Chapter Text
Buck opened his eyes, and he was up before he could even process what he needed to be doing. The bell was ringing, warning his team of a call they needed to get ready for.
It was late at night, and Buck had been sleeping comfortably on the firehouse bunk beds. He got out of the room and joined the others, who were also robotically getting ready to get out of the station. Everyone moved around each other with ease, like all their movements were a practiced dance, a choreography they had memorized and rehearsed a thousand times.
They were sitting on the truck and on their way in what felt like no time. Eddie was in front of him, as usual, and he still looked sort of sleepy. He was staring blankly ahead, as if recalling some sort of dream. He must have sensed Buck’s eyes on him, because he looked up to meet them, and gave Buck that warm smile of his.
Despite the fact that this was just Eddie, his coworker and best friend of, what, 5 years? Buck still felt his heart perform this weird little jump in his ribcage, which in turn caused the smile he wanted to give in return to be wonky and too late to feel natural. Now he just looked awkward, and weird, and the amused glace he received from said best friend confirmed his suspicions.
He cleared his throat and elected to simply push this new memory out of his mind in hopes it’d be unreachable soon, so he wouldn’t have to deal with the flicker of embarrassment low inside his chest.
He might be a little dramatic, but he can’t exactly help it.
Soon enough, they arrived to the place where the call was made. Dispatch informed them the caller was inside an abandoned building, right in the middle of nowhere. He was a 17-year-old boy, and was calling for his 16-year-old friend, under whom the floor had given out. The kid fell down, just a flight of stairs, and landed on some kind of creepy abandoned basement, knocked unconscious.
The team entered the building and searched it, until they found the first of the boys.
“Hello, LAFD, are you the one who called?” Bobby asked, when he caught sight of a teenager who was pacing anxiously, one hand holding his phone to his ear, and both eyes trained on the hole that opened up on the floor.
“Yes! Yes, here! They’re here, Josh, thank you, thank you!” the boy said, and hung up on the 9-1-1 dispatcher. He gestured wildly for them to walk closer, and started explaining himself, “Caleb is down there, it must be some kind of basement! We were just having a look, I swear! We weren’t doing much of anything and suddenly the floor gave up on him and he just went down! He’s not answering, please, tell me he’s not dead,” the poor boy rambled, “He can’t be. He can’t be dead.”
Bobby quickly put them to work, “Buck, Eddie, find me a way to get to Caleb. Kid, what’s your name?” he asked.
“Aiden,” the boy answered, looking paler every minute that passed.
“Okay, Hen and Chim, look Aiden over, make sure he’s feeling alright.”
Buck started searching around the place, for some way of getting to the lower level of the building. Every wall in sight was dirty, painted on, or growing moss. All the exits of their current room led to either another, smaller room, or were blocked. The stairs must have been behind some blocked door, because when he looked at Eddie, who was searching on the other side of the building, he shook his head looking defeated.
“Cap, the stairs must be blocked, we can’t go down the easy way.” Buck turned to inform Bobby, who sighed.
“Alright, Eddie, you’re going down with the ropes. Check Caleb, put him on a stretcher and get him up here. Buck, you’ll be on the watch.” Bobby ordered, and the two men jumped up and went looking for the ropes.
“I love when Cap chooses me over you to go down with the ropes,” Eddie teased Buck.
“Shut up.” Buck demanded, throwing a knowing smile his way, anyway.
They got the ropes and the stretcher from the truck and made quick work of its set up. Soon enough, Eddie was descending upon the basement floor and checking the poor boy’s vitals. He was some years older than Chris, but calls with kids always got him thinking of his own, no matter the age.
This particular kid had a pulse, was breathing and had reactive pupils. There wasn’t any external bleeding, so he would probably get out of this one with nothing more than a concussion and maybe a broken bone. Eddie put a cervical collar on him and quickly got him on the stretcher. He looked up at Buck and signalled for him to pull the boy up.
When Aiden saw Eddie giving him the thumbs up, he approached Buck and started frantically asking him, “Will he be alright? He’s not… He’s alive, right?”
Buck gave him a soft smile, trying his best to look reassuring. “Well, he’s got the neck brace on and my partner didn’t need to perform any emergency procedures, so I’m sure he’s fine. He probably got lucky. Are you two friends?” he asked, trying to get Aiden thinking of something else. He looked so deeply worried and anxious for this boy’s well-being. He knew the feeling all too well.
