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Buck’s been dead four days when he realizes he can haunt Eddie’s house.
Or at least he attempts to. He tries getting the floorboards to creak, but he has no weight anymore. He wants to manifest a cold breeze to blow ominously through the hallway, but he doesn’t know how. He tries writing Eddie a message in the fogged-up bathroom mirror, but his finger goes right through the glass. Eddie wipes the condensation clear and goes about brushing his teeth. Eddie’s eyes are puffy and bloodshot when he chances a look at himself in the mirror. The color gone from his face except the deep bruising of his grief under his eyes. It would break Buck’s heart if he could still feel it beating.
Buck tries to put a hand on Eddie’s shoulder and can’t. That might be the worst part.
Buck died falling too many stories through the middle of an apartment building when the floors collapsed underneath him during a fire. Not his preferred method of meeting his end and half a century too soon. Given the stacks of unfinished business cluttering his desk Buck should be haunting the corner of W. 8th and Flower St., but instead he’s mostly incorporeal on South Bedford, trying to get a mournful man and his son to notice him.
It’s not ideal, being dead. He can’t bake, he can’t take a shower, he can’t go to work. And he can’t tell Eddie he loves him.
It occurred to him in the too-fast flash of a second it took to fall 48 feet into the fiery subfloor full of rubble, glass, and rebar.
Oh, Eddie.
Not ideal at all.
Buck assumes there was a funeral; he wasn’t there to see it. He came to whatever consciousness this is standing in the dimly lit kitchen of Eddie’s house, staring at Eddie’s hunched back as he dry-heaved into the sink while wearing his Class As.
He’d wanted so badly tell Eddie he was there, it was fine, he didn’t need to cry. But as Buck took a step towards Eddie, the world shifted and tilted, odd thrumming sounds filling the kitchen, and suddenly he was back in the hallway while someone’s footsteps echoed away from him.
That was two days ago, or at least Buck thinks it was. It’s not like he’s sleeping. Or eating. Or doing anything at all. He seems to be flickering in and out of existence, his phantom body appearing in different rooms seemingly at random. The living room while Eddie stared blankly at his phone. The dining room while Eddie and Christopher picked morosely at cooling boxes of take out – Buck’s favorite Mexican place. The steamy bathroom while Eddie cried in the shower, trying to drown out the sounds from Chris.
But he’s always at the South Bedford house. He tried once to follow Eddie out the front door, confidently walking after him, and ended up right back in the kitchen several hours later without any sense of time passing for him at all. He attempted a second time to sneak out the back and found himself in a bedroom doorway while Christopher slept fitfully, tossing and turning in the middle of the night. So okay, no leaving the house. And no touching anything either.
Except that’s not completely true.
The first time Buck realized he might be able to touch something was in the living room, sitting on the coffee table across from Eddie while he slouched on the sofa, staring directly into Eddie’s waxen face and not being seen at all. Eddie was scrolling blankly through his phone with one hand, chewing the thumb nail on his other hand down to the quick, until he reached for a mug of cooling tea without looking and knocked it off the side table.
Buck grasped for it instinctively, arm snapping out without a thought. His fingertips brushed the edge of the mug, and, for just a moment, his flesh was flesh again, making contact with the porcelain, shocking a silent gasp out of Buck at the first sensation he’d felt since his death. And then it was gone, leaving an aching nothingness behind. The mug clattered to the floor, splashing lukewarm tea on the carpet, and Eddie stared vacantly at the mess for several long minutes before finally moving to clean it up, lumbering straight past Buck to do so.
Buck had knelt on the carpet and tried to pick up the pieces of the mug, but his fingers passed through the shards as though they weren’t there, as though he wasn’t either. But he was, wasn’t he? When Buck looked down, he saw his hands – short nails, thick knuckles, the way his work reshaped his fingertips. But was he only seeing the memory of his body? Was it just a trick of the last shadows of his existence?
So now he’s haunting Eddie’s house. Trying to leave smudges on the bathroom mirror (it doesn’t work), trying to get the lights to flicker (he can’t), screaming in Eddie’s face that he needs to eat something (he doesn’t hear Buck).
If this is what being a ghost is, Buck doesn’t see the appeal.
Movies have promised him a whole list of things he should be able to do now that he’s less than his body. Telekinesis. Clairvoyance. Teleportation. Buck can’t do any of it. He can’t move things with his mind or his ghost powers, whatever it is that he’s got going on. He accidentally touched a coffee mug once – throwing furniture across a room is way out of his reach. As for teleportation, Buck still finds himself randomly appearing in rooms without knowing how he got there or why. At least he hasn’t manifested in the attic yet. He doesn’t like it up there.
He doesn’t know what Eddie’s thinking. He wishes he did, wishes he could see into Eddie’s mind and pull out his thoughts like recipe cards. Sorrow gathers around Eddie like a storm, almost visible, following him around the house. He’s quiet, quieter than Buck’s ever seen him. There’s never any music playing; Eddie’s never humming along or singing to himself. He doesn’t dance in the kitchen anymore; little shuffling Rumba steps he hardly realizes he’s doing. He’s withdrawn and withdrawing further, not eating, sleeping too much, and fading away.
Buck doesn’t know what to do about it if he can’t reach Eddie to tell him he’s right there.
Even possession could be fun. He could take over Eddie or one of the 118 and be able to let someone know that he’s still here. He’s – not alive, per se, but he’s here. He’s still with them. He’s voiceless, inconsistent, but something about him is still here. And then maybe his friends could do something about this whole dead thing. Hire a witch from Los Feliz to reincarnate him. Ask Bobby’s priest to exorcise him. Anything.
Perhaps Buck needs to be around longer before he gets those abilities. Maybe it’s a practice makes perfect kind of deal.
But he doesn’t want to wait around decades while Eddie grows old, while Christopher grows up. Before they move out and he’s left haunting South Bedford while a new family moves in. While he fades out of memory and the engravings on his tombstone weather out of sight.
Buck’s never had much for patience and he’s not going to start now that he’s dead. He’s going to need to figure something out and fast.
Buck brought an old Ouija Board over to the Diazes last Halloween. He’d gotten it as a kid with his saved-up allowance because he’d thought it would fun to try to talk to any spirits lingering around Hershey, but no one had wanted to play with him. No one but Maddie.
Eddie had taken one look at it, scoffed something about superstitious nonsense, and left Buck and Christopher to ask the board questions while he’d watched them from the other room with a beer in hand. The judgment coming from him had been palpable, but Buck’s pretty sure he and Chris made contact with the original owner of the house.
Buck left the board with Christopher after Halloween, thinking maybe he’d like to use it with his school friends, or maybe Denny and Mara. He doesn’t know if they ever did.
It takes Buck another few days of being the world’s most useless ghost before he remembers the Ouija board.
Buck spends an entire day following Eddie around the house like a personal ghost, trying this best to get Eddie’s attention.
Morning comes and he’s standing in Eddie’s doorway watching him sleep. At least Eddie gets to sleep. Buck might be dead, but he wouldn’t mind lying down and catching eight hours. It might make him feel better, if he was able to feel. He’s still not sure what’s happening inside of him – emotions, sensations. He doesn’t have nerves or hormones or a fucking amygdala anymore. And yet, he thinks he still yearns.
