Work Text:
It's 2:37 AM on a random Thursday in June, and Buck is sitting on the couch in the fire station reading the Wikipedia page about ghost towns.
He has the hood of his fire department sweatshirt pulled over his head and the fuzzy, lopsided blanket Mara knitted for the station draped over his legs. His half-empty mug of green tea is on the coffee table. The lights in the lofted kitchen and living area are off, which offsets a bit of the bright lights that are still on by the engines and equipment. Rain patters on the roof, which sets Buck further on edge than he cares to admit.
He can handle a drizzle to a light rain, but the moment it starts storming, Buck wants to bolt. Lightning flashes outside in tandem with Buck's racing heartbeat as he braces himself for the thunder that will surely follow.
The thunder rumbles through the station, menacing and loud enough where it sounds like it's right in Buck's ear instead of tens of thousands of feet above him. Buck burrows further into his hoodie and blanket and keeps reading about ghost towns. He's reached the overview on South America. He forces his eyes to follow and absorb every word. He wonders if there's any ghost towns near where he lived in Peru. He types "ghost towns peru" into the search bar for later and goes back to his reading.
South America
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a wave of European immigrants arrived in Brazil and settled in the cities, which offered jobs, education, and other opportunities that enabled newcomers to enter the middle class. Many also settled in the growing small towns along the expanding railway system. Since the 1930s, many rural workers have moved to the big cities. Other ghost towns were created in the aftermath of dinosaur fossil rushes.
It doesn't settle his nerves as much as Buck hoped, but it's fine. It's something. It's better than laying awake in the bunk room and staring at the shadows the lightning flashes make on the ceiling while he tries not to succumb to the urge to wake Eddie up or worse, crawl into bed next to him. They're at work. Despite popular belief among his friends, Buck can have some decorum while on the clock, mostly because he doesn't want to get himself or Eddie fired or transferred. So rather than bother Eddie and disturb the sliver of rest he'll get while on shift, Buck got up, grabbed his laptop, and made camp on the couch.
Buck has a long list of things that pester him at work. He still doesn't slide under any of the trucks for maintainance or otherwise. He gets paranoid when Hen and Eddie have to transport a patient with an infectious disease to the hospital, even if it's something as simple as the flu. He can't shake the fear that when they're called to a car crash and he doesn't know where a loved one is that they might be in the wreck. This list of things bothers him at random. Sometimes it's an issue, sometimes it isn't. The unpredicitability is annoying, but all of those things are still largely tolerable.
Rain and storms though? It's a certain way to send Buck into a spiral. He's long since stopped trying to explain it. He hates it, mostly since it means he's constantly in fight or flight mode the second water falls from the sky in a perfectly normal weather phenomenon, but he can make peace with it. Maybe. It's been years and he still hasn't, but he can keep hoping.
He asked his therapist once why it bothers him so much even though he still can't remember the event. Frustratingly and predictably, Buck got the reply that trauma doesn't follow logic and the best he can do is find a healthy way to cope with it.
He still doesn't know if reading Wikipedia all night is healthy. It's better than his coping mechanisms of the past, whether that was his addiction to sex when he first moved to LA or his addiction to opioids after that awful day in New Mexico or any of the other less than ideal things he did in between.
Buck shakes his head and goes back to the article. He's on the various causes of ghost towns in Oceania now. Gold rushes. Drought. Inhospitable terrain.
"You're going to break a tooth if you clench your jaw any harder."
Buck flinches at the sudden noise and looks up to find Eddie lingering near the edge of the coffee table. He clearly just rolled out of bed and wandered out here from the bunk room. His hair is a mess. His t-shirt is creased and a little rumpled. There's a comfortable quality about him, or maybe that's just Buck seeking warmth and reassurance by looking at his fiancé.
"C'mon," Eddie says through a yawn as he walks over to the couch. "Lemme sit."
Buck adjusts the blanket as Eddie sits down, draping it over both their laps. Eddie presses close, cheek resting on Buck's upper arm in a way that can't be comfortable but let's him see the laptop screen. After a few moments of fumbling, Eddie finds Buck's hand under the blanket and holds it in both of his.