“Yes, he’s my best friend, my favourite person. He’s the only one who gets me. It’s his birthday, soon. He always has a bad day, because no one really cares about it at home. I was trying to give him a good birthday week, to make up for it,” Aiden rambled. When Buck had brought the boy up to their floor completely, Aiden threw himself at his side, and grabbed his hand tightly. Hen and Chim got started on him, too, just to make sure.
“Caleb loves visiting abandoned buildings like this. I think it’s really creepy, but I found this one for him, to give him a good start of the week. And I failed spectacularly. Idiot.” He finished, self-deprecatingly. Suddenly, he looked so alike to Buck himself. His furrowed brows, his pouting lips, his saddened, guilty eyes. Oh, Buck was sure Aiden was feeling a pressure on his chest akin to his own.
“Kid, it was an accident. I bet he was having the time of his life before this happened. Plus, just showing him how much you know him and how much you care must have meant a lot to him,” he said, placatingly, “I know firsthand how that makes you feel. Look, that man down there that’s waiting for me to pull him up?” he pointed at Eddie, who looked at him with a confused face. Cute. He started doing so while continuing his story.
“That guy is my best friend. He knows me better than anyone, and every time he shows me just how much he does, I feel so seen. It makes me feel so close to him, it’s… it’s just really nice. I’m sure Caleb was feeling just like that, too. And he’ll tell you as soon as he wakes up.”
Hen had Caleb rolling away towards the ambulance before he got an answer, and obviously Aiden forgot all about Buck as soon as his friend was moving away.
He walked alongside the paramedics, not once letting go of his best friend’s hand.
Buck hoped what he said to him had helped, at least partially, to calm the boy’s guilt. He really meant everything he said. The warm feeling he got whenever Eddie sent him an article on something he was interested in, every time he got his favourite pizza order without having to ask, every time he just lifted his brows at him, nudging him to talk about what was wrong when he sensed he was slightly off… it could quite literally get him all giggly and giddy.
It meant that Eddie paid attention. Eddie listened to his long rambles and Eddie watched him enough to recognise his mannerisms. Eddie learned about him, liked him enough to stay by his side and cared enough to remember everything.
To be loved is to be known, and all that cheesy shit, right?
“What was that about?” Eddie asked, out of the loop, while he took the harness off.
“Poor kid was so worried he had ruined Caleb’s birthday week.” Buck answered.
“Birthday week? Kids are so spoiled nowadays,” Eddie joked, bumping their shoulders together and helping him pack up the equipment.
“Well, yes,” Buck started with a smile, “But this was sweet. Aiden wanted to give Caleb a good week leading up to his birthday because the day of, he never has a good time. Says no one cares about it at home.”
“Oh,” Eddie replied, looking dejected. “That is really nice.”
“They’re best friends.”
Eddie looked to his side, and waited until Buck met his eyes. Then, he smiled and let their arms and shoulders touch again, only this time, it was gentle and warm.
“Just like you and I.” Eddie finished before they got on the truck.
———————————————
Cute? Huh.
———————————————
At exactly 10:23 am, Buck was sitting on the sofa at the loft, with his feet up on it and under Eddie’s legs. He was reading this book he found in a public library about the history of dark magic, when the alarm went off again.
He jumped up excitedly and ran to his place. They were having a pretty q-u-i-e-t day, no big emergencies, no little calls, ever since the one at 3 am with the two little best friends in distress.
The trip was fast, as the emergency took place in a house near the station. When they got there, LAPD was already in the scene. He searched in hopes of finding Athena, and sure enough, there she was. The whole team walked towards her, and her worried face lit up with relief when she spotted them.
“Captain Nash, thank god you’re all here,” she said, “we have a weird case, we think it’s a medical one.”
Okay, Buck did not feel disappointed at that. Really. He didn’t feel joy at the suffering of others. But he did enjoy days with a little more action. A little more rescuing. Sue him.
Athena, oblivious to his deflating mood at the fact that he wouldn’t be doing much of anything on this call, kept on explaining what it was all about.
“A 22-year-old girl named Willow called earlier today, claiming she was locked up in the bathroom, hiding from a bunch of strangers that had broken into her house and were claiming to be her family. When we got here, those supposed strangers answered and they seemed to have no clue what we were talking about when we explained the situation. They let us in and their house is full of pictures. The mother and siblings of this girl all appear to be who they claim to be, according to those.” She explained.
