Chapter Text
April 6
Buck
Buck’s alarm goes off. Six thirty, like usual. He opens his eyes, then closes them again. Like usual. Gray light’s peaking through the blinds of Eddie’s, or, no, Buck’s room. He should be used to the view, the way light drapes over him in here, but he’s not.
And today, to make it extra unsettling, a black, kind of horrifying blur slams itself headlong into the window and jolts him awake too fast. He blinks, still bleary, trying to figure out if the crash was the final throes of a dream or if it actually happened.
Probably a dream. It would fit with the recent theme of his dreams, at least. He throws his feet over the edge of the bed. His mood shouldn’t be this bad already – at least he’s sleeping here now. He’s talking to Eddie. The world is still spinning. That’s progress. That’s all that matters. Baby steps. Acceptance. Blah blah blah.
He grabs his phone and squints for a few seconds before the screen comes into focus. The calendar widget says it’s April 6th. The picture… well, Buck’s not going to think about the picture. Just like he’s not going to think about the date.
It’s been a month. Four weeks. Twenty-eight days. Six hundred and seventy-two hours. Forty thousand, three hundred and twenty minutes since Eddie left.
Buck knows this. He’s not sure why he knows this. It’s just information that he has. He doesn’t know when he got it. He just has it. It doesn’t matter when or why or how. He has it. Eddie’s been gone for over forty-thousand of somethings, and Buck knows that.
The thing is, Buck shouldn’t even be awake right now. It’s his day off. He forgot to turn his alarm off, and that’s annoying, because now he’s going to have to try and get back to sleep. And, well, he might be sleeping at night now, but it’s still a process.
Another sound breaks through his thoughts, the grinding, sort of violent pulse of his phone on the nightstand. It’s still hooked into the charger, and he wrenches it free before he checks the screen. Sure, there is a small, far-off hope that it’s Eddie. He’s always hoping it’s Eddie. They’ve talked, obviously, in those six hundred and seventy-two hours. They’ve talked a lot.
Buck’s wondering if it’s going to be less now, since Eddie and Chris talked things out, kind of, which is good because it means Eddie’s figuring stuff out, but, well, Buck just hopes he keeps calling when things are better. He’s got no reason to think he won’t, but he also had no reason to think last year that Eddie would be living eight hundred miles away from him right now.
Either way, it’s 6:34, and even if Eddie’s in mountain time now, he’s almost certainly not calling this early.
Which is why Buck isn’t disappointed at all when it’s not Eddie’s name on the screen, it’s Chimney’s.
Buck sighs and accepts the call before he presses it to his ear, trying to work the sleep out of his voice. “Hey, Chim, everything okay?”
“Depends who you ask,” Chim says. “Sorry to do this to you, but… Jee’s babysitter’s got a bug, and she can’t come today. I hate to take up one of your day’s off, but would you mind watching her?”
This should be a bad thing. Before, Buck might have been sad to lose a day off, but the truth is, he’s been dreading this day for the past week. Jee is the most welcome distraction he could think of. “N-no, I’d love to watch her. What time do you need me there?”
“Why do you sound so excited?” Chim says.
“To see my niece?”
Chim’s quiet for a second before he sighs. “I… yeah, alright. Hour and a half?”
“I’ll be there.”
Buck gets out of bed and showers because, turns out, he does have something to do today, and it’s almost enough to put him in a good mood.
~
Buck gets there almost twenty minutes before Chim asked him to, and yet, the door swings open before he can knock and Maddie rushes out, calling something back to Chim, completely oblivious to Buck until her, and her thankfully cooling cup of coffee spills down the front of his shirt.
“Oh my god!” Maddie draws back, staring at the cup like she can big brown eyes back the past few minutes.
Buck holds his arms out and drops his head. “Early bird gets the coffee, I guess.”
Maddie sighs, then flinches into “I’m so sorry, Buck. I’m super late. Chim’s inside with Jee, just… he’ll help, okay? But I really gotta go!” She moves like she’s going to hug him, thinks better of it, and pats him on the shoulder. “Thanks for watching her today. Call me if you need anything. Love you, bye!”
Buck’s still wrapping his mind around what she even said when her car door slams and she’s pulling out of the driveway. “Alright…”
Inside, Chimney’s trying to talk Jee into eating the bowl of oatmeal in front of her, and Buck stops short and grabs the paper towels, mostly just trying to get dry – the shirt’s beyond salvation.