Lately, Eddie sleeps curled up on his side, clutching the bedclothes tight under his chin, tension from temple to toes. Buck wants to run his hand down Eddie’s back, try to get him to loosen his muscles, find actual relaxation, but he can’t.
Today, like all days since Buck died, Eddie’s sleeping fitfully, brows furrowed against a dream. He doesn’t talk in his sleep, but he doesn’t need to. Buck tries to remember if ghosts can enter people’s dreams, change them, talk to people through them. But considering he still can’t leave a smudge on the bathroom mirror, dream-walking is probably beyond his skills at this point. If he could get into Eddie’s harrowing nightmares, he would tell Eddie everything was okay, that he was okay, that Eddie didn’t need to be so sad anymore.
But he can’t.
Buck found out pretty quickly that even though he can’t touch Eddie (he keeps trying), and he can’t move objects (yet, he’s hopeful), he doesn’t fall through the furniture. He can sit on the couch and lie down on the bed and not end up on the floor, and he doesn’t fall through the floor into the ground below. But he can’t walk through the outer walls of the house. Whatever the boundaries and rules of this existence are, they exist within Eddie’s house. Maybe that’s okay. If he’s a ghost and this is a kind of purgatory, there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.
But even if Buck lies down on the bed, he can’t sleep. He tried. One of the times Eddie was gone, Buck got onto the bed, not disturbing the sheets or comforter, or denting the pillow at all, and closed his eyes. And then he ended up back in the kitchen watching Eddie root around in the refrigerator for something to put in his coffee that wasn’t rancid and it was morning again. Buck adds sleep to the list of things he can’t do anymore.
Buck blinks and Eddie is walking Chris to the front door, holding his backpack while Chris pulls on a light jacket he probably doesn’t need.
“You sure you’re ready to go back to school?” Eddie asks. His voice sounds flat.
Chris nods, but everything about him is dull, wan. He’s like a 2-D version of himself. Every spark about him gone.
“Yeah,” Chris answers.
“You can come home anytime,” Eddie reminds him. “I’ll come get you.”
“I know, Dad.”
Buck watches Eddie help Christopher sling the backpack over his shoulders even though he’s a teenager now and can manage just fine. Buck reaches out, he can’t help it, for Christopher’s hand, and his fingers go right through. The nothingness of his hand, which looks so real to him, passing through Christopher like smoke.
And then Chris is out the door and down the stairs where Buck can’t follow.
Buck watches Eddie watch Christopher through the window as he gets picked up by his friends and disappear off to the school. Eddie’s so pale in the morning light coming through the window; the last time Buck saw him this he was bleeding out in the back of a firetruck and Buck could taste copper in his mouth.
Somewhere Buck hears sirens.
He hates that Eddie looks like this, deader than Buck feels. Though to be fair, Buck doesn’t feel dead at all. He doesn’t feel anything, which is probably for the best, considering how he went. He doesn’t want to spend his afterlife dragging broken backs and burst lungs around. The bruising under Eddie’s eyes hasn’t gotten any better, deep purple half-moons that swallow the light. His cheeks are sunken and even his posture is failing, his bones collapsing under the weight of his grief.
Buck reaches out for him too, hovers his hand over Eddie’s shoulder and thinks really, really hard about what should be a familiar sensation. He imagines the comfortable fit of his palm over the muscled curve of Eddie’s shoulder, something he’s done a dozen times over the years and should have done a hundred times more. He tries to recall the heat of Eddie’s body through his clothes, the exact way Eddie’s chest would rise and fall with each breath. Because maybe if Buck remembers the exact details, remembers the warm aching life of them, he can make it real enough for Eddie to feel.
Buck takes a breath (or would if he still did) and closes the gap between him and Eddie, and his hand goes right through Eddie’s shirt and his shoulder – through skin and muscles and sinew and bone and back out through his arm. Eddie doesn’t blink, doesn’t even shiver.
Buck stares at his hand, the limb that looks so fucking real to him, and wants to cry.
“Eddie, please,” Buck implores. But Eddie doesn’t hear him, just turns from the window and walks towards the kitchen.
Buck follows, arms outstretched, dragging his hands along the walls, hoping he might be able to knock into picture frames or bump against lamps. Anything to get Eddie’s attention. Nothing works. He still doesn’t know why he was able to touch that coffee cup just once and never since.
“What is it going to take?” He asks aloud, silently.
The Hildy takes up a decent amount of real estate on the counter. Buck sort of expected that Eddie would resell it after the novelty of it wore off, but he never did. It’s not the most useful coffee machine Eddie owns, making little cups of espresso and frothing milk, but he uses it all the same. Buck has caught Eddie savoring the richer flavor of espresso and allowing himself the joy of homemade lattes, even a cappuccino or two, after he finally figured out how to use the machine.
This morning, Eddie stands in front of the Hildy with slumped shoulders for long minutes, staring at it with half-open eyes like it’s the answer to a question. Like it could tell him a secret and give him his life back. Buck tries to flip the switch on, but as expected, his finger passes through the steel and plastic.
Eventually Eddie shakes his head, sniffles a little, and sets about making himself a coffee.
“You need to eat something,” Buck tells him. He tries to remember the last thing Eddie ate and can’t, but in his defense, time isn’t working the same way anymore.
“You can’t live on coffee,” Buck says, walking in front of Eddie, trying to herd him towards the refrigerator. “I can hear your stomach growling.”
He can. Eddie already looks like he’s lost weight and it’s only been a week since Buck fell through the middle of a building. At least he thinks it’s been a week. He’s losing track and it scares him.
Buck narrows his eyes at the fridge door, clenches his jaw, and calls to mind the weight of the handle, the force it takes to pull the door open, all the delicious food that could be inside. He closes his hand around the door handle, and nothing happens.
Buck sighs, “Fuck.”
Surely a better ghost than he would be able to put toast in the toaster, crack an egg, or at least knock a box of cereal out of the cabinet. A better ghost could help Eddie.
Eddie must not be on shift today, because he simply grabs a banana from the nearly empty fruit bowl and wanders out of the kitchen with his coffee. Buck follows, thankful that at least Eddie’s eating something.
“I’m sorry I died,” Buck says, because he hasn’t yet and the house is very quiet. “I didn’t mean to and I’m kind of annoyed you don’t know I’m here. I feel like you should know.”
Eddie doesn’t respond, just flops down on the couch with his coffee and his banana and a soul deep sigh.
Buck sits down next to him and misses the way the cushions used to compress under his weight, molding to him, holding him. He misses the way Eddie’s knee would knock thoughtlessly against his because of how Eddie sat, thighs spread comfortably wide, like he didn’t care how much space he took.
“I’m sorry you were there,” Buck offers, gazing at Eddie’s profile. Eddie’s looking straight ahead, but Buck can’t tell if he’s looking at the empty fireplace or at the array of photos on the mantel. Buck can’t tell if Eddie’s looking at anything at all.
Maybe part of the whole unfinished ghost business thing is making amends. Buck can’t say he’s lived a guiltless life and his list of people he could offer some sort of apology to is at least a page long, probably more. He remembers Bobby’s 8th step and thought it seemed like a half-decent idea. Except Buck can’t leave the house on South Bedford and there is a whole hell of a lot of people he probably needs to atone with. He wouldn’t know where to start.