“So, you think the problem is somewhere in the girl’s brain.” Hen finished for her.
“Exactly. It’s plausible, isn’t it?” Athena asked as she led them all inside.
“Oh, sure. I have a few disorders in mind. Where is Willow?” Hen inquired, looking around the house.
Sitting in the kitchen, Buck saw a middle age woman, a slender man in his late 20s and a tan girl who seemed close to her 20s herself. They all shared the same kind of hair. Warm brown, straight and fluffy. Their brows were furrowed in worry, and they all gave his team the same look when they heard them enter. One of immediate attention and attentiveness, their brown eyes all followed them down the hall, where Athena led them. They sure looked like a family.
“The help is here!” she called out to someone, then turned to look at them and spoke much lower, “She’s still locked up in the bathroom, refused to get out.”
Hen took the lead and knocked softly on the door, before calling out with a soothing voice, “Willow? I’m Hen, a paramedic, I’m here to help you. The police are here to take care of the people you warned them of, they won’t be able to hurt you. Would you mind opening the door, so that we can talk?”
A short silence followed, before the distinct sound of a door being unlocked swiftly broke it, and Willow came to stand in front of them. She was average in height, had tanned skin herself, and she shared the exact same soft hair and warm eyes with the worried people he had spotted sitting in the kitchen. There was no doubt about it, they all belonged together. So, what was going on in this girl’s brain, that made her believe so wholeheartedly that these weren’t her people?
“Why don’t we go sit down on your living room, Willow?” asked Hen, “that way you’ll be more comfortable, I’m sure we’ll get our answers soon.”
Willow nodded and started walking towards it. Maybe Hen was putting her memory to test.
When the girl sat down on the worn-out sofa, both paramedics ran their usual tests on her, before starting up with their questions.
“I think it’s probably Capgras Syndrome, she knows these people look like her family but believes they have been replaced by imposters” Chim whispered, right before Hen asked the girl a new question:
“Do you think these strangers look like your family, Willow? Or are they different?”
“No, they’re different. Complete strangers,” she answered.
“Well, shit, that was my best guess.” Chim complained and took another step back, as if signalling his surrender.
All of a sudden, things got all the more interesting.
In true telenovela style, someone dramatically walked through the front door. It was a tall, skinny girl, who looked to be around the same age as Willow. Her hair was dark and curly; her skin was light and dotted with countless freckles. She looked to be the most worried of them all, which was saying a lot.
What was truly interesting about it, was Willow’s reaction.
“Mimi!” she exclaimed, having immediately lit up in recognition. She quickly got up, ran to meet the other girl and threw herself into her arms. Mimi embraced her automatically, like that’s what she was born to do.
Willow’s family must have heard the commotion, because they walked out of the kitchen, and smiled for what was probably the first time, today. The woman Buck guessed was Willow’s mother walked up to him and clarified the situation.
“That’s Michelle, my daughter’s best friend. They have been attached at the hip ever since they were 5 years old,” she said, “They are so intimately close, their bond is so special. Looks like it’s downright biological, huh? She’s the only one my Willow recognizes.” The woman looked to be a little sad, but fondness of her daughter and her best friend seemed to outweigh the negative feelings she must have been experiencing.
Buck looked at the girls. Michelle was caressing her friend’s hair, kissing her forehead and whispering words of comfort, reassuring her that yes, they really are your family. That’s your mom, Jocelyn, your sister Jane and your brother Johnny. Her eyes looked so soft and so caring. Yes, he was recognizing the pattern of best friends in distress for the day, but the situations were so different from one another. Not in the sense of the emergencies themselves, but on how Buck saw himself on the people in danger.
With Aiden, he felt a sense of kinship, of similarity. He heard his story and saw himself in it. Knew they had both felt the same shame, the same guilt. Saw his care for Eddie reflected on Aiden’s care for Caleb.
With Willow, though, he got a sense of longing. A yearning for something that seemed so distant, so unattainable. The softness of how the girls interacted with each other, their looks, their voices, their touches. He looked at it all and wished he could have it. Wished Eddie would look at him like that, wished their hugs looked like that, wished he’d talk to Buck like that.
Buck didn’t really know where this was all coming from. He was probably just touch-starved, desperately craving contact and latching onto the first person that came to mind. And, of course, that would be his best friend, as that seemed to be the theme of the day.