“I want a honeybun!” It isn’t working.
“You can’t keep having honey buns for breakfast, Jee! Just eat some oatmeal! It’s healthy.”
“Honey bun!” Still not working.
“It’s pure sugar,” Chimney says, and Buck admires the perseverance, but can’t condone the method. Honeybuns being pure sugar almost certainly won’t convince Jee to want something else. Buck doubts she even knows what sugar is, really. “It’s like candy! You can’t have candy for breakfast!”
Jee stops and stares at him, like it’s never even occurred to her to have candy for breakfast, and apparently this is so novel and upsetting, her eyes well.
“Hey!” Buck says, mostly because the sight of his niece crying might be the thing that sends him into full psychosis.
The tears vanish, and Jee lights up. “Uncle Buck!”
“Buck, thank god.” Chimney does too. “We’re really trying to stick to this no snacks before ten thing, but…” He looks at Jee and eases close enough to whisper. “But I’m gonna be honest, it’s Maddie’s thing. I just give in, but the thing is, when Maddie finds out I give in – she’ll kill me, but if it’s you…” He cocks his head.
Buck tries not to take offense. “It’s me?” He takes Chimney’s place in front of Jee and grabs the spoon full of oatmeal. “C’mon, Jee. It’s good! It’s got bananas in it.”
“No!” Jee says. “No thank you!”
“We taught her about no thank you bites,” Chimney says. “But mostly she just does the no thank you part.”
Jee is in fact sing-songing those very words and grinning at Buck. “And you think Maddie’s gonna be okay with me not following this new rule?”
“I think better you than me.” Chimney’s eyes drop to the coffee all over Buck’s shirt. “There’s a reason she was fleeing so fast she almost gave you third degree burns. Besides, she can’t be mad at you right now – she’s knows you’re still going through the whole Eddie thing.”
Jee’s not taking the oatmeal, so Buck drops the spoon. “Whole Eddie thing?” It’s too loud, too defensive. “There’s no Eddie thing! I’m just… my best friend left, that’s not an Eddie thing. That’s a person thing.”
Chim’s brow furrows before he draws back. “Yeah, well, I really gotta get to work. You know where the snacks are. Call us if anything comes up, and, godspeed.”
Buck opens his mouth, but Chimney leaves almost as fast as Maddie did, and then it’s just Buck and Jee.
Jee does not eat the oatmeal.
Buck tries for a good twenty minutes, and then, he gives Jee the honeybun she’s honestly earned by this point and sets her up with some crayons and paper before he collapses on the couch.
A couple hours pass, and the day’s going pretty well, Jee’s busy, even more so now that she’s got more control of her faculties, but it’s a pleasant kind of busy. And she entertains herself more now, enough that Buck can scroll his phone between activity changes. At least, he could until she looks up from her dollhouse and asks, “Uncle Buck, are you sad?”
“What?” Buck chokes.
“Are you sad?” she asks. “You seem sad.”
“Sad?” Buck asks, like it’s a word he’s never heard before. Maybe he hasn’t. “Wh-why would you—no, I’m not sad. Why would you think I’m sad? I was just… on my phone.”
She frowns at him, and if she wasn’t just a few weeks short of four, he might accuse her of being sad as a defense. “Why your face like that?”
“Like what?” Buck asks. “A-are you sad?” It’s not an accusation, but it kinda sounds like one. “Do you wanna do something else?”
“No,” she says, then hops off her little toddler chair and toddles over to him, placing a hand on his knee. “It’s okay to be sad.”
“I’m not sad,” Buck says, and his voice spikes, way, way too much, given he’s talking to his niece – who is, he reminds himself, three years old. This should be sweet. It is sweet, that she cares – that she’s asking. That she’s even thinking about it. But it’s silly. He’s not sad. He’s fine.
Jee pats him again. “I miss my mommy when she’s gone.” Her eyes are getting bigger – they’re getting so big. It’s slightly alarming. “Do you miss your Eddie?”
Buck has coffee, but he isn’t drinking the coffee – so he’s not sure why he sputters and chokes and coughs like he’s drowning in it. It’s Jee. This is how three-year-olds talk. She doesn’t mean anything by it. By his Eddie. Buck’s Eddie.
