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Buck’s no stranger to being hurt.
Or sick. Or hurt and sick at the same time. It’s not something he prides himself on, but it’s just a fact of life that he received the kiss of death the moment he came screaming out of his mother, as true as there being twenty-six letters in the English alphabet or seven colors in the rainbow.
There’s all the broken bones, the bruises and bloody noses and road rashes, the quite stunning workplace accidents and the seasonal allergies that feel more like dying than anything else, so the thing is—after being struck by a literal bolt of lightning and living to tell the tale like something out of the Old Testament, something as insignificant as a common cold is nothing to phone home about. A cold in the middle of a record-high summer, no less, because of course that would happen to him.
So, it’s barely something to blink at, shouldn’t even be a blip on the radar, but he’s stuck inside. Stuck inside when he could be doing his job, the thing among maybe two or three other things in his life that are the reason for his entire existence. He’d much rather be standing in the middle of an otherworldly blaze, or helping some nice old lady off the floor, or even staring at his wobbly reflection as he cleans a communal toilet.
But something else that Buck isn’t a stranger to is the knowledge that there’s evil all around him. Evil that’s plucky and standing at approximately five foot seven inches, got spiky middle-school boy hair and goes by the name Chimney.
Buck sniffled once. One single time before shift, and Chimney zeroed in on him like a viper before it strikes on a poor unsuspecting mouse and promptly sent him home. Because he has the power to do that now, a sign in a growing pool of other signs that the world is completely going to shit, or that Buck stayed dead back in 2023 and everything since has actually been Hell the whole time.
It must be Chimney's way of keeping Bobby's legacy alive—being an angel sent from heaven, or less generously, an ever-present pain in Buck’s ass.
So, Buck has resigned himself to two days of holing up in his room that’s more like a closet, rubbing his nose raw with Kleenex and watching video essays about the history of amusement parks in a state of catatonia while ignoring the mattress springs digging into his back. His head is exploding with fun facts, and he should probably open a window for some fresh air and also get up and go pee now that he thinks about it, but then the phone rings.
Buck’s got a bit of a thing about phone calls. He has for a while now—it’s no doubt his line of work, and his circle and their propensity for getting themselves into capital S Situations, but he’s also just been on edge. For many reasons, but also kind of mainly one big reason lately, that thing sitting heavy like a millstone around his neck.
It’s Hen. He picks up the phone.
“Hey,” Buck croaks like a frog, and he realizes that he hasn’t really used his voice in over twelve hours. “Did you know that when Disneyland first opened, they had a lingerie shop on Main Street that had a mascot called the Wizard of Bras?"
“I did not,” Hen says. It doesn’t have her usual melodic cadence to it, instead sensible and impeccably sober. Buck blinks. “Listen, Eddie got hurt on our last call. I wanted to call you as soon as I could, I know you hate surprises. We’re at Cedars on Beverly.”
Buck shoots up in his bed and starts to see little black spots in his vision, his back immediately protesting with the movement. “W-what?”
“He’ll be alright,” Hen assures him immediately. She laughs a little, a delicate puff of air. “Maybe I should’ve started with that.”
Right, of course. Buck’s body assumed the worst, but there are logical things that can be considered. Like, Hen sounds a bit worked up, but not guess what, someone else you love just died heartbroken. Buck didn’t get an emergency contact call from the hospital, so Eddie’s not incapacitated and three seconds away from meeting his maker. And—well, the thing is, Buck is sure he would just know. He’d know if Eddie was going to leave again, because he’d just feel it somewhere, in his head or maybe the back of chest, between the fourth and fifth ribs right where the apex of his heart is. He would’ve felt it.
Buck runs a hand through his hair, placing his knuckles over his chest. Stupid. “What, uh, what happened?”
Buck can practically hear Hen roll her eyes, exasperation heavy in her voice. “Got into a tiff at this hole in the wall in DTLA. We were treating these two big guys who got into a bar fight—broken nose, glass in hands, that kind of thing—but then Asshole Number One said something I can’t repeat to Asshole Number Two, and it set him off again. He was about to tackle that guy straight to his grave, but Eddie decided to be a big damn hero and get in the way. Combine a big guy with a slightly less big Eddie and, well. You get a fractured arm.”
Buck winces. “Jesus.”
“Yeah, the way he landed on his arm…I’ve seen it all, but I still flinched. It was an open fracture. But look, he’s going in to surgery right now, and he’s gonna be okay.”
“That’s good,” Buck says. And it is good. Eddie has survived far worse than a broken arm, because he’s no stranger to being hurt either. But it’s still—it’s just not fair, is all. Eddie has enough on his plate already, and he doesn’t deserve so much as a hair on his head being out of place.
And Buck feels…well, his heart is doing a weird thing. It’s that thing it does, the one where it kind of feels like he’s being hunted for sport, where it stomps around in his chest like a particularly pissed off elephant. He knows that Eddie is gonna be okay, Hen assured him as much as soon as she realized he was gonna freak out like he’s prone to do, but it’s like his body hasn’t gotten the memo yet. It’s like the words Eddie and hurt in the same sentence set off a sleeper agent in his brain, his breath stuttering out of his mouth.
“It'll be a while, but-”
“I’m on my way.”
“Yeah. I figured you’d say that.”
There’s nothing quite as boringly sickening as the smell of a hospital. It’s more familiar to him than a lot of things at this point, and Buck's gotta put up with it.
Eddie's out of PACU in the late afternoon.
“I thought you being a paramedic now meant you’d stay out of trouble.”
Hospital beds have a way of making people look inexplicably small. Eddie turns and squints from where he’s laid up like a reanimated corpse, and Buck feels like he can breathe a bit again. His eyes are glassy, but Buck can tell he’s present, the quiet intensity that Eddie always carries with him floating around in there. “It always finds me anyway.”
Buck pulls up a chair and tries to remember how a human being is supposed to breathe, normally. The normal respiratory rate is roughly twelve to twenty breaths per minute for adults. Two seconds for inhalation, three seconds for exhalation. It’s weird, but it’s—it’s not actually that weird. If he thinks about it. No person likes to see a loved one injured or in pain. It feels nice to think of Eddie as a loved one. And with their track records, it just brings up dreadful memories. Of course he feels like this.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Eddie is alive and awake and breathing, and he lolls his head over to the side to take a look at Buck, giving him a once over like he’s making sure he’s really there.
Buck gets another weird feeling in his chest, but it’s not the same kind of weird as before. It’s sticky and cloying this time, like he’s got chewing gum stuck in the spaces between his ribs. “You look terrible,” Buck says.
It’s not true. Eddie’s a little muted from his usual golden tan, like someone’s turned his brightness down, and there’s a big ugly eyesore of a cast on his left arm, but he’s still anything but a hardship to look at. Buck can think that Eddie is beautiful without it being a whole thing, right? Buck thinks a lot of people are beautiful.
“Surely not as terrible as I feel.” Buck can tell that Eddie tries to shrug, but it’s aborted.
“What were you thinking?” Buck blurts out, although he’s sure he meant to say something else. “Hen told me that guy was like twice your size. You’re lucky all you got was a broken arm.”
“I wasn’t doing it for him,” Eddie says, easy as anything. “If he ended up tackling that other guy, that would’ve been more work for us, and I was ready for shift to be over.”
Buck wants to smother him with a stiff hospital pillow or…something. “Save it. You’re not funny.”
Eddie makes some disgruntled sort of face, scrunching his features up this way and that way. “Can’t even crack a smile when I’m incapacitated?”
“You’re not incapacitated.” Buck realizes then that he really is upset, more than the usual amount in situations like this. He should’ve been there—it was really just a sniffle, barely even a sickness. If Buck were there, he could’ve done something. Prevented it. Or bit the guy’s head off. Even though they’re not partners anymore, Buck would’ve handled it. To think, that someone could put their hands on Eddie where Buck couldn’t see.
Eddie seems to sober up suddenly, the haze clearing. “I need—”
“Everything is sorted. I’ll pick Chris up from school in a bit and bring him here, and then he'll go back over to Pepa's place. She’s been called and she's on her way here, by the way.”
Eddie blinks a couple times, his jaw ticking a little.
Buck feels like blushing a little bit, and it doesn’t even make any sense. Eddie looks at him all the time, there’s no reason Buck should be feeling like he’s been doused in gasoline and lit up like the fourth of July. Stupid.
“Hey, thanks, Buck,” Eddie says after a moment, getting more lucid by the second. There he is. Buck feels acutely naked, like Eddie can see through him with x-ray vision.
Buck scratches at his neck, trying to make himself be fine about this. “Yeah, it’s—it’s no problem, man, you know that.”
Eddie’s still looking at him, kind of probing, almost curiously, so Buck picks up the bag he dropped by his feet when he entered the room. “Um, I stopped by your house and got you some stuff, ‘cause I know you’ll be here for a minute.” Buck shoves it at him lamely, and then he remembers. “Oh, wait.”
Eddie huffs out a laugh. “Hey, the other one still works.”
“Man, why’d you have to go and break your dominant arm?”
“S’okay,” Eddie says kind of proudly. “I’m like half-ambidextrous ‘cause left-handedness used to be for freaks.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot that was a thing. Jeez, you’re old.”
“Fucker. If I'm old, you're old.”
Buck sets the bag back down by his feet and sighs. Two seconds for inhalation, three seconds for exhalation. “I’m, uh, I’m really glad you’re okay.”
Eddie takes the change of conversation in stride like he always does. It’s easy, the way it is, the way it always has been. “It’ll take a lot more than an old drunk to get rid of me.”
Buck will hold him to that.
“Wait,” Eddie says after a second. “Didn’t you have a cold?”
Buck’s trying to figure out how he ended up in this situation.
It was only eighty hours and twenty-seven minutes ago that Buck was standing outside of a food truck with Eddie waiting for a devastatingly overpriced breakfast sandwich because they’d barely had time to eat on shift. It had been one of Buck’s more absentminded days where food was more of an afterthought and there was no time for Eddie to breathe down his neck to remind him to eat something, especially now that they weren't joined at the hip.
Buck was feeling a little bit dizzy, and he’s always had two left feet on a good day, so Eddie caught him when he had stumbled a little on the sidewalk, sturdy and unrelenting like he had grown roots underneath the pavement. Buck let himself lean in.
“You know, I could get one of these in New York City for, like. Five dollars or something.”
Eddie’s shoulder was a nice, centering touch. He was solid as a rock, his posture unshakable. “You wouldn't survive New York City.”
“Uh, excuse you. I totally would. I’ve survived all kinds of places, I’m worldwide. Like…uh, Pitbull.”
Eddie rolled his eyes, in his good-natured way, and grabbed their sandwiches from the truck, shoving Buck’s in his face. “Eat.”
Buck shrugged and shoved it in his mouth because he felt quite ravenous, but also because he thought it’d probably make Eddie laugh. And Eddie did laugh, predictably, and Buck felt very proud of himself.
“What borough’s my vibe?” Buck asked, but his mouth was full, so it came out more like nonsense. “Manhattan? Brooklyn? Queens.”
“Staten Island,” Eddie deadpanned.
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’re making a mess.”
Buck licked his lips, and Eddie screwed his face up at him. “That didn’t help.”
Buck imagined himself as a giraffe with a long blue tongue, licking his own eyeball or something. “How ‘bout now?”
“You still got—stop that.” Eddie grabbed his shoulder with one hand just like he’s always done, that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. But then he reached out to rub his thumb across Buck’s bottom lip, swiping away cream cheese with all the precision of a brain surgeon.
Wait, Buck thought. Hold on a second.
“Got it.”
The world stopped turning, or maybe Buck did, surprising given the way he’s always been in motion since the day he was born, never stopping. He thought to himself, wait, and Eddie was brushing crumbs off his collar completely oblivious with the morning sun painting him in chiaroscuro like the subject of a Rembrandt painting, the lines of his face sure and strong.
“Maybe eat like a normal person now,” Eddie was chiding him, but he was smiling, and Buck kept thinking, wait. When was the last time Eddie touched his face? Did Eddie touch his face? Was that a thing they did?
Eddie was right in front of him the whole time. Hiding in plain sight, a human optical illusion.
“I am a normal person,” Buck managed to say, impressively so, but the Earth still wasn’t rotating like it was supposed to. He felt inexplicably warm, molten and incandescent, and Eddie became clearer to him, clearer than he’d ever been.
And Eddie said, “That’s debatable,” and Buck thought to himself, holy shit.
And now he’s here, eighty hours and twenty-seven minutes later, and Eddie is saying to him, “There’s only so much pudding a man can consume before he starts to go insane.”
He looks better now, not that someone like Eddie could ever look bad, really, and Buck is wondering how he ended up in this situation. Not that there’s anywhere he’d rather be anyway, but maybe that’s the crux of the issue.
“I don’t think I have that,” Buck says. He brought Eddie a nice shirt from his house, this green one that brings out the pointillist flecks in his eyes. He rarely ever wears it, but Buck would much prefer if he did. It’d be weird if Buck asked him to wear it more though—thankfully, Buck’s always been good at finding cheat codes. He looks nice. Like Eddie. “I can put down a whole six-pack of pudding, easy.”
“I don’t have an iron stomach like you.” Buck’s never seen Eddie truly doped up on painkillers and even the lesser doses don’t make him stupid like they do to most people. He gets soft around the edges like a Gaussian blur, the persistent sharpness of his shoulders rounding for once. Buck hates to think it, but the one good thing about moments like these is that Eddie’s forced to slow down, even for a little bit.
Buck shakes his head. “Weak stomach, brittle bones. Jeez, old man, you’re helpless.”
Eddie raises his good hand all slow like he’s wading through water, squinting his eyes from the bed. “What is it with you and calling me old these days?”
Buck smiles. He waits for Eddie to say something else, but he just stares at Buck testily, which might be menacing if he didn’t have his arm all mummified. They’re usually equally-matched when it comes to giving each other shit, but Eddie’s not quite on his game, and Buck plans to take full advantage of it while he still can. “Don’t worry about it, Grandpa. I'm here to help you get back on your feet.”