In hindsight it’s completely irrational, but after the fire engine and the blood clot and the tsunami and the lightning, Buck sort of thought he might not be able to die, at least not on a call.
He didn’t think he was immortal (duh), but this point he didn’t think he’d be taken out by something as pedestrian as a structure fire. He wasn’t even being reckless, not this time, but a building out of code, too many feet per second, and landing wrong. Well, some things even a Buckley can’t escape.
Buck thinks he hears an air-conditioning unit turn on and then click off.
“I hope you didn’t have to see me. After.” Buck adds, frowning. He thinks his stomach would be turning in knots if it still did that. He thinks he should be nauseated.
They’ve seen more than their fair share of death and destruction in their short lives, Eddie even more. Nearly drowning in thick, cold mud where Buck couldn’t follow. Dangling from a ladder too high up with a stopped heart where Eddie couldn’t reach. Buck still has nightmares about the split second a bullet blew a hole through Eddie’s body and hot blood splattered across his face.
Had nightmares.
“Fuck,” Eddie mutters to himself, because to him, he’s alone in the house. Dreadfully, inexcusably alone.
He eats the banana sullenly, like he knows he has to and doesn’t want to, and Buck needs to figure out how to get him to eat more before he passes out during his next shift. He must be convincing Bobby he’s fine somehow. Eddie’s good at that, Buck knows, convincing everyone around him that he’s doing better than he is.
Eddie tosses the peel to the side table (Buck wrinkles his nose but can do nothing about it) and digs his phone out of his pocket. Buck leans in close – closer than he would ever dare when he was alive – to be able to look at the screen.
There are 56 unread texts.
“Dude,” Buck exclaims. “What are you doing? Are you shutting yourself away? You know that’s not healthy. Open those up so I can read them.”
Buck has to wait for Eddie to take a slow slip of his coffee (and fuck wouldn’t Buck die again for a cup of coffee) before he opens his messaging app.
He has unread messages from everyone: Bobby, Hen, Chimney, Karen, Tía Pepa, even Maddie. Buck looks at Maddie’s name for a long time and wishes he could feel something. He misses longing.
“Show me Bobby’s,” Buck prompts, nudging Eddie’s knee with his own even though he knows his spectral body will pass right through. It’s something even just to pretend for a moment.
Eddie opens the thread with Tía Pepa first. Buck groans. The conversation is mostly in Spanish, and while he’s gotten a little better with his conversational Spanish since meeting Eddie and Chris, he’s never been very good at reading it.
Whatever Tía Pepa has said to Eddie makes him shift and sniffle before responding with one thumb. Buck catches the words “fine” and “me” and nothing else before swipes over to Bobby’s latest message.
Bobby: I’m here, son.
There are tears now, first one tracking slow down Eddie’s check and then more. He doesn’t have a free hand to wipe them, so he turns his head to his shoulder, scrubbing his face awkwardly on his shoulder.
Buck wants to cry too. He doesn’t feel it, exactly, behind his eyes, but the urge is there. Something like pressure building, the way the sky feels before lightning strikes.
“Tell Bobby I’m sorry, too,” Buck whispers.
Eddie’s thumb hovers over the text, hesitant. Buck wouldn’t know what to say either. Thank you? I appreciate it? Fucking fix it and bring him back?
Eddie closes his messages without reading the rest, which Buck understands, except he knows their friends will continue to reach out. If Eddie doesn’t respond, someone’s going to show up at his front door for a wellness check. Maybe one of them can get Eddie to eat something of substance.
Eddie knocks back the rest of his coffee and shoves himself to his feet. He’s wearing sweatpants that have a raggedy hole in the knee and an old LAFD t-shirt.
“Laundry day,” Buck says out loud, because he can.
He follows Eddie into the bedroom where he grabs the full laundry basket from the closet and then he watches Eddie strip the bed. Quick, efficient movements. Buck pretends to help, letting the cotton sheets pass through his hands, and remembers the long, hazy months they spent living together after Eddie returned from El Paso.
Buck cooking breakfast for everyone after shift. Splitting a chore chart, which really just meant that Eddie did more of the dishes because Buck did more of the cooking, and because Buck hated the way wet food felt on his hands. Working their way through every John Cena movie available and falling asleep three-quarters of the way through some of them because 48-hours off really just meant catching up on sleep and errands. Forcing Chris to go to every museum in Los Angeles because if he wasn’t there with them, it would just be Buck and Eddie and that was too close to a date.
Gorgeous, sun-soaked days spent on just living. Not knowing he was running so short on time. How stupid he was wasting all those hours trying to convince himself Eddie was just his best friend.
The memory of the Ouija board comes to Buck when Eddie goes into Chris’ room to get his laundry.
Chris’ closet door is open the way it always is, showing the neat hang of his clothes, and all of the shoes, books, and old toys stored inside.
On the top shelf, shoved in next to a Lego set Chris hasn’t played with in years and games of Candyland and Scrabble, is the Ouija board box.
“Oh. Fuck yes.” Buck grins and takes three quick steps across the room towards the closet before he remembers. Remembers that he’s not going to be able to pick up the game and give it to Christopher or anyone else.
Three steps before he remembers he can’t do anything.
“Fuck my death,” Buck grumbles, hands on his hips, staring into the closet.
Eddie’s gone from the room, probably down the hall to the washing machine, but Buck has more important things to deal with.
He needs to figure out how to get that fucking Ouija board to Christopher.
Buck decides the best way to tackle his sad useless ghost problem is to practice. He has nothing if not time. He was able to touch (barely, but still) that falling coffee cup once, he can do it again. He came back to the LAFD after getting crushed by a fire engine, and after getting struck by lightning, he can do this. This is nothing.
When he was a teenager he went through a Patrick Swayze phase, which really should have clued him into his bisexuality a hell of a lot sooner. But it means he’s seen Ghost more times than he cares to admit. His Blockbuster card should have come with a rent 10, get 1 free punch card.
So far, he’s tracking a few ghostly points with Sam Wheat – he’s intangible and no one can hear him. That much he’s got (and it sucks). But there don’t seem to be any other ghosts at South Bedford that Buck can see and, since he’s unable to leave the boundaries of the house, he can’t wander around the city looking for others like him.
(If it’s unfinished business keeping him in Eddie’s house, he doesn’t want to know how many ghosts are dragging their corpses along Sunset Boulevard.)
And Buck doesn’t have an Oda Mae Brown to talk to Eddie through. It’s a bit unfair, really.
If he’s going to learn telekinesis and spiritual manipulation, he’s going to have to teach himself. And he’s going to have to do it without a clipboard.
Sam Wheat started by kicking a can, but he was angry, and Buck isn’t angry. Not really. He can’t be angry at a fire for doing what it’s meant to do. Consuming oxygen and fuel, converting it carbon dioxide and water. Over and over as long as the fire as everything it needs. No, Buck’s not mad – he’s determined. And he’s morose.
There’s also the whole being in the love with Eddie thing, but what’s he going to do about that now? Maybe he should have listened to his sister the first time she brought it up, back when there was time and life left for it to matter. He’s harboring no desires for couples’ pottery with Eddie, but he wouldn’t mind being able to say goodbye to him. To let Eddie know that the rest of his life is going to be okay.
