Chapter Text
Eddie steps up to the porch, the uncomfortable drum in his chest making his throat tighten. He knocks, glancing at Buck’s truck neatly parked behind him, then back at the door.
His fist hits the wood a little harder the second time.
“Buck?” He calls tentatively.
With a huff, he heads to the window, tries to peek through the blinds. The hallway is dark, he can only see a sliver of Buck’s living room. He catches a glimpse of movement and leans in further, squinting through the high mid-afternoon sun.
It’s their 96-off and Buck has been mostly M.I.A., sparsely answering his texts on the lucky times he doesn’t just leave Eddie on read.
He makes out the edge of hunched shoulders at the dinner table. Unmoving. His breath hitches and he takes an unstable step back, heading back to the door.
He knocks, again, failing to keep the urgency out of his voice.
“Buck, come on, I know you’re home.”
Buck never gave him a key. The thought, in no way new, aches every time, makes his mind drift back to a time when this was easier. When it was natural for them to have constant access to each other, when he didn’t need to call ahead, when he didn’t feel like Buck was slipping through his fingers.
Last time, he left. Last time, he gave up, and when he climbed into his car with Chris there had been a tar pit forming in his gut telling him he was making a mistake. Buck wants to handle it his own way, and Eddie has been trying to let him, but every day that passes Buck gets further and further away. He’s done letting him.
He raises his fist again, but before he can do anything with it, the lock clicks and Buck opens the door just wide enough to let his body through, but closed enough that it makes it clear he’s not being invited in. Buck smiles brightly at him, a confused frown over his eyes.
Eddie feels sick.
“Eddie! Sorry, didn’t hear you, I was in the backyard. What’s up?”
A bold faced lie, and Eddie only barely manages to school his expression.
“Uh,” he starts, shaking himself out of it. He just needs to get inside, then he’ll figure out the rest. “Chris is at a friend’s for the day and I’m bored out of my mind. Wanna hang out?”
If Buck notices the uncertainty in his voice, he doesn’t react to it. There was a time Eddie would have never doubted Buck’s answer to that offer. He wouldn’t even have to offer, they would just head home together after shift, collapse on the couch with physical fatigue weighing on them, but wide awake, and Buck would eventually head home when he felt like it. Sometimes he didn’t until the next day.
Buck shifts on his feet, the only indication of discomfort that seems to slip past his carefully constructed mask, then glances behind him.
“Oh, uh, well now’s not really a good time, I have a bunch of errands I need to run today.”
“I could help you with whatever it is, I don’t mind. Give me something to do,” he shrugs, a half-smile tugging at his lips.
Buck’s eyes flutter, a hint of hesitation flickering across his features. His smile drops infinitesimally, but he catches himself in a second and chuckles with a nonchalant shake of his head.
“Sure, if you insist.”
He steps aside, finally, and lets Eddie in.
The house is cloaked in darkness. The blinds and curtains are drawn, and Eddie’s not claustrophobic but he feels his heartbeat spike anyway as he walks inside.
“What are you, a vampire? Why’s it so dark in here?”
Buck has his back turned to him as he closes the door when he answers, his smile still audible in his voice.
“Ah, I took a nap on the couch earlier.” He heads into the kitchen, Eddie trailing after him, and pulls the blinds open, sunlight casting him in a harsh white glow. “Coffee?”
Eddie nods, eyes darting to the dinner table. One of the chairs is still haphazardly pulled out from under it.
He reaches out to take the mug Buck offers with a small smile, leaning against the threshold. Buck settles himself against the counter, a safe distance away. Eddie feels it like a knife in his guts.
“How’s Chris?” Buck asks.
He does seem genuinely curious, but instead of the pleasant warmth it usually awakens in Eddie, the question stings. Guilt claws its way into Eddie’s stomach.
Eddie knows it’s partly his fault that Buck uses Chris as a buffer. He doesn’t doubt that Buck does care, but they haven’t been able to talk about anything real because Eddie has made it a habit to cheer Buck up with his son. It hadn’t really failed him before, until now. Until Buck had willfully ignored them a few weeks ago.
Something’s changed, enough to fracture Buck’s ties to him, to them.
“He’s good. I’m sure he’s over there playing video games he knows I wouldn’t allow at home. Teenager stuff,” Eddie says with a shrug as he takes a sip from his drink, eyes fixed on Buck. “How are you?”
Buck rolls his eyes. “I’m good, just enjoying the days off.”
Is that what he was doing? Enjoying?
“What were you really doing before you opened the door?” It stumbles out of him before he can help it, and he winces at his own phrasing.
Buck tenses, squares his shoulders, but the unsettling, constant smile doesn’t leave his lips.
“I told you, I was in the backyard.”
“Buck, come on.”
The humorless laugh Buck aims his way only worsens the frustration rising in him. How is he supposed to navigate this? Buck lying to him? He wants to call it out, but there’s an undercurrent of fear in his veins that it will only drive Buck further away.
“I don’t – Eddie, what the hell are you on about?”
“I just want you to talk to me,” Eddie pleads. “Or anyone. You didn’t reschedule therapy, did you?”
“I don’t need therapy, it’s been months.”
Eddie barks out an incredulous laugh, and Buck isn’t smiling anymore. “How can you even believe that? What, you think you can get over this in a few weeks?”
“What happened to letting me do this my way?”
“Your way isn’t working,” Eddie hisses. He strides forward and puts down his mug with more force than he intended, coffee spilling over in scattered drops on the counter. Buck stumbles back, composure cracking. “I’ve given you your space, I wanted you to control how you dealt with this, but you’re just not. You’re not dealing with it.”