“It’s just a broken arm, not osteoporosis,” Eddie says quite predictably.
“Okay, tough guy.” Truthfully, Buck really fucking hates it when Eddie does this. He’d probably downplay a severed limb if it came down to it. Buck’s just got to take care of him, protect him now since he couldn’t protect him a week ago. “You have a couple metal plates in your bones—the dominant ones, by the way—and you look like a mummy, are you expecting to return to normal function in a couple days?”
“Well, now you’re just putting words in my mouth.”
“Look,” Buck says. It’s not like Eddie’s even rejecting him or anything, it’s just—Buck needs to do this. Who else, if not him? Who would do it properly, the way that Eddie deserves? “It’s not like I-I’m gonna move back in or anything, but you're still in pain. A lot of it, and I know you’re trying to downplay it—don’t look at me like that—so just let me help out with stuff for a couple days. You'll be—you’re gonna be out for a while, Eddie.”
Buck doesn’t want to think about that right now, though, and neither does Eddie, if the wavering look on his face is anything to go by. He sighs, still a very lovely sound despite it all, and nods once. “I know.”
“Good,” Buck nods. He can be good about it, he can be great about it. He'll be the best about it. “So accept my help.”
Eddie quirks his lip at him. “You wanna rub ointment on my cast rash?"
“Who else would,” Buck says. It was supposed to be a question, lighthearted, but it’s just there. It hangs in the air, a miasma of all of Buck’s fully-realized feelings stinking up the place.
Thankfully, the doctor appears to debrief them before Eddie’s discharge, Buck’s guardian angel, and thank God for divine timing, right?
It’s gonna be a long six to eight weeks.
When Buck was 9 years old, he found a baby bird with a broken leg in his backyard. It was about the size of his palm, so little he was almost scared to touch it. Curiosity often outruled fear for him back then, though, so he touched it anyway.
He didn’t know at the time, but it was a young Eastern bluebird, Sialia sialis. It didn’t have that vibrant shock of orange-brown on its underside yet, just cool speckled gray and peeks of brilliant blue on its wings. He thought it was a nice contrast to the way everything was so drab that day, the mist sticking in his eyes.
Buck got a towel from the bathroom and swaddled it as gently as his hands could manage to keep it warm—it was shaping up to be a real cold winter. It wasn’t his first instinct by that point to ask his parents what to do, he was long past that. And they were out anyway. Maddie would know. Maddie knew everything, after all.
“Evan, what have you gotten yourself into now?” she had asked him, but she didn’t mean it in the mean way that everyone else would’ve meant it. She crouched down next to him in the grass, knocking their knees together.
“I-I think its leg is broken.”
“Oh, he’s just a baby,” Maddie cooed, her voice taking on the sugary sweet quality it got when she saw something awfully cute. “He needs a vet. I’ll go get him some water and call them, don’t let him leave your sight!”
“Okay,” Buck said. He knew that Maddie would know. Maddie knew everything.
She let Buck give him water, and they moved him into an old shoebox. Buck still remembers the baby’s eyes, beady and darker than anything. Someone else would’ve probably said that there was nothing behind them, it was just a dumb bird after all, but Buck could see. The baby knew that he was being helped. And Buck, well, it felt like he was doing something important, or maybe just something right, and he didn’t feel like that often.
“The closest vet isn’t too far, we can walk,” Maddie told him. “So what should we name him?”
“Dunno.” Buck thought about it for a second. “Blue!”
Maddie laughed. “Very on the nose.”
“Well, he’s blue,” Buck figured. “So he’s Blue.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
The vet told them that little Blue would be alright, thanks to them. Buck had never felt so happy.
“Damn. I might have to help you make your way through this drug supply.”
Eddie knocks his head against the car window like a bird to transparent glass. “I don’t wanna do drugs anymore.”
Buck tosses Eddie’s prescription cocktail in the backseat, pulling out of the pharmacy parking lot. “That’s alright, Eddie. We’ll get you some help.”
Eddie stops trying to brain himself on the passenger seat window and fixes Buck with a stern Dad Look. He’s got pretty gnarly dark circles under his eyes, but he still manages to look Brando-esque. Buck looks away and stares at the road. “Thank God you decided to become a firefighter and not a comedian.”
It’s good to know that despite his grogginess, Eddie has gained back some of his hard-won Make Fun of Buck skills. No one does it quite like him. “Yeah,” Buck says, “‘cause you wouldn’t know me and then your life would suck.”
“Maybe a little bit,” Eddie says.
For the next twenty or so minutes, Buck tries not to let his eyes stray from the road too much, but he can’t help but catalog every shift and intake of breath Eddie makes next to him, like he’s in danger of spontaneously combusting and splattering all over the windshield at any moment.
Predictably, Eddie notices, albeit a little slower than he probably would on a better day. “My other arm isn’t gonna magically break during this car ride,” he says very plainly.
“I can’t know that for sure,” Buck insists. And really, he can’t, like. He takes his eye off Eddie for one second—against his own will, crucially—and the man goes and gets football-tackled right into the hospital. “I mean, look at the shit you got up to while I was gone. You can’t be trusted!”
“Oh, I can’t be trusted,” Eddie mutters testily.
“What’s that?”
“Nothin’.”
“Dick.”
By act of grace, they manage to make it to Eddie’s house completely unscathed, with no divine punishments or near death experiences to hold them up.
Eddie swings the door open in the driveway and groans. “This fuckin’ Jeep. Has it always been this…high?”
“Stay there!” Buck yelps with too much force, his voice ringing out into the placid morning-quiet of the street. “I mean, uh, stay there.”
Buck scurries out of the car and grabs Eddie’s duffel and drug supply out of the backseat, and then he circles around to the passenger’s seat. Eddie, thankfully, stayed right where Buck told him to, looking down at Buck like he’s fighting an internal battle with himself. Or maybe not that internal, given the grimace on his face. He’s never been very good at fixing his face.
But Eddie is much better at accepting help than he used to be, although he never really had any problem accepting help from Buck like he did other people. Not that he can remember. It makes Buck preen a bit, that Eddie trusts him with this.
“C’mon,” Buck says. He grabs Eddie’s uninjured arm and helps him down as gently as he can, their shoulders bumping together. “Hey, at least we’re not in your twenty foot tall hillbilly truck.”
“Don’t bring up my truck,” Eddie grumbles, already breaking a sweat. “It's still a sore spot.”
Buck leads him inside with his hand still wrapped around Eddie’s arm, letting out an almost involuntary sigh of relief once they’re inside. Buck has been back here since he moved out, but it hasn’t been exactly the same as it was, not as deep in each other’s pockets as before. Buck had been meaning to fix that, right before he got slapped in the face with—well, none of that matters right now. Buck has things to do.
Eddie collapses very gracelessly onto the couch the minute it’s in sight and groans. “After a week in a hospital bed, I think this is…the most comfortable thing I’ve ever felt in my life.”
“Mhm,” Buck says distractedly, setting the duffel on the floor and making his way to the kitchen. “Don’t jostle your arm.”
“It’s in a cast and a sling, it’s not even jostle-able.”
“I don’t think that’s a word.” Buck pours Eddie a glass of water and makes his way back over to the couch. “Here. You need to hydrate.”
Eddie’s looking a little glum, like someone’s in the process of removing his batteries, so Buck quirks his lip at him. “So your pee won’t be chocolate pudding.”
Eddie smiles, modest but there, brilliant all the same. Like it always is. Buck mentally pats himself on the back for a job well done. He dutifully downs half the glass even though it’s clear he doesn’t feel like putting anything in his stomach and hands it back to Buck.
“Chris,” Eddie says, and then doesn't expand on the thought.
“I’m gonna pick him up from school later,” Buck says, going through his mental checklist, “and bring him here to see you before he goes back to Pepa. But first I’m gonna stock up on groceries, because it’s sad in here.” Eddie narrows his eyes. “Then I’ll make you something to take your pills with later. But for now, you should get some rest. I know you’re tired.”
“‘M not that tired,” Eddie insists, looking half-dead to the world.
“Uh huh. C’mon. Let’s get you to bed.”
Eddie grumbles something unintelligible, and Buck grabs his good arm to help him to his feet. “My legs still work, you know.”
“Of course.”
Buck guides him down the hallway with a hand on his back. He’s very warm to the touch, a kind of pleasant that almost makes Buck snatch his hand away. But it’d actually be weirder if he did snatch his hand away, wouldn't it? Yeah, it would.
Eddie slumps over onto his bed, an Eddie-shaped sack of potatoes.
Buck huffs, maneuvering a pillow under his arm to elevate it. “You gotta stop doing that, man.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Eddie mumbles into his pillow, already dozing.
“Wait. You forgot to take off your shoes when you came in.”
“Mmph,” Eddie says.
Buck watches him for a second. When he makes no move to do that—or anything at all, really—Buck sits on the edge of the bed to do it for him.
Buck pulls his shoes off as gently as he can, grabbing his socked heels so they don’t flop back down and placing them on the bed himself, and it’s—weird. It’s weird, Buck’s never touched Eddie here before. And it's weird, there are places that Buck has never touched Eddie before. Buck has pushed into his open wound with his bare fingertips, felt his flesh pulling away from itself and his blood trickling over his knuckles and the spirals of his fingertips, but never here. Somewhere so inconsequential, really. His heel rests in Buck’s palm.
Buck snatches his hand away.
“Get some rest,” Buck says even though he’s not sure Eddie can hear him anymore, clearing his throat. “And then you’ll eat when you wake up. And see Chris.”
Eddie doesn’t open his eyes, his lashes fluttering against his pillow, but he mumbles, “Don’t like it when he sees me like this.”
“Like what?” Buck whispers. “He knows you're human.”
Eddie makes a funny little sound in the back of his throat, and Buck feels his lip twitch with the threat of an ill-timed smile. “Don’t want him to be scared.”
“He’s not as little as he used to be.”
Eddie’s breathing evens out, though, and then he’s out like a light. Buck will have to tell him again later.
He stands up from the bed, and he makes his way to the door, and he tries not to look back at Eddie. But how can he not look, when he’s been looking ever since they met?
He chances one glance behind him, traces the shape of Eddie’s breathing with his eyes, a delicate up and down.
Buck takes a deep breath.
“Hey, kid.”
Chris shuts the door behind him, and Buck focuses up. Things to do, Buck has got a lot of things to do. Chris really does look more grown by the day, standing taller and talking taller, and it makes Buck feel every single millisecond of his age.
“Hi, Buck.”
Buck turns the AC up and tries to angle the vents toward his sweaty face, filling up the car with boy-smell. “How was your day?”
“Good,” he offers in the vague teenage way. “How’s Dad?”
“He’s good,” Buck replies automatically. But then he thinks back to their last conversation, and he thinks about a well collapsing, a bullet hot to the touch and a hostage situation. “Well, he is good. Some pain. But. Well, you know, he’s aware he sort of has a track record with these kinds of things.”
“I’m not gonna make him quit his job again,” Chris says without missing a beat.
“Woah. That’s not—huh.”
Chris lets him stew for a second, and then he says, “Joking,” in the same disappointed tone he uses on Eddie when he scrolls on his phone with his pointer finger instead of his thumb. “I was joking.”
“Oh.”
Chris twists his face up at him, but he has enough manners not to laugh. Buck narrows his eyes at him. “Well, my point was. He’s thinking about you, and how it might make you feel…to see him like that. You know what I mean?”
Chris sits with that for a second. Buck watches the trees pass them by. “I think it’s better now,” he says after a moment. “But I get it. I like staying at Tía Pepa’s house anyway.”
Buck smiles. “Because she overfeeds you?”
“Yeah.”
“I feel the same way.”
Chris is silent for the rest of the ride home, but after all these years Buck knows that it’s not the bad kind of silence, just the contemplative kind.
Buck tries not to think about it, to let the lull of the radio distract him, but these are just the things that happen to him when there’s silence that doesn’t need to be filled. It should be nice, the knowledge that Eddie trusts him with the most important thing in his life—and it always is, when Buck thinks about it, and it’s nice right now, except now there’s also this other thing looming over him. This relentless knowledge pressing at the back of his head.
But the thing is, he doesn’t really have to think about it. There’s no seed of doubt in his mind what his feelings are anyway, now that they’ve made themselves known to him, because how could Buck ever be unsure about someone like Eddie?
But even if he were, there would be no need to think about it. He has things to do.
“He might be asleep again,” Buck says when they pull up in the driveway. “He was pretty drained when he was discharged this morning.”
“That’s okay. I’ll just sit on him until he wakes up.”
“Good plan.”
There’s still a quiet novelty to watching Chris walk into this house after being gone for so long, and it’s made even weirder by the fact that Buck was squatting here for months.
Eddie, predictably, is not in the living room or the kitchen, and Buck watches as Chris shuffles down the hall to Eddie’s bedroom. Eddie, predictably, is fast asleep in his bed, mouth agape like he’s having a particularly life-changing nap. Buck smiles.
He watches from the doorway while Chris sits down on Eddie’s legs as promised, and then he tosses his backpack at his head.
Eddie sits up abruptly like someone’s pulling his strings, grumpy and his eyes half-open. Buck only narrowly holds back from saying don’t jostle your arm! “What the-” Eddie’s eyes land on Chris after a second, and Buck watches in real time as his face softens and goes all gooey, an ice cream cone melting in the face of the sun. “Oh. Hey, kid.”
Acutely and without warning, Buck feels like he should avert his eyes. He steps away when they start whispering privately to each other.
Josephina’s house is much like Eddie’s, in that Buck feels inappropriately comfortable inside of it. But it’s not entirely his fault, can’t be all on him when the woman always greets him so warmly, every time, without fail—
“Sweetheart! Oh, you look so handsome today. But so tired.”
“I’m alright,” Buck says as she pulls him in for an oxygen-stealing hug, their bones clacking together. Chris makes a fake-vomit noise in the back of his throat and pushes past them. “It smells good in here.”