Which is why it’s very stupid when he says, “H-he’s not my Eddie. He’s… just Eddie.”
Jee is still looking at him, and he so badly wants her to say, yes, he is. He is yours. He’s yours and you should go get him right now.
But she’s three, so she says, “My hands are sticky! Can I have towel?”
Buck’s mouth twitches before it settles into a smile, and he lifts Jee up to bring her to the sink to get the mess off her hands.
The rest of the day is busier than the first half. They draw for about five minutes, then play pretend kitchen and Jee takes his increasingly silly food order for an hour and brings it to him on plates from her toy kitchen.
It’s nice. Buck doesn’t call Eddie, and Eddie doesn’t call Buck, and Buck doesn’t think about it, okay, well, he kind of thinks about it but it’s in a normal, casual way. And it doesn’t devolve. Not that it usually devolves in a weird way.
He just gets in his head about it sometimes, especially after Tommy and Maddie and their accusations, or, well, Maddie didn’t say it, but Buck knows her well enough to know she was thinking it.
Buck isn’t in love with Eddie. He just wants him around. He just wants to be there for him, since Eddie’s parents suck, and he’s clearly having a hard time with the Chris thing. Buck wants to talk to him. He likes his company. In a best friend way. Not an in-love-with way.
Buck’s not in love with Eddie.
He just misses him.
It’s normal to miss your best friend.
Which is why, around three, when Jee’s halfway through a cupcake Buck wasn’t supposed to give her, her face smeared almost completely in blue icing, he takes a picture of it and pulls up Eddie’s number.
Before he can hit send, though, his phone lights up with Maddie’s face. He hits answer. “No, Maddie, I have not given her any sugar at all.”
“You’re lying,” Maddie says on a breath. “But you know, it’s fine! I get it. Uh, are you working tomorrow?”
Buck frowns. “No, I’m off till Monday.” He’s been working a lot of back-to-back shifts, and Bobby’s finally forced him into a couple days of PTO. It’s annoying. Work is what he likes. Work is where he wants to be, even if Eddie isn’t there. “Why?”
“Because… one of the new girls called out sick and Josh really needs me to cover tonight, and Chim’s already working a double, so is there any way you could stay tonight?”
Buck glances down at Jee, who’s hopped off her chair and has her arms out pretending to be an airplane. “Y-yeah, sure… but I better not get one judgy stare for at least a week.”
Maddie clicks his tongue, then says, “Just as long as you don’t bring up the E word.”
“I know you didn’t just call him the E word,” Buck huffs into the phone – only slightly less offended than he’s pretending to be. “And trust me, I won’t. Not looking to be accused of secret pining again.”
“Never accused you of anything,” Maddie says. “But I do really appreciate it, Buck. You’re a life saver.”
Buck smiles in spite of himself. “A life saver who is not in love with his best friend.”
“See?” Maddie shrieks over the line. “I didn’t even say anything, and you brought it up again. What’s that saying about protesting too much?”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Just make the Spaghettio’s for dinner tonight,” Maddie says, “it’s all she’s been eating anyway – love you.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Buck stares at his phone. The picture’s gotten lost, so he gives up on texting for now and chases Jee into the other room.
Bath time goes better than expected. The Spaghettio’s are a raging success, and Buck’s feeling like he might be the world’s best uncle-slash-babysitter right up until Jee asks for Binky. Buck has babysat before so he, of course, knows who Binky is – he’s a little bush baby stuffed animal with terrifyingly large, sparkly eyes. Jee got him from a gas station when she was two, and they have been inseparable ever since.
Except, Binky hasn’t been around today – at all, actually. But now it’s bedtime, and if Binky isn’t at bedtime – there won’t be a bedtime.
He checks the toybox, and the closet, then Jee’s bed, three times – then Maddie and Chim’s bed. Nothing. Jee’s following him around, and he knows the tears are close when she says, “Binky” for the eighteenth time in the past twenty seconds.
“D-don’t worry!” Buck says. “We’ll—we’re going to find Binky. I promise. He can’t walk so he couldn’t have gone very far!”
Jee sniffles but hope catches in her big brown eyes as Buck starts opening drawers and checking those. No Binky. Just like there’s no Binky in the bathroom, or the laundry hamper, or under the couch, or on the shelves, or anywhere.