“Jesus, Eddie, there’s no it! There’s nothing to talk about.”
There’s a fire behind Buck’s eyes, and Eddie thinks,good. He’ll take anything. He’ll take exasperation, blame, anger, anything over the nothingness that has invaded the usually spirited eyes of his best friend.
“Fine, you don’t wanna talk? I will.” Buck runs a frustrated hand over his brow and turns away from Eddie, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t need to look at him to say what he needs to say. “I’m scared, Buck. I know something’s wrong and you won’t – you’re lying to me about it and I don’t understand why.”
Eddie inches closer, and Buck must catch the motion in the corner of his eye because he shuffles away.
“I don’t know when it changed,” Eddie continues, voice small and unsteady. “I don’t know when you decided you couldn’t rely on me anymore.”
Buck winces like the words are slicing through him.
“Maybe it’s been like this since I left for Texas and I just – I didn’t want to see it. Or, I don’t know, maybe since Bobby –”
“Stop.” It’s said like a plea and a warning wrapped into one. Buck snaps his head around, finally meets Eddie’s eyes.
The breath is punched out of him. Buck looks – pained, tired, and Eddie hates that he’s the one responsible, but he needs Buck to know, he has to know that he’s allowed to feel it, that Eddie can take it. Now that he’s started, he doesn’t think he can stop.
“I thought – I thought they killed you, in New Mexico. I thought I lost you, but I found you, and you saved me, and now we’re back and somehow it still feels like I’m losing you all over again.”
“Eddie, I’m telling you to stop.” Buck strides out of the kitchen, but Eddie chases after him when he brushes past.
Buck evidently didn’t even really have a destination in mind, because he plants himself in the middle of his living room and starts pacing in tiny steps, with his fists tangled in his curls. Eddie halts a few feet in front of him.
“No, I won’t. Just talk to me, Buck, let me – let me have your back, I’m right here.”
“I’m fine,” Buck hisses through gritted teeth, knuckles white against his head.
“I don’t get why you’re being so – bullheaded about this.”
Buck halts, then drops his arms to his side, a snide caricature of a smile ghosted across his lips. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m no longer the man you knew.”
A weight settles in his gut like tar, his chest caves in on itself, and he has to bring a hand to his sternum to steady himself.
“Buck…” It comes out as a whisper, dripping with the guilt unfurling in him. “I’m – I didn’t mean it like –”
“Get out.”
Eddie has never felt so small.
“What?”
He hadn’t known, then. He’d thought he was just placating him, he’d thought – Buck had been adamant that he was good, and he’d let them in that time, and Eddie had been too caught up in the relief of it to think.
“If you’re not gonna drop it, just get out.” Buck is resolutely staring at the wall behind Eddie, refusing to meet his eyes.
“Buck, please don’t do this.” His voice cracks around the words, the tightness in his throat choking him.
“Just go, Eddie!” Buck stomps to his front door, unlocks it with a swift, painfully sharp movement, and swings it open. He doesn’t even glance Eddie’s way, his gaze is fixed somewhere on the hardwood floor.
I don’t want to break down the door. He has to.
“No.”
Buck finally looks at him then, and he scoffs. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not leaving unless you drag me out of here.”
Eddie follows Buck’s immediate glance at the dinner table, until his eyes land on the keys to Buck’s truck. He acts before he thinks, moving swiftly to grab them in a tight grip before Buck can storm out with them. He still might, but Eddie doubts he will. However, his little plan only seems to ignite even more anger in Buck.
“Are you fucking serious right now?”
“Look, Buck, I’m sorry, okay?” He barrels through the indignation pinning him in place, because it’s too late to back down anyway. “I’m sorry I said that. So you’re not the same person, you changed, of course you did. Who the fuck wouldn’t after what happened to you?”
Buck slams the door shut, turns the lock again almost absently, but he remains in his spot, the muscles in his jaw shifting under the skin with tension.
“I don’t care that you changed, Buck, I don’t need you to be okay, I don’t need you to be the same, I’m gonna love any –” Buck narrows his eyes as Eddie’s breath stutters. “Any version of you that I get to know.”
It rings truer than it should to his own ears. He loves Buck, of course he loves Buck, he already knew that. So why did it feel different to say it just now?
“I just need you to let me,” he finishes, all the frustration drained out of him. All that’s left is worry.
Silence stretches between them while Buck searches his face with an undecipherable expression. The only sounds filling the room are Eddie’s shaky exhales, and the thrum of his own heartbeat.
Buck moves, finally. He walks towards Eddie carefully, with a resigned purse of his lips. Hope blooms in Eddie’s chest, but there’s no pride in it. He never wanted to have to push so hard, but if that’s what it had to take, he doesn’t regret it.
Buck comes to a stop in front of him, close enough that Eddie feels his breath on his cheek when he sighs. He reaches his hand out to wrap his fingers around the back of Eddie’s hand. Eddie can’t look away from the wistful eyes boring into his as he feels warm skin drag against his knuckles, skimming into his palm.
Eddie is frozen in place, waiting, open, offering up the space for Buck to finally let him in. His chest constricts, his blood rushes in his ears.
A finger loops into the metal ring of the keys, and pulls.
“There’s nothing left of me for you to know.”
Buck leaves, the soft click of the door echoing endlessly in Eddie’s ears. He looks down at his hand, the ghost of the touch lingering, and glances at the kitchen window. Their forgotten mugs are sitting next to each other in the patch of sunlight.
The low rumble of an engine sparks to life and fades just as fast. Eddie doesn’t feel it when his knees hit the ground.