He needed to focus on the call. He’d solve his needy problem later, when he wasn’t on the clock. He willed his mind to listen as Hen started her questions back again.
“Do you remember falling recently, Willow? Maybe you hit your head at some point?” she asked. Willow tilted her head, like a confused puppy. Buck caught the affectionate grin from Michelle at the gesture.
“Yes, she did!” intervened her mother, “she was playing with the dog, and Chester accidentally threw her to the ground, flat on her back. She must have hit her head then, but she seemed totally fine, I didn’t even think of considering that she…” Jocelyn trailed off guiltily.
Hen jumped to reassure her. “That’s completely fine, ma’am. It’s to be expected, there was no way to know. She probably injured her occipital lobe. That could have caused an acquired sort of prosopagnosia,” she explained.
“Face blindness, of course!” Buck chimed in, then blushed and shut his mouth when everyone turned to look at him.
(He did not catch the same affectionate grin he had seen on Michelle’s face, plastered on Eddie’s this time. Mimi did, though.)
“How can she recognize my face, though?” Michelle asked, light pink dusting her cheeks at the honour.
Buck jumped in to explain, “Well, acquired prosopagnosia usually means damage on the part of the brain consciously recognizes faces. But I see that you two are very close, and a very intense bond comes with intense emotional salience, and that means, Willow, that your limbic system goes a little crazy when you see Michelle. The components of the limbic system are really involved in emotional memory and the social relevance of stimuli,” Buck explains, moving his hands around excitedly.
“So, this emotional salience facilitates plasticity which kind of activates the subvisual routes that allow partial face recognition, which combined with emotional memory, probably Michelle’s scent, because smell heightens memory, and context clues, let you recognize her immediately.”
It was after Buck finished his explanation that he finally noticed all the eyes on him and had the grace to blush a little more.
“Sorry. I read an article a few days ago. It’s just a hypothesis though, I’m sure your doctor will explain better!” He scrambled to take everyone’s attention off of him. Hen shook her head amusedly and led Willow towards the ambulance, Michelle never once letting go of her hand.
Buck noticed the flustered look on both of the girls faces, like they had been called out on something. That didn’t stop them from positively ignoring each other’s personal space and standing as close as possible to one another.
“I’m going to save the ‘limbic system going crazy’ line for my speech at their wedding,” said Jocelyn, still by his side.
Buck turned to look at her with wide eyes, “They’re together?” he asked.
“They sure looked like it, they were giving each other heart-eyes the whole time. One person can’t look at someone like that without their feelings being obvious,” added Eddie, coming to stand close to his other side. Somewhere in the room (Buck couldn’t be bothered to look away from Eddie’s little smile) Chim snorted.
“I don’t think they’re together, or at least they haven’t told me so. But I am completely sure they will be, and I doubt they’ll ever stop, once they get there. They bring each other’s best sides out. They’re meant to be.” Jocelyn smiled fondly and put her hand on Buck’s arm in a motherly gesture.
“If your explanation is what finally gets them to start dating, you will receive an invitation for their wedding, firefighter Buckley, I’m not even kidding. Thank you, guys, for all your help!” she finished and went to grab her car keys and usher her other kids outside to be in the hospital for Willow.
Buck maintained a strained smile on his face until they were out of the house, too. It was then when he turned to Eddie, glued to his side as usual, and slapped his good shoulder lightly.
“You should have told me to shut it!” he scolded, “I shouldn’t be going around giving medical explanations that I’m totally not qualified for on the job!”
“It was very interesting, not official and it will not interfere with Willow’s treatment. Only, maybe, with her love life,” Eddie joked. Buck just groaned and sat down on his place on the truck.
The supposedly minor call had ended up having a butterfly effect on Buck. Jocelyn, Willow, Michelle, they were all very sweet, but they had caused a tornado to be formed in Buck’s mind. It was cluttering every thought, messing with his emotions, altering his perception, reorganizing memories, he thinks a cow or two had gone up in the air flying.
He was spiralling, staring blankly at a fixed point in front of him, his thoughts were racing around and their speed made them blurry and hard to focus on. Buck had longed for having someone look at him like Michelle and Willow looked at each other. Someone that was specifically Eddie. He had not thought of anyone else. Willow and Michelle were in love. According to Jocelyn. And to Eddie. He wanted Eddie to look at him like that. Eddie said the girls were in love because of how they looked at each other. Buck wanted Eddie to look at him like that. What?
