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“Stop saying that!” Buck’s voice was sharp, breathing heavy.
Despite the blood that soaked his shirt, Eddie found it within himself to smile.
Something about Buck’s furrowed brows and pinched expression only made Eddie feel fond.
The blood loss might actually be getting to him now, because when he looked up at Buck, he wasn’t even sure he felt afraid anymore.
He would, of course, if he allowed himself to think about Christopher too much, but he tried not to. If nothing else, he knew that Christopher had Buck. It wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t the same as Eddie getting to be there, but Eddie could help his position. He couldn’t help being sprawled out in the floor of the elevator, and he couldn’t help that he was starting to get tired in a way he knew very well was dangerous.
Buck being present at all felt like some weird kind of miracle. Eddie had stumbled into the elevator alone. He had ripped his shirt and shoved it against the stab wound alone. He had thought, for two minutes that felt like two hours, that he was going to die alone. Dying was funny that way. How time felt like nothing and everything all at once. Eddie had been well on his way to dying enough times to know. In the army, buried beneath the earth, gunned down in the street, driven off the road.
Buck knew it too.
What it felt like to die.
Maybe that was why he looked so disturbed.
When all the lights went out, Eddie thought maybe it was all over. Maybe it had gotten worse. But then the doors had opened and Buck’s face had appeared, wild-eyed and terrified when he saw Eddie’s face.
He skidded to his knees in front of Eddie, hands moving to Eddie’s face like it was completely natural. Like they belonged there. Like they didn’t only ever touch this way when one of them was half-dead. He set about doing what he could to help Eddie, which really wasn’t much. He wasn’t a medic, and even if he was, there were no supplies.
Short of holding the shirt against Eddie’s wounds tighter, and maybe CPR later, there wasn’t really anything at all that Buck could do except for watch him die. He had a few long minutes at best before the situation was completely dire and he knew it.
Buck knew it too.
“Tell me something.” Eddie finally answered, looking up at him. Buck looked frustrated.
“You can’t tell me that there’s nothing we can do except wait and then just change the subject.” He argued, the dismay on his face almost a pout. Tangible sadness.
“Just… play along, please. We both know we’re stuck here.”
“I could climb out of the elevator and find a way back into the building.”
Eddie sighed, “but you haven’t, because you know it won’t do any good. For a start, we’re between floors. Stranded. Even if you could though, there’s an active shooter. The guy who stabbed me, I assume. And then you’d have to get back to me. Without resources. You’d have to find the others, get them here, get the equipment to get me out and then get me treated. But again… shooter. There aren’t going to be doctors just waiting around to treat me. So you may as well just stay with me, Buck. You may as well just… talk to me.”
Buck looked upset, genuinely ready to cry. Or maybe to scream or fight God himself if he had to. He looked like he wanted to fight, but fighting wouldn’t do anything right now though, and Eddie didn’t really want to die alone in a hospital elevator, smelling like church incense and chemicals.
Buck seemed to realise that though, because the fight drained right out of his eyes into something softer. More tragic.
“What do you want me to say?”
His voice was too small. It made Eddie want to be sad again, but that wouldn’t help either of them. He was trying to stay calm and aware and awake for them both.
“You got that weird call earlier.” Eddie tried, groaning as he tried hard to sit a little straighter.
“I don’t really want to talk about that.” Buck was too quick, and Eddie thought that was ideal. If Buck was that stressed, then there was hope that they could distract each other from the pain of it all. The crushing and overwhelming fear of it all. The finality of Eddie’s struggling breaths.
“Come on,” Eddie goaded, “what was it? Some new special person in your life?”
“Eddie,” Buck warned. He took a good look at Eddie’s pale face and sighed. Eddie watched the moment he gave in. “It was a social worker.”
Eddie’s heart jumped in his chest. He was right— he felt more awake already. The look on Buck’s face told Eddie his thinking had shifted a little too. Good.
“So… kind of a new special person in your life then.” Eddie mumbled. “How is he? Is he… doing okay?”
“He’s alive.” Buck shrugged sadly, “But the placement isn’t ideal, and the kid’s direct family are…”
Eddie hummed, prompting him.
“Well, when Kameron was pregnant, as you know, she wound up basically living on my couch. And Connor, it’s… me and him bonded over all the family that we didn’t have. So it’s not really surprising that no one… wants him.” Buck winced even as he said it. That no one wanted him.