Buck decides to start practicing his ghost powers with a coffee cup, because it was the first thing he was able to touch since he died, and maybe that means something. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but Buck has to start somewhere.
He has to wait for Eddie to leave one out on a table for him, which Eddie does at the end of his 48 off on his way back to the station one morning.
Eddie still looks haggard, dead-eyed and pale, too thin in his face, as he leaves the house. Buck watches his truck back out of driveway and onto the street until he can’t see it anymore.
“Come back safe,” Buck tells the empty street, longing to follow him.
His attention turns to the coffee cup, conveniently left for him on the kitchen table – mostly empty, but with the last dregs of milky coffee in the bottom.
Buck has to kneel on the floor because Eddie pushed all the chairs in. If there’s anything good about being dead, it’s that his leg doesn’t hurt anymore. The ache in his knee down to his ankle that’s been with him for years now is gone. In all fairness, he can’t feel his leg at all, but at least it doesn’t hurt.
Eddie picked a dark blue mug that morning – plain, unadorned – and Buck narrows his eyes at it.
“Just you and me now,” he tells the mug.
The first time was an accident. The first time he didn’t mean to do anything; he acted on instinct, on the decades of life and experience and impulse guiding his hand. But he can’t wait for that. He can’t wait for enough accidents to happen around the house to develop whatever ghost abilities he might be able pull together. A clock is ticking.
The second time won’t be an accident.
Buck didn’t always think he was strong-willed. He watched Chimney come back from the brink of death and impossible odds and thought “I could never do that.” And he watched Bobby, his captain, crawl back from addiction and unimaginable circumstances and thought, “I wouldn’t have made it.”
But then a fire engine blew up underneath him and landed on top of him. And then a tsunami swept his feet out from under him with the force of fate. And then the sky opened up and stopped his heart in his chest until Eddie restarted it with his own two hands.
If Buck lets himself look back, back beyond his final death and the 118, past his time roving across the country looking for something he never found, he supposes he survived his own family through hard-fought grit and determination too.
So, he can move a fucking mug.
Buck thinks about the mug, thinks about all the coffees and teas and hot chocolates that mug has seen. Early mornings before shift while getting Chris out the door for school, late nights trying to settle down enough to finally fall asleep while his brain replays every call from the last 24 hours. He thinks about sitting on the couch while Eddie lounges in one of the armchairs, mug in hand, thighs spread wide, talking about nothing of importance and soaking up every minute of it.
Buck imagines the weight of the ceramic, the heat of it when it’s full, how his fingers fit through the handle. It’s not his favorite mug – too small for the big cups of coffee he prefers and the handle bends weirdly for the shape of his fingers. He leaves it for Eddie most of the time, and marvels at the way Eddie’s big, capable hands completely surround it. He thinks about —
The sound the blue mug makes scraping an inch along the wooden table is one of the most marvelous things Buck’s ever heard.
Buck laughs, soundless in the empty kitchen, and rocks back on his heels.
“Okay. We can do this.”
It takes him three days to be able to knock the Ouija board off the shelf in Christopher’s closet.
Days is a fuzzy concept. Something like time passes. There’s sunlight coming in the dusty windows and then it’s dark. Eddie and Christopher are home and then they’re not. Shoes appear and disappear from next to the front door. Dishes fill and empty from the sink. Buck misses feeling hunger and thirst; he misses feeling tired. He misses life.
Sometimes he hears birds in the distance but can’t see them. Sometimes he thinks he smells something familiar – something warm and woody – but imagines it’s only the memory of what it meant to be able to smell something.
But time and practice have given Buck’s nascent haunting abilities a significant boost.
He moves the picture frames on the fireplace mantel, rattles a few doorknobs, and gets a cabinet door to swing open, and hopes that someone will notice. It’s kind of fun – Buck gets why ghosts might stick around doing this to people who annoy them. There’s power in it, to be unseen and seen at the same time.
He’s given up on the idea of writing a message to Eddie in the bathroom mirror because it’s finally occurred to him that Eddie’s well and truly naked on the other side of the shower curtain and maybe he shouldn’t be crossing that line, ghost or not. The thought of Eddie naked in the shower makes something like a frisson of awareness course through him. It’s sensation and it’s not, and when he tries to chase the feeling, it disappears.
It’s draining, in a way, learning how to haunt a house. The first time Buck gets a picture frame on the wall to tilt askew a few inches he flickers away for an unknown amount of time and reappears long after someone has straightened it out. He wishes he could have seen their face when they saw the painting out of place.
But at least Buck’s starting to get their attention.
Eddie and Christopher are in the living room, Chris powering through an assignment so he can escape to his room and his gaming buddies in record time while Eddie scrolls listlessly through his phone again. An old episode of a telenovela plays quietly on the TV. Buck wanders silently over to the big windows and gives the curtains a confident tug. The fabric rustles too loudly on the rod.
Eddie looks over at the unexpected noise, brow furrowed.
“Did you leave the window open?” He asks Christopher.
Chris shakes his head, not looking up from his schoolwork.
Buck grins and gives the curtain another shake. It almost feels substantial between his fingers, the way a strong wind can feel solid, or a cobweb.
Something complicated passes across Eddie’s face. He gets up from the couch and comes over to the window, right next to Buck.
If Buck could ache, he would ache to touch him. In almost a decade of knowing each other, Buck can nearly count the times they’ve really touched, with intention and not panic. If he’d known there would be a limit to the touches he would have savored them – every hug, every grip of his shoulder, every brush of a bare forearm against his. He didn’t know there was a ticking clock until it stopped. He didn’t see the countdown until it flashed zero.
Buck lets his eyes rove over Eddie’s face, memorizing it anew. He looks at the mole under his eye and scar under his lip. The shape of his eyebrows and the way his unkempt hair is getting too long at his temples. He lingers on the little patch of stubble where Eddie missed a spot shaving. There’s a little more color in Eddie’s cheeks now, a little more light in his eyes, and Buck thinks maybe Bobby’s been forcing him to eat at the station.
“Hey,” Bucks whispers, unable to contain the smile Eddie can’t see.
Eddie reaches out and touches the curtains, letting the fabric run through his fingers. The window is closed, of course it is, and Eddie’s got a look on his face like he’s trying to see beyond the glass.
“Eddie,” Buck says louder. He can’t smell Eddie, but he knows he’s carrying the lingering scents of aftershave and laundry detergent, cumin and coffee.
“Eddie!” He practically shouts it in Eddie’s face. A muscle in Eddie’s jaw flexes, his eyes hunt for something in the dark distance, beyond the front yard, out into quiet street. Buck’s heart would race if it could.
And then Eddie yanks the curtains shut.
The next day Buck knocks the Ouija board out of Christopher’s closet.
It’s late, but Chris doesn’t really have a bedtime anymore. From the bedroom doorway, Buck watches Eddie say goodnight to his son. Chris is far too old to be tucked into bed at night, but given the recent circumstances, he doesn’t seem to be begrudging his father an extra hug these days. At least for now. Buck could use a hug as well. He’d settle for someone making eye contact with him at this point.