“Hey Jee, I’m super hungry, can you make me some more waffles and eggs before you go to bed?” It’s last-ditch. He needs her not to burst into tears – he can’t handle her bursting into tears. It works, and she claps her hands and scurries off to make the food while Buck grabs his phone and calls Maddie, who doesn’t answer, so he calls Chimney.
“Buck?” Chimney answers almost immediately. “Everything okay?”
“No,” Buck says, then rushes to quell any actual panic, “Yes, but, I mean – I can’t find Binky. Is it in one of your cars? I have been looking for half an hour.”
“Oh shit,” Chimney groans. “That thing is possessed. I swear I spend half my life looking for it. Did you check her toy box?”
“Yeah.”
“Under the bed?”
“Obviously.”
Chimney sighs. “It can’t be in our cars because I know Jee had it last night before bed. Ugh, I dunno… um…” Chimney trails off, thinking, while Buck checks between the couch cushions for the second time. “You checked in her kitchen? Couple nights ago, I found him in the microwave.”
Buck hasn’t, so he does. “Not there.” Jee is, though, and she beams at him with a plastic plate and his imaginary waffles. “Wow, these look amazing!”
“What?” Chimney asks.
“I added sprinkles!” she says.
“Oh.”
“I love sprinkles!” Buck pretends to eat, then says through his teeth. “Chim, I’m dying here.”
Chimney considers, then shakes his head. “Here, give her the phone. Maybe I can work some magic.”
“Hey Jee,” Buck says. “You wanna talk to Daddy?”
“Daddy!” Jee reaches for the phone, and Buck turns on facetime and sets it in her hands. She lights up, and Buck does another sweep of the room as Chimney tries to talk his daughter into finding a new best friend. Which isn’t fair. Binky’s been with her most of her life at this point, and Chim’s expecting her to just move on, find something else, be okay without it. That’s not fair to ask of a three-year-old. It’s not fair to ask of anyone.
Oh, god, is he really relating to the toddler missing her stuffed animal?
“How about when I get home tomorrow,” Chim’s saying, “we can have a scavenger hunt and find Binky together, tonight you just have to—”
The alarm blares on the other end of the line. A call. Chimney hisses, and Buck hears him frantically saying goodbye to Jee – trying to half make the deal, before he calls, “Do your best, Buck! Sorry!”
And then it’s just Jee and Buck again.
“Binky will be all by himself! Where is he? What if he gets hurt?” Buck doesn’t want to think about how sad it is that Jee’s worried about a stuffed animal getting hurt, but then, given what her parents have been through…
“He’s not!” Buck says. “This house is super safe, and I’ll keep patrolling after you go to bed to make extra sure.”
Jee’s eyes well and widen again. “Binky.”
Buck pulls her into a hug. “I know, I know, but I promise he’s here somewhere, we just gotta get some rest before we can find him.”
Tears eventually start falling, and he rocks her as best he can – rocks her and hates how badly he gets it. He does miss Eddie. He does hate that they haven’t talked today.
Do you miss your Eddie?
“Hey, uh… Jee, how about some juice before bed?” He asks, half to stop her tears, and half to stop whatever’s going on in his head. “We don’t have to tell Mommy and Daddy.”
“I can have juice?” Jee squeals. “Before bed?”
“Yeah, as long as you promise to keep it a secret.”
“I promise!”
Buck runs a hand through her hair, then heads towards the fridge to pull the apple juice out of it.
“Binky!” Jee shrieks.
“I know,” Buck says, hand on the lid of the apple juice. “But I pinky promise we’re gonna find him tomorrow.”
“No!” Jee giggles, then hurries over to the fridge. “Binky!” She’s pointing at the bottom row of the door where, sure enough, Binky is lodged between two jars of olives. “Binky! Binky!”
Jee plucks him out and squeezes him. “He’s so cold!”
“How’d he even—” Buck sighs. There’s no reason to ask when the answer is standing right in front of him. It’s too late to renege on the juice promise, so Buck says, “Okay, well, you get a tiny bit of juice, then bed. It’s late.”
“Yay!”