The little boy who wasn’t Buck’s kid, but was his biological child. Eddie hadn’t met him for very long, but he had seen enough. Heard enough from Buck too.
He looked at Buck and knew how emblematic this must feel to him. He was a kid that grew up feeling like nobody wanted him. Now Theo, who was his blood despite Buck not being his dad, was going through similar. Eddie was bleeding out, but he wasn’t, he wanted, bodily, to hug Buck. To assure him of something else.
“Fuck them,” Eddie mumbled, somehow startled by how weak his own voice sounded. Buck hadn’t waned even slightly in holding pressure against his mid-section.
“Hm.” Buck bit his lip.
“So they called you?”
Buck nodded slowly.
“Connor and Kameron put me in their living will. Not necessarily as a guardian, but… more like, I was listed as someone who could help. Like a note or an addendum or something. The social worker said she thought it was probably intended to be an option but not an obligation.”
“What does that mean?” Eddie rasped.
“Eddie, I can’t talk to you while your blood is—”
“Please? It’s helping me. To stay calm and awake.” He tried to give Buck his best puppy eyes. Buck crumbled instantly.
“It means that the social worker thinks that it was like a… break-glass-in-case-of-emergecy. That the system prefers to foster to close friends or family. She thinks it was a way for them to… to give me proof of a relationship with them. In case I… wanted to.”
“And?”
“And the social worker says she can help me if I want to go through the steps to foster him.”
Buck looked torn up about it. Talking was helping him to hang on. Seemed like a win-win. And it would be kind of funny to die while giving a pep talk.
“You should.”
“How can I?” Buck burst out, as if he hadn’t been bottling this dilemma inside of him forever, and not just for a few hours. “I’m— I’m not his Dad. I’m not his parent. I’m a sperm donor. I’m the reckless, overly energetic, annoying sperm donor who gave him the same traits that made no one want me around growing up. I mean, I thought it was my parents that made me like this, but apparently I really was just broken and apparently I passed that on, because—”
“Hang on.” Eddie grabbed BUck’s arm and squeezed. It wasn’t as strong, obviously, but it seemed like enough. Buck stopped to look at him. “Look at me in the eye and tell me that that adorable, sweet, bright, clever little is broken?”
Buck paused.
He met Eddie’s eyes. It didn’t help. Eddie could see the grief forming. A funeral in his eyes for an Eddie who wasn’t dead yet. He mustn’t look it yet.
“Not, of— of course not. I just—”
“No, no. Theo is a funny, bright, capable kid with uncanny climbing skills. There’s nothing wrong with him and there’s nothing wrong with you. He’s a special kid, and I mean that as a compliment. You live big, and apparently so does he. But he also has no one. And who better to take him in than his Da—”
“I’m not his Dad.” Buck interrupted, breathing hard, “Connor was his Dad. Connor fed him, he put him to bed. He changed his diapers. Connor and Kameron are his parents. They loved him! They went through so much to be able to love him and to have him. He might have my DNA, but he’s not my kid. And Connor— Connor was the good one. He was always smarter and more sensible than me. More stable. They’re his parents! They deserved to be his parents! They deserve better than this! They deserved more than four years with him and— and— Christ. I can’t be a Dad, Eddie! I already lost my friends and I…” He breathed hard, eyes finding Eddie. “I can’t lose another friend today, Eddie.”
His eyes were so big and so, so fucking sad.
Eddie wanted to be able to tell him that he couldn’t. He couldn’t. Instead…
“I wasn’t going to say Dad, Buck. I was going to say Dad’s best friend. You and Connor loved each other, obviously. They both loved and trusted you. Enough that they wanted to give you legal standing if you ever did want to… be there. I know you weren’t that close in recent years, but you were once, and clearly that mattered to both of you. He mattered enough to you that you stepped away rather than risk making things messy with his family and his child. They didn’t just pick you by accident, Buck.”
Buck scoffed, “No, they picked me because… I’m tall and healthy and a firefighter.”
“There are agencies for that.” Eddie argued. If this was their last conversation, he hoped Buck would walk away feeling a little more confident. A little more loved.
“I can’t be someone’s dad, Eddie.”
