shoves the thought into a box and kicks it under the bed. There's a pair of burn marks on his neck that he's trying not to think about, which is easier if he doesn't think about where they came from. "S'fine. What's up?"
Eddie is watching the road when Buck looks at him, that wired tension back in his jaw again. Then he sighs, laughs a little under his breath, and says, "Figured you'd want to know we're out of New Mexico. Finally."
"Fucking finally," Buck says, slumping back in his seat. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Eddie glance over at him, but when he looks back, Eddie is watching the road again. Buck pushes himself carefully upright, watching his inscrutable profile. "Thanks."
"Anytime," Eddie says, and this time after a moment he looks back.
Hour Five
He calls Maddie again on their fourth pit stop of the day, little more than a highway pull-off with bathrooms and a vending machine and a scattering of picnic tables, empty right now but for an old man walking an equally elderly dog at the far end of the sidewalk.
"How's the drive going?" she asks.
"Good, it's, uh, it's good," he says. He's hobbling in slow circles through the scrub grass and sand alongside the tiny parking lot, Joshua trees casting scant shade. Eddie is over by the vending machine, hands on his hips, a set to his posture that Buck knows means he's swearing at it under his breath. Buck's bad leg aches ferociously, but then again, so does everything else. "Haven't run off the road yet."
"Buck," Maddie sighs.
"Sorry."
"You're okay, though?"
Not even slightly, but Buck doesn't bother saying that. He rolls his shoulders instead, tilting his head back to look up at the blue, blue sky, faded pale along the edges of the horizon. "I'm okay. Hey, how was the party?"
"Aside from the guest of honor missing it?"
"Aside from that," Buck says, watching Eddie straighten up, drag both hands through his hair, then deliver a sharp kick to the base of the vending machine. Something rattles into the bucket with a heavy thud. Eddie nods sharply, hands on his hips again, visibly, ridiculously satisfied even from here, and Buck loves him, loves him, loves him.
It's not a new revelation, not exactly. It's been on the tip of his tongue for more than a year, and he's been biting it back just as long. But he almost died yesterday. What's the point of lying to himself about this?
"—not sure how we're getting Jee to bed after all that sugar," Maddie is saying when he tunes back in.
"Well, you have a couple of hours to figure it out."
"True. Hey, do you want me to put her on? Chim's just getting Nash down for a nap."
"Uh, no," Buck says, so fast that he startles himself. Startles Maddie too, if the sharp intake of breath is anything to go by. He squeezes his eyes shut until he sees bright spots floating in the dark. Like headlights rushing past in the night. He never turns down a chance to talk to Jee. Never. But now—but now— "I think we're gonna hit the road again pretty soon and I-I should probably give Eddie his phone back be-before I kill the battery, so—"
"Buck," Maddie says gently, and it's only then that he realizes he's close to hyperventilating. He stops, makes himself pull a slow breath in across his teeth. His chest aches as it expands.
"Sorry," he says again. He doesn't know what the hell is wrong with him. He just knows that his chest feels like it's full of shattered glass and there are nightmares clinging to the edges of his vision and he can't talk to Jee like this.
"It's okay," Maddie says, but he can hear how her voice shakes. "You're okay. You'll be okay."
"Yeah," Buck says, because what else can he say. "Yeah. I'll, uh, I'll see you soon. Few more hours."
"See you," Maddie says, with clear reluctance.
"Love you," Buck adds, and hears her take another quick breath.
"Love you too," she says, and it doesn't shake, not this time.
Eddie is on his way back over with a pair of Gatorades in his hands when Buck hangs up. He offers Buck the red one, and Buck takes it, hands back his phone.
"You have a car charger, right?" he asks.
"Yeah. Why, what's the battery at?" Eddie's already looking before he can answer. "Seventy-four percent."
Buck jerks his chin down in a nod. It's not like they've been using it to play music. That should last them the rest of the way home, no problem. They're not going to get stranded out here somewhere with no way to call for help. "Yeah, I, uh, forget it, probably don't need to dig it out."
Eddie glances up at him. His eyes are warm and concerned, his hair falling across his forehead. Sunlight catches in the stubble on his jaw, over the scrapes: a few glints of silver amidst the reddish-brown. He chews the inside of his lip for a second, then says, "Can't hurt."
