Chapter Text
Buck sees it in one of Helena's facebook posts, he doesn't even know why he keeps checking it, it's not like it's gonna solve anything or change the way things ended. But Eddie hasn't posted anything since he moved, and he's trying to know something, anything, get any kind of news about the man that he loves, the man he married, the one he was building a life with, a family.
Maybe it sounds crazy, or incredible pathetic, looking for pieces of the love of your life through the social media of the mother in law who never accepted you, or your relationship. It's a good thing Helena can't know he's seeing her posts, that would definitely be too humiliating, on top of everything that already happened.
Or maybe she does. And that's why she keeps posting pictures of Eddie and Chris, looking happy and cheerful like a real family.
Like the one they never could be.
Because a man loving another man is not natural, it's not normal.
So, facing the facts, maybe she knows he's stupid enough to go through her Facebook page on a daily basis, maybe this is her way of showing what he could never have, what he doesn't deserve.
Or maybe Buck is being paranoid now as well, on top of sad, and crazy, and pathetic, and all the other things everyone must think of him since he basically gave up his social life. It's not his fault he doesn't feel like going out, or that he has no energy to play nice and pretend to be happy.
He thought he had lost everything not that long ago, he thought Eddie had died, and for a while there it really seemed that way, and then he didn't, and it seemed like a second chance, a way to go back, to get back their life, together.
But it wasn't, fate gave him everything he wanted, let him have hope, time and time again, just to strip him of all of it again, all at once.
Eddie, Chris, their life, their family, their marriage.
Way to go universe, message received.
So, no, Buck is not doing well, maybe he's not even coping, but he's been doing better. Perhaps not as good as his friends and his sister would like, but he's not crying himself to sleep anymore, and he's not walking around in Eddie's old t-shirts every day. And yeah, maybe his wedding ring is still on his finger – and maybe Eddie's is hanging around his neck – but at least he's trying.
And that exactly what messes him up the most when he sees it. The picture that changes everything, again. Can something change into something good, already? Or is too much to ask?
Eddie is with a woman, a brunette, she looks around his age and his arm is hooked around her neck, hand falling loosely over her shoulder, and they are smiling. They are both smiling. Like everything is okay, like the world is not ending.
Like the world didn't end already.
Buck doesn't know what gets him the most, honestly. The photo or the description.
"Could there be a wedding on the horizon?" - may, 15, 2025
Yeah, the photo is bad enough, I mean, who would like to see the love of their life hugging some random weirdo as if they were so in love? But that caption tho, this is everything his parents ever wanted, the entire reason they could never accept their happiness. Eddie was supposed to find a good woman, a good mother for Christopher. Buck could never be that, he could never be what they needed, he could never be enough.
And now Eddie could be getting married, again, to someone else, someone he doesn't know, someone he's now even sure knows how to care for Chris, how to prepare his bath, how to help him when he's in pain, or having nightmares, how to love him, them, Eddie. God, he knows how to love them so well, it's the only thing he's ever been good at, besides being a firefighter.
He knows how to love them, he loves them, and now he's losing them, all over again. On the same day it marks exactly six months since his entire existence shifted.
I mean, if we are going to get technical with it, that happened almost ten months ago, when Eddie almost died, when Eddie slipped into a coma and every doctor told him there was a great chance he'd never wake up. Still, Buck visited him every single day, for an entire month, the worst thirty days of his entire life, or so he thought at the time. He had no idea how worse it could still get.
One day he walked into that hospital room and he was met with the one thing he wanted – Eddie was awake. And at the same time he was met with the biggest fear of his life, one he didn't even know existed – Eddie had no ideia who he was.
8 years, that's around how much Eddie was missing, he didn't remember being a firefighter, Chris growing up, falling in love with Buck, building a family. He had no recollection of anything, and it became abundantly clear he didn't seem to want anything to do with any of it, specially when Eddie chose to go with his parents, to go back to El Paso, to do what they wanted of him.
So yeah, if you ask Buck, six months, today, that's when everything changed for good.
Six months since Eddie moved to El Paso.
Six months since he last saw Christopher.
Six months since he signed those damn divorce papers. Since he looked Eddie in the eye, watched him sign his name of that line with a kind of determination he hadn't seen since the proposal, and then watched him walk away, from LA, from him, from their home.
Buck still thinks about it sometimes, maybe if he had said no, if he had refused to sign it's maybe they could have made things right, maybe Eddie could have gotten his memories back if Buck had forced him to stay.
Or maybe Eddie would hate him even more.
Either way, he would probably end up exactly where he is now, crying on his kitchen floor, sobbing, screaming, grieving for someone who's very much alive but still feels gone. Looking at his wedding ring, still on his finger, like a part of him, thinking whether or not it's time to finally take it off, to let go of it, of him, of them.
When his phone rings he literally jumps, trying to find out where it ended when he threw it away, – don't judge, you would too if you saw what he just did – part of him hoping it's Eddie, saying he's coming back, saying he got his memories back and he's finally ready to go back to their real life.
It's Chris, asking to facetime him, feels like a gift anyway, he hasn't been with the kid since they left. Facetime and calls and texts, feels like crumbs but he'll take it. He'll take anything.
"You need to come get me." It's the first thing he hears, while he was still busy trying to make sure his face didn't look swallowed from all the crying and his tears had stopped.
It's not at all what he expected, he hasn't hears from Chris the entire week, and now what? What is he supposed to say? What does he do?