“You already are, Buck,” Eddie reminded, “you know that you are to my kid. To him. To me. Don’t talk like you’re not capable of raising a kid, as if I didn’t already— as if you aren’t—”
“Break-glass-in-case-of-emergency is not… the same as being a dad, Eddie. You’re his dad, I’m just… I’m just… Buck.”
Just Buck.
Somehow, that made Eddie laugh. As if anything at all about Buck had ever been just. As if he wasn’t Buck fucking Buckley, the man who jumped into active floodwaters to save his colleague of a year’s son.
The man who snuck away from law enforcement to go after his kidnapped sister.
Who was willing to die rather than risk his captors finding and hurting Eddie too.
Buck wasn’t just anything, not even on his worst day. He was clever and kind, loyal to within an inch of his life.
Eddie had seen him on his worst day. When he sued his friends, when he sprained Eddie’s ankle, when he lashed out.
He’d seen Buck scream and cry and flounder.
He was the best and most important person that Eddie had ever known, short of the one he’d raised.
“Yeah, you’re Christopher’s Buck.” Eddie agreed, aware how weak his voice was sounding. “But I don’t think that means what you think it means.”
Buck sighed deeply and Eddie mimicked the sound, but there was a smile behind his.
“If you asked him, he’d tell you that you’re his second dad.” Eddie told him softly, certain. “He loves you, Buck. And Theo would too, if you decided to be there for him. You don’t have to, but you’ve…” he sighed, “if I don’t get out of here today, you’re going to have to be what Christopher has. All he has. So you need to stop telling yourself that he doesn’t need you or care about you. He’d need you more than anyone.”
“Eddie…”
“No, Buck, I’m serious. You’re his other dad. He loves you like a parent. Family. And you can’t replace me, that’s true. Or Connor or Kameron for that matter. But there’s a third option. The one where, instead of treating love or family as replaceable, you see it as extra. Chris has known you longer than he’s known his mother now. He’s lived years of his life without me, without Shannon, without you. It doesn’t make anyone less important. It doesn’t mean Shannon wasn’t his mother. If he loses me today, it won’t mean that I wasn’t his dad. But just because he loved us both doesn’t mean that you don’t matter too. It doesn’t mean you haven’t been a parent too. I want my son to have as much love as he can. All of it in the world, that’s what he deserves. But Chris has had all three of us, and Theo can too. Connor and Kameron should’ve had more time, you’re right. And they will always be his mum and dad, that’s true too. That doesn’t mean he can’t have a Buck too. Chris’ life is richer for having a Buck, and Theo’s will be too. You don’t need to be his Dad, Buck. Just… just be his Buck. For Chris, it was the same thing anyway.”
Buck shook his head, looking at Eddie like he’d said something terrible. Buck was hurt by what was being sad, by the reminder of all the bad that might be about to happen. Buck might be about to lose someone else he loved.
Eddie might be about to lose his life.
But he couldn’t think about his own love. All of his son’s milestones that he wouldn’t see. Every moment he’d miss. The future he couldn’t have, wouldn’t see or feel.
He had neither the time nor the energy to grieve for the life he might miss. He may have precious few moments left, and he wanted to accomplish something worthwhile with them.
“Eddie, you’re not about to die, stop talking like that, I— we can talk about Theo after. We can talk about all of it later, just— stop. Stop talking like this is it because it isn’t. It isn’t! If I take Theo then— then you have to be there. You have to— to help me. I don’t know how to raise a four-year-old! I have— I’m not doing any of this without you.”
Eddie sucked in a deep breath, looking up at Buck and trying to blink away the haziness.
It didn’t really clear, but he could see Buck through it. Somehow, like always, Buck was clear, even when nothing at all else was. Even when the world felt impossible and like it was all burning down, Buck was still crystal clear. His face, all blotched-red and devastated and beautiful, was clear in Eddie’s mind. There was blood on his face.
Eddie raised his hand to swipe the blood away from Buck’s face, to clean it, but realised as his fingers found Buck’s cheek that he had only made it worse. Only smeared the existing blood further, only added more.
Maybe he was losing too much blood, but since he was there…
His fingers moved to Buck’s lips, the very tips of them dragging across Buck’s skin. So much of Buck was known to him, and had been for a long time, but not this. Never this. But if Eddie was going to die anyway, then there was nothing to be lost from telling Buck.
Nothing to be gained from keeping secrets, even ones he’d been keeping from himself.