His chest was getting tight, and Buck’s first instinct was ‘flight’. Flee, escape, ignore. He needed to go back to his original hypothesis. He should be scientific about this. Science is good, science gives you real answers.
He had a hypothesis and he should stick to it. Experiment, get evidence, contrast it, observe differences, correlate results with a cause, you know. He was touch starved, so he’d get someone (not Eddie!) to touch him and then he’d watch as the longing melted away and he’d be normal again.
Easy-peasy. Back to work.
———————————————
They had had less than an hour back at the station when they next heard the bell ringing. The whole time, Buck had been working on his chores, not rambling away with Eddie like he normally would have. If the guy had noticed, he didn’t mention it, just gave him space and a smile as they sat back down at their places.
“We have a GSW in a mansion at Bel Air. Just one victim. LAPD is there taking care of the aggressor and taking statements. We need to attend the victim quickly and get him to the hospital.” Bobby explained to his team. As soon as they arrived, Buck made sure to stay out of the way and let the paramedics of the team take the lead.
They followed a stoic looking blonde girl through the luxurious rooms and corridors of an old mansion, towards what seemed to be a living room. There was a man on the floor, laying on a pool of blood. He was well on his 30s, had shiny black hair that reached his shoulders, and a lot of dark tattoos that peaked from behind his punk style clothes. He didn’t look like he belonged there.
Over his body on the floor was kneeling a man around the same age, wearing patched old clothes in all shades of brown, and a deep sorrow on his face. He was cradling the man on the floor’s face and begging him to hold on.
Hen and Chim immediately took action, pushed the man away and started doing their jobs. They didn’t have to do it for long. It seemed they were too late.
They shook their heads sadly at Bobby, whose face fell a little before contacting the responsible department to take care of the body. Buck turned to look at Eddie, who looked back at him softly and nodded, knowing perfectly well what his next move would be.
Together, they walked towards the soft looking man wearing brown. They slowly walked him towards an old, elegant armchair and led him to sit down. Stray tears were running down his face, but he had a blank expression that revealed the shock he must have felt inside.
“What’s your name?” Buck asked softly. The man looked at him and his eyelids trembled up and down, as if he couldn’t decide between wanting to close his eyes or holding onto the tears welling up in them.
“Roman,” he whispered. Buck and Eddie nodded.
“Roman, can you tell us what happened?” Eddie asked, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“Bella killed my Simon.” Roman stopped looking at either of them. He faced forward and let his eyes grow distant, watching something that wasn’t really there.
“Your Simon?” Buck asked him gently, and Roman nodded.
“We had to wait so long for this. It had been 12 years, I…” He trailed off. “We broke things off between us, it was a huge misunderstanding. We were so young, we didn’t know better. But we knew now. It’s been 12 years of growth, we knew better,” he rambled on.
“We knew better now and we were ready. Ready to try and stop missing each other. We were going to be together for the rest of our lives, I… I was so excited to grow old with him. He’s the love of my life,” Roman lamented, putting his head on his hands and shaking with uncontrollable sobs. Buck didn’t even try to school his face into an unshakeable, professional mask.
“I should’ve fought harder back then. We could’ve had so many more years together. I should’ve known. But we were 21,” he mumbled, “He was my best friend.”
Buck’s heart dropped. He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t breathe. In a flash, he was in an ambulance, putting pressure on his bleeding best friend’s wound, begging him to stay with him as he slowly closed his eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Roman. I can’t even begin to imagine how you feel,” he lied in a whisper, brushed the man’s shoulder comfortingly, and left Eddie to talk to him. Eddie knew about loss, Eddie would help. He stumbled towards the exit and rested against a wall outside the living room.
He tried to breathe in slowly and deeply, tried to look around in search of five things he could see, tried telling himself that everything was alright, that Eddie was a few steps away, alive and well. Nothing was working. He could feel his heartbeat everywhere on his body, his chest was tight, he seemed unable to let oxygen in, his vision was getting blurry, he was trembling, he felt lightheaded. Out of the blue, a hand reached out and pulled him out of his hellish spiral.
He looked up to find Bobby, staring at him with a concerned but resolved look.
“Two fast breaths in, one slow breath out, kid. You can do it,” he instructed, and Buck immediately listened and obliged. He could hear Bobby praising him and asking him to focus on random things until his body had slowed down and he could think clearly again. He blinked the tears away and whispered his thank yous. His very honest and heartfelt thank yous.