“Come in. I have something for you.”
Buck dutifully follows Pepa inside and into the kitchen, where she promptly shoves a giant Tupperware container in his hands.
“Bring this back to my nephew, and make sure he eats every last drop.”
“Ooo,” Buck says as he eyes the bright orange color inside. “What is this?”
Pepa waves her hand. “Ah, it’s just chicken noodle soup. But trust me, it’s no Campbell’s.”
“Oh? What’s the secret?”
“It wouldn’t be a secret anymore if I told you,” she chides, and then she says, “Sriracha.”
Buck blinks. “Wait, really?”
She gives him her trust me look and ushers him back out as quickly as he came, hand on his back. “Ándale, get back to him. Time is money.”
“Why are you rushing me out?” Buck whines, but truthfully, every second that Eddie isn't in his sight is a second where Buck feels like he's gonna break right out of his own skin. “What if I wanna catch up?"
"We can catch up when my poor nephew isn't all broken up and suffering. Pobrecito, I should beat that drunk asshole up myself."
Pepa swearing always makes Buck giggle like a schoolgirl. "I think you could take him."
"I know I could!" She shoos him out the door. "Out, out."
"I'm going, I'm going."
She pecks him on the cheek and cradles his face in her hand. "And make sure you get some rest. You're paler than usual."
"Yes ma'am."
Her eyes dance across his face for a moment. "You’re good to him," she says kind of out of nowhere.
Buck feels himself flush a little, incendiary, the heat prickling at the back of his neck like porcupine quills. "Oh, um. I-it’s nothing."
"Mhm," she says very vaguely. And then she gives him a puckish little smile, but Buck can't recall if it's a Pepa smile he's ever seen before.
It's really nothing.
Buck broke his arm when he was twelve.
He was being stupid, as he was wont to do, trying to see how much air he could get on his skateboard. It had been four years prior that Tony Hawk had become the first skateboarder to land a 900 live at the 1999 X Games, so it was more Tony Hawk's fault, really, for existing where Buck could see it.
It was always hard to find ramps in such a small place, and everyone always found the grubby skater boys to be a nuisance to their peace—there was some sort of highly-contagious suburban hysteria going around about skaters and BMX riders destroying property and terrorizing children. Luckily for Buck, not many people were at Brookside Park on a Monday morning save for a few lone birdwatchers. He was playing hooky, but it was for a good cause.
He had his eye on the bridge over the creek. He had finally polished his kickflip after weeks of practice and eating shit on the pavement, and he was ready to take it to the next level. The next level, which was doing a kickflip off of a bridge, naturally.
Truthfully, he really thought he had it. He climbed on top of the thick green arch of it, setting his board flat. It was pretty much a straight line ahead until the divot at the end of the creek, and he zipped across it so fast and hypersonic that his breath got all caught up in his lungs. He got to the end of the arch and ollied into the air, lifted his back foot and slid his front foot across the board diagonally forward. It flicked and the board spun, flipping it completely over just like he was supposed to.
There was always the landing, though. Buck was good at the tricks, but quite sad at making them stick.
Instead of stopping the spin and returning to position on the board, he lost his footing completely. He could taste the mud in his mouth before he landed in it. He tripped through the air and landed on his arm in the sticky dew of the grass, his skateboard skidding off into the nearest Magnolia tree.
A wildfire razed through his forearm as he rolled over onto his back and stared up at the sky, and all he could think was, I got so much air.
He doesn't remember much after that. He vaguely remembers the shrill howl of the ambulance and sterile hospital walls, consternation on his mother's face when she saw him like he was dying right in front of her and not just laid up with messed up bones, a shiny get well soon balloon. What he remembers the most clearly is Maddie.
She was the only person in the whole stupid world that could get him to wear a helmet—and when he was feeling particularly generous, kneepads—but she wasn't there to hover over him when it happened, so she had a lot of words for him.
"You're gonna give me an ulcer," she had told him. "Have you ever seen an ulcer? They're not pretty."
Buck was quite enjoying the hospital fruit cups, especially because one of the nurses had taken a liking to him and made sure he got extra. "Is that when your stomach gets a hole in it or something?"
"Yeah, Evan. You're burning a hole in my stomach."
Buck twisted his nose up at the visual, shoving more peach cubes into his mouth. It was hard because he only had his left hand, so some of them plopped into his lap. "I-I don't mean to, Mads. I just wanted to see how high I could get."
Maddie was very bad at staying mad at him, or even getting mad at him at all in the first place. She tried to scowl, and it looked wrong on her pleasant face, unnatural like someone had drawn it on. Then she smiled like she couldn't help it, one of those long-suffering, philosophical ones. "And how high did you get?"
"So high," Buck grinned. "It was like. Like I was flying."
She rolled her eyes in response, her curly mascaraed eyelashes fluttering like little spider legs. "You're impossible."
You're impossible sounded much more like I love you, with a little bit of I'm gonna kill you diluted in there somewhere. Buck didn't mind.
Maddie scooted closer in her glorified brick of a hospital chair, grabbing the fruit cup off of his little table and snatching the plastic spork from him. "I'm gonna take care of you," she told him. "I know Mom's pissed, but don't worry about anything, okay?" Then she shoved a spoonful of peaches right in his mouth.
Buck spluttered like a broken car engine, dribbling all over himself. "Hey!"
"Promise not to do it again," Maddie demanded like an evil mobster getting ready to waterboard him.
"I would do it again," Buck said stubbornly. "I was like a bird."
No, Buck didn't regret it. He got so much air.
It didn't matter. Maddie kept true to her word, and she took care of him. It made Buck glad he took the jump.
As it turns out, Buck drastically underestimated his feelings.
Or, well, he didn't underestimate them. But he thought he could put them on the back-burner for a little bit, cast them to the side for later, or maybe never, because they didn't matter and he needed to take them with him to his grave. But it's starting to feel impossible for feelings like this. Big ones. All-consuming ones, life ending ones.
The funny thing—or maybe the depressing thing—is, Buck has been here before. When that bullet razed through Eddie's body, Buck was there in the aftermath, just like he always was. He was there in the waiting room, next to the hospital bed, in the car to take Chris to school, on Eddie's couch wide awake and drenched in cold sweat, prepared to jump up if Eddie needed something. He saw everything.
And now he's here, and he's saying, "It's not gonna bite you."
Eddie is staring at his shower like he's trying to laser it in half with his eyes, mouth set in a very unimpressed line. He's, at the very least, very much so awake now, and Buck can't decide if that's better or worse for him. "I got it."
"Sorry," Buck says. "I didn't realize you were completely fine and the broken arm was actually a figment of my imagination."
"Could you pick a better time to be a smartass," Eddie grimaces, "please?"
No, Buck is patient. He wasn't an angel to be around after the ladder truck bombing, he can intuit what Eddie's feeling. Probably something like he wants Buck's stupid ass to get away from him and leave him alone because there will always be a little shame no matter how much you grow up and get over yourself. And also, broken bones fucking suck.
"We've been through this before," Buck says, tries to make his voice soothing. "And hey, we had known each other for, what, three years back then? Compare it to now. Not much I haven’t seen."
"I'm not worried about you seeing my dick," Eddie says quite crassly, and that's Buck's cue to laugh at his bluntness, but he kind of just chokes on a bit of saliva for a moment instead.
"Right…" Buck says normally. "Right, for sure."
Eddie, blessedly, does not look away from the shower door, some sort of silent communication going on there. Then he sighs and deflates a little. "I hate this part."
"I know." And Buck does know. Everything about being injured is kind of a humiliation ritual, from the pain to the way you can't do the things you always do to the accepting help part. Especially if the person helping you out isn't your…well. "I get it. But, um. It's just me."
Eddie finally looks at him then, and his eyes are quite clear, so much so that Buck feels like he could see to the bottom of them if he really focused. For once in his life, Buck can't figure out what he's thinking. He doesn't dignify Buck with an answer.
"Come here," Buck says, and his heart is playing skip rope in his throat, his palms getting hot like he's got a bad rash.
Eddie steps closer, and he smells like antiseptic. Buck grabs the hem of his shirt, and wills himself to look and act and think normal as he carefully helps Eddie ease it up his arms and over his head.
Eddie winces in pain, barely there but Buck's got an eye for it. "Sorry," Buck says, "are you o-"
"Fine." Eddie chances a hateful glance at his left arm. "Stupid."
"Don't talk about yourself like that."
Eddie rolls his eyes, and Buck smiles, and then he remembers what he's doing. Nurses do this all the time. Buck is not anything close to a nurse, but he's a professional.
"Here." Buck grabs the cast cover off the sink and guides it over Eddie's arm. "Can't have you getting infected and your arm falling off."
"At least it would put me out of my misery."
It's Buck's turn to roll his eyes. "Lemme get your soap for you."
Eddie decides to shimmy out of his sweatshorts while Buck fumbles with his body wash and turns the shower on, which is fine, he supposes, because he's not even gonna look. And besides, there's no such thing as privacy at the 118, of course Eddie doesn't care, why would he care when it isn't even a big deal? Why would Buck care? He definitely doesn't care.
"Alright," Buck attempts to look literally anywhere but Eddie, eyes settling on the door behind him instead. "Scream if you need me."
Eddie kicks his shorts away, leaving him in his boxers. Okay, it shouldn't be different, because Buck wasn't lying when he said it's not anything he hasn't seen before, but it is a little different. Still. It's like he has a new awareness, a hyper-awareness, an awareness of himself and an awareness of Eddie that he didn't have before. Even though Buck thought he was already pretty aware of Eddie before all of this—it's like he's magnetized now, and Buck can see everything, right down to the marrow.
It's just—he should be able to look, but he can't now. It wouldn't be right, it'd feel like…like he's disrespecting Eddie by looking at him like that.
"Alright," Eddie says, and Buck leaves the bathroom at what he hopes is a normal human pace. He shuts the door behind him and slides down it until his butt hits the floor.
He feels really hot, actually, scorching even though the AC is blasting, his shirt clinging to the skin of his back. It's weird. And mildly concerning. Buck tries to remember if there are somatic symptoms of being in love with someone. And if so, do they usually feel like dying?
Buck listens to the sound of water hitting the floor and Eddie cursing inelegantly to himself, and he wonders how he ended up here.
Well, he knows exactly how he got here, but he doesn't know how he let it happen. Eddie, one of the things in his life he'd be the most devastated to lose. Of course, something inside of Buck decided to choose him. Beautiful, perfect, unattainable, decidedly heterosexual. Buck can never take the easy route in life, it's a fact he's known about himself since he gained sentience.
He doesn't know how much time passes, ruminating himself sick until there's a loud thumping noise from behind him, and then Eddie says, "Fucking hell," and Buck jumps up quicker than he knew he was capable of. "Eddie?"
"Goddamn it," Eddie hisses in response.
"If you don't say anything in the next five seconds, I'm coming in there!"
"I'm fine!" he yells over the water. He sounds like he's in pain. Buck tries not to bite a hole through his lip. "Slipped. I caught myself."
"Do you need help?"
Eddie groans.
"I'm coming in there."
Buck silently thanks the universe for shower steam as he opens the door and steps back inside. Buck squints his eyes so that everything turns into an abstract painting, blobs and vague shapes where concrete things used to be. He opens the shower door, and Eddie is bracing himself against the other wall with his hair in his eyes, looking one second away from losing his balance again.
"Alright, I'm just gonna-" Buck wraps an arm around Eddie's middle to steady him, his sweatshirt soaking through immediately. "Are you done?"
Eddie makes a vague, caveman-grunting noise that Buck takes as a yes, so he reaches down to turn the faucet off. "Okay. Turn a little and hold onto me."
Eddie releases his death grip on the wall to grab Buck's arm instead, soaking through that too. He stumbles a little and his cast knocks into Buck's chest, making him hiss under his breath.
"Shit," Buck steadies him again, "does that hurt?"
"It doesn't feel great," Eddie says through clenched teeth.
"That was a stupid question. Sorry."
Buck manages to walk Eddie out of the shower with no more brushes with death, and he passes him a towel. Eddie's a blurry blob, but Buck can still make out the tomato-esque flush of exertion spreading across his skin. "I don't remember showering being this hard last time."
A tasteless grandpa joke bubbles up in Buck's throat, but he decides against it. Low-hanging fruit anyway. "To be fair, you weren't wearing a cast down to your ass crack last time."
"Real cute," Eddie says.
He towels at his hair, and Buck should leave, but he can't, because Eddie freaked him out and now Buck's afraid that if he leaves the bathroom again, Eddie will break his leg next. "You don't have to do that, y'know."
Buck blinks up at the ceiling. "Huh?"
"Squint your eyes," Eddie clarifies, and there's some amusement coloring his tone. "Weren't you just going on about how we've done this before?"
Buck really needs a glass of water. Or some essential oils. Or a lobotomy. "I'm trying to be, like. Uh, a gentleman or something."
"A gentleman," Eddie parrots back.
Yes, a gentleman, Buck doesn't say. A well-adjusted bisexual man who doesn't lust after his naked, glistening straight best friend when he's in pain. Because that would be weird. "You know, privacy of your own home and all that."
"Since when have you ever given me privacy?"
Buck scoffs, and he's gonna say something particularly scathing back when Eddie curses under his breath again. "What is it?"
"Putting on clothes…" Eddie says kind of philosophically. "Man, we really take a lot of things for granted."
"Don't get so emotional. Just let me help you."
Buck helps him get a new shirt on—with his eyes still squinted, because Eddie doesn't fucking get it—and makes sure to stare at the ceiling as he helps him into his boxers.
"What are you thinking for dinner?" Buck asks when Eddie is fully clothed again and no longer an imminent danger to his cardiovascular system.
Eddie is staring at him, and he kind of looks upset but he also looks a little tickled, like Buck is doing something funny. Buck feels caught a bit, ensnared in his stupidly striking eyes. "Let me sit down for a second before you try to fatten me up."
"You think I'm gonna try and put you in a boiling cauldron of soup?"