The rest of bedtime goes well. They brush Jee’s (and Binky’s) teeth, read a book, sing a song, and Buck tucks Binky in beside her on the bed. “Alright, now you sleep good and tomorrow you can tell me about all your fun dreams.”
“I hope I dream about unicorns!” Jee says.
Sirens blare from Jee’s window, louder than expected, like they might be in the neighborhood.
“Firetruck!” Jee claps and sits up. “You think Daddy’s driving?”
“That’s, uh, those are actually cop car sirens.”
Jee blinks. “Are there bad guys here?” And there’s a look of genuine fear, and Buck mentally strangles himself for a few seconds before he walks back over to her bed.
“No, no,” Buck says. “Someone probably just got locked out of their house or something.”
“You promise?”
“I promise,” Buck says, then kisses the top of her head. “Now, you get some sleep. Goodnight. Love you.”
“Love you, Uncle Buck! Today was so fun.”
“Yeah,” Buck says, through a half-smile. “It was.”
He leaves the door to her room cracked, then heads down the hall to the sound of more sirens. And they’re loud – weirdly loud. He half-expects to see the lights, but he doesn’t. They just keep going and going and going and…
Buck blinks awake, scrubbing his eyes for a few minutes before fumbling to silence his alarm. Which is weird. He’s pretty sure he turned it off when he realized he was staying at Maddie and Chim’s last night because he didn’t want to risk waking Jee up.
But that’s the thing, he’s not at Maddie and Chim’s. He’s in Eddie’s bed—his bed, it’s Buck’s bed. This house is Buck’s. The point is, he’s in it, which means he just had one of the most vivid babysitting dreams of all time. He goes to close his eyes again, but something black and blurry slams into the window.
Buck frowns, then pulls himself upright. Wondering if that noise was his dream or real life, and wondering why that thought feels so familiar.
He massages the space between his eyebrows and pulls himself upright. He’s not working today. He should’ve turned off his alarm last night, and now, god – it feels like he did this day already. He should be twenty-four hours closer to going back to work, but when he grabs his phone – sure enough, it’s April 6th.
And then his phone lights up. It startles him, the familiarity of it – the echo of maybe it’s Eddie, and then the complete, almost unsettling unsurprise when it’s Chimney’s name on the screen instead. At 6:34.
Weird.
“Hey, Chim, everything okay?”
“Depends who you ask,” Chim says, and a chill runs straight down Buck’s spine. “Sorry to do this to you, but… Jee’s babysitter’s got a bug, and she can’t come today. I hate to take up one of your day’s off, but would you mind watching her?”
“What the fuck?” Buck whispers.
“What?” Chimney asks, startled enough not to get immediately defensive.
“I…” Buck forces a laugh. “N-nevermind. I’d be happy to watch her… what time?”
Hour and a half.
“Hour and a half?”
This is the most nauseating déjà vu Buck’s ever had in his life. “I’ll be there.”
“You could sound a little more excited,” Chimney ribs. “You do get to spend the day with your niece, the cutest girl in the world.”
“True,” Buck says.
And he really hopes that’s the last of the déjà vu.
~
It’s not.
Buck opens the door. He intentionally didn’t change his course – intentionally ignored every alarm bell, but Maddie comes flying out the door. Calling back to Chimney. Sending coffee all down Buck’s shirt.
He kind of sputters, staring, because he really needs this to stop.
“Oh my god!” Maddie draws back, staring at the cup, and Buck’s not convinced he isn’t going to throw up.
He chuckles, and it’s mostly nerves. “Uh… a-all good.”
“I’m so sorry, Buck. I’m super late.” Is he having a stroke? What the hell is going on? “Chim’s inside with Jee, just… he’ll help, okay? But I really gotta go!” She moves like she’s going to hug him, but he knows she’s not going to – just like he knows she’s going to pat him on the shoulder. “Thanks for watching her today. Call me if you need anything. Love you, bye!”
It all plays out the same. The honeybun. Chim telling him about no snacks before 10, the no thank you bites – everything, played out exactly how Buck remembers it from his dream, from… somewhere. It’s so jarring he barely responds to Chim, and yet, somehow the conversation ends up in the same place.
“Hate to make this your problem, but you can basically do whatever you want so long as Jee stays happy…” Chim shrugs. “Maddie’s got a huge soft spot for you since you’re still dealing with the whole Eddie thing.”