Bobby nodded and rubbed his thumb over his shoulder, “What happened back there, kid?”
“I’m so sorry, Cap. I shouldn’t have let this happen on the job. I’m sorry,” he immediately apologized, but he was cut off by Bobby’s soothing voice.
“Buck, you didn’t put anyone’s life in danger. There was nothing we could do when we got here, and you still did something by comforting the spouse of the victim. It’s all okay. I just want to make sure that you’re alright.”
Buck’s shoulders lost some of the tension they had been greedily collecting like a treasure. He considered his options. He could bare his heart and soul to Bobby, tell him everything that was wrong, everything that induced his panic. But he held this fear of his so close to his chest. Telling someone, telling Bobby… it felt like too much soul-baring to him, honestly. But the man had just talked him down from an anxiety attack. So.
“It was a gunshot wound, Cap. And Roman, the spouse, he… He called the victim his best friend. It just took me back, is all.”
Bobby nodded in understanding, “Are you talking to someone about this?” he asked in a scolding fatherly tone, pointing his index finger at him, and everything.
“Yes, Bobby,” Buck answered in true teenager fashion. (No, Bobby, he thought privately. This fear was, indeed, so close to his chest, he hadn’t even thought about telling his therapist. Oops. He begrudgingly made a mental note to bring it up during his next session.)
The medical examiner department arrived and entered the living room. Buck only had time to blink once or twice before Eddie was walking out of it, a handful of seconds before the rest of the team, eyes looking around a little wildly. When brown met blue, the wildness turned to concern just as Eddie walked towards him and gripped his shoulders tightly.
“Buck! Are you okay? What happened? What’s wrong?” he asked, looking all over him in search of something evidently wrong.
“Eds, I’m fine,” Buck said placatingly while gently taking Eddie’s hands out of his shoulders, “I’ll tell you later, we gotta get moving now, yeah?”
The tint of worry did not leave Eddie’s eyes at his words, and Buck could feel them following him all the way back to the station.
———————————————
In the hour or so they had left of their 24-hour shift, Buck’s mind slowly drifted away from the Eddie-getting-shot-by-a-sniper incident. However, his brain only let that happen so he could focus on Roman and Simon. The sorrow in Roman’s eyes, the desperate grip he had on Simon’s face when they arrived, his unashamed begging down on his knees.
He remembered that accident so many years back, in his probie time, where that old couple had only been separated by death for a few minutes. The survivor didn’t need to live with his loss for long, and though the end of their lives turned him blue for a while every time he was reminded of them, that thought brought him comfort. No one knows what comes after death, but wherever those two ended up, they ended up together.
He didn’t really know whether it was cruel to wish the same kindness on Roman. Was it worse to die young and miss so many of the good things the universe had in stock for you to experience, or to experience them all and still be weighed down by the deadly grip of grief? Is it better to live drowning or to not live at all?
His mind once again drifted back to Eddie. If something were to happen to him, if one day his best friend did not get to return home, would he want to keep on living? The answer probably was no; he wouldn’t want to. But he’d keep living anyway. He’d have Chris to take care of, and leaving that kid alone in this world just because he lost his best friend would be the worst act of selfishness he could ever fathom.
His thoughts revolved around death and loss and grief even as he took care of all his chores. No one dared to bother him, knowing him well enough to let him try and be distracted after losing someone on a call.
As their shift ended, though, Eddie seemed to have had enough of letting him wallow in pity and cornered him as he was leaving the dressing room.
“Will you come ‘round to mine for a beer?” he asked, and Buck blinked.
“Eddie, it’s 1 pm.”
“Okay, so we’ll have lunch. I’ll make you something,” Eddie countered.
“That sounds like a threat,” he joked, “Are you trying to poison me?”
“Okay, you’ll make something and I’ll help where I can!” Eddie exclaimed and grabbed his arm to pull him towards his truck.
“Eddie, I have my car here.”
“So, stay the night! I’ll bring you here tomorrow so you can get home, or whatever.”
Buck snorted and gave up. He had really felt like being alone for the day, but his best friend’s insistence on spending time with him made him feel warm all over, and it was just too hard to keep denying himself the pleasure of his company.
“Okay,” Buck gave in, “So bring me home, you stubborn idiot.” And if Eddie had blushed a little at the wording of his sentence, Buck was not the one to notice.