"Who knows what goes on in that head of yours."
Buck helps him all the way over to the couch even though Eddie reiterates that his legs do indeed work, but he doesn't try to shove him away. Buck really appreciates that, that Eddie doesn't push him out. He doesn't even realize how much Buck needs to do this, deeply to his core, all the gooey and sticky parts of him reaching out to wrap their tendrils around Eddie and protect him.
Eddie sits down on the couch gingerly and releases a long, long breath like he's just finished pushing a boulder up a hill, the knife-edge of his perfect shoulders finally relaxing. "God help me."
"My name's Buck."
Eddie gives him the face he usually gives him before he flips Buck off for doing something stupid, but he must not have enough energy. Buck shrugs and collapses next to him, careful to keep his distance. He belatedly realizes the entire front of his sweatshirt and the tips of his hair are soaked.
"Thanks," Eddie says after a moment.
"Mm?"
Eddie tilts his head back to rest against the couch and turns to look at him. Buck copies him. "Would've died a sad death in there without you."
Buck knows that's not true, and Eddie knows that's not true, but Buck feels his whole body get warm anyway. He's hopeless, and his skin is all prickly and sweaty again even though his wet sweatshirt is getting cold, and he's pleased, sparkling under Eddie's attention.
He's always felt this way about Eddie, hasn't he?
"It was nothing."
Buck is really in for it now.
Buck floats in and out of sleep.
He crashes on Eddie's couch at the end of the day, something he hasn't done in a hot minute, and all he feels is an acute sense of dread.
There's no one to blame but himself, and for multiple reasons. Mostly for feeling these impossible feelings in the first place. Then for not being able to smother them and keep them under control. Then for not being there when Eddie got himself into this whole predicament in the first place. He could've…he could've done something.
He stares at the ceiling, his blanket kicked off, straining his ears just in case something happens. He's severely reminded of when Eddie got shot, and Buck was safeguarding the house, making sure nothing bad happened. There were nights when Eddie would wake up in a cold sweat, or with a shout, or with a moan of pain, and Buck did his best to make it better. The stakes are lower this time, but Buck feels just as high-strung.
He closes his eyes. Buck has this dream sometimes. He never knows where he is, just that he’s in some nebulous sort of space, sterile and white like a hospital waiting room. It’d maybe be easier if it really was a hospital waiting room because he’s well-acquainted with those, but this dream isn’t an easy kind of dream. It’s the kind of dream that doesn’t have a clear ending—he’s always running forward, trying to reach something.
The thing is, he never reaches it. He never even sees it, but he keeps running anyway.
Buck startles back into consciousness at the same time he always does on a work day. He looks around and sees everything just the way it was when he fell asleep, and he strains his ears and hears nothing.
He tiptoes to Eddie's room—Buck made sure to insist that Eddie left a crack in his door, more for Buck's peace of mind than anyone else's—and studies the Eddie-shaped lump in the bed. He's breathing even, and he's not screaming in agony, so that's probably a good sign.
Buck gets ready for his shift quietly. He hasn't gotten ready in Eddie's house in a while, and there's a little bit of novelty there as he stares at himself in the smudgy bathroom mirror.
He makes some breakfast and puts it in the fridge for Eddie for later, and he leaves him a sticky note reminding him to take his pills and keep his arm elevated when he can. Buck knows that Eddie can take care of himself just fine while Buck's gone. Of course he can, he's one of the most capable people Buck has ever met. And Buck's only supposed to help him out for a little bit, it's not like he's moving back in. Eddie needs his space, and when Buck brings Chris back home, Chris will need his space too.
But. But, but, there's always a but with Buck. It just feels better for him, better for his heart and his mind and his soul and his bones, when he can see Eddie. Keep an eye on him. Make sure he's safe. Buck knows what it's like to go without Eddie for a while. He doesn't wanna go back there.
But it's not about him, and it doesn't matter. Eddie doesn't need Buck to be in love with him. Buck's trying to be better about getting over himself.
Hen nudges him under the chin. "How's your patient doing, Doc?"
People would normally be a welcome distraction for Buck, something he can toss himself into that can take his mind off of everything, but now he just feels dread. Lots of it. Dread seems to be a recurring theme for him this week.
This whole thing has left him feeling naked, like those recurring nightmares he has sometimes of not wearing pants in public places. Like someone will be able to take one look at him and say, look, he's in love with his best friend!
"Eddie? U-uh, he's doing alright."
"That break was nasty, man," Ravi says as he stares off at the wall, cringing into himself like he's reliving the memory. Hen nods in sympathy. "I should never have to see someone's bones outside of their body."
Hen laughs. She looks extra sparkly today. Buck wishes he felt the same. "Why'd you become a firefighter then?"
"The first responder discounts."
Buck tries to laugh along like he's supposed to, but he mostly just feels sick, a cinder block at the pit of his stomach. He's so mad at himself. Eddie should never be in pain.
"Me and Chim are gonna come around this weekend," Hen says, always the one to pick the thread of a conversation back up.
"I'm gonna bring him a fruit basket!" Chimney chirps from somewhere behind Buck, always bouncy and chipper at a time no one should be bouncy and chipper. Many have said the same about Buck, but he's got a little…situation going on right now. He's not bouncy. "Or maybe a football helmet."
"Hardy har har," Buck says.
It's a long shift. It shouldn't be that different when Eddie's not there because they're not even partners anymore, but Buck feels his absence something fierce anyway. Eddie has always been an employer's wet dream—he never misses work, he's never late, he rarely ever catches a sniffle or a bug or anything that would prevent him from making shift. Buck's not used to this either.
He's not used to it, but maybe he shouldn't be so put off by it. There was an entire period of time when Eddie didn't even work here. Then there was the time he left the 118 for Chris. Then there was the time he was in Texas. Buck has worked without Eddie a lot of times, now that he thinks about it, but the weird feeling he gets over it never changes.
Maybe he's just bad at accepting change. Half of the time, he dreads coming into work because he knows that Bobby won't be there, even though he's never told anyone. He dreads going back to his apartment when the day is done, even though he was the one so eager to move out and get out of Eddie's hair. It's kind of comical.
Truthfully, Buck misses their old routine. Buck's always been a fan of routines. The way he and Eddie used to sync up, like they were inside each other's heads. The elbow touches, the fist bumps, the harness-checking, the way their gloves would brush when they were working in tandem. Buck got comfortable. Real comfortable.
But working with Ravi is nice. It's not the same, but it's nice, and Ravi doesn't even side-eye him with a look of hesitation and exasperation anymore because Buck's been real good and he's redeemed himself. It's very nice. But Eddie's not there, and Buck is also in love with him, and he feels a bit off his game even though he shouldn't, because something could happen like—
"Watch out!"
Getting run over by a rogue, amateur arsonist on a bicycle is probably something that would only happen to Buck. Really, that's all he can think as the wheels hit him and he falls over into a very thorny bush, his arm slicing open on one of them.
"What the hell," Buck says to the sky.
The fire has been out for a little bit, so Buck doesn't feel too bad for the distraction as someone grabs his arm and lifts him out of the bushes.
Ravi comes into view like a sooty, curly-haired guardian angel. "Buck," he says, smacking leaves out of his hair, "you good?"
"Uhhh." Buck takes stock of himself and feels a tingling, burning sensation in his arm. He raises it to his face and sees a giant gash running from his wrist and down his forearm, blood dripping down his elbow. "Well."
"I didn't mean to hurt anyone! I was just practicing!"
Somewhere in the distance, Buck overhears Athena say something about how he'll no longer be able to set fires from a jail cell, and Ravi leads him over to the ambulance to get checked out.
"Personally," Buck says as Hen sits him down and turns his arm this way and that way, "if I were an arsonist, I'd set fire to a much cooler place than an abandoned warehouse."
Hen looks majorly unimpressed. "What, like an apartment complex?"
"I said arsonist, not arsonist-slash-murderer—ow, fuck."
Chimney comes tottering over, scratching his head with his helmet like he's being faced with a very complex math equation. "I become captain and my whole team immediately starts dropping like flies. Maybe this is a sign."
Hen sends him a very scathing look while she wraps Buck's arm up. "Chim."
Eddie would have found this pretty amusing, Buck thinks.
Approximately eighty years later, Buck stumbles back into Eddie's house, feeling like he's just fought a war on the losing side.
He drops his duffel at the door and kicks his boots off, making his way to the kitchen. Eddie's in there, thankfully, and a honey-like feeling of relief washes over Buck at the mere sight of him. Sure, he texted Eddie every single free moment he had during shift to check up on him and make sure he was okay, but that wasn't nearly enough.
Eddie looks up from his mug of coffee at the table and, instead of greeting Buck like a polite person would, instead asks, "What the hell happened to your arm?"
Honestly, Buck kind of forgot about that. He looks down at the bandage wrapped around his arm, mummified to match Eddie's, and blinks. "Oh, uh. This call at work. No big deal."
"No big deal?" Buck pulls the chair across from Eddie and slumps into it, thankful to be off his feet. "You updated me about your every waking moment on shift but conveniently left this out?"
Yes, Buck doesn't say. "I mean. I'm fine. It's just a scratch."
Eddie reaches across the table with his good arm and grabs Buck by the chin, tilting his head this way and that. Buck bites at the raw skin of his cheek so that he doesn't make any weird noises, and seriously, is Eddie touching his face just a thing that happens now? "Your face is all scratched up too. You get mauled by a bear?"
He looks very beautiful, which isn't very relevant, but it's distracting. The morning light fluttering through the window catches on his irises in a way that looks painterly, a living impressionist piece. He needs to comb his hair. "Uh, well, I-I kinda got hit by a bike?"
Buck is hyper-aware of the callused skin of Eddie's thumb rasping against his end-of-long-shift stubble. He holds back a sigh when he drops his hand. "You what?"
"It was kinda funny." Buck shrugs up to his ears. "We responded to this two-alarm at this abandoned warehouse. Some kid set it, he was a budding arsonist, I guess, practicing. And he was one of those types that likes to observe their work. But he was kinda cocky, so he wasn't that far away. So an officer spotted him, and he tried to get away on his bike. And I was an obstacle. Y'know, I forget how pointy bushes can be sometimes."
Eddie does not laugh, but it really is funny, okay, he wasn't even there. He reaches out to grab Buck's arm next, and Buck lets him twist it this way and that, his fingers brushing over the bandage. "Did they catch him?"
"Yeah."
"Fucker."
Buck doesn't want Eddie to worry, but a greedy, selfish part of him beams under Eddie's gentle concern. It's ugly.
"It was a pretty deep cut," Buck says. "I'll probably have a gnarly scar. We’ll match." Buck pauses. "Well, yours will be more gnarly. Ravi told me he could see your bones."
"I'm glad you didn't see that," Eddie says in a subdued kind of way.
"I'm sorry I wasn't there," Buck blurts out before he can stop himself.
Eddie blinks a couple times. "What? Don't be ridiculous."
Buck can't stop himself. "I know we're not partners anymore, but I still want to…" Buck doesn't know how to say this. He just wants to look after Eddie. He wants to protect him from everything. Live inside his pocket if he could. "I want to make sure you're okay."
Eddie watches him for a second, his eyes mossy in the light. Being looked at by Eddie feels like a vivisection, his chest open and under operation while he's wide awake. "We never really talked about," he says after a moment.
Buck wasn't expecting that. "Talked about what?"
"Not being partners anymore."
Buck feels acutely like they’re talking about divorce or something, Eddie on one side of the table, Buck on the other. It all just happened so fast, and so many things were happening at the same time, that's all. Bobby was dead, Maddie was giving birth, Chimney was testing for captain, Buck was moving, Eddie was getting his paramedic license. There was no moment of rest, a space for an exhale. "What’s there to talk about?"
"It’s a big change," Eddie says patiently. Buck realizes that Eddie is still holding his arm.
"But we managed. I-I still got your back."
"I know," Eddie agrees, strong and sure. "But not like before. You can't, I mean. Logistically."
Buck knows that he's right, he's being realistic, but it still doesn't sit right with his body.
"It's alright, Buck," Eddie continues before he can get another word in. "I'm okay." He pauses, sends him a wry smile. "I guess I just had to almost kill myself to get you to talk to me again."
Buck springs back in his seat. "What?"
Eddie tilts his head at him, like he's saying get real, and Buck frowns. "You fled my home, and then you started getting all weird like someone body-snatched you."
"I. I did not flee."
"Okay, Buck," Eddie says in that way he does when he thinks Buck is being a moron.
Buck's not being weird. Buck hasn't been weird. Buck's not being weird, right? For the last three months, he's been trying to ensure that he was the opposite of weird, so that everyone would stay off of his case. About everything. And now there's the Eddie thing on top of all the other things, and it's. It's too fucking much. "I didn't," Buck says again, and he realizes that he's started to sweat.
"Agree to disagree," Eddie says, like an asshole.
"I'm, uh. I'm sorry." Buck's thinking about it now. Does Eddie feel abandoned? Did Buck do that thing again? The thing he wasn't supposed to? He barely even remembers the last three months, everything made up of fuzzy vignettes in his head. He was trying to be better. "I'm just-"
"Don't be sorry," Eddie cuts in, not unkindly. "Just talk. You know, that thing that people do where they open their mouths and say words?"
Eddie's really good at that. Dunking on Buck but still managing to make it feel like a hug.
"Fuck off."
Buck doesn't know what wakes him up that night.
He's in that stupid, never-ending hall of sterile white, running without stopping, and then he's in the dark and blinking up at the ceiling of Eddie's living room.
He sits up and strains his ears, doesn't hear anything. He gets up anyway.
He tiptoes over to Eddie's room, and he sees that his lamp is on. Then he hears a small, pained groan.
"Eddie?"
He pushes the door open, and Eddie is on his back, his comforter kicked off and eyes screwed shut. "Hey, hey, what's wrong?"
"Nothing," Eddie mumbles to the ceiling, even though something is clearly wrong. "I jerked in my sleep and I rolled onto my arm pretty hard."