He's still moving slowly, free hand pressed to his ribs as he pops the trunk and leans down to rifle through his bag. Buch winces and looks down. He can't exactly bend at the waist much right now, so he wouldn't be much help even if he wanted to.
He wants to. He wants to. It bruises something in him that Eddie's taking care of him like this, digging through his bag for a charger even though it hurts to bend over because Buck is irrationally scared of their one phone dying.
Eddie stands back up slowly, charger in hand. He takes a slow breath, then closes the trunk and starts limping back to the front of the car, so Buck makes his own slow, halting progress back as well.
Hour Six
He dozes for a while in the sleepy, golden hours of the afternoon. They've switched out the eighties metal for something acoustic, humming guitars barely audible over the sound of the road noise. He took a painkiller not that long ago, and the lassitude laps at him, softening the edges of the world.
The tape ends. There's a moment of quiet hissing, dead noise, then Eddie makes a soft noise, ejects the tape, turns the radio off. The silence feels loaded somehow, like Eddie might be staring at him, but of course he's not. He's watching the road. And Buck can't quite find it in him to climb all the way back up to consciousness. He floats there instead, his mind a calm bubble beneath the surface of stormy seas, before he finally sinks back down.
Hour Seven
The sun has started its downward arc toward the western horizon, bright and blinding in a way that makes Buck's skin itch, when they cross into California. The car is full of dusty golden light, long shadows drawn across the landscape. They've got the sun visors down, but at this angle it's not doing much, and reflections seem to swim across the road ahead, the transitory illusion of water.
Buck is sitting slumped in his seat, at an awkward angle that makes his ribs ache but takes a little bit of the pressure off of everything else. The painkiller is starting to wear off, and it's at least a few more hours before he can take another one. He's breathing through it, riding the swells of agony and trying to keep his groans behind his teeth every time they go over a pothole. Eddie keeps looking over at him, but Buck, stubbornly, doesn't want to give him the satisfaction.
He's a dick when he's injured. He knows it, Eddie knows it. And the warm tide of relief that's been carrying him since that moment Eddie collapsed to his knees in the dirt next to him yesterday is finally starting to wear off.
The light is getting to him. Too bright, too blinding. Too much like—
He hears Eddie take a sharp breath and wrinkles his nose, feeling prickly, feeling like he wants to bite. God, he can't wait to be home.
"They thought we were together," Eddie says abruptly, which wasn't at all what Buck was expecting.
He freezes, then straightens up slowly in his seat. Shifting positions awakens a whole host of new aches, but he ignores them, looks at Eddie, who is staring intently at the road in front of them, hands at ten and two, knuckles white.
"The guys at the diner, I know," he says cautiously. Truth be told, he's not exactly eager to talk about this either, and he definitely wasn't expecting Eddie to. Not after the way he looked in the diner after those assholes left, eyes wide and furious and wounded. Not after the way he shrugged off Buck's hand when he tried to coax him toward the door.
He knows Eddie well enough to discard the worst and most uncharitable explanations for how that went down. He was tired, frustrated, hungry. Buck had just picked the kind of huge embarrassing public fight that he knows Eddie hates. Those guys were assholes.
He's been trying not to think about it too much, honestly. One of about fifty things in the past couple of days that he's been trying not to think about.
"Not just—" Eddie jerks his chin to the side, doesn't finish. His jaw works. Buck stays silent, watching him. Partly just to give him whatever space he needs to spit it out. Partly because he's not sure what question to ask, or even if he wants to.
"Eddie," he says finally, quietly, after the silence has stretched out for at least a mile, highway rumbling beneath them.
Eddie breathes out, hard. "I thought they were the ones who—I thought it was them."
Buck knew that, sort of. Heard what Earl said, after the shaky combined relief and terror of Eddie's voice, calling out obliviously from the other side of the property. He just—hadn't really thought about it. What that meant. What Eddie must have thought, during those long hours of searching for him.
"Oh," he breathes.
"I thought it was them. That it was my fault."