“There’s not…” Somehow, this is what wakes him up – what brings him back. “I’m not going through anything!”
“Yeah, well, I really gotta get to work. You know where the snacks are. Call us if anything comes up, and, godspeed.”
Then Buck’s alone with Jee and her banana oatmeal – the banana oatmeal he knows she isn’t going to eat. He tries, though, and she doesn’t, and then he gives her a honeybun before he sets her up with the same crayons, the same paper…
But it can’t be the same, because none of it makes sense. He’s starting to think he might need some kind of medical intervention. He could call Eddie. That would break the cycle, right? Maybe it would shake his brain out of thinking all of this is a repeat.
He’s staring at his phone, considering hard enough that it surprises him when Jee asks, “Uncle Buck, are you sad?”
Again. This is happening again. She’s going to say his Eddie. But he doesn’t want to hear it again, so he says, “No, no, I’m all good,” and forces a smile.
“Your face looks sad.”
Buck stands up, like he’s going to fight this turn of events off. “No, that’s just my face, Jee. Here, why don’t we put on Blippi? You love Blippi.”
Jee watches him thoughtfully for a few seconds. “I miss my mommy when she’s gone.” Fuck, he wants to yell – wants to make her not say it. “Do you miss your Eddie?”
He actually stumbles back a step. He can’t be sick, right? He knew she was going to say it. He thought that before she ever said the words. Your Eddie. He’s been thinking about it since she said it yesterday – yesterday which never actually happened.
He needs sleep. He’s been sleeping like shit in Eddie’s house, and somehow, it’s got his brain completely scrambled. “Why don’t we go wash your hands?” Buck asks. “They’re all sticky.”
Jee looks at them, like she’s surprised she even has hands. “They are sticky!”
They wash her hands, and she wants to play kitchen. He tries not to think about the combinations, about what he said before – what she said. He tries to just live in the current moment. He pinches himself a couple times – makes sure he’s not currently still in a dream, but time keeps moving. He doesn’t wake up.
Jee eats the cupcake. She gets the blue frosting all over her face. Buck thinks about texting Eddie. Thinks about calling him, honestly, but Eddie’s just going to tell him that he needs to go home and rest. Which, maybe he does.
He starts a text, So, I think I might be going crazy…
He’s still typing when Maddie calls, and he hates that he knows what she’s going to ask. She asks it, exactly the same way as before. Buck takes a shaky breath.
“Y-yeah, I can stay.”
There’s this loaded silence before finally she asks, “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Buck says, but admittedly, he’s not feeling particularly great right now. “I’m… I’m good.”
“Is this about Eddie?”
At least she didn’t call him the E word this time. “No, it’s—it’s really not about Eddie. I’m not in love with Eddie.”
“Never said you were,” Maddie says. “But I do really appreciate it, Buck. You’re a life saver, oh and—”
“Spaghettio’s for dinner,” Buck cuts her off. “I know.”
“Dang,” Maddie says. “You’re good at this.”
The day plays out the same. All culminating in Binky, who isn’t here, but this time, Buck doesn’t call Maddie or Chimney – instead, he skips the entire search and goes straight towards the refrigerator. He opens it, and sure enough, there Binky is, wedged between the olives.
He’s losing his mind.
Jee takes Binky, but she still wants apple juice. He pours it. Bath time is the same, the teeth brushing, the book, all of it. He settles her into bed, hands her Binky, and then, “Firetruck!” Jee claps and sits up. “You think Daddy’s driving?”
Buck doesn’t mention the cop cars. He just smiles and says, “Maybe.”
The clock on the wall says it’s 7:55. He didn’t look at it before, but he found Binky faster than before, so he’s probably got a little time. He just needs to get past this part, because then there’s nothing else for him to remember. Because he’s tried to remember how he got to sleep, but the dream ended too early. He never went to bed.
“Love you, Uncle Buck!” Jee says, because Buck’s still standing in her doorway. “Today was so fun.”
“Yeah,” Buck says, and the smile is a little less genuine this time. “It sure was. See you in the morning, kiddo.”
I hope.
He goes down the hall to sit on the couch and stares, watching the clock move, too slow. Finally, he takes a breath and grabs his phone. He needs to talk to someone – no, he needs to talk to Eddie. He’s gotta be done driving for today. If nothing else, he’ll hear Buck out, talk him down.