But he’d known, hadn’t?
On some level, in some way, he’d always known.
It wasn’t conscious, exactly, but it was there. A creeping dread in the back of his mind. A voice in his ears, a door in the corner of his eye. That he hadn’t loved Shannon the way he should. That he didn’t love Buck the way he was meant to. The way he loved Hen or Chim or Ravi.
Maybe it was the blood loss, or the imminent death, but it felt so clear all of a sudden.
He loved Buck. He’d loved Buck since he bowed his head, all bashful and earnest, and told Eddie that he could have Buck’s back too.
He’d loved him in all the good and the bad of their near-decade together.
Eight years.
It didn’t feel like nearly enough time by Buck’s side.
One day, Buck would know Christopher longer than either of his parents ever had. At least Eddie knew Christopher would be loved. He’d have a brother too. Buck was too good to leave Theo all alone. Buck would love them enough that they’d never feel alone. Just like he’d done for Eddie.
It was a small comfort, but it had to be enough.
And now, there was only one last thing he had left to give to Buck. Aside from his son, his trust, his partnership. The only other thing that he’d ever had to give.
Broken, battered, imperfect though it was.
Himself.
Buck, he realised, was babbling something. Asking Eddie to stay. Pleading with him to open his eyes.
When had Eddie closed them?
“Buck,” Eddie heard the rasp in his own voice. The choke that got caught there.
“Shh, no, don’t talk. I just got a response, finally. From the others. They’re coming, Eddie. You’re going to be okay, just stay awake.”
The elevator hadn’t moved yet. They were still trapped in no man’s land, still stuck too far for them to easily get to Eddie and save him.
Buck could try to keep faith, but Eddie knew better, and so Eddie had to say it before he lost the chance.
“Buck, listen, I—”
“Eddie, don’t. No goodbyes, okay? Please?”
“I’m not going to die without saying this, so shut up and listen.” Eddie managed to rasp out.
Buck, to his credit, shut up and listened.
“I love you, Buck.” Just like that. Secret blown. Trap door faced. Monster vanquished. The monster at the end of the book was never a monster at all. It was just Eddie; human, flawed, full of love, just as he always had been.
“I love you so much. I think you might be the first one. Only one.” He choked out, and it tasted metallic, “I know how you see yourself. How you think everyone sees you. Buck, it isn’t true. You are not broken. You’re the easiest person in the world to love. I did it without even knowing for so long because it was as easy as breathing. You’re gonna take Chris. And you’re gonna take Theo, and Buck, you’re going to be amazing. And if my final gamble is right and there’s something else after all of this, then I’ll see you there. And you’ll have a long, full life to think of a response even half as romantic as this confession. Okay?”
Buck was crying. Sobbing. Quick, fat tears that fell onto his bloody sleeves when they passed over his face. There was so much blood on him.
For a split second, Eddie was worried for him, but then he remembered. His blood. His life.
“You can’t just—”
“Sure I can.” Eddie’s voice was slower and softer, but Buck stopped to hear it, and Eddie was sure that, as much as he might not want to acknowledge Eddie’s finality, he didn’t want to risk missing the last words either.
“I just did. I need you to remember, okay? I need you to remember that I love you. It’s going to be hard, looking after both of them. It’s going to be big and scary and exhausting, but you’re going to do it. And when it feels too big to hold, you’re going to remember this. That I love you. That I’ll keep loving you, even after. Just… what you said before… being broken? Not being lovable? It isn’t true. And you can’t argue, because I got stabbed today.”
Eddie tried to laugh at his own joke, maybe to try to lighten the mood or something, but he wound up choking on blood again.
“Tell Christopher I love him.” Buck was still babbling, pleading for Eddie to stop talking like that, telling him the team was coming, that he wasn’t alone. Eddie wasn’t listening. He had things he needed to say. “Tell Christopher that he’s the best thing I ever did. The best. Tell him you’ve got him. I know you do.”
Sometimes when Eddie was really tired, he’d wake up, go to speak, knowing that his mind had nearly slipped away into some dream place that he had no recollection of. He blinked awake, sure he had gone to another world, even for a moment.
Or maybe longer. Eddie couldn’t tell anymore.
His eyes flickered open again, but the angle was all wrong. Buck was above him, and the wall was in the wrong place. It was covered in blood.