"It wasn't your fault," Buck says immediately. Eddie shakes his head again, his lips pulled tight enough that the scar across his lower one goes white. His eyes are shiny, which could be just from driving into the sun, but Buck knows it's not. "Even if it had been them—"
"I picked a fight."
"It still wouldn't have been your fault."
"I picked a fight," Eddie repeats, the words bitten off, sharp.
"It's okay," Buck says helplessly. He can't ask why, not now. Suspects that Eddie wouldn't have an answer for him even if he did. That's a conversation for later, if ever. "I'm—we're okay. You know? We're gonna be okay."
"You have four broken ribs. Plus a concussion."
"Yeah, but on the upside, no internal bleeding."
"Jesus," Eddie says. He finally lets go of the wheel to shove a hand through his hair, then he starts laughing, shaky.
"I'm okay," Buck says again, and Eddie nods, takes a quick breath, swipes his palm quickly across his eyes like if he does it fast enough Buck won't notice. Buck lets him get away with it. He usually does.
"We should, um. Shit. It's getting time we should stop again. Find a place to pull off. Stretch our legs."
"Okay," Buck says. "Yeah, sounds good."
Hour Eight
He's expecting another rest station, but instead Eddie eases them off the highway a little while later, onto the county roads. Buck blinks at the landscape, soaked in golden late-afternoon sunlight. Dry California hills, a blocky white sign high up one rounded peak that reads CALICO.
Eddie pulls into the parking lot below without explanation. It's sparsely populated: a handful of SUVs, a tour bus, a mint 60s sports car that'd normally have Eddie popping out of the car to circle it avariciously.
He cuts the engine now. Straightens slowly.
"Where are we?" Buck asks.
"Calico Ghost Town Regional Park."
"What?"
"Stopped here with Chris." Something pulls at Eddie's mouth, like it's not sure what shape it wants to make. "The last time we, uh. Made the drive."
From El Paso to Los Angeles, he means. Buck thought about offering to come help them pack, at the time, but he had his own shit to pack up and put in storage and in the cramped spare corners of Chim and Maddie's garage. Eddie and Chris took a few days to make the trip—it's hard for Chris to be in a car that long. They didn't really talk much about it, at the time. There was a lot he and Eddie weren't talking about, at the time.
"Oh," Buck says finally.
"He said you'd probably like it."
Buck squeezes his eyes shut. Stupidly, they're pricking with tears. "We—we're not that far from L.A. now. Right? Maybe we can all come back here together sometime."
He wants to bite it back as soon as he says it, but when he looks up, Eddie is just looking at him, eyes soft. Buck wonders how long he'll keep looking at him like that—like he's staring at a miracle.
"Yeah," Eddie says, also soft. "Yeah, maybe. C'mon, I think they close pretty soon."
Buck follows him, limping and slow, to the visitor center, where a young-faced park ranger apologetically informs them that the park is only open for another half an hour. Eddie waves her off and pays for two tickets anyway.
"I'll pay you back," Buck says.
"Don't be stupid."
He snorts laughter, and Eddie glances up at him with a brief grin that punches him painlessly in the chest. This is going to be a problem, he thinks. Sooner or later.
For now, though, he follows Eddie slowly down the paved main street of a nineteenth-century mining town, preserved like something kept in amber. There's an old-fashioned general store, windows dusty, goods laid out like something straight out of an old western. A blacksmith, a saloon, even a barbershop. Eddie talks while they make their slow limping way along, pointing out this building or that, reading off the information plaques when they stop, which is often. Playing the role Buck usually plays in places like this, but Buck will let him have it. He's kind of losing steam. Moving around helps a little bit, but not much, and Eddie can't be in much better shape than him.
But it's nice, being here, in the sunlight, walking through a ghost town with Eddie. It's nice, not being a ghost himself right now.
"Should probably head back," Eddie says, and Buck realizes that he's just been standing there swaying in place, watching the sun's last golden rays slip behind the hills, shadows sinking down. He glances over and sees that Eddie has shifted closer, in arm's reach, like he's preparing himself to catch Buck if he falls. Buck kind of wants to collapse just to feel Eddie's hands on him again, but that would be selfish, so he doesn't.
"Yeah," he says, "probably."
"You good?"
