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Evan Buckley wasn’t peaceful. Eddie knew that from day one, the moment the man - more so a boy at the time - walked into the medical tent, he was not peaceful. He came with an entourage, he came with a loud voice, he came with crackled laughter that somehow was louder than everyone in the room, and he came with chaos that seemed to follow him around. Much like the scent of boot polish and hair gel.
It was annoying. At first it was, though if anybody got Eddie drunk enough, he’d admit that the lack of peace that was found within Buck, and around him, was always annoying. Buck was annoying, Eddie would never say that though, because he didn’t believe that part to be true at all, he couldn’t even be convinced of such an opinion even if the entire population were screaming at him that it was true. But the lack of peace that Buck brought was annoying.
Any time Eddie looked back on the day he met Buck, all he could think was how much of an asshole that kid was. Both of them were basically kids at the time, Eddie being twenty-one and Buck being nineteen, but at least Eddie had grown out of being an ass - maybe, he’d probably have to ask Buck. But Buck had not, he was as stubborn as a mule, his eyes held a determination unlike anything that anybody had ever seen, and his tongue was sharp, always insulting, always defensive. Never peaceful, kind in his own way, but that was only if somebody looked further than surface level.
And just when Eddie had momentarily stopped thinking of that man as an ass, and rather paid attention to his beauty, he’d dropped and started to seize. Eddie didn’t even get the joy of looking a little too long at Buck before the man snatched any peace that could’ve formed in that tent and promptly chucked it out like it didn’t matter. The medical emergency was pure chaos, Buck was pure chaos. And unfortunately, or rather fortunately, Eddie was already falling for him. Fast and completely unprepared to hit the ground hard, and the ground was only centimetres away. Only the ground felt more like a void with no bounds.
He didn’t know what it was, maybe it was the way Buck had smiled at him, sharp and toothy, like a sheep in wolf's clothing. It could’ve been the way his eyes twinkled a little under the incessant flickering of the overhead bulb, or the way they still seemed to light up in that crisp ocean blue even when it was dark. It could’ve been the freckles that dusted over his face, ones so discrete that probably nobody other than Eddie noticed. Maybe it was the dimples, maybe it was the faint scar running down his face, so light it was almost undetectable to the untrained eye. It could’ve even been the fact that Buck’s sweat had undone the gel in his hair and a curl had sprung out from his otherwise perfectly tamed hair.
Maybe it was his personality. Eddie doubted that as he looked back on it, because that Buck wasn’t the Buck he really knew. That Buck was insecure, hiding behind false bravado out of fear that people would turn away at the very sight of who he truly was beneath all of it.
If it wasn’t his looks, or his personality, it had to be something like fate. And as much as Eddie didn’t want to give credit to the ‘universe’ or ‘fate’ - because in his mind, the universe never had anything to do with anything, and as far as he was aware, fate didn’t exist - he had no other choice but to say that maybe, just maybe, he fell in love because that was how it was supposed to be. It was fate. It was written in the stars. It was carved into the marble of a headstone from the second they locked eyes. Eddie fell in love then and there with no reason for it at all, with no expectation of it, and a whole heap of reasons as to why that shouldn’t have happened.
It was unsettling how quick he was to fall for a man who slapped his hands away when he tried to tend to wounds. It was scary how fast he was to fall for a man who was just that, a man. Not a woman. Not the woman that was in Texas waiting for a phone call. It disrupted everything Eddie knew to be true, it brought him agony, and he buried it deeper and deeper as the years went by.
And as the years did in fact go by, and they became friends, not just people passing by one another now and again, the peace never truly surfaced. Not even when Buck showed Eddie who he was, who he truly was, not the bravado, not the cocksure grins, none of that. Just Evan. But peace and Evan could never be used in the same sentence, not really, not without an underlying feeling lingering too.
Eddie saw that when they’d gotten kidnapped and nearly murdered. He saw the restlessness and how far Buck could really go with his own bare hands, and after years of wondering if his friend could ever find any form of peace, or bring any that didn’t feel fabricated or like it was in limited supply, Eddie knew the answer. Buck wasn’t peaceful. Not in his movements, not in his mind. Because Eddie had watched Evan Buckley, a man who was the embodiment of pure sunshine, kill two men before his very eyes, without a moment of hesitation. It was instinct in a way that should’ve never been instinct for somebody who wore a smile as bright and warm as his.