Eddie should apologise for getting the wall bloody.
For all of his confusion, Eddie managed one final thought as he looked up at Buck’s hazy face.
“Your hair is the same colour as Christopher’s.”
At least Eddie got one final thought about before he died.
—
Eddie was not, in fact, dead.
He knew this because there was something sticking into his arm. He wasn’t dead, and he was being unceremoniously poked in the side, because life was a cruel mistress.
He might be on painkillers.
His eyes managed to open just a little big, light flooded in and obscured anything he might have been able to see.
It took a few seconds, and a few slow and groggy blinks, before things started to make sense.
Buck’s face was twisted with concern as he listened, phone held to his ear, jaw clenched. Eddie didn’t know who he was talking to, but he could figure it might be about him. Or, no. Maybe not. Buck was fiddling with something, and when Eddie strained to see it, it became obvious that it was Theo. A little picture of Theo.
Eddie felt a rush of fondness for his best friend.
After the day they’d all had, Buck had taken it all on board. This was why Eddie loved him so much. After everything, there was Buck, thinking about the innocent kid with his own smile.
“Yes,” Buck told the phone softly, brows pinched up, “yeah, I understand. I can’t— I can’t right now because my best friend is in a hospital bed, but I…” he was nodding, though the person on the other end of the phone surely couldn’t hear, “as soon as I get home. I could maybe even get my sister to— yes. Okay. I understand. Thank you.”
He listened for a few long heartbeats.
“Oh, he—” Buck’s eyes flickered to him, and Eddie supposed that the person had asked about him this time. “Eddie.” Buck lit up, and something inside Eddie glowed, soft and warm and comfortable.
He sat up straighter. “Um….” his eyes stayed locked on Eddie, “he got stabbed. Yeah. But he’s— he’s awake and I have to…”
A pause.
“Okay. Yeah. Bye.” Buck tried to hang up without breaking eye contact and missed the button several times. “Eddie.” He breathed out the word, a hint of a smile taking over his previously stricken face. It was like the sun had come out from behind black storm clouds. Like Buck’s life had just regained meaning.
Despite the pain in his side, Eddie felt like the world was made of only warm, bright things.
He had thought he was going to die.
A forgone conclusion of Eddie running on burrowed time all of his life. Since he drove a car with his pregnant mother as a child. Survived active combat despite a helicopter crash. Survived being buried underground and shot and stabbed and kidnapped. He’d thought maybe the last decade of his life with Chritsopher and Buck was all that he got in the end. Like he’d made a deal with the devil to have everything he’d ever wanted, but only for a little while.
Ten years with Buck and Chris and the 118 and then it all went away.
Instead, the storm had paused, the sky had cleared, and Eddie was still breathing.
Eddie was still alive, and BUck’s eyes felt like something physical on him. How had he ever missed the way that he felt about BUck? How had he ever ignored the way Buck and Buck alone felt like safety and love and joy. Buck was the other half of his heart, and he, alongside Christopher, was the only person who could cut right to the heart of who Eddie was. He understood Eddie. Stood by him unyieldingly, even when the worst kept happening.
Every bad day, every worst case scenario, there he was.
“Hi Buck,” Eddie whispered, “where are the others?”
“Waiting room.” Buck breathed, eyes still locked on Eddie’s face, unmoving, unwavering. Eddie never thought he’d see that shade of blue again. “Only one at a time allowed in and—” his breath caught, “Eddie, I—”
“Oh, Mr Diaz, you’re awake.” The nurse smiled, and Eddie attempted to reciprocate it. He didn’t really want to look away from Buck, but he had been raised with strict ideas of showing respect, and so he forced himself to make eve contact. Even still, he felt it. He felt Buck’s eyes on him.
She began to do basic checks, ask basic questions. Eddie listened, he answered. He heard the advice. How lucky he had been to survive. What the recovery would look like. He tried really, really hard to listen and to understand because she was warm and caring and trying to help.
But Eddie felt Buck’s gaze.
Eddie wanted to take Buck’s hand. He wanted to know that Buck was okay too.
He knew he was the one who got hurt, but he still worried after his Buck.
Eventually, the nurse left, but Buck’s eyes had never, not once, diverted from where Eddie lay. He wanted to feel bad for worrying Buck, but instead, he just got a thrill in knowing Buck was even partially as insane about him as he was about Buck.