"I told you to use your pillow! Hold on."
Buck runs back into the dark and almost eats shit in the hallway, sprinting into the bathroom and feeling around the medicine cabinet for the painkillers. Then he almost eats shit a second time when he slides into the kitchen, socks catching on the floor, as he fills a cup of water under the tap.
Eddie's right where he left him, his brow twitching in the lamplight. Buck hands him the pills.
"I'm sorry," Buck says as Eddie sits up gingerly and puts the pills on his tongue. He passes him the glass. "I would've come sooner, why didn't you—I told you to scream if you need me."
"Lot of effort," Eddie says, his voice strained.
Buck takes the glass from him and sets it on the bedside table. It'd be easier if…but it’s Eddie’s bed. Maybe Buck could sleep on the floor, guard his bed. It just doesn't feel right, Eddie not being in his line of sight while he sleeps. Anything could happen.
Buck chances a glance at the door. It feels wrong to stay out there, when Eddie could need him. It's—
"You can just stay in here."
Buck snaps his head back toward Eddie, who blinks at him sleepily kind of like a cat, his face flushed and marbled with sleep. "There’s space," he says lowly.
"Oh," Buck says.
There is space. It's right there. Buck sees it. They've shared a bed before, it shouldn't be anything to phone home about. That was before Buck realized the thing, though, so now it would be different. It'd be different, and Eddie wouldn't even be aware of it. That feels wrong.
But Eddie's eyes are fluttering shut again, and he's mumbling, "C'mon," and when has Buck ever really said no to him?
Eddie lies back down, and Buck steels himself and shuffles under the covers next to him, making sure to keep his distance. He allows himself one calming second of looking at Eddie's face, his features smoothed back out, before he reaches over and turns off the lamp.
"Night, Buck," Eddie mumbles, less words and more a suggestion of them.
"Night, Eddie."
It's nobody's business, but Buck gets the best sleep he's had in three months.
Five years ago, Bobby caught a nasty bug that was going around the firehouse and taking people out one by one. It was so bad, it had him out for a whole week.
Buck brought him soup four days in. Truthfully, it was making him feel all buzzy inside, Bobby not being there at work, and he needed to see him for better peace of mind. Ulterior motives and all that.
When Bobby opened the door, he said, "I'm surprised it took you this long."
Buck clutched his soup to his chest. It was rare that he ever saw Bobby looking anything but clean-cut, mildness was his default state of being, but he was scruffy and wearing a worn pair of sweatpants, which probably would've made Buck laugh in any other situation. Bobby Nash in sweatpants, that was a real sight to behold.
"I'm sorry."
Bobby looked at him a little funny. "I was just joking, Buck."
Of course he was. Buck shook his head. "Yeah, I would. I would usually know that. Sorry."
Bobby's little expression turned gentler, and he opened the door wider to invite Buck in. "Come sit."
There was something meditative about Bobby and Athena's old house. Maybe it was the reams of dark wood that stretched all over, or all the lush green outside, or the rustic smell. Maybe it was just Bobby's presence that mellowed Buck out.
Buck sat down at the dining room table and slid the soup across it to Bobby. "How, uh, how are you feeling?"
Bobby looked like he had something he wanted to say, but he humored Buck for a bit like he always did. "I feel much better than I did earlier this week. Getting better by the day."
"You look a little pale." Buck reached out to feel his forehead, but before he could get a good read on his temperature, Bobby gently removed his hand and placed it back on the table.
Really, it wasn't long enough ago that Bobby got exposed to radiation from that Cobalt-60 on scene, and Buck had to tell him, I don't know what I would do if anything were to happen to you. So what, maybe Buck was still a little raw sometimes.
Bobby watched him for a second, and Buck tried not to get all twitchy. He can't remember if he succeeded or not. "I know you like to make sure people are safe. There's nothing wrong with that." Buck was waiting for the but. It never came, but Bobby continued, "You don't have to worry yourself to death. You need to take care of yourself too."
Bobby had a nice way of making the buts land softer. He was very tactful in that way, something Buck, with his chronic foot-in-mouth disease, sometimes envied greatly.
Buck knew that Bobby was right. He wasn't always right, but when he was right he was very right. It was easier said than done, though. Buck had to see so many of his loved ones in pain, worry had become a default state for him.
"I can't be concerned about my captain?" Buck copped out.
Bobby rolled his eyes at him good-naturedly, not pointing it out. "I won't always be your captain."
"Yes you will," Buck said, even though he knew that wasn't true. As much as he loathed to think about it, Bobby wasn't immune to getting older, and his limbs would grow tired eventually, and one day he'd have to think about retirement. That was good. He deserved that, after everything. "You'll be captain forever. And I'll be on your team forever. That's how it works."
Bobby shook his head at him, and he smiled that little smile of his that made Buck feel very pleased with himself. "We can only hope."
Buck was very good at hoping. At least he didn't know that five years later, he'd have to go without Bobby for good. It was good not to know.
“Hey, kid.”
Chris shuts the door behind him. He's less sweaty today, but Buck turns the AC up and angles the vents toward him anyway.
“Hi, Buck.”
“How was your day?”
“Good,” he offers in the same vague teenage way. “How’s Dad?”
"Better," Buck says. He is, actually, but it doesn't really mean that Buck is less on-edge for it. "Getting better by the day."
"That's good." Chris takes out his phone. "Did you know golden apple snails can regrow their eyes?"
"Woah," Buck says.
Chris tells him about golden apple snails and this biologist at UC Davis studying them in hopes of learning more about human eye development and regeneration. Buck is very grateful for the distraction.
When they pull up in the driveway some minutes later, Buck lets out a deep exhale. He's gotta get it together.
"I guess Dad was right," Chris says, apropos of nothing. "I don’t like seeing him like that."
Buck blinks at the arches and iron scrollwork on the porch. "Me neither."
"I'm ready to come home, though."
Buck laughs and resists the urge to ruffle his hair. "Yeah, that's real good."
Here's the stupid thing about getting injured: it messes with more than just the part of you that's actually hurt.
Buck is well-aware of and well-acquainted with this fact of life. Having to stay active even with half of his leg in a cast, so not to clot up, was one of the most infuriating things he's ever experienced in his life. He's done countless hours of PT for numerous reasons. There was all the brain and memory exercises he had to do after the lightning too. It's kind of demoralizing—not only that, but it just gets frustrating, and frustration is never pretty.
The thing is, Eddie doesn't get frustrated in the way that Buck gets frustrated. He hasn't really lashed out at Buck. He's just got all quiet and brooding, which might honestly be worse than getting yelled at. Yeah, Buck would prefer to get yelled at. Buck could deal with that. Maybe he'd get some answers.
But Eddie's not letting him off that easy. Buck tries to give him some space at first and let Eddie come to him, like some very mature adult person would do, right, but nothing changes. Buck gets a little paranoid at first. He has not left Eddie's house, even though he probably should've after the first two weeks. It's not like he's effectively moved back in or anything, he's just…still there.
Maybe Eddie feels smothered, but he's trying to find a nice way to say it. Because Buck is Buck, and he doesn't want him to take it the wrong way. But even though he's quiet, he doesn't seem put out. He smiles when Buck brings him coffee, small and sure. He lets Buck help him get dressed, even if he does grumble under his breath about it a bit like a grumpy old man. He allows Buck to drive him everywhere, to his physical therapy appointments and his follow-ups, which honestly isn't all that different from their pre-broken-arm routine. He lets Buck take Chris to school and drive him to his friends' houses. He lets Buck stock up the fridge. He lets Buck stay.
Buck left because he didn't want to overstay his welcome, keep spilling himself all over the place and polluting the house with his mess. But Eddie seems more than happy to have him here, doesn't seem to mind all of the Buck infiltrating every nook and cranny of the house.
So, he's trying to reconcile all this in his head in the fresh produce section at Trader Joe's, and he's trying to reconcile all this in his head on the drive back over to Eddie's, and he's still trying to reconcile all of this as he dumps the groceries on the kitchen counter, Eddie nowhere to be found.
"Eddie?"
No answer. Buck puts away all the perishables and walks down the hallway to his bedroom. "Eddie? I got those chocolate covered pretzels you li-"
Eddie is sitting on the floor at the edge of his bed, and he startles like a spooked deer when Buck opens the door.
"Jesus."
His hair's sticking up all cartoon-like, his knees up to his chest. Buck's heart stands to attention, his palms immediately slicking up with sweat. "Hey, w-what's wrong?"
Eddie runs a hand through his hair kind of self-consciously, like he wasn't prepared for Buck to be standing there. "I'm alright." He's flushed all the way down to his neck, the rest of it disappearing under his shirt. Buck tries to check for any other signs of distress. There's no blood, no holes in the wall, no tears.
Buck steps into the room slowly. "Eddie. You've been weird."
He shakes his head. "It's really nothing."
"I can fix it," Buck all but pleads, desperate to get to the bottom of this Eddie-shaped puzzle. "Just tell me what it is, and I can fix it."
"There's nothing to be fixed," Eddie says in his please drop it voice. "I'm alright, okay?"
"Don't shut me out, Eddie-"
"I'm not shutting you out."
"You can tell me if you're in pain, or if something's bothering you, or-or if it's something mental then we can-"
"I can't jerk off."
"Oh."
Buck tries to blink a couple times, like maybe he's imagining this or this is just a strange dream he's never had before, but everything in the room stays the same. Buck's gonna be normal about this and tell Eddie they don't have to talk about it, actually, but Eddie continues, as if the words are being wrung out of him, "I can't even get it up."
Oh. Yeah, that. That explains a lot, actually.
Of course, the jumpiness, the quietness, the cinematic Batman-level brooding. Eddie's pent up. Of course. Buck's been there before. And he remembers the whole Marisol debacle, and honestly, he should've seen the signs sooner. Right.
"Well, there's. Uh." Buck likes solutions. Buck tries to think of a solution to this problem and comes up very short. There's really not much he can offer here that would address the actual problem, except for, like, a platonic handjob, and there's no way in hell he's doing that. That would be weird. Unless Eddie really needed it. But Eddie wouldn't ask for it, no, that'd be weird. Definitely weird. Buck shouldn't even be thinking the words Eddie and handjob in the same sentence. That's weird.
Buck walks over and sits down next to Eddie at the edge of his bed, his leg protesting as he folds it up under himself. He considers putting a supportive hand on his shoulder in solidarity but ultimately decides against it. "Yeah. I mean, uh. We've all been there, man."
Eddie sends him a very deeply unimpressed look, and Buck cringes at himself. He didn't adequately prepare for the sexual dysfunction part of taking care of an injured person, although maybe he should've. It just didn't come up the last time they were here, because getting shot is maybe the least sexy thing that can happen to a person.
It was probably a bad idea to sit next to Eddie, because now Buck can feel himself blushing. Now just isn't a good time to be thinking about Eddie's dick. He tries to imagine roadkill and very dead puppies in his head instead.
"I-I'm serious," Buck insists. He has to soldier through this. It's not even about him, it's about Eddie. "When I fucked up my leg, I couldn't either. And then, after the lightning, I was convinced my dick would never work again."
Eddie snorts, and Buck feels like maybe he's saying the right thing. That's good. "I mean it! It was like a graveyard down there-"
"Oh my god."
"-seriously, it was a massacre."
"I get it."
Eddie's smiling again, and that's very, very good. Real nice. Buck gives himself a mental round of applause. "You just, um. Gotta remember it won't last forever, I guess. I know that's easier said than done."
Eddie nods. Buck handled that pretty well, right? Maybe. It's not often they talk about stuff like this. Which is probably a good thing, especially now, considering…everything.
"It just…" Eddie trails off a little like he might decide to keep the thought to himself. He presses ahead. "It's not only that. It just…reminds me of when I got shot. I felt helpless."
"You’re not helpless," Buck jumps in to assure him. That shouldn't ever be a word used to describe Eddie.
"Overall, maybe," he offers, "but when I’m like this. When my body is like this. I am."
"You're not," Buck insists. "But you have me here, anyway."
Eddie sits with that for a second, his mouth with a contemplative little tilt to it, the way it gets when he's thinking real hard about something. "I have you," he says after a moment.
Eddie wouldn't let anyone else see him like this. Help him like this. Just Buck. Buck doesn't take it lightly at all, honestly, it makes him feel big, bigger than the whole sky and all the mountains and the oceans on Earth. That Eddie trusts him with this. That Buck can take care of him like he needs to. Buck feels himself flush again, almost feverish.
He shifts a bit, and he feels a bit weird, and he looks down at his lap, and—
Nope. Nope. Nope. No.
"Uh. Yup, good talk. I'm gonna go put the rest of the groceries up."
He hightails it out of there.
"You look terrible."
Honestly. Buck's life is a comedy. He goes to visit his sister to get his mind clear, gossip about his babies, maybe sneak a fake spider into Chimney's underwear drawer while he's out with the kids for a fun Sunday, and he gets this instead. He should just give up.
"I always look like this."
"Hm."
"Are you calling me ugly?"
"Yes."
Maddie is on her second glass of concerningly-early-in-the-afternoon wine, and Buck wishes he had the energy to get responsibly day-drunk with his sister, but he really doesn't. Like, he really doesn't. There's only one thing going his way in life right now, and that's Eddie slowly healing up like he's supposed to. Buck only feels good about that.
That also means that Buck should be going back to his place in the next couple of weeks, permanently. Because that's the point of renting an apartment, you live in it. Buck is fine with that.
Buck collapses onto the couch next to her. Maddie already says a lot of things he doesn't really wanna hear when she's sober, so it's only multiplied when she's got alcohol in her system. At least she's not in her medical marijuana phase anymore. "No, seriously though. Are you good?"
What a loaded question.
"I'm fine, Mads."
Buck is content to just sit there and watch Bluey reruns with her while she stains her mouth with red wine, but she doesn't let him off that easy today. "You don't think you're spreading yourself too thin?"
Buck blinks. "What do you mean?"
"You give a lot of yourself," she says vaguely. She blinks back at Buck, her black hole eyes almost curious. "Sometimes at your expense. Well, most times."