But the only reason it was instinct wasn’t his training, wasn’t how long he’d been in the SEALs, not because he was cruel or unkind. The only reason, truly, was because Eddie was in danger. Would Buck have done the same thing if it was just him in that helicopter? Probably not, and that wasn’t because he didn’t value his life (and often, he didn’t) but it was because Buck was smarter, faster, more technical when Eddie wasn’t on the line. But the fact was, Eddie’s life was on the line, and Buck’s most prominent instinct was to protect Eddie from any danger, to hold Eddie’s life in his hands until Eddie himself could hold it himself safely again.
The look in Buck’s eyes in that moment wasn’t peace that you’d find in a monster’s eyes during a brutal murder. It wasn’t peace at all, it was something primal, a need to protect Eddie, and that was when Eddie knew that Buck was not a peaceful man. Not by nature, not through fabrication either. He was just Buck, just Evan. And Eddie would continue to see him that way even as his hands were painted in blood and another body or two landed cleanly in Buck’s basement.
After that, the closest they really got to peace was in the desert. Looking up at stars as they waited for Buck’s team to find them and bring them to safety. They made jokes, they kept each other warm, tended wounds as best as they could, it was almost peaceful. Maybe it would’ve been if Buck hadn’t thrown Eddie out of the helicopter, and if he hadn’t jumped out himself. Maybe it would’ve been if they weren’t in the middle of the desert, or if Buck hadn’t killed two people. But that wasn’t peace, Eddie didn’t know peace when Buck was around.
He never had before, he never would. And he knew that. From that very moment when Buck hadn’t even flinched as he cut the strings to a man’s parachute, Eddie knew. But the lack of peace wasn’t uncomfortable. It wasn’t, and somehow? That made it worse.
Moments where they met again, moments when they left one another, they weren’t done kindly, they weren’t done lovingly. There wasn’t a single opportunity where Buck showed that he knew what peace was, and there wasn’t a moment where Eddie got to sit in a feeling that frankly could not exist in the same vicinity as Buck.
Eddie liked to think that Buck could’ve learnt. If he’d left with him when Eddie had asked, maybe Buck could’ve learnt how to feel peace, how to be peaceful, but Buck didn’t leave. He didn’t. He stayed where he was, as a SEAL, as a lieutenant, and he wracked up more bodies, more pain, more trauma, and he continued until the world decided that he still didn’t have enough and orchestrated it for him.
That very second that that explosion killed Brian, there was no coming back for Buck. He couldn’t learn anymore, he couldn’t feel it anymore. Agony was etched on his skeleton, it was burned and fused with his DNA, there was no room for peace in a body that only knew chaos and agony, an upturned life that never got the chance to settle for a moment. But Eddie hadn’t known that, because what he knew when Buck had suffered that loss and a crush injury that took away every stable ground he had, what he knew was that Buck was dead. Even if he wasn’t.
And Eddie didn’t feel peace at that moment. It wasn’t like he was expecting to feel that way when the news finally found him that Buck had died in combat, but he believed that some part of him would feel peace. Because if Buck was dead, Eddie didn’t have to live with the knowledge that the man was somewhere out there putting his life on the line when he didn’t need to. He didn’t have to live with the knowledge that his moment of hesitation when returning Buck’s feelings cost him more than he could ever gain. He didn’t have to live with that because Buck would be gone, and any memories, any chaos, would all die with him.
Instead of peace he felt anguish. Pure unfiltered rage that sat uncomfortably in his bones, in his muscles, in his flesh, in his blood stream. He felt that, because it felt like he’d lost something, even when he didn’t even have that very thing to start with. It felt like a lost opportunity, a lost chance. Buck’s death felt like losing an important segment of a memory that somebody never wanted to lose - that grief of knowing that that segment would never resurface lived in Eddie. For years, it did, because Buck was dead, and all he could do was curse that man’s name and wish he hadn’t hesitated when telling Buck he loved him. And the only reason he had, wasn’t because he didn’t love Buck with his whole being, but it was because that moment wasn’t like how Eddie imagined it would be.