He felt plenty insane about Buck.
He thanked the nurse as she left. Buck didn’t. Buck stared at Eddie.
She had barely closed the curtain behind herself when Buck spoke.
“If you didn’t mean what you said, you have to tell me now, Eddie.” Buck said, breathless and frantic. “I was going to not bring it up, in case, y’know, you didn’t mean it or you were like, delusional from blood loss or something, but I’m going insane and I can’t— I can’t be all normal and cool and pretend it didn’t happen because I— you— you said that you loved me. And I have been— I have— Eddie,” he ran a hand through his hair, sounding kind of desperate, “I have been so, so careful not to love you. Because I knew wouldn’t survive it if I… so if you said it to be nice or to reassure me, tell me before I go crazy because if I let this out of the box, I can’t put it back in. I can’t keep pretending not to know. You… you.” He brought a hand to his lips, where blood hadn’t quite been scrubbed from the dry divots of his lips. He needed water. He’d cried himself into dehydration. Eddie had put that there.
He hoped, wildly, that his blood on Buck’s lips had some kind of last effect. Like maybe his blood had sunken into Buck’s lips, alongside Buck’s own, kept Eddie there as a ghost in any kiss Buck ever shared with anybody that wasn’t him.
But he’d told Buck. Buck knew.
Buck, who stared at him with desperate, imploring eyes.
Well, well, well, Eddie thought, if it wasn’t the consequences of his own actions.
“I meant it.” Eddie rasped, his throat suddenly raw with emotion.
“Romantically?” Buck was wild-eyed.
Eddie blinked, “I’m pretty sure I told you you had to woo me in the afterlife to make up for my romantic confession. I— yeah. Obviously romantically. Was that not obvious?”
Buck frowned, “but you’re straight.”
Eddie frowned right back at him, “I got stabbed and confessed that I was in love with you, Buck. I said you were the first person I loved.”
“But as a friend?”
“Buck,” Eddie sighed, “all this time, I thought I was straight. But there was this thing. This… itch. This ghost. You ever read that golden book for kids? The monster at the end of this book? And Grover was so terrified of the monster at the end and how— how it was coming for him. But in the end it’s him? He’s the monster at the end of the book? I’m the monster at the end of the book, Buck. I was so worried, I dreaded something I’d never even allowed myself to— I didn’t know, but I knew, y’know? The monster was just me. And it’s— it’s not so monstrous. Loving you.”
Buck’s breathing was sharp and shaky. He wasn’t moving at all. He was holding completely, painfully still. Eddie had no idea what he was about to say.
“I called about Theo.” He mumbled. Eddie blinked. He had whiplash. “I have to fill out a lot of information. Jump through some hoops. But she said she thinks I’d be an idea foster parent. Someone who… knew his parents and loved them. It might take time, but… I’m gonna do it. Foster him.”
Eddie smiled warmly, glad to hear something good, finally. For Buck and for Theo.
“That’s amazing, Buck.” Eddie mumbled, still uncertain was Buck was doing conversationally, but genuinely glad for him nonetheless.
“We could, um, we could do it together.”
Eddie met his eyes.
“What?”
Buck shifted closer, his chair squeaking painfully against the linoleum. They both winced.
“That wasn’t smooth.” Buck admitted, almost shyly, and they both laughed. Kind of giddy, kind of uncertain. More of a giggle. It all felt so… young. A love Eddie had seen but never had.
He could skip down the hallway in glee. If he hadn’t just been stabbed, that was.
“Eddie was a thirty-something year old man. A widower, a father, a veteran.
He felt like a fifteen year old with his first crush. Only, it was Buck. His best friend, his favourite person. In all the good, and all the bad. All the unfair and the heartbreaking and the soul-crushing and the grieving. It was Buck. Him and Buck. Buck and Eddie. Buck, Eddie and Christohper. Buck, Eddie, Christopher and Theo.
Buck’s clammy hand found Eddie’s. Warm, familiar and calloused. He fumbled at entwining their fingers, but eventually managed it. HIs grip was comforting and strong. It felt right. Eddie hoped he never let go.
“You and me. Together. You, me, Chris, Theo. Maybe we can do it together. All of it.:
Eddie felt tears prick his eyes.
“All of it,” he agreed, squeezing Buck’s hand, “together.”