People have said this about him before. But, this isn't one of those times. It's different. Everything's different with Eddie. Eddie isn't like anyone else. It's different.
"I feel fine. And I don't mind doing it, I mean. Eddie would do the same for me."
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? He doesn’t feel like he’s spreading himself too thin when he takes care of Eddie. It’s as easy as breathing. No, it’s easier than breathing. No one gets it. Maybe that's the problem.
Maddie twists her mouth to the side, a habit she hasn't been able to kick since childhood, the way she can't fix her face. Buck digs his fingertips into his palms. "I just want you to look after yourself. And think about yourself. I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, I'm just saying, are you sure this is good for y-"
"Just because I'm in love with him doesn't mean I can't take care of him!" Buck blurts out before he can reel it in. "He's still my friend."
Maddie spits her mouthful of wine back into her fancy glass. "Oh god."
Buck swallows, flushing all the way up to the tips of his hair. "Um…I didn't mean to say that."
Well. He hates to admit it, but it kind of feels good to say out loud. But that also makes it real. And that's bad. Very, very bad.
Maddie sets her glass down on the coffee table, looking like she's preparing herself for a very arduous task.
"Do you think we could just forget I said that?" Buck tries.
"Absolutely not." Maddie turns her full attention to him, tucking her feet under herself. "When did you realize? What made you realize?"
"It was the cream cheese," Buck blurts out again because he has no sense of self-preservation, evidently.
"What."
"It was a couple weeks ago. Right before he broke his arm. We were having breakfast, and he wiped cream cheese off my mouth."
Maddie seems to take this information in and process it very slowly like a malfunctioning robot. Buck can almost see her cogs turning and sparking. "You realized you were in love with him…" she says very slowly, "…because of cream cheese."
"Yeah," Buck says.
"I see."
She doesn't give him anything else for a minute, nodding to herself philosophically. It puts Buck on edge.
"You seem like you're having a hard time."
"No," Maddie says. "I already knew you were in love with him."
Buck hates this conversation. It's not a good conversation. "Well, I know that. Retrospectively."
Buck's brain didn't wanna listen to her, it was trying to protect itself from sudden death and destruction. Buck's brain was being smart. It was doing the right thing.
"What are you gonna do?" Maddie asks.
"I don't know, Mads. Nothing."
She looks like she wants to say more for a second, but she doesn't. She spreads her arms open and Buck tips over into them, his head landing under her chin. She's way too tiny for this now, and Buck has long since outgrown this, but it still feels just as nice as it did when he was seven.
Buck watches the cartoon dogs on television run around their background. Maddie pats him on the chest methodically. "Do you remember when you were twelve, and you broke your arm trying to do that flipkick?"
"It's called a kickflip."
Maddie pinches him on the neck, but she doesn't dignify him with a response. "If you could go back, would you still skate off that bridge if you knew you were gonna break your arm?"
"Of course," Buck says immediately. "Totally worth it."
Later, Buck does, in fact, put the fake spider in Chimney's underwear drawer.
"Chris," Buck says that night. "Do you think it's weird that I'm still here?"
Chris looks up from his stomachache-inducing bowl of ice cream he probably should not be eating at this hour. "Why would it be weird? You're always here." He goes back to eating his ice cream.
"Huh."
That night, Buck tries to figure out how he ended up here. Again. Here, meaning, still sharing a bed with Eddie even though his pain has subsided by now, the color returning to his cheeks. Eddie hasn't tried to kick him out, hasn't said anything about it at all, actually, and it's making Buck go into a tailspin. Like, it should be weird, right? But it doesn't feel like it.
"Why are you staring at the bed like it's gonna eat you?"
Buck blinks back to himself and looks at Eddie, looking more alive by the day, on his side of the bed. It feels weird to think he has a side. No, it's just a side of the bed that he's on.
"I'm not." Buck does the mature, adult thing and gets in the bed because it's not weird. It's not weird if he doesn't make it weird.
They've been staying on their sides of the beds, thankfully, and Eddie hasn't really had any energy for conversation these past couple of weeks, but tonight he turns onto his good side to face Buck, his bulky elevation pillow leaving space for Jesus in between them. And his face is just. It's so distracting. It's kind of always been distracting, if Buck really thinks about it, but now it's causing actual, physical pain.
"Hey," Buck says stupidly.
"Hey. Did you have a good day today?"
Buck tries not to think about it. "Mhm. I had a great time with Maddie and Disney Junior."
Eddie smiles a bit and Buck catches a peek of pearly white, his canines digging into his bottom lip. "Sounds like a fun day."
"Mhm. I'm glad she's doing okay. I wanted to hang out with her, of course, but I also had an ulterior motive. After her last pregnancy, I just…well. Y'know. I still get paranoid. Is that stupid?"
"Nah," Eddie says easily. "It's normal to worry about your siblings. I worry about my sisters too. All the time."
Buck turns toward him fully. "Do you think I worry too much?"
Eddie gives him a wry little smile. "You wouldn't be Buck if you didn't worry too much."
Buck raises a hand to hit him, then realizes it would be kind of unfair right now. "Shut up."
"I'm serious. You care about people a lot, there's nothing wrong with that."
"I guess."
"Why don't you stop worrying right now," Eddie says, "and go to sleep. You have work in the morning."
"Okay, Dad."
"Shut up."
Buck turns the light off.
He sleeps peacefully, again, and doesn't even have any stupid dreams like he always does. It's unthinkable that eventually he'll have to go back to sleeping alone in his apartment after this, that he'll have to give it up after having this little taste.
At least he can keep an eye on Eddie for now. He'll just have to think about that.
He wakes carefully and gradually some time in the morning, when it's still dark out. He squints into the black and sees 3:05 on Eddie's alarm clock. And there's no Eddie.
Buck stumbles out of bed and feels his way through the dark into the hallway, spotting a sliver of light peeking out from under the bathroom door.
"Eddie," Buck whispers to the door.
"Buck?"
Buck pushes the door open gently, squinting into the light. Eddie is sitting on the floor, a hoodie bunched up over his neck and around his good arm, his back against the wall.
Buck closes the door and slides down next to him, cringing at the cold tile seeping through his pajama pants.
"You've become a real floor-sitter these past few weeks."
Eddie shrugs, and it knocks their shoulders together. "It's kinda nice."
"You okay?"
"Yeah," Eddie says. "Just had a nightmare."
Buck frowns. Buck can tell that he's gonna say more, he just needs to wait him out a little. "I guess this has just been. Bringing up old stuff for me."
"The shooting?" Buck asks.
"Yeah. But before that, too."
Buck yawns. He's thankful he's only half-awake, because if he were completely lucid he'd be even more upset at this development. "I'm sorry."
"S'fine."
"Do you wanna talk about it?"
Eddie shrugs again. The warmth of his shoulder is almost enough to lull Buck back to sleep. "You already know what happened."
Buck feels himself tipping to the side a bit. He tries to fight it. "I should've been there," Buck mumbles.
Eddie laughs, and Buck feels the rumble of it against his side more than he hears it. "You should've been there? In the desert? What would you have done?"
"I would've shielded you from the bullets," Buck yawns again. "Captain America style."
"Roundhouse kick 'em away."
"Inverted full nelson slam it."
"I appreciate that."
Buck yawns a third time, and he feels his head droop onto something firm and warm. Eddie nudges him gently. "Don't drool on me."
Buck's out like a light.
Buck had a lot of brain fog after the lightning strike. He was already easily distracted and prone to forgetting things beforehand, so it was like the way it already was living inside his body, but one-hundred times worse.
It lasted for a while, even when his body started to feel less broken up and glued back together. It made everyone treat him like a fragile old man, losing himself to senility. But that wasn't the case. There was a chance his neurological symptoms would persist forever, but there was also a chance that they would get better, and Buck liked the more hopeful chance.
Buck was supposed to do something one Friday. He woke up, ready to go, and then he couldn't remember. He looked for his phone to jog his memory, but he couldn't find it anywhere. He was the one insisting he could take care of himself enough to be alone in his apartment, but maybe he was wrong. No, he wasn't wrong. He just had to remember.
He was sitting at the kitchen counter, resigning himself to another morning of trying to smack his brain back into the place, when Eddie came through the door.
Buck blinked. "Oh, hey. What are you doing here?”
Eddie sat on the stool in front of him, sliding his keys onto the counter. His keys to Buck's loft right next to the keys to his house, Buck remembers looking at that and finding it quite nice.
"We were supposed to go out for coffee," Eddie said, but he didn't sound mad at all.
"Oh. I forgot. I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry."
If Eddie said he shouldn't be sorry, then Buck wouldn't be sorry.
"What's that?" Eddie continued.
Buck looked down at the mess of stuff in front of him. Eddie had been doing the daily crosswords with him, but Buck had never brought out those before. "Flashcards. I was trying to wake my head up."
Eddie slid them over to his side of the counter, squinting at them like he was the senile old man and not Buck. "Capitals of the U.S.A."
"I used to be good at this," Buck insisted. "I knew all of them."
"Let's test your knowledge, bud," and then Eddie got his game face on, and Buck was suddenly very determined to make him proud, even over something inconsequential like that. "New Jersey."
"Trenton."
"Alabama."
"Montgomery."
"Oregon, Rhode Island."
"Salem. Providence."
"Maryland?"
Buck hit a mental block. "Oh, jeez. Something with an A?"
"Annapolis."
"Damn."
"It's fine," Eddie said, placing the cards down. "I didn't know that either."
Buck laughed, and it was a real laugh, not the one he kept huffing out to satisfy other people and make sure they didn't look at him with concern or pity, like he was pressing a button. It felt nice. Eddie wasn't hovering like everyone else was, he was just there, a tranquil and steadying presence. "Thanks. I know revisiting elementary school isn't as fun as going out."
Eddie shrugged, easy as anything, and Buck felt his heart squeeze. It wasn't a delayed heart attack, though, it was something else he didn't have a name for yet. "You'd do the same for me."
Buck would've, a thousand times over. And then some. "Yeah, I would. I just, I don't know, you're always taking care of me."
"I like to think we take care of each other," Eddie said. "Don't we?"
Buck's trying to think. Maybe there's a way he can be in love with Eddie for the rest of his life and not have it ruin everything.
Because realistically, Buck knows that there's no way he's ever getting over him. He's it. And it's kind of nice, if he thinks about it. It's very easy, being in love with Eddie, the act of it. It's just the reality of it that's a little harder to deal with.
Hard to deal with, like—
"Goddamn it."
Buck's trying to peacefully eat a bagel in the kitchen, but Eddie keeps making little grumbly noises from the bathroom. "Is it life-threatening, or are you just grumpy?!" Buck yells.
"I'm fine!"
Buck could just continue to eat his bagel in peace and get ready for the rest of his day off—because contrary to popular belief, he is not actually just sitting around and waiting on Eddie hand and foot all day—or he could go see what's wrong. He could just see. He's not hovering, he just. He could just see.
Buck abandons his bagel and peeks into the bathroom, where Eddie is glaring at himself in the mirror, a razor in his good hand and his face messy with shaving cream.
"Whatcha doin'?" Buck asks, even though it's clear what Eddie is doing.
Eddie meets his eye in the mirror, glum. "Suffering."
"I told you, there's no point in shaving every week. Especially not with one hand. Just wait."
"I don't like messing with my routine."
"You could go full lumberjack beard," Buck shrugs. "You're on medical leave. This is the only time you'll be able to do it!"
"Hm," Eddie says. "I don't think so."
"You'd look good," Buck doesn't mean to say.
Eddie eyes him through the mirror, and Buck gets that flayed open feeling inside of his chest.
Buck makes grabby hands at the razor. "Lemme help, then."
This is a bad idea, probably. But Eddie wants to shave, and he's having trouble, and it's Buck's responsibility to make everything better for him. So he'll do it. He'll do anything for Eddie.
Eddie keeps looking at him, and Buck holds his breath. Then he passes over the razor without saying anything, and now Buck's trying to think of the last time he touched Eddie's face.
Maybe in the back of the ambulance, when Buck was telling Eddie to stay with him.
Buck guides him to the toilet. "Sit down real quick."
Eddie sits and angles his face up at him, and yeah, this was a really bad idea. Horrible miscalculation on Buck's part. But he has a job to do. Buck holds his chin and gets to work.
Buck's only ever noticed the green flecks in his eyes a couple times, because they're really only visible if the light hits them a certain way or if you get real close. So he just averts his eyes and watches his own hands instead.
Eddie doesn't say anything, and Buck can't figure out if that's better or worse for him. He tries to just focus on the methodical strokes, the rasp of hair against razor, the rinse of water against the blade when he puts it under the tap. Eddie's chin is really warm. Buck feels feverish again.
"There," Buck says when Eddie is nice and clean-shaven. "Go rinse off your face."
Buck lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding when Eddie stands up and walks over to the sink, his heart playing double-time in his chest. Maybe Buck isn't in love with Eddie, and he's just been having the world's longest heart attack this whole time. Buck might actually have a better chance of survival if that's the case.
Eddie splashes his face with water and fumbles with a towel. Buck sighs. "Hold on."
Buck takes the towel from Eddie and pats his face for him, doing everything he can to avoid his eyes again. He chances a glance at Eddie's aftershave, thinks fuck it to himself and grabs that too.
Eddie leans his hip against the counter while Buck pats the aftershave gently onto his face. He tilts his lip up at Buck and he looks a little vulnerable like this, at the mercy of Buck's hands. Buck gets that vivisected feeling again, feels himself flush all the way down to his feet. It's just—it hurts, but he likes doing this. Taking care of him. It makes him feel good, needed, Eddie his little baby bird in a shoebox.
"All done," Buck says quieter than he meant to, his skin suddenly feeling too tight to hold all of his flesh inside.
"Thank you," Eddie matches his tone. "Don't know what I'd do without you."
"You'd be fine." Buck doesn't want to think about some other universe where they're apart, though he imagines that such a universe probably doesn't even exist. Eddie would be fine, though. He'd survive.