Buck hits the call button, and the phone rings. He hears the sirens again – the ones from yesterday, the last thing he remembers. The same ones Jee heard. The phone rings. The sirens get louder.
The phone rings.
~
Buck’s alarm blares into his consciousness, and he bolts up, kind of fumbling for the phone at his ear. He’s in Eddie’s house again. He grabs his phone, and this time, he sees it – a crow, careening towards the window and then bouncing off it, like something straight out of a fucking horror movie.
“What the fuck is going on?” Buck hisses.
April 6th. It’s still April 6th.
He watches the clock numbers. 6:31, 32, 33, 34…
It rings. It’s Chimney.
Buck doesn’t say hello, instead he says, “Let me guess, you need me to watch Jee tonight.”
“I…” Chimney goes quiet. “Damn, are we that predictable?”
Buck opens his mouth to say something, to explain what is going on, but he doesn’t want to talk to Chimney. “No, just… i-it doesn’t matter. I can be there in an hour and a half.”
“That’s perfect.”
“I know,” Buck says.
He gets ready, but this time, he calls Eddie. It’s early, but he needs to shake this up, and that’s what’s been looming over him. If he’s entered into some weird-ass timeloop, well, maybe it’s just the universe gently encouraging him to call Eddie.
Because that’s a normal thing to think.
Eddie answers on the third ring, and he sounds more awake than Buck expects, a little too awake, actually. He doesn’t even say hello, instead he goes right to, “Buck?”
Like he was waiting on it.
“Hey,” Buck says, and suddenly his tongue’s all twisted, and he can’t figure out how he should say this. “You’re up early.”
“So are you,” Eddie says, and Buck wishes they were on facetime, because something about Eddie’s voice sounds almost panicked, but it’s always easier to tell if Buck can see his face. “What’s up?”
“I, uh…” Buck clears his throat. “H-have you ever had like… déjà vu dreams?”
Eddie is so quiet for so long that Buck thinks the line’s gone dead, before Eddie says, very slowly, “What’d you mean?”
“L-like…” Buck swallows, then pushes through. “Like dreaming something that happens the next day or… or feeling like you did?”
Again, quiet, for someone who sounded like he answered the phone mid-cartwheel, Eddie is being very slow about this. “Uh… maybe? I don’t… did you really call me to tell me about your weird time loop dream?”
“I-I didn’t say time loop,” Buck says. “How’d you know it was a time loop?”
Eddie laughs, and it’s electric, not the soft, gentle thing that lights up Buck’s insides, but something charged like a trip wire. “You said dreaming about living the same day, that’s a time loop.”
“No,” Buck says. “I said dreaming something that happens the next day.”
Eddie groans. “It doesn’t matter. I just knew where you were gonna go with it, and-and yeah, I’ve had weird dreams before. You probably just need a little more sleep – didn’t you say you’d been having trouble?”
This is not what he needed. Usually, Eddie would ask a few calming, leading questions, and get him somewhere more stable, but this… it’s like Eddie’s ten steps ahead of him and Buck doesn’t know how to catch up.
“I feel crazy,” Buck says. “Do you think it’s a medical thing? Do I have a brain tumor?”
At this, Eddie loosens a little bit, and his laugh settles in Buck’s chest. “You don’t have a brain tumor, Buck. Dreams are weird.”
Somehow, this is enough to bring Back into himself, to make him feel like things are going to be okay, even if things are impossibly weird right now. “Y-yeah, I guess so. How are things with Chris?”
“Better,” Eddie says, a little frazzled. “He came over for dinner the other night. It was nice.”
“That’s great,” Buck says, and there it is – the need to ask, to see if coming back is a thing, if Eddie’s even considered it, that eventually Chris will move back in with him and then maybe... But Buck’s promised himself he’s not going to be selfish. He has to be okay with this so he swallows the question. “A-and the repairs?”
“A work in progress,” Eddie says.
Buck checks the clock. He’s somehow managed to lose thirty minutes to this conversation, and it’s pathetic how bad he doesn’t want it to end. “Well, I’m babysitting Jee today so I should probably get ready.” I miss you. “I’m glad things are turning around.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Tell Jee hey for me.”