Buck’s confession in Eddie’s wildest imagination was a moment where they sat together, staring at each other, eyes never straying from one another, an earnest moment that didn’t have a vile undertone that felt like a strong current that dragged them apart, swirling through merciless water that would kill them eventually. It would’ve been warm, it would’ve been loving, it would’ve had Buck’s brilliant smile and twinkling eyes that looked like the reflection of the sun off the sea’s blue surface. It would’ve been peaceful, and that is why that was Eddie’s imagination and not reality.
Somehow, when Eddie thought back to it, he wouldn’t change that confession for anything. Because it was raw. It hurt unlike anything Eddie had ever felt before - and that was the reality of loving Buck. Loving Buck hurt, it would never feel healthy, or stable. It would always feel overwhelming and like fire licking up flesh, burning through it like his body was the scripture of his purpose before finally reaching his heart and engulfing it in a flame that even the fiery pits of hell could never rival.
Loving Buck was like pressing on a burn just to feel the sting.
And god, how Eddie adored that sting.
How he missed that sting, up until the very moment that Buck walked - no, staggered - back into his life with cuts down his face and drenched in ocean water, holding the centre of both of their universes in his arms. Christopher.
He didn’t need to miss it anymore, because the sting was like an electrical buzz that flooded Eddie’s entire system the second his eyes locked on a man who should’ve been dead. Only Buck wasn’t dead, Buck was there. Right before his very eyes. Curls plastered to his forehead, eyes hollow and dimmed, smile weak and unconvincing. He was a shell of who he used to be, but that didn’t matter to Eddie, because the shell was still there, and the inner surface of a shell is made of nacre, which formed pearls, and Buck shined like one. Eddie didn’t need Buck to be who he used to be - he just needed Buck to be Buck, in whatever format he came in.
Because while Eddie felt the electric pulse through his entire being, Buck was drenched in sea water, and that would always be enough to make a spark, and that spark could become the familiar flame that burned Eddie from the inside out. He wouldn’t need to miss the sting when he had the agony of loving Buck back, settling heavy in his chest, filling his lungs with smoke and making it harder and harder to breathe.
And in that field hospital, like the very first one they’d met in, the spark flickered in the dim lighting, and it caught into their surroundings, creating a flame that couldn’t be combated. It was like that fire was caused by an oil spill, polluting the world, killing it, sickening them, but they didn’t have the tools to fix it. To stop it. And the fire was too warm, too warm to find anything but comfort in the soft glow and the heat, it was too pretty to notice the destruction forming around it.
The sun, a ball of gases, often depicted as fire, that was Buck. To Eddie, Buck was the sun. Not because of how bad the sun’s surface could burn, but because it kept coming back after the darkest of nights, the longest of nights that nobody thought they’d ever get through. Buck was the sunrise, the sunshine, the sunset, he was the sun to Eddie because he never truly left, he always lingered, there was always a promise that he would be seen again, that he’d always be there, no matter the phase he was found in. He was impossible to miss, and in that field hospital, and every day after that, he was impossible to not gaze upon and realise how much his mere presence was valued.
Nighttime was dark, it was home to monsters that only children openly believed in and adults quietly agreed that existed too; their monsters were different.
Christopher’s monsters were different than Eddie’s. Cheistopher’s monsters were the ones under the bed, the ones that lurked in the bathroom at night, the ones that made the sounds against the floorboards, like a scratch, like a creak. But Christopher knew the sun would come back up, rescue him from everything that was unknown in the dark, the sun would shine again, and from sunrise to sunset, he would be safe again. Safe in the embrace of the sun, safe in the knowledge that nothing could touch him while the sun was still shining above.
Eddie’s monsters were different. Because his monsters revolved around the sunrise, the sunshine, the sunset, not the ones in the dark. His monsters taunted him in the day, told him that once the sun set across the city, it would never rise again, not for his eyes. His monsters gave him sunburns, peeling red skin, blisters and teary eyes that would water until the sunset again. And then, lying in bed at night, in the darkness, he would yearn for the sun again. That was his monster. Buck was the monster that lingered.