“Night, son,” Eddie says, heading for the bedroom door.
“Night, dad,” Chris responds, a hint of teenage exasperation in his voice.
Eddie smiles, flicks the light off, and then walks straight through Buck as he leaves the room.
Buck gasps in surprise. It’s happened before, pieces of living body passing through him. He hovers too close to Eddie and gets a hand through his arm, his side. He appears suddenly in the hallway just as Chris leaves a room and gets a foot and a crutch through his calf.
It doesn’t feel like much, a bit like an involuntary shiver than starts at the top of his head and travels all the way down to his heels. Light and fleeting.
But this, this feels different. This feels like that gathering lightning storm, electricity building and building, looking for a to lash way out. Like Eddie bumped into every one of his molecules and dragged some of them with him on his way into the hallway. Buck feels like he’s vibrating.
Maybe he’s still keyed up from the other night, from Eddie finally noticing the curtain moving. Maybe he’s starting to lose what mind he has.
Because maybe that’s what happens to ghosts eventually; he’ll fade and fade away, his mind withering and disintegrating until he’s nothing but someone else’s memory. And then not even that.
Buck shakes it off and steps into Chris’ room. The kid’s not even pretending to be asleep – the light from his cellphone illuminates his face while he scrolls, various snippets of music and videos playing a few seconds at a time. Buck needs to remind Eddie to set better parental timers on of some of Chris’ apps, though he’s sure Chris could figure out how to bypass them in minutes.
Buck’s had the practice of weeks (months? he’s not sure, actually) that lets him walk past Christopher and go straight to the open closet. The first days after his death he would sit close to Christopher and stare at his face, look for any signs that he wasn’t doing well, not that he’d be able to do anything about it, but Buck wanted to know. He wanted to be close, just in case.
The Ouija board is where he last saw it, on the top shelf, innocuous, easily missable. A dark box with white outlining, wear around the edges from decades of use. None of the neighborhood kids in Hershey would play with him, but Maddie would. They’d turn out the lights in her bedroom, sit on the floor while a few candles swiped from their mother burned, and ask the sturdy wooden board questions.
Are there any ghosts in the house? - Yes
Are they with us right now? - No
What’s their name? - Marge
How did she die? - Poison
Buck reaches up, finds the edge of the box, and tugs. It takes a few tries – the box is tucked in tight – but he gets a metaphysical grip on it and pulls the game off the shelf.
Chris jumps half out of bed at the dull clatter of the Ouija board on the carpeted floor.
“Dios,” Chris mutters and Buck grins, because he’s still his father’s son.
“You okay, Chris?” Eddie calls down the hallway.
“Yeah,” Chris calls back. “Just uh, just dropped a book.”
A terrible lie, Buck thinks, but it’ll do.
Chris stares at the game on the floor with confusion on his face. Maybe he’d forgotten it was up there. Maybe he’s wondering how it could have fallen – the only item to be disturbed in his closet. Maybe he’s thinking there wasn’t an earthquake and there’s no reason for it to have fallen at all, so what’s going on?
“Come on, kid,” Buck urges aloud.
Chris slowly pushes his bedclothes aside, swinging his legs around to sit up. He turns his bedside lamp on before carefully pushing himself upright. Buck wishes he could kick the game closer, but that might be a step too far, that might scare Chris off too soon.
Chris makes his way the few steps across the room to where the Ouija board box lays, face down, and looks at it a few moments before he picks it up.
“Yes.” Buck pumps his fist.
Chris shuffles back to his bed and sits down, the box on his lap. A contemplative look creases his mouth, his forehead, and Buck desperately wishes he were the kind of ghost who could read minds. But he can’t.
What Buck can do is touch the lamp next to Chris’ bed with the tips of his fingers and think about lightning, think about heat and warmth. Think about the sun he longs to feel again. The bulb flickers once, twice, casting stuttering, flickering light about the room, across Chris’ face. Chris looks up, blinks owlishly around the room. Without his glasses, his eyes are huge, deeper blue in the warm light. For a moment, just a moment, his gaze land right on Buck.
Buck smiles, even though he knows Chris can’t see him. “Hey, bud,” he whispers.
Chris looks away, back to the game on his lap, and then pulls the board out of the box.
It’s like a scene from an 80’s movie – a dark night, Christopher on his bed with an old Ouija board, illuminated only by lamplight. He twists the plastic planchette in his hands, over and over, round and round.
“You know what to do,” Buck says, coming to stand right beside the bed. “We did this last year.”
Chris presses his lips together in a thin line and sniffles and then sets the planchette down in the center of the board, two fingers of each hand resting on the guide. Buck can see him take a deep breath and then another.
“Buck,” Chris starts, a whisper, and the name catches hard in his throat.
Buck feels it in the space where his heart should be, a tug, a pulse. He feels like the room gets warmer, but it can’t. And he wouldn’t feel it even if it did.
Chris clears his throat. “Buck, are you here?”
“Yes!” Buck shouts voicelessly. “Yes, I’m here.”
Chris doesn’t twitch. The planchette doesn’t move.
“Buck,” Chris repeats, resigned misery in his quiet voice. “Buck, are you here?”
Buck gets as close as he can without walking through Chris. “Yes, I’m here. God, Chris. I’m here.” He scrubs his hands through his hair.
And then he remembers. He remembers Maddie and her bedroom and the candles. And how there were always two of them playing.
Buck sits down on the bed across from Christopher, on the other side of the Ouija board. The bed doesn’t bow under his weight, the sheets don’t rustle, but he’s used to that by now. Buck reaches out, remembering cool plastic and the giddy excitement of hanging out with his sister, his best friend, and communing with unseen spirits, and he rests his fingers on the planchette.
Yes, he thinks with everything he has and is and was. Yes, I’m here. Yes, I’m here. Yes, I’m here.
Christopher gasps. Beneath their fingers, the planchette hovers over a word on the board: YES.
Buck laughs, silently into the room, but he laughs because what else can he do. If he could cry, he’d do that instead.
Across from him, Chris’ eyes are huge on his face and he’s gone pale. He looks like he’s somewhere between throwing the board across the room and crying.
“Ask me something else,” Buck urges.
Chris inhales, swallows. “Are you…are you okay?”
Buck concentrates. Something like heat, or the memory of it, courses down the back of his neck into his arms and hands.
The planchette moves.
M.I.S.S.Y.O.U.
The first tear slips down Christopher’s cheek, and he wipes it roughly away. Buck wants to tell him not to take his hands off the board, but he figures he’s the ghost and he’s not going anywhere. So supernatural game rules be damned.
“I miss you too,” Chris whispers. “I don’t know what to ask you.”
I.T.S.O.K.
Chris sniffles. “It’s not okay. You’re not here and it’s not okay.”
H.E.R.E.
Chris looks up from the Ouija board, looks right at where Buck is sitting on the bed across from him. Something perceptive glimmers behind his pain. Buck loves this kid so much.
“What do I tell dad?”
Buck flickers, glimmering in and out, and worries he’s going to disappear. What should Chris tell Eddie? He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He’d just wanted someone to notice him, for Chris and Eddie to know he wasn’t completely gone.