They drove in amicable silence, listening to music in Spanish that he could halfway understand, until they got home. Eddie opened the door, and they both got rid of their shoes and jackets, and went to wash their hands. As Buck began to work on their lunch, Eddie did end up getting out two beers and started setting the table.
They worked perfectly well in tandem, just as compenetrated as they did in rescues. It had always felt like they could read each other’s minds, like they knew one another’s intentions without having to waste time voicing them. It’s what made them such a good team.
As Buck was plating their food, Eddie finally opened his mouth. He was never one to beat much around the bush.
“What happened at the last call, Buck?”
He froze for a couple of seconds before sighing. This wasn’t unexpected. At all. He had been waiting, a bit anxiously, for Eddie to ask him about it. Had been planning on what to tell him, on how to explain that his brush with death was still haunting him, how the thought of losing him was a recurring nightmare. He answered without turning to look at him.
“An anxiety attack, that’s all”
He wasn’t all that brave. Eddie was relentless.
“Sure, okay. What caused it?” he pressed, and Buck sighed louder.
“Eddie, I’m not sure if you’re really the person I should be talking about this with,” he argued, because he was probably right about that. Talking about how badly the memory of Eddie getting shot still made him feel, with Eddie himself, the one to get shot, to go through the pain of the wound and the recovery, to live through the fear and the trauma. It was selfish and unfair, and Buck wouldn’t do that to him.
He then made the mistake of looking at Eddie. The look of hurt in his lovely brown eyes washed away most of his previously sturdy conviction.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Eddie – I do, you know that I do! It’s just… It wouldn’t be fair to you,” he tried to explain.
Eddie just tilted his head about it.
Buck sighed yet again, and carried on. “It wouldn’t be fair to burden you with it because you obviously had it much worse! It’s… it’s your trauma and I shouldn’t be making it about me. You’ve mentioned that I do that. Sometimes.”
Eddie stayed quiet for a couple of minutes. Opened his mouth a few times but nothing came out. Finally, he shook his head, like he couldn’t come up with a defence for himself. “Just… start telling me, please, Buck. I’m worried about you. I promise to stop you if it’s too much.”
Buck looked down at their plates of food getting cold and gave in. He put them in their respective places at the table and sat down. He grabbed his fork, and didn’t even try to grab a bite.
“I have nightmares about the day you got shot,” he confessed.
His ears rang in the following silence. He didn’t dare look up.
Eddie grabbed his chair from the other end of the table and brought it to Buck’s side. He sat down, way closer to him, and offered his hand.
“Keep going, Buck.”
Buck did. He took his hand and told him about the countless nights of waking up hyperventilating in a cold sweat. About the flashbacks he got sometimes when he noticed that Eddie was innocently standing at the same distance from him that he had that day. About the ache in his chest every time he thought about it.
“This call, it was a gunshot wound, Eddie,” Buck said. “I thought I could handle it. You… you obviously had it worse and you were handling it. But then Roman called Simon his best friend and I lost it.”
Eddie squeezed his hand and rubbed his thumb over it. “Buck, I get it,” he whispered.
“Yeah?” he asked. He saw Eddie nod in response.
“I… I get nightmares about you, too, Buck. About you getting struck. About you in a coma. About you not waking up. I can’t sleep during storms anymore. I get it, Evan.”
Buck blinked away tears. He rarely let people call him Evan, it didn’t even feel like his name anymore. But when Eddie did it, it felt his again. It felt like Eddie was reaching out and talking to another version of him. A fragile, vulnerable, scared version of him that he had tried so hard to hide away, had tried to protect by burying it. At times like these, only Eddie could reach Evan.
Buck nodded and smiled lightly. Eddie let go of his hand so they could both eat their cold food. None of them complained, nor re-heated it. Their knees were pressed against each other the whole time.
———————————————
Lovely?
———————————————
A little while after, they were on their way to pick Christopher up from school. Buck had offered to call an uber and go home, and Eddie had called him stupid and senseless. Said Chris would be ecstatic at having his Buck over as a surprise. They could make a movie night out of it, seeing as it was a Friday.
Chris did, in fact, seem ecstatic. He gave Buck his biggest smile and hugged him as strongly as he could right away. He relished the moment, dreading the fact that Chris was rapidly growing into a teenager and probably would soon avoid this sort of affectionate contact, especially in public.
The kid chatted away the whole way home, and both he and Eddie couldn’t keep their grins off their faces as they nodded and asked questions and reacted at all the right times.