And yet, Eddie missed the monster, missed it like he’d made a friend, a life long friend that he’d gotten used to and could no longer part with. Maybe Buck wasn’t a monster, maybe he was just the reality of love that Eddie didn’t want to accept. Because in stories, in fairytales, love didn’t hurt, didn’t burn. In stories and in fairytales when one would compare their lover to the sun, they never meant it in a painful way, never. But Eddie did.
Yes, of course, Buck was everything good about the sun too, but he wasn’t pure. Eddie wouldn’t have loved him if he was though. He couldn’t imagine loving somebody so perfect, but he could imagine loving a man that was so imperfect and did it so well that every sharp edge, every burning look and touch was nothing less than perfection.
That is why Eddie wanted to keep it casual. Friendship was safer, it was that pain in small doses. Only Eddie couldn’t be casual about it, because every smile, every cocked head, every time the sunshine caught those blue eyes, he couldn’t fathom a life where he kept things casual with Buck.
He would’ve rather burned out faster, harder, entirely, than burned slowly and never reached the end of the wick before being blown out. So he jumped, he jumped when Buck was already airborne, like some free falling Icarus that never planned on reaching the ground despite his wings burning up. Eddie jumped because Buck jumped, and somewhere near the ground, they caught one another, holding on while the ground got closer and closer.
The ground they were about to hit looked stable enough for the both of them. Like they’d land together, in the exact same way, neither falling away, neither hurting more than the other. It looked stable. The fall didn’t look peaceful, but the ground did, and Eddie was convinced they’d finally reach that.
It felt as if they’d been falling for centuries, like they were talking for years upon years about the future they’d build on the ground when they finally landed on it. The fall was taking a long time, so long in fact that Eddie started to believe they were rising, higher than either of them could’ve possibly imagined when it came to sharing a life together.
But then they landed, and not in the way they’d expected. The ground was supposed to be peaceful, the ground in which their life was supposed to properly begin was supposed to be peaceful. But with Buck by his side, he should’ve known better. Because even in the sky, even free falling, their hands conjoined and the winds blowing through their hair, it wasn’t peaceful. That wind was rough, the debris carried by it scratched at their resolve, scratched at their flesh until blood was drawn. Blood trickled slowly, not enough for either of them to notice, not enough for concern.
But after knowing Buck for a decade, Eddie should’ve known that not enough was too much entirely.
The ground was rough, and it shifted. Not beneath Eddie, but beneath Buck.
The plans they’d made in the sky, where nothing of physical significance - other than one another - could touch them, fell away as Buck was dragged back into the Navy. Plans that should’ve succeeded, plans that ensured their life together would be happy and fulfilled, they fell through, because the plans that Buck had had before stumbling bloody and soaked back into Eddie’s life, those very plans were ripping Buck away once again. It seemed that their plans didn’t come before Buck’s plans, because Buck’s plans were never timed correctly, never made with a clear head, because did Buck ever have a clear mind? Was his mind ever calm, like the sound of the sea washing over the shore and trailing back into the ocean? Or was it always erratic, always terrifying, like the sound of bullets penetrating skin and bouncing off the metal of humvees and choppers that Buck never should’ve been in? He never would’ve been in them, had he been given a chance from the very start.
Buck never had a chance. He had a mother and a father who viewed him as a delinquent, as something to be fixed, as something that they didn’t have the tools to fix, and therefore tossed him into a boot camp that became a home that nobody should’ve ever seen as home. He joined, because the Navy gave him false choices, choices that made him feel like he was controlling his own narrative, when in reality, he was falling subject to the propaganda of the military. But not just that propaganda, but the propaganda of love that he could find there. And there was love, but not the kind to steer his ship home, not the kind of love that would dock his boat and leave that very boat untouched for the rest of his life. Because his love was out there, and it wasn’t through shooting guns or throwing grenades into buildings, it was in the people who he spent every day with.