Buck's not too sure about himself.
Buck does not leave the house like he was supposed to. He lies down on the couch and takes a nap.
It's fine, he has been a little tired lately, and there's still the off-chance that Eddie ends up breaking another bone or spontaneously combusting or getting gangrene or something like that because his luck is just that bad. Buck will be there to take care of it.
He'll just get a little bit of shuteye, and then he and Eddie will pick Chris up from school in the afternoon, and then maybe Buck will cook or they'll order takeout, and Buck will be calm and fine about all of this.
Buck's having that stupid dream again, the one in the not-hospital, but it doesn't feel as hopeless as all the other iterations. He's running and running, but he feels like maybe, just maybe he can actually reach what he's running towards this time, even though he can't see it.
But then something makes him stop running. Nothing changes or appears to him, but he knows that someone is there now. He feels a hand on his chest, phantom-like, and warmth spreads from there to his toes, a palm pressing into his heart until it feels like it might go right through his body.
"Buck?"
He jerks awake.
Eddie is hovering over him, his eyes dark and serious, one lock of hair falling in his face all Old Hollywood. "Buck."
Buck lick his lips. "Wha-?"
"Sorry. You were flailing and talking in your sleep."
"Oh."
Eddie blinks down at him, and Buck feels like he's being observed under a microscope. "Why didn't you sleep in the bed?"
"I feel like I shouldn't be here."
Buck didn't mean to say that, but it's taking a while for his brain to catch up to his body. "Uh."
"Why, did I-" Eddie looks kind of disturbed by this information, a deep crease appearing between his brows that Buck has to hold back from smoothing out under his thumb. "Did I do something to make you feel that way?"
Buck sits up slowly and swings his legs back onto the floor, the reality of what he's just said setting in a bit. "No, no it's not you. I just." Shit. "I feel like I'm intruding sometimes."
"You're not," Eddie says easily. It feels a bit nerve-wracking to have Eddie standing over him like this. "I want you here."
Buck swallows. "Sure. Yeah, but I mean. I mean, it must be weird, right? I moved out, and then I kind of moved back in to help you. A-and it's not like I'm your…uh, girlfriend or wife or something. I'm just-"
"You're not just."
Eddie looks kind of mad at him now. Buck feels like he's accidentally stepped in something, but he's not sure what exactly he stepped in. "Uh."
"I mean," Eddie continues, looking a little indignant now. "You're right. If I had a girlfriend or a wife, they would've taken care of me. But I don't. And I…" He takes a big, painful looking breath. "I don't need one. I only want you to take care of me."
Buck feels another bolt of lightning fissure through him. Eddie seems to steel himself and he sits down next to Buck. "You're not intruding."
Buck takes a deep breath.
"I want you here," Eddie says again, stronger this time, louder this time. Buck can't help but look at him, can almost see himself reflected back in his eyes. "Can't you see that?"
"I'm not saying I think you—you hate my guts and want me gone or something, I'm just-"
"You just what?"
Buck has been trying his damnedest not to ruin everything these past couple of months, but he should've known. With someone like him, it only takes one moment. It takes one mistake. But when it's Eddie asking, Buck has to tell him, doesn't he? Hasn't it always been that way?
"I've been trying to move on."
It seems like Eddie was expecting him to say anything but that, recoiling back away from him. Hurt colors his face, and Buck didn't mean to do that. "Move on from what? Me?"
Buck wraps his arms around himself. "I don't mean. Like that. You'll always—I'll always be your friend, Eddie. And I'll always have your back. But." Buck sighs, he resigns himself. "You left. And I know, I know you had to, and it's not something I hold against you. I know you had to, but it's like my head knows it and my heart doesn't. You've been back for months now, but the move and now being here helping you made me realize…I want too much from you."
"What do you want?" Eddie asks, his voice hard. "What could you possibly want that I can't give you?"
Buck holds his tongue.
Eddie doesn't let him off easy. Buck wasn't expecting him to, but he wishes that for once, just this once, he would. "What is it?"
Buck's heartbeat rumbles in his ears, thunder signifying where lightning has been. "Don't make me," Buck whispers.
"No, Buck," Eddie says firmly. "We're here right now, and you can't run away from this—from me anymore. I won't let you."
Buck looks down. "I can't stay."
"Why not? What if I want you to stay?"
Eddie can't possibly mean stay in the way Buck wants him to. The selfish, parasitic way Buck craves it. "I don't-"
"I thought I was showing you," he cuts in. Buck glances up and Eddie's face is uncharacteristically somber, his posture stiff. "I thought…I thought you would understand."
"Understand what?"
"Okay," Eddie says decisively, but Buck has no idea what it is that he's deciding. "Okay. This time, it…" He nods to himself. "It has to be different."
Eddie grabs his face with his good hand and kisses him. Buck's brain stops and starts to melt out of his ears—not that there was much left of it anyway—and he freezes up. Eddie kissing him. That didn't seem like a possibility in his lifetime, so out of left field that Buck barely even feels Eddie's lips on his. Eddie pulls away before Buck can even try to process any of this, their lips catching. He doesn't go far, but he looks a little perplexed. "Am I reading this wrong?"
Buck brain turns back on all at once. "No! No. Um. What the fuck."
Eddie yanks him back in.
Buck's got it this time. He's never really allowed himself to think about kissing Eddie, but now that he's here, he knows how to do it right. Buck pulls him closer by the nape of his neck, Eddie's cast bumping gently into his chest.
Eddie makes a lovely little sound in the back of his throat, and then there he is, his lips slotting against Buck's in a life-affirming kind of way, one big palm moving down to sneak under his shirt and flatten across the small of his back.
Buck melts, a puddle at Eddie's feet. He opens his mouth and gorges himself on Eddie, his taste, the earthy clean smell of him, the bristly hair underneath his fingers.
Eddie is the first one to pull back, red as Jupiter's spot, and he asks, "Do you believe me now?"
Buck blinks at him, real fucking dizzy. "I barely even remember what we were talking about."
"You need to focus, Buck," Eddie chides, and there's a huge shit-eating grin on his face now. Buck wants to kiss him again. "About intruding, remember?"
"Oh. Yes? I mean. I just. H-How long? Why now?"
That doesn't really make sense, but Eddie seems to understand what he's saying like he always does. "I don't know. I think I—when you moved out. And I was trying…I was trying to figure out how to let myself have something I want."
"Me?" Buck asks stupidly.
"You," Eddie confirms.
Buck never even considered the possibility of Eddie wanting him back. Eddie couldn't want him back, that was the whole point. The whole, stupid point.
"You moving back in," Eddie continues, "unofficially. It had me thinking a lot. I couldn't really hide from how I felt for you anymore, not when I was like this and you were taking care of me. I liked it."
Buck gets that feverish feeling, superheated and incandescent, the crux of it landing right in the pit of his stomach like he's at the apex of a rollercoaster about to do a nosedive. He bites his lip until he tastes blood.
Eddie's eyes stray to his lap.
"Are you hard right now?"
"Sorry," Buck flushes, shifting in his seat. He feels mortified, but it's not entirely unwelcome. "I just. I, um, really like taking care of you. And I'm glad you like it. I guess my body doesn't know what to do with it. I don't know. It makes me feel…needed."
The half-smug, half-embarrassed look falls off of Eddie's face, making way for something softer. "Oh, Buck," he says gently, and he looks at him like he's small, like he's an injured little bird in a shoebox. "I do need you." He kisses the tender corner of Buck's mouth. "And I want you, too."
And that's all Buck's ever wanted, right? To be needed, but also to be wanted. He's a firecracker getting ready to go off, in the poetic sense and the crass sense, his hands starting to tremble a bit from how much he wants. Eddie notices the tremor, taking one of Buck's hands into his good one.
"Sorry," Buck says again, though he's not exactly sure what he's apologizing for. I'm sorry, Buck thinks, but it’s Eddie, so maybe he doesn’t need to be sorry at all.
"Why would you be sorry?" Eddie asks. "I don't want you to be sorry." Then he falls back onto the couch and yanks Buck on top of him.
Buck makes a shrill noise he's never made before in his life, catching himself with a hand next to Eddie's head so that he doesn't fall flat on him and jostle his arm. "Eddie!" Buck says indignantly, already lightheaded because of all the places they're touching. "Your arm."
"Don't care," Eddie says, and then he pulls Buck in by his sweatshirt collar and kisses him again.
Okay, Buck cares, so he shoves himself against Eddie's uninjured side and lets himself be kissed.
"Look at you," Eddie pulls away to mumble against his lips, turns to smear a wet kiss on his cheek. "Still taking care of me, even now."
Buck hears a tortured little sound, and then he realizes that he's the one making the whining noise in question, his hips twitching forward. Eddie wraps his good arm around his waist and pulls him in closer, Buck's head tucking under his chin. "C'mere." He angles his thigh the slightest bit until it's right where Buck needs it, his heart thumping away in his chest. "Go on," he says. "It's okay, Buck. Take what you need, it's okay. It's okay. It's always okay with me, you know that?"
Buck's shivering all over, nearing total delirium, but Eddie says it's okay, so it must be okay. He grinds down against Eddie's thigh, aching everywhere but especially where his cock is trapped in his sweatshorts.
"Good," Eddie says soothingly, and he pets at Buck's hair like he's done an impressive trick. "You did so good. You deserve it."
Buck shoves his face into Eddie's neck and licks at the sweat pooling there, rolling his hips down faster and faster. Eddie's so warm, and he smells so good, and he's real and solid and flushed under Buck, he just needs, he needs—
"Come on, Buck," Eddie hums. "Give me what I want."
Buck tenses up and then he's spilling into his shorts, Eddie's grip around his waist tightening as Buck buries his moan into his neck, the feeling never-ending.
After one last twitch, Buck liquefies into Eddie's side, still careful of his arm. "Fuck."
Eddie's neck is glistening. Buck flushes. reaching forward to rub at it with his sleeve. "Sorry, I slobbered all over you."
"That's okay," Eddie says. "I've always wanted a dog."
Buck knocks his shoulder with his forehead. "Fuck you."
"Not yet."
Buck freezes and remembers something, scrambling up onto his knees. He looks down, and Eddie's tenting his own sweatshorts obscenely.
Buck gasps. "It works again!"
"Buck," Eddie laughs disbelievingly, but Buck barely hears him, saliva pooling in his mouth.
"Eddie. Let—let me. Please."
"Whatever you want."
Buck hastily shrugs Eddie's shirt up to his neck, bending over him and placing an open-mouthed kiss against his sternum. Eddie sighs and Buck rubs his face against his chest hair, feeling Eddie's following laugh rumble gently against his cheek. He kisses his way down, down, down until he reaches Eddie's waistband.
Buck looks up and Eddie is watching him intently, pupils so blown out he looks high with it. He nods once and Buck wastes no time, tugging his shorts down until his cock springs free.
He's pretty here too, of course he is, and Buck marvels at the sight for a second before he wraps his lips around the head.
Buck hollows his cheeks and Eddie's abs clench immediately, warmth flooding Buck's mouth.
"Fuck. Sorry," Eddie gasps, his chest heaving. "S-sorry. Been a while."
Buck swallows every last drop and he feels giddy with it, because a piece of Eddie is inside of him now, real concrete proof. And it was really hot, but he doesn't need to stroke Eddie's ego right now. "That's okay. I'm flattered."
Buck wipes his mouth and falls back into Eddie's side, his bones melting and fusing together. The wet spot in his shorts is getting really uncomfortable, but he doesn't move.
Eddie sighs, but it's not heavy. "That's not at all how I pictured this going."
Buck peeks up at him. "You imagined this?"
Eddie looks like he's about to explode with how pink he is, his nose twitching with indignity. "That's not—whatever."
Buck laughs into his neck. "Tell me about it later."
Later. Buck wonders what's gonna happen later. Eddie wants there to be a later?
"Will you move back in with us?" Eddie bulldozes his train of thought. "Officially."
Buck thought Eddie couldn't have meant it like that—it just wasn't a possibility. But when it's Eddie asking, Buck has to say yes, doesn't he? He always wants to say yes. "I…yeah, Eddie, I'll move back in. Of course."
"Good."
Buck rests his hand on Eddie's face, feeling the clean-shaven skin underneath his fingertips. "I missed you."
Eddie turns his head and presses a gentle kiss to his pointer finger. "I always miss you."
Three weeks later, Buck feels like he's flying. Rappelling down a cliff, flying through the air on a skateboard, flapping his blue-orange wings.
"Cast is coming off today." Buck puts an invisible microphone up to Eddie's mouth. "How do you feel?"
Eddie leans over the console and grabs Buck's wrist, bringing his invisible microphone closer. "Well, I'm happy as a tick on a fat dog."
Buck sputters out a laugh. "Happy as a what?"
"You never heard that one before? That's alright, I'll teach you."
They jump out of the car and Buck guides Eddie through the automated hospital doors with a hand on the small of his back even though he doesn't need to. Just because he can, and Eddie lets him.
Buck sits in the waiting room and tries not to bounce his leg too much as he waits for Eddie. He's excited. Not for any selfish reasons, just because he wants Eddie to be comfortable again. And maybe he wants a hug. It's alright for him to want that.
Eddie comes bounding into the room and holding a bunch of papers not too long later, a brand new spring in his step. Buck's never seen him skip before, but he's coming close.
Buck stands up, Eddie skidding to a stop in front of him with a grin of relief on his handsome face. "I almost forgot what it looked like under there," Buck says.
Eddie raises his arm gingerly. "I'm pale like an uncooked noodle."
"That's okay," Buck laughs. "I'm well-versed in post-cast care, I'll fix you right up."
Eddie shakes his head at him fondly. "I'm sure you are."
Buck grabs him by the waist and pulls him in for a hug.
He didn't realize it until now, but he can actually count the amount of times he and Eddie have hugged each other if he thinks hard enough. They just weren't like that—they were about knee knocks, elbow touches, fist bumps. A hand on a shoulder, a hip check, kicking each other under the table like middle schoolers.