He complained, as any other child, when his dad urged him to do his homework right away. “It’s Friday, dad! I have another two days to do it!”
“Oh, well… I guess we’ll have to leave the surprise reward for another day, then. That’s a shame, I’m sure Buck would have enjoyed it…” his dad said with a big sigh, dropping is shoulders in obvious disappointment.
“No!” Chris exclaimed, already running to his room, “I’ll do them!”
Eddie laughed and Buck shook his head at him, wearing an amused grin in spite of his disapproval. “You have mastered the art of manipulating your 11-year-old child.”
Eddie put his hands up in an innocent gesture. “I’m simply teaching him that being consistent and hard-working has its benefits!”
“Uh huh,” Buck mumbled sassily, raising his eyebrows, “And what is this grand reward you’re promising in exchange of all this consistency and hard work, if I may ask?” he said, walking closer.
Eddie’s breath caught for the shortest millisecond, and before anyone could ponder on the meaning of it, he shrugged and suggested: “Pizza and movie night?”
“That’s lame, we would have done that anyway, Eds,” he complained, letting himself fall on the couch. Eddie sat next to him, close enough for their knees to touch, as always.
“Okay, you come up with something less lame, then.”
Buck barely even had to think about it, “Let’s get tickets for the zoo! For the three of us!”
Eddie snorted, “That kid knows the zoo’s layout better than his own house at this point.”
“So?” Buck rolled his eyes teasingly. “He’s growing up so quick, I wanna squeeze every moment while he still wants to go out in public with us.”
The look he received was fond, if amused at the same time.
“Spoken like a true parent. Okay, tomorrow’s good for the zoo, right?” Eddie asked while getting up to go look for his laptop. Buck’s heart jumped a little out of beat behind his ribs, but he didn’t let himself look too much into the phrasing, he didn’t let himself hope for something he might never truly have.
“Yeah. Tomorrow,” He agreed, while actively ignoring the warmth in his chest and on his cheeks.
———————————————
Chris cheered when his dad showed him the zoo tickets, and thanked them both with a shared hug. When Buck asked him to choose a movie for the night while Eddie ordered their usual pizza, he all but glowed as he went through every single streaming service in search for something that caught his eye. He ended up picking the Super Mario Bros movie. It was a good choice.
Chris fell asleep with a full stomach and a pleased smile 43 minutes into the film. He was resting against Buck’s arm, and holding Eddie’s hand on his other side.
Buck often marvelled at how this kid could be so joyful after everything he had been through. This kid had suffered through so much loss, so much change. It’s hard to understand how he could fit all the grief inside his little body, and still leave plenty of space for the good.
He guessed that’s the bright side of being too young for tragedy. Christopher’s body is still made for growth. He’s grown so much since the tsunami shook their lives. He’s grown a lot since that car took his mother’s life. He’s grown since that bullet hit his father. He’s grown since the lightning reached Buck. He goes through fear and loss and pain, and then he grows, and wisely uses all that extra space to stock up in happiness. If life was fair, he wouldn’t have had to do it. But life has never been fair, and Chris managed to be happy anyway.
Everyone always assumes the youth knows nothing, but Buck thinks everyone should learn a little from the youth. He thinks that children know something the rest of them don’t, something that wears off with age, like an old memory you know is there but you can’t quite reach anymore.
He let Eddie take his Chris away from his side, and get him to his bed (not without kissing his curly hair good night, first.)
When he came back, he was smiling sleepily. “Are you ready to go to sleep yet?” Buck asked, and smiled as Eddie nodded his head.
“You know where everything is, make yourself comfortable,” Eddie began instructing, as if Buck needed any guidance with something he’s done so many times.
“I just need to brush my teeth and the bathroom’s all yours. Oh, don’t forget your glass of water.” Buck always wakes up in the middle of the night with a dry mouth, and he hates getting up to look for something to drink.
“I know, Eddie. Have a good night,” he smiled.
Eddie smiled right back. “Good night, Buck.”
Buck went to the kitchen, filled his glass with water and left it on the table by the couch. He brushed his teeth with his extra tooth brush that he once left there. He took his blanket, his pillow, and some pyjamas from the corridor closet, where Eddie always keeps everything Buck needs for his nights here.
He laid down on the couch and sleep came rapidly for him. His eyes were heavy and his heart was content as he let his consciousness steadily slip through his fingers.