But after that? What’s his future? Will he stay in the house, unable to leave these walls, talking in stilted sentences to Christopher and no one else while Chris grows up, grows older? Will Chris get tired of a children’s game, using the board less and less until he puts it away, leaving Buck voiceless at last?
Will he eventually fade away completely while Eddie moves on? While he carries on with the 118, finds someone to love, to take Buck’s place in this little house while the last vestiges of Buck sinks into the floorboards, into the worn grain of the windowsills?
Buck grits his teeth. Can he make some other life for himself? Sam Wheat was eventually able to possess other people to make himself known. Maybe there’s more Buck can do, given time, given the will. He has the will.
So, what should Christopher tell Eddie?
T.E.L.L.H.I.M.H.E.R.E.
“Buck’s talking to me.”
Eddie twitches, like a shiver caught him off guard. “Chris.”
“He is,” Chris insists.
They’re outside in Eddie’s small backyard on a comfortably warm morning working through a physical therapy routine for Chris. Eddie rolls out his neck, where he’s always tense, while Chris stretches one arm long across his chest and holds it there.
Buck sits crisscross applesauce just inside the open back door, aching to feel the sun on his face or the light breeze on his skin. He feels like maybe he can smell the ocean.
“I know it can feel that way,” Eddie offers after a moment. He’s wearing a baseball cap, and it hides his eyes in shadows. “When we – when we miss someone. That it’s like they’re still there.”
The words stutter-stick in his throat, coming in starts and stops.
“It doesn’t feel that way,” Chris protests, switching arms. “It is that way. He’s talking to me.”
Even from a distance Buck can see Eddie clench his jaw, watches him press his lips together. His cheeks are dark with stubble; Buck hasn’t caught him shaving lately and he looks to be a few days shy of being outside of department facial hair policy.
Eddie puts down a little orange cone on the grass, finishing setting up a little obstacle course for Chris to work through.
“Mijo, if you need to talk to someone, I can set up some appointments with Frank.”
Chris shakes his head. “I don’t need Frank, Dad.” He switches from arm stretches to shifting his weight from foot to foot, holding on to one of the lawn chairs for balance. “Buck’s talking to me with the Ouija board he brought over last Halloween.”
Eddie lets loose a frustrated, pained sound from deep in his throat. “Christopher, stop it. You’re not.” His hands clench at his sides before he folds his arms across his chest.
“I am,” Chris throws back.
“You’re not!” It’s a shout and it reverberates across the yard, echoing off the walls. “Buck’s dead and he’s not talking to you.”
Chris stills, eyes wide, and Eddie freezes, chest heaving with fast, tight breaths.
“But I am,” Buck interjects softly from the doorway. Neither Chris nor Eddie notice and it’s kind of like being 11 years old with his parents again, desperate for attention, aching for validation.
“I’m sorry,” Eddie relents after several heavy moments, sagging on his heels. “I didn’t mean…I shouldn’t have said that.”
Chris looks at his dad for a long moment, and Buck can see Shannon in the proud, determined jut of his jaw, and he can see Eddie in the way he holds his shoulders.
“I know you’re sad,” Chris says slowly, “and I’m sad too. But I am talking to him.”
Eddie wipes his hand across his mouth. “Okay, how?”
“The Ouija board,” Chris repeats.
Eddie frowns. “What Ouija board?”
“The one Buck left last Halloween.”
Buck can see Eddie trying to remember. Eddie hadn’t wanted to play with them last year. Buck had pulled the board out of a bag and Eddie had just rolled his eyes at the both of them, leaving them to play in the dining room. Buck and Chris had turned the lights out, scooted their chairs close together, and started asking the board questions. Eddie had watched them for a few minutes, sipping a beer, before he’s disappeared into the living room, only poking his head in once to ask them if they wanted more hot chocolate (for Chris), or another beer (for Buck, who asked for hot chocolate instead).
Buck smiles about it now and thinks he feels something like wistfulness rising in his chest. His lungs feel tight with it, like it’d be hard to breath if he was still breathing.
“Christopher, you know that’s just a game,” Eddie says, stepping closer as though he wants to put his hands on Chris’ shoulders. “It’s not real. Like, like Santa Claus and magic.”
Buck snorts at the examples Eddie reaches for.
Chris shakes his head. “He told me to tell you he’s here.”
Eddie freezes. “What?”
“Buck told me it was okay to tell you he’s here.”
“What do you mean, here?”
Chris gestures to the house. “He’s here.”
Eddie takes a step back like he’s been slapped, the color draining from his face as though he’s been shot again. “Chris, that’s not–”
“You believed Abuela about God,” Chris says. “Why can’t you believe me about this?”
Buck wants to applaud or whoop; he settles for pumping his fist silently. For the first time since he died, he’s glad Eddie can’t see him; he doesn’t need to rub salt in. Not about this.
Eddie takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly, clearly practicing a bit of therapy-taught meditative self-restraint. Buck’s so proud of him.
“Okay,” Eddie begins. “I believe that you believe–”
Buck stands, reaches to the side, and grabs the edge of the door. It takes a second to remember the feeling of the old wood and the cracking paint before he can get a grip on it and give it enough force to swing the door on its hinges. A little pulse tingles through his hand, like the memory of when his foot would fall asleep after sitting on it weird for too long. His chest feels heavy for a moment and then it passes.
The movement catches Eddie’s attention, just barely, but it’s enough. Interrupted, Eddie looks over, looks at the empty space of the back doorway where the once wide-open door is now half closed.
There’s a breeze this morning, but not enough to move the door.
“That’s Buck,” Chris states with teenage conviction.
Eddie grips his hands on his hips, worrying his lips together as he tips his head back, looking away from the door, away from Chris.
“You could talk to him with me,” offers Chris and Buck feels something like the memory of a heartbeat.
“Chris.”
“I’ve gone to church with you–”
“Like once,” Eddie interrupts.
“–you can do this once with me.”
Buck grins, so gravely proud of Chris it would knock him off his feet if he had them. Hard to fault the kid’s logic after all.
Eddie lifts his face towards the sun. Buck takes him in – the strong line of his stubbled jaw, the rise of his Adam’s apple as he swallows, the way he’s still too pale. Too thin. Like he struggling not to fade away.
“Say yes,” Buck whispers.
“Fine,” Eddie relents. “Once.”
It takes another day, or what Buck thinks is a day; more likely two because Eddie leaves for a shift and comes back home and sleeps again. Buck really hates how he can’t keep track of time. He really took the hours of the clock for granted.
The sun rises and Buck lingers in Eddie’s bedroom doorway. Is it creepy of him? Probably, but at least Eddie’s dressed underneath the bedcovers instead of naked in the shower.
Eddie’s curled up on his side, the well-worn comforter tucked up under his chin, beautiful face soft with sleep. And Buck aches enough to make the curtains rustle on the rod with just the emotion roiling off him.
It’s a fucking shame, Buck thinks, that it took falling through a burning building to realize the confusing churn of emotions he felt for Eddie included love. That he loved him. Was in love with him. His best friend. His partner. It couldn’t have been something easier; less painful, less traumatic for everyone involved. Of course not. That’s not how it works for them.