"You should go back to bed," Buck says quietly.
Eddie shakes his head. "Storms bother me too, sweetheart. You know that."
Buck does know that. It's comforting in its own way that Eddie has his own fears of pouring rain and lightning and what might result. Not just of lightning strikes, but also tsunamis and cave-ins. For him, the weather brings fears of losing Buck or losing Chris or dying alone at the bottom of a collapsed well. Even though Buck wishes he could take away all that pain or go back in time and make sure it never happened, he likes that they share this. It's a further confirmation neither of them are alone, that they're partners in everything from the good days to the nights where fears and nightmares creep in too close.
"Besides," Eddie says, voice light and teasing. "Harry snores worse than you do. Can't sleep in there anyway."
Buck rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "Leave Harry out of this. It's not his fault."
"Do you think he got it from Michael or Athena?"
Buck raises an eyebrow. "I suggest you never say that in front of Athena if you want to live."
Eddie laughs. While quiet, the sound manages to drown out the next echo of thunder. That quiet joy settles deep in Buck's chest, slowing his heartrate down to something next to normal instead of racing with adreneline.
At the next flash of lightning, Eddie curls closer. "What are you reading?"
"Ghost towns," Buck answers. "Wikipedia deep dive. Started at a randomly generated article about rural Wisconsin."
Eddie yawns again. "Cute. Love a good ghost town. And rural Wisconsin."
Buck twists around in an attempt to press a kiss to the top of Eddie's head. The angle is off enough where he catches a few stray strands of Eddie's hair rather than properly landing a kiss, but the intention is there. "You should get some rest, baby."
"I am resting." Eddie traces absentminded patterns on the back of Buck's hand. "We're reading about the fact Antarctica has ghost towns for some fucking reason. Like penguins or something created settlements and then abandoned them."
"It's because of whaling," Buck says. He knows Eddie is baiting him into explaining something, either in an effort to get Buck to calm down a little more or just because Eddie wants to hear his voice. "It says so right there, silly."
"I'm sleepy," Eddie answers through another yawn. "Can't read properly. Screen's all blurry."
Buck shakes his head as something fond sparkles in his veins. He loves this man so much his very cells ache with it. "You're so cute."
"Shut up," Eddie grumbles.
More thunder and lightning. This time, the rain picks up with it, slamming hard against the station roof. Buck forces a deep breath in and out. Eddie squeezes his hand tighter than strictly necessary.
"Hey," Eddie mutters, voice rough and tired. "Read it to me."
Buck settles back into the couch cushions and nods. "Almost at the end of this article. Anything specific you wanna follow?"
Eddie shakes his head. "You pick."
Buck smiles softly. "We're gonna read about potemkin villages."
"'Kay, Buck." Eddie turns his head and presses a light kiss to Buck's arm. "Tell me about these villages."
Eddie's voice sticks on the word "villages" as he tries not to yawn again. Buck is so hopelessly endeared by him. He can't believe he gets to spend the rest of his life with this man.
"A potemkin village," Buck reads from the Wikipedia page. "Is a construction, literal or figurative, that provides a façade to a situation, to make people believe that the situation is better than it actually is. The term comes from stories of a fake portable village built by Grigory Potemkin…"
He keeps reading until Eddie's breathing goes soft and even with sleep. Buck tilts his laptop screen down when his eyes get heavy and exhaustion scratches at his skin. He should probably wake Eddie up so they can both go sleep in actual beds. Falling asleep sitting on the couch is going to be hell on both of them with Buck's bad leg and the uncomfortable way Eddie managed to curl himself as close to Buck as possible. Everyone is going to make so much fun of them tomorrow if they find them asleep here.
And yet Buck can't bring himself to shake Eddie awake, not with how hard it is for him to sleep when the weather turns. They can handle a few achy joints and some teasing in exchange for the potential of a few hours of sleep. Lord knows they've dealt with worse for less.
"Love you," Buck whispers, half-asleep and even though Eddie can't hear him.
He shuts his laptop right as the next flash of lightning illuminates the room. It just barely unsettles him, and Buck is asleep before he can hear the full rumble of the thunder that accompanies the strike.