"I'm good," Buck says, and he means it as much as he can right now. "Hey, uh. Thanks, for this."
Eddie nods, then presses a hand to Buck's shoulder, steady and grounding, to steer him back toward the car.
Hour Nine
The outer edges of the city swallow them up still miles and miles from home, sporadic traffic thickening to the familiar rapid pulse of tourists and truckers and evening commuters. Buck watches Eddie blink heavily, rub his eyes, then shake his head jerkily, but his hand stays steady on the wheel.
"Almost home," he says eventually.
"Yeah," Buck says. It rasps a little in his throat.
"You should come stay at mine tonight."
"Eddie…"
"Chris will want to see you."
"That's not fair."
"It's the truth."
Buck sighs. "I want to sleep in a bed tonight, man."
"So take the bed," Eddie says casually. The kind of casual that he usually likes to try out when he's not being casual at all, like he thinks Buck won't notice.
Buck notices. He's exhausted, but he notices. "You were in a car accident too. You need the bed just as much as I do."
"So we'll share," Eddie says, jutting his chin out stubbornly, and Buck kind of wishes he could be surprised. Wishes he knew what the hell Eddie thinks he's doing, if he even knows himself.
"Come on," he says.
"What?"
"We'll share?"
"Put a pillow between us if it makes you feel better," Eddie says, like Buck's the one who needs to feel better about this. Sharing a bed with a man, with his best friend, for no reason other than to stay close. A pillow isn't going to do anything about waking up to the sight of Eddie's soft, sleeping face, the sound of his breathing, the way that permanent knot between his eyebrows smooths out and makes him look younger. Right now, Eddie is still watching the road, and the knot is still there. "Tell you the truth, I wouldn't mind keeping you where I can see you for a little while."
"I'm fine, Eddie."
"I know," Eddie says, in a tone that suggests otherwise. Which is fair; he's right. "Maybe I'm not."
It's a low blow, but that's not surprising. Eddie fights to win, even when he's not actually fighting. Maybe they would be, if either of them had the energy for it. Maybe not. Buck's too fucking hazy and broken right now to tell.
Maybe this time, for once, he's too tired to push it away.
I'm in love with you, he thinks, watching Eddie's profile while Eddie watches the road. You know that, right? You have to know. Everyone knows.
Eddie's good at not letting himself know things, though. And maybe this, the offer of a bed, that quiet intimacy fenced in by excuses, is the best either of them can do right now.
"Okay," Buck says finally. "If you're sure."
"I'm sure."
"I'll call Maddie and let her know. She's gonna want to—"
"Yeah, of course," Eddie says quickly. His hands flex on the wheel. He chews the inside of his lip briefly, and doesn't say anything else.
Hour Ten
It's dark when they take the highway exit that aims them toward South Bedford Street, not a hint of sunset left in the sky. Buck has mostly stopped flinching every time a set of headlights runs up behind them, flashes of white briefly flooding the cab. It's being so low to the ground, partly. The sedan they were driving when they were run off the road was, too.
Maddie gives him shit about his truck, but he'll be glad to be back in it. Whenever he's finally cleared to drive.
He looks out the window as Eddie slows and comes to a stop at the bottom of the exit ramp. Traffic flows across the street in front of them, headlights flashing, then stops. The light flips from red to green. Eddie pulls out onto the street.
"Can't wait to get out of this car," Buck says finally, the first time either of them have spoken in a while.
"You doing okay?"
"Everything hurts, but yeah."
"Should be able to take a painkiller when we get there."
"Yeah." Buck closes his eyes, but the vertigo of the darkness gets to him worse than the sunlight did earlier. He glances down at Eddie's phone, still plugged into the car charger. There's a new text message from Maddie, so he picks it up, peers at it. "Maddie and Chim are, uh, are meeting us there. If that's okay."
"Course. Pepa will let them in."
"Yeah." Buck's quiet for another long while, watching the side streets slide past. Familiar signs, familiar buildings.
"Hey," Eddie says, soft, at the next red light, and when Buck glances over he sees Eddie already looking at him. "We're almost there."
Buck meets his eyes, swallows, nods.
They're not home yet, but they're getting there. They're not okay yet, either, but he's got to believe they'll get there too.