Buck wants to feel it, everything that comes with being in love with Eddie. He wants the squiggly feeling in his stomach whenever Eddie’s around and he wants his heart to beat faster just because Eddie looked at him. He wants to know what they’re like together, tangled under the sheets, finding vulnerability in passion. He wants coffee dates and a wedding ring and 50 more years of a warm hand on his shoulder.
But he’s not going to get that.
He’d even settle for the pain of it. For the days when everything between them is too much, when his emotions flood over and Eddie withdraws into himself, and they both know too many precise words to make each other bleed the most. Buck will take those days too if means all the others.
Maybe, if he’s lucky, Eddie will admit he’s on the other side of kid’s game board and he’ll have that to hold on to for as long as he’s a ghost.
Buck sighs and turns away before Eddie wakes up.
He wants to spend the day following Eddie around, moving coffee mugs and opening cabinets, trying to get Eddie’s attention, but he should probably save his energy. Or whatever it is that’s keeping him here on this plane, in this house.
Instead, he sits in a chair by the window and watches cars and dog walkers and bicyclists pass by. Maybe it’s not so bad that time is so faulty. He could be there an hour or ten; sometimes it feels all the same.
Buck’s nearly vibrating by the end dinner. The lights in the hallway flicker and it’s decidedly warmer in the house than it should be.
Chris catches the flash of the lights and smirks on his way down the hallway to his bedroom to get the Ouija board.
“Come on,” Buck urges, out of patience.
Eddie’s cleared the dining room table and now stands behind one of the chairs, head hanging, gripping the back of the chair so tightly his knuckles are white.
“Eddie,” Buck says, even though he knows he can’t hear him. He comes up to Eddie’s side and remembers the times he’d be able to smell Eddie’s cologne, warm and woodsy, his shampoo.
He’s really been an idiot, if he thinks about it. And now that he’s dead all he has is hazy time to think about it. Buck can’t say he’s ever noticed Chimney’s cologne or Hen’s perfume. Tommy had an aftershave that made him sneeze and he doesn’t even remember what Taylor used for lotion anymore. But unquestioningly he could pick Eddie out of a crowded room while blindfolded and drunk. He’s been so stupid.
Buck hasn’t tried to touch anyone since he attempted to put his hand on Eddie’s shoulder weeks ago. He hasn’t wanted to feel that gnawing disappointment that presses in on all sides when his spectral hand passes through flesh and bone.
But maybe —
“Eddie.” Buck reaches out. If he could tremble he would. Eddie’s taking deep, calming breaths and Buck’s fingers are inches from the familiar curve of his shoulder when Christopher appears in the entryway, holding the Ouija board.
“Ready?” Chris asks.
Eddie straightens up and Buck’s hand drops away. “Yeah, bud. Let’s do this.”
Chris ambles over to the table, setting board down before pulling out a chair for himself, and then a second close by.
“Expecting a guest?” Eddie asks with a raised eyebrow.
“It’s for Buck,” Chris states, chin set defiantly, daring his father to challenge him.
“Okay, kid,” Eddie concedes, hands raised in defeat.
Buck snorts and takes the chair, even though sitting still feels weird because he can’t actually feel the seat.
Before he sits, Chris turns off the overhead lights in the dining room, leaving the room only illuminated by the lights coming in through the kitchen and hallway. Eddie looks like he wants to question it but doesn’t. Buck thinks Chris should ask for candles, just for the ambience, but maybe next time.
Chris sets the board out between them. “We all put our fingers on the disc thing,” he instructs.
“Planchette,” Buck corrects and no one hears him.
Chris sets the pointer and middle fingers of both hands on an edge of the planchette. Buck leans closer and gets his fingers on another curved side of the heart-shaped piece of plastic; his side disappears into the edge of the table so he can get close enough.
“Dad?” Chris urges when Eddie hesitates to join them.
Eddie shakes his head like he’s knocking an unwanted thought away and finally completes the triangle of their fingers.
Buck stares at Eddie’s hands – his long fingers and short nails, the rope of veins and barely visible scars on his knuckles. He’s noticed before (of course he has) the differences in their hands. Growing up he had the longest legs and the biggest hands. Girls would ask to compare the sizes of their hands, pressing their palms together and giggling when he could curl his fingers over the tops of theirs. And then he met Eddie, Eddie who was inches shorter than him with hands that looked like they could encircle Buck’s fucking waist. They couldn’t, Buck was sure, but he wanted Eddie to try anyway.
Somehow Buck still couldn’t place the feeling in his gut when he stared at Eddie’s big, confident, capable hands until it was too late. And now he can’t even hold them in his own, even just the once. Death is really unfair.
“So, what’s next?” Eddie asks.
“Now we ask him questions,” answers Chris.
“How do we know he’s here?”
Buck recognizes Eddie’s tone. It’s the same one Buck uses when he’s playing — when he played — Dragons and Mermaids with Jee-Yun. It’s the "yes and” voice of a parent playing along with an imaginative kid.
Chris rolls his eyes and sighs the way only an aggrieved teenager can. “We ask him.”
Buck wants to rage against the injustice of it all that he’ll never get to see Chris grow into an adult.
Chris wiggles his shoulders a little and stares intently at the board, brow furrowed and nose scrunched in concentration. “Buck, are you here?”
Buck hears a sharp intake of breath from Eddie but forces it away so he can focus on the task at hand. He thinks about cool plastic under his fingers and how Maddie tried to convince him ghosts were real just to make him laugh and how Christopher looked – wild-eyed and teary – when he realized Buck was haunting the house.
I’m here I’m here I’m still here I’m here
Eddie yanks his hands back. The planchette has settled over YES on the old Ouija board.
“Don’t take your hands off the board,” Chris chides.
“Christopher,” Eddie rasps.
“Dad.”
Eddie carefully places his fingers back on the planchette, shifting uncomfortably in the chair.
“Buck, are you still okay?”
He wants to say no, he wants to say he’s tired of being dead and he wants a hug and a beer and to take a shower. That sometimes he hears things that can’t be there. That lately when he looks down the hallway it shifts and contorts, like his vision is crossing. But he finally has the chance to talk to Eddie and he’s not going to waste it on being annoying (not today, anyway). Buck narrows his eyes and that little pulse of awareness, of static energy, travels up his wrists.
H.E.R.E.
“Don’t play, Chris.” There’s something in Eddie’s voice that sounds like fear, like a warning.
“It’s not me,” Christopher objects. “It’s Buck.”
Buck can see Eddie wanting to swear, wanting to get up from the table and walk away, and the only thing holding him to his seat is his undying, enduring love for his son.
“Buck,” Chris asks, “where are you?”
C.H.A.I.R.
Eddie’s gaze snaps to the seat Buck’s ghost is sitting on. Hovering over. Whatever it is his incorporeal body does. Eddie’s eyes flicker back and forth, up and down, searching for any sign of Buck, some hint of reality. Buck wishes there was a switch to make himself visible, but he hasn’t figured it out yet.
H.I.
Buck spells it out, but Eddie isn’t looking at the board; he’s still staring at the chair.
“Buck says hi,” Christopher says and he’s smiling.
Eddie swallows. “This isn’t a game, mijo. Death isn’t–”
“I know, dad.”
Buck wants to ruffle Christopher’s hair and seriously considers trying.