“I will,” Buck says. “I’ll text you a picture.”
Eddie laughs. “Great… but, hey, out of curiosity, the dream… how’d it, you know, end?”
Buck blinks, then wanders over to the window to see if the bird’s lying on the ground. It isn’t. “Uh, it just kinda does… there were these sirens, and then, it just reset.”
“Oh,” Eddie says, “so it wasn’t anything, you know, dramatic?”
The words slam into Buck’s chest, molten, and he can’t work his mouth again, like they’re back at the beginning of the conversation. The way Eddie says it – the way his voice dips around it, like he’s trying not to stumble, claws at something in Buck’s center.
“No,” Buck answers. “I… I don’t think so, why?”
“Just wondering,” Eddie says. “When I’ve had them, before, it kinda… I don’t know, ended with a bang, I guess. Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Yeah,” Buck says, but it trails and goes on too long. “Are you?”
“Yeah, for sure,” Eddie says, “anyway, I’ll talk to you later, Buck.”
~
Buck side-steps as he walks into Maddie’s and avoids the coffee on his shirt this time. Maybe it’s a matter of reacting – maybe if he just does what he’s supposed to do and solves all the obstacles, this will stop.
It’s a long shot, but right now, it’s all he’s got to go on, so he gives Jee her honeybun, then lets her color. She asks the question again, if he’s sad, and she watches him with the same eyes. It’s the same conversation, before it winds back to that reverberating finale in his head, “Do you miss your Eddie?”
He takes it in this time, and instead of outright deflecting, he says, “Yeah, y-yeah, I do, but that’s just how it is sometimes.”
“How what is?” Jee asks.
Buck frowns, then considers. It’s weird how fast he’s gotten lazy with already knowing the scripts to these conversations. “I, uh… how life is. Sometimes people have to leave.”
“How come Eddie had to leave?”
“Because Christopher left.”
“Can Christopher come back?”
Leave it to his adorable niece to ask him the question he’s been desperately trying not to ask himself, or Eddie, for weeks now. “He, uh, he doesn’t want to.”
“Does Eddie?”
“I-I don’t know,” Buck says and tries not to think about it, tries not to wince. “Hey, I think your hands are sticky.”
Jee glances at her hands, squinting. “They are sticky!”
Instead of the cupcake, he makes some steamed vegetables from the fridge. He plays the kitchen game again, then he tells Maddie that he’ll stay overnight. She asks him about Eddie. It feels almost disorienting, like staring at a picture of himself falling and falling and falling. None of this feels real.
He wants to call Eddie, but he doesn’t.
He finds Binky in the fridge, and puts Jee to bed, just in time for the same sirens. Maybe he should go see what’s going on there. Maybe that’s the thing he needs to fix – maybe someone needs his help. Maybe he can save them.
Except, he has no idea where those sirens are going, and he can’t leave his three-year-old niece in the house alone, asleep or not. He bounces his leg and watches the clock again. Maybe, just maybe, this’ll stop. Maybe it really was all a dream, and this is where it ends.
Buck’s phone rings.
It’s Eddie. Facetiming him. Which makes no sense. Eddie didn’t call him before.
What does that mean?
He answers, and for a few seconds, he’s not sure what he’s looking at. None of it makes sense. It’s Eddie, his eyes, his hair, his face, but… Buck’s brain shatters like a wine glass on the door, because it can’t, won’t, process what the fuck he’s looking at.
Eddie is on the phone. He’s pale, and he’s heaving, trying to gasp, staring directly into a shaking camera.
“Eddie?” Buck asks, because it’s all he can get out. “Eddie – what is…”
Eddie’s hand is on his throat, but it doesn’t look like his hand because it’s all black and shiny, and… blood, there’s blood pooling between his fingers, cresting and breaking over his knuckles. He’s bleeding. Eddie’s throat is bleeding, and he’s holding onto it, choking. There’s panic in his eyes, and then there’s something deeper, something broken, like an apology.
“Eddie! Jesus, what happ—” Why is Buck asking him what happened, when he clearly can’t talk? He can’t do anything. His throat is cut open. “I-I need…Eddie!” He needs to call the police. He needs to get to Eddie. He needs to do something.
But then the phone drops, and there’s a far-off siren, and no sound will come out of Buck’s mouth when he opens it to scream.