He didn’t have a chance because they were the only forms of love he ever knew, and Buck was a starving man, eating every ounce of love they had to put down because he was never sure when he’d be given more. But eventually, the taste of the affection and love they’d given him became the standard, and nothing on the outside would suffice. Even if it tasted better, even if the outside had four walls and roof more often than it didn’t, even if those four walls and roof contained a warm house and a stable, unmoving family waiting. It wouldn’t suffice, because Buck’s entire view on love was because of the indoctrination of the world he lived in before settling in a career that was never meant for him.
The choices he made were on the foundation of a world view that was as unstable as the morals of the military itself. And from the second he signed the first contract, he was no longer his own, his body did not belong to him, his mind did not belong to him, his people did not belong to him. He was the military, he was the golden boy of the SEALs, and Eddie could never command a change, because Buck’s world view was built on medals and chains of command, and in his world, Eddie had no right to command anything of him. Because Eddie was not the military, Eddie was his person, and Buck’s person, his people, were not his to keep.
Buck was not Buck’s to keep.
And Buck was not Eddie’s to keep.
It was like it was written into the core of the earth, unreachable to change, written in from the start. They were powerless against the nature of what was supposed to happen to them, and they could only sit and watch as Buck was catapulted from his home with Eddie to the other end of the earth, always searching for a way to come home, always fighting to get there, when in reality, he had shackles around every limb, and a knife to his throat, pressed so hard that even a breath in the wrong direction would sever his throat.
Buck was torn away. And Eddie waited, Buck’s heart left in his hands.
Buck came back, and restarted Eddie’s heart, not so that Eddie could keep his heart safe, but so that Eddie could keep his own safe. Eddie never realised that, never realised that Buck’s inner duty to keep him alive wasn’t because he wanted Eddie to keep his heart safe, but because he wanted Eddie to keep his own safe. To keep it beating, because Buck could never imagine a world where Eddie’s heart stopped and didn’t beat again when he was around. And Buck never had to imagine that world.
By keeping Eddie’s heart safe, Buck was keeping his own safe. Not because Eddie held Buck’s heart in his hands, but because the heart in Eddie’s hands was a fabrication of what everyone expected Buck to give. Buck’s heart was Eddie. Eddie was his heart and soul, and that was why he never felt that peace, because Buck never did either. And Buck’s heart lived in Eddie, lived as Eddie, and even after he died, he lived on because of that.
But just because Buck brought Eddie back to life, didn’t mean he could stay again. He left again, and watching him leave was like watching the world end. Because Eddie knew he could not stay and watch the sunrise, he couldn’t watch the sunset, he couldn’t even look at the sunshine, because it looked cold, it looked dull. Because Eddie no longer looked at the sun with that wonder, that longing he always had, he looked at it like it was an inevitability, and not a welcome one.
He never believed that the day the sun didn’t rise again would make him realise how much time he really had wasted just watching rather than stepping into it.
Buck burned fast.
Eddie always believed he’d burn out first. But it took him another fifty-four years to reach the end of his own wick. But that wasn’t true. Not really.
Because Eddie had stopped burning half way, he’d stopped burning thirty-eight years after Buck had burnt out, and the fire caught onto the scripture again. Alone, his fire caught those scriptures and wrecked them, leaving no trace behind. There was no scripture of his design, because he didn’t know his own design, he didn’t know Buck’s design. He knew nothing.
He knew nothing other than the agony of a sun ray.
The colour blue, a particular shade always on the cusp of his mind but not something he could easily grab and treasure.
The smell of boot polish, not the specific brand, not anymore.
A laugh, a foreign one, like it was new to his ears despite having heard it a thousand times over.
He knew nothing but shards of his life, pieces missing, like a puzzle that could never be completed.
Maybe Buck wasn’t peaceful, maybe his presence in Eddie’s life wasn’t peaceful in any sense of the world.
But Eddie knew for sure, the absence of him was less peaceful than his presence.
The memory of him was less peaceful than his presence.
And the loss of memory of Evan Buckley was the most agitating part about all of it. Because he mattered, and the lack of peace he brought was irritating, but the most enthralling part of his presence. The lack of memory that Eddie had of Buck, the lack of which remained was the most unsettling part.
Maybe Eddie never knew peace when Buck was around.
But he knew something close to it. And catching a jagged glimpse of Buck through his sickened mind brought him the most comfort in the wake of a lack of peace.