And Eddie was always the one reaching out first. Buck wants to be the one to reach out now, now that he knows that he can, and the world will keep turning just like it always has.
"What's this for?" Eddie asks muffled into his shoulder, good hand between Buck's shoulder blades, but he doesn't pull away.
"Just love you," Buck says, and it should feel scary, and maybe it does a little bit deep down inside of him, but it mostly just feels like relief instead. "Is that okay?"
Eddie extracts himself from Buck's octopus grip but keeps his hand on his shoulder, thumb to collarbone. "Of course it's okay. It's always been okay."
Always, Buck thinks.
Eddie drops his hands. "I love you too. Now, can we get out of here? I don't wanna see another hospital for at least the next five years."
Buck grins. "Think you chose the wrong profession, then."
But Buck listens well and guides Eddie back out of the hospital with a hand on the small of his back, because he can. "Okay," he says when they step into the blazing morning sun. "You're a free man now, what's the first thing you wanna do?"
Eddie studies him for a second, and then he says quite seriously, "I wanna kiss you."
Buck bites down a giddy laugh—he's gotta play it suave. "Okay, anything else?"
Eddie considers this for a second, and then his eyes trail down the line of Buck's body. "Maybe something else."
Buck gawks at him. It's strange, Eddie's attention on him like this. But if he really thinks about it, lets himself think about it, he's always had it, hasn't he? "No video games? No cartwheels? You get your cast off after almost two whole months and you're only thinking about sex?"
Eddie raises his eyebrows, his red fucking face betraying some of his cool. "You're not?"
Buck ducks his head and sends a silent prayer for survival up to the universe. "I didn't say that."
Eddie looks very pleased with himself.
Buck helps Eddie into his passenger seat, even though he doesn't have to. "I'm not done with you yet. We're gonna follow the doctor's instructions and avoid strenuous activity for the next couple days and do all of your physical therapy, and y'know, you could have swelling, joint stiffness, muscle atrophy—"
"You worry a lot."
"You told me that was okay. You wanna get in my pants that bad?" Buck jokes, but his face is really hot.
"Well," Eddie says. "Yeah. I didn't get to touch you properly last time."
Oh.
Eddie pats his head. "Let's go home."
Home. Sure, Buck can do that.
He focuses very hard on the road and not Eddie as he drives them back. Eddie lets him stew in silence and bounce his leg up and down as he smiles serenely out the window. Dickhead.
Buck hightails it into the bathroom as soon as they step inside to take a bone-chillingly cold shower.
He is not an insatiable pervert, and he is not hyper-aware of the fact that Chris is at school right now, and he definitely is not thinking about running his hands all over every inch of Eddie's stupid perfect fucking body now that he's free from cast-prison. Buck is a grown man with oodles of self control, last time was just a momentary lapse in judgment, and he will not let Eddie goad him into fooling around right now even if he really wants to, because he's responsible and he's all about safety, he's a first responder for God's sake, and—
Eddie is waiting for him when he steps out of the bathroom, a shit-eating little grin on his face as Buck towels at his hair.
"Come to bed," Eddie says, hooking a finger into the waistband of Buck's sweatpants and tugging him into the bedroom.
God, Buck is such a bad person.
Eddie pushes him down onto the bed very gently, hovering over him.
"Hey," Buck says stupidly.
Eddie smiles, and Buck counts the pretty little fine lines around his eyes. "Hi."
Buck doesn't think he's ever gonna get used to kissing Eddie. There's this weird novelty to it that somehow feels like it might be permanent, the bite of his lip, the rasp of his stubble, the pads of his fingers.
Eddie smacks a bunch of kisses to his lips that make Buck laugh, drags his teeth over his chin and down his neck, licks at the divot of his collarbone. Buck feels like he's on fire, lava flowing freely through his veins.
"Eddie," Buck groans when he bites at his pec. "You've never—you've never really done this before."
Eddie looks up at him. "I'm not scared."
Buck tugs at Eddie's hair and watches his pretty eyelashes flutter. "Don't you think it's a little weird?"
"What's weird?"
Buck worries at his bottom lip, and Eddie's eyes trace the movement. "You're my best friend, and now we're…here."
Eddie tilts his head at him and Buck gets the urge to ruffle his hair, and then he remembers that he can, so he ruffles his hair. "I thought I might feel some type of way about it," Eddie admits, his hair sticking up in one hundred different directions. Buck smooths it back down. "But I don't, not really. It's you."
"What's that mean?"
Eddie smiles. "Fishing for compliments?"
"Maybe," Buck says, but he's really not.
"It's like you said. You're my best friend. I've seen everything, and you've seen everything."
You're my best friend sits warm and luminescent in Buck's stomach, heating him up from the inside out. Buck had always wanted a best friend. He never had one, not until Eddie. "I think," Eddie continues, tracing his pointer finger over the jut of Buck's collarbone meditatively, "it's weird, but in a good way. Different, but the same. You know?"
Buck does get it. His heart is beating a harebrained path up his throat like it's trying to make its way out his mouth, but he also feels…right. Settled. "What about this is the same?" Buck asks, just to be an asshole.
Eddie hums. "I'm looking at you right now," he says, "and I've always been looking at you."
"Okay," Buck says. "Kiss me."
Eddie can be a very good listener just like Buck can, so he leans down and reattaches their lips. Buck lets himself lean up into it, Eddie sinking into him like quicksand, the feel of him, the sound of him. Buck floats on it like a cloud.
Eddie leans down on his forearm next to Buck's head and attaches his lips to the pulse point in Buck's neck in a sloppy kiss. "Don't put pressure on your arm too much," Buck says through a moan. "This is what I was trying to tell you-"
"I'm okay now, Buck," Eddie mumbles into his neck. Buck shivers. His other hand traces a delicate path down, down his sternum to the waistband of his sweats. "All because of you, you know that? Took such good care of me."
Buck can't control the way his body spasms, Eddie's words settling over him like a warm blanket. "Fuck—Eddie."
This seems to spur him on, and he cups Buck through the fabric, his touch curious and eager. Buck's hips twitch up and he gasps, like he's never been touched before.
"You did." Eddie's hand crawls under his waistband and into his briefs and—Eddie's hand is really big, really big, and Buck feels like he knew that, but maybe he didn't know it completely, just like this. Buck shivers down to his marrow, can feel himself leaking all over Eddie's fingers. "Made me feel so safe. Did such a good job, didn't you?"
Buck arches up and their chests bump together, all of Eddie's weight caging him in. "Shit."
Eddie's gaze is sweltering, dissecting Buck with eyes, setting fire to his heart, his lungs, the spaces between his ribs. "Say that you did."
"I-I did." Yeah, Buck did do a good job. If Eddie says he did, then he did. A great job. Eddie deserved that from him. He deserves everything. "I did."
"Good." Eddie's grip is firm, pulling his strings hard and relentless, his thumb digging into Buck's slit just on the edge of a little mean. Buck sighs, yeah, right there. "You’re so capable," Eddie whispers into his skin. "So strong. Dependable."
A little sob tumbles out of the depths of Buck's chest, something breaking inside of him and rearranging itself in a new, better way. That's all he's ever wanted. Eddie just knows what he needs.
Eddie kisses him again, lets Buck pant feverishly into his mouth, swallows all of his sounds. "Love you."
It feels like his chest caves in when he comes, collapsing in like a house of cards. Eddie doesn't let go and soothes him through it, little zips of lightning skittering up Buck's spine as Eddie touches him carefully, reverently.
The ringing in his ears fades a moment later, and Buck blinks back to himself. Eddie's blinking back down at him, flushed, lovely, wearing way too many clothes. "You okay?"
Buck grabs Eddie's wrist and pulls it out of his sweats, guiding his fingers to his mouth. He tastes himself on the pads of Eddie's fingers, and underneath that, his skin soapy and salty. Buck imagines his blood next, his flesh.
"Eddie," Buck says when he's all cleaned up, determined. "I need to taste you again."
Buck helps Eddie tug his shirt over his head, careful of his arm again, and then he pushes him down onto the bed.
Eddie looks up at him dazedly, ruddy down to his ribs. Buck gets that feeling again, not just protectiveness now but also an appetite that's impossible to ignore, something that can only be satiated with Eddie. Buck's going to get it right and commit it to memory now that he can.
"Keep your arm here," Buck says, arranging it so that it's elevated and resting on his stomach. Eddie gets that look on his face he gets when he thinks Buck is doing something funny, but he lets himself be rearranged until Buck is satisfied.
"Bossy."
"I don't think you mind it." Buck leans down and kisses his mouth, his stubbled cheek, the strong line of his brow. "Do you?"
"No," Eddie says simply.
Buck trails his teeth down the vulnerable line of Eddie's jaw and neck, tries not to salivate. Mandible, sternocleidomastoid, clavicle. He imagines sinking his teeth into his carotid, tasting him that way too, shaking him around in his maw like a chew toy.
Eddie's other hand slides into Buck's hair when he starts kissing down the solid planes of his stomach, and Buck pushes up into it. He dips his tongue into Eddie's bellybutton and his stomach clenches, he can taste the heat of his blush. "Let me," Buck mumbles, rubbing his nose against the grain of Eddie's happy trail.
Buck doesn't wait for permission now because he knows he has it, his hands trembling with want, tugging Eddie's pants and briefs down his thighs. His flush has spread here too, marbling and streaking the delicate skin of his groin, his cock hard and rosy.
He thought he would take his time like he couldn't before, but he can't help himself, sinking down onto Eddie's cock until his nose meets skin. Eddie groans and his grip on Buck's hair tightens, his fingertips brushing against the sensitive skin of Buck's scalp.
Buck thinks he must start drooling, slick pooling to the base, but he can't pull off. There's just an overwhelming rightness, a settling, a part of Eddie inside of Buck, together forever.
"Fuck," Eddie gasps when Buck hollows his cheeks and sucks, the arm Buck carefully arranged on his stomach shifting as he tries not to jostle it. Buck preens. "Buck, baby-" Buck can tell he's trying his hardest not to thrust up, fingers clasped in a death grip in Buck's hair.
Buck comes up for air. He digs his tongue into Eddie's slit and laps up the precome beading there, and it's—it's so much. Buck can feel himself ready to pop again, moaning around Eddie's cock as he grinds his hips against the bed, the friction making overstimulation lick up his spine.
"Just like that," Eddie sighs, and Buck feels his eyes roll to the back of his head as Eddie pets at his hair, hand sliding down to the back of his neck to scruff him. Buck shoves his hand into his sweats before he can stop himself, grinding into his palm and gasping around Eddie's cock. "Good," he murmurs, and Buck shivers, pleasure-pain pooling in his stomach. "So good, Buck."
Buck's right on that edge again, spine stiffening, and he doubles his effort. He can feel when Eddie's about to come, a wildfire razing through his scalp as Eddie presses his fingers back in. "Buck, I'm-"
Buck pulls off for a second, gasps out an, "Inside, please," and wraps his lips around the head of Eddie's cock, moaning when Eddie swears up a storm and spills inside of him. Buck swallows and buries his face in Eddie's stomach, spilling into his own hand next.
His head rises and falls as Eddie heaves in panting breaths, his hand back to smoothing Buck's hair down and patting it into place. Buck tries to catch his breath, removing his hand from his pants and debating for one second before he wipes it on the sheets.
"Nasty," Eddie chides, but it comes out all whispery.
Buck smiles into his skin. "I do all the laundry in this house anyway."
Eddie tugs at his hair meanly, and Buck lets himself be lifted up and shaken back and forth, Eddie holding him like a rowdy puppy. He looks blissed out, sunken into the sheets like they're made of quicksand, and Buck mentally pats himself on the back. "Hey," Buck says. "You lasted longer this time."
Eddie lets go of his head and flicks him on the forehead. "I was injured and in a dry spell. What was your excuse, leg humper?"
Buck scoffs out a laugh and tries not to flush at the memory, shoving at Eddie's face. "Fuck off."
Eddie grabs his wrist and tugs him down onto the bed, their foreheads bumping together. Buck is careful of his arm, still, running a hand down the length of it until he reaches Eddie's wrist, feels his pulse strong and sure underneath his fingertips.
"Does your arm feel okay?"
Eddie studies him for a moment, reaching down to rest his hand over Buck's. "I meant it," Eddie says. Buck tilts his head. "You took care of me. I'm okay because of you."
Buck feels sheepish all of a sudden, even after everything they've just done, his shoulders touching his ears. "It wasn't—because of me."
"It was," Eddie insists. He wraps his hand around Buck's and brings it up to his mouth, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. "You kept me safe."
Well, if Eddie says so. That's all Buck ever wants to do—keep his people safe.
"Okay," Buck acquiesces, blinking rapidly to keep himself from doing something ridiculous like bursting into tears. "But next time, I won't be so nice to you. Don't go breaking anymore bones, you hear me?"
Eddie smiles, a little wicked, and Buck's not sure if the sight will ever stop taking his breath away. "Oh, I won't. You'd just be walking around with a boner 24/7 anyway."
"Oh my god. Oh—my god, Eddie, what's wrong with you?"
Buck starts to sit in on Eddie's physical therapy sessions. It's a relief, that he can look after Eddie this way too.
Buck's there through tricep stretches, bicep stretches, wrist flexor stretches, wrist extensor stretches and pronation/supination stretches. Internal and external rotation, flexibility training, occupational exercises. It's nice that Buck can hold his hand, cheer him on, keep him safe. The way he's always wanted.
It's nice that—when Eddie is done for the day, beet red and breaking a sweat and the most beautiful person Buck's probably ever ever ever seen—Eddie can say to him:
"I'm really glad I snapped my arm in half."
Buck almost drops the water bottle he was offering to Eddie, dribbling all over himself. He laughs incredulously. "You what?"
Eddie takes the water from him and smiles, his canines playing peekaboo. "I'm glad. Because I have you now."
Buck smiles back. "You always had me."
"Promise?" Eddie asks.
"Promise."