“Ask me something only I would know,” Buck says soundlessly, giving the planchette a little shove.
“Okay,” Eddie sits up a little straighter. “Ask him something only he would know, something the two of you didn’t do together.”
My beloved skeptic, Buck thinks.
“You can ask him,” Chris nudges, grinning impishly.
Eddie inhales, his chest rising with it, and blows the breath out. “The first time, the lightning. How long?”
Buck shudders, hard, and feels it. He’s sure he feels it.
And he felt the lightning. Like getting hit by a fucking truck. A blinding flash, hotter than the sun. A deafening crash that blew out his ear drum. Taking his breath away and stopping his heart. Sending searing, blistering pain through his hands, his chest. Like being lit on fire from the inside, from his bone marrow outwards. Instant and unstoppable.
The planchette moves.
3.1.7.
Eddie pushes back from the table so fast his chair falls to the floor with a crash.
“Dad?”
But Eddie’s staring at the chair again, wide-eyed and pale, breathing hard. Like he’s seen a ghost.
“Buck?” His voice catches in his throat, a rough whisper.
“You need to put your hands on the disc,” Chris reminds him gently.
Eddie slowly picks his chair back up and sits down. A fine tremble runs through his hands.
Buck doesn’t wait for a question.
G.O.F.O.R.T.I.T.L.E.
A sob bursts out of Eddie’s throat, raw and gasping. The sound of it, animalistic, tears at something inside of Buck, at the spectral atoms of him, burrowing towards his heart.
Buck closes his eyes and tries to remember himself. Remember what it felt like to be him. The weight of his own body. The near-constant ache in his left leg. The way the curls that rested on his forehead were sometimes overstimulating. How the skin over his tattoos felt the same as the rest under his fingertips. The palpable, heavy beating of his heart as he raced up five flights of smokey stairs towards his death. How it felt when —
“Oh,” Chris murmurs.
Buck opens his eyes and Chris is looking at him. Right at him. Because he sees him.
“What is it?” Eddie asks, roughly swiping away the tears that have tracked down his cheeks.
“I can see him, dad.” There’s only wonder in Chris’ voice, no fear, and it doesn’t surprise Buck at all that Chris isn’t afraid of ghosts.
“What?”
“I can see Buck,” Chris repeats.
“Hi,” Buck says and smiles so broadly his face would hurt if it could.
“I think he’s saying hi,” Chris relays to his dad, “but I can’t hear him.”
Goddammit, Buck thinks. But he can’t be totally mad about it. Because Chris can see him. It’s taken him weeks (months? he doesn’t know, he doesn’t care) to get this far, but he’s managed it. And he’s pretty sure Eddie doesn’t think Chris is insane.
Eddie follows Chris’ gaze to where Buck is and fuck if he isn’t gorgeous like this. Eyes bright with tears, lips a little swollen, belief system cracking open underneath him.
“Can you see him too?” Chris asks.
Eddie shakes his head. “No, bud.” And it’s another piece of his broken heart.
“You will.”
Buck nods enthusiastically so Chris will see him agreeing.
Over Buck’s dead body is Eddie going to get away with not seeing him.
The next morning Eddie sees Chris off to school and Buck is there by the doorway. His friends are outside waiting in the car. This time, Chris knows Buck’s there.
“You got everything you need? Homework? Lunch?” Eddie asks, holding out Chris’ crutches for him.
“Yes, dad,” Chris sighs, getting his backpack on and giving Buck a conspiratorial wink.
Eddie catches it. “What was that?”
“Buck thinks you’re hovering.”
Eddie blinks, takes it in, and then looks around. “He’s here?”
“I’m always here,” Buck says.
Chris narrows his eyes thoughtfully. “I think he’s saying he’s always here. I don’t read lips. Gotta go love you bye.”
And then Chris is gone, ambling down the steps and into the waiting car.
Eddie goes to close the front door, but Buck gets to it first. He’s feeling confident now and the door closes before Eddie’s fingers can touch the doorknob.
Eddie’s hand closes into a tight fist before falling to his side. “Buck? Is this…are you…I’m losing my fucking mind.” Eddie stares hard at the door before turning on his heel and walking away. Buck follows.
In the living room, Buck turns on a lamp just after Eddie passes. Eddie flinches but doesn’t stop.
In the dining room, Buck gives the Ouija board that’s still out on the table a nudge, moving it a few inches. Eddie looks at it sternly and continues into the kitchen.
“Stubborn,” Buck grumbles, oddly pleased, and follows him.
In the kitchen, Eddie fumbles with the Hildy, all clumsy hands and thin-pressed lips. This time, Buck is able to flick the power switch on.
Eddie whirls around, a wild look on his beautiful face; eyes wide, bright with unshed tears.
“What are you doing?” Eddie demands. “If you’re here, what are you doing? Closing doors and turning on lights? Was that you, before, moving the picture in the hallway? Was that you?”
Eddie scrubs his hands through his already messy hair. Next to him, Buck slowly opens the cabinet where all the coffee mugs are.
Eddie slams it shut with a hard hand. Porcelain clatters. “Stop it! Fucking stop it!”
Buck freezes. Pressure builds in his core. His lungs hurt, his chest feels fragile.
“I don’t believe – I don’t believe in ghosts or superstitions or curses and I —” Eddie swallows. Tears spill over. “I still wanted you to haunt me and you’ve been here the whole time.”
Buck comes closer, close enough he can see the scar under Eddie’s lip and the flecks of color in his eyes. The dark stubble on his cheeks almost grown to a beard. How his jawline is too sharp with grief; the muscles flickering as he clenches his teeth against his harsh breaths.
“You still aren’t eating enough,” Buck whispers and Eddie shivers. The staticky pressure inside of Buck presses outwards, making him flinch. It feels like his skin his stretching too tight around his body, barely able to contain him. Something hurts deep inside.
The kitchen is quiet. Outside, a truck rumbles down the road. Somewhere a few goldfinches sing to each other. Someone else is talking. Buck wants to bury his nose in the soft place of Eddie’s neck and breathe him in, to find out if the memory of his scent is true.
Buck’s hand finds Eddie’s shoulder without conscious thought. And it’s solid. Warm and devastatingly familiar. Muscles flexing and shifting minutely under his palm.
Eddie goes still. His eyes track from the floor up until they meet Buck’s. And then hold his surprised gaze.
“Buck?”
Lightning cracks. The world goes white.
Buck wakes up in the ICU of the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center a week after falling through the center of a building.
He doesn’t feel alive. He doesn’t feel dead. The ceiling is an ocean. He’s lying on the creaking wooden slats of the Santa Monica Pier while water rises up around. His limbs aren’t real. Birds are talking in Los Feliz. His brother stands next to him in a suit, teaching him how to tie his shoes (cross the bunny ears over each other, Evan, we’ve gone over this).
He fades out.
He’s a ghost again. Chris goes to school. Eddie sees him for a flash of a second in the reflection of the microwave door. Another plate shatters.
There’s sun in his room (real sun, he can feel the warmth on his arms) when Buck wakes up again. A monitor beeps somewhere close by. The room isn’t empty. There’s a soft rustling sound off to the side like a page turning.
Buck tries to lick his lips and he tastes Chapstick.
No tube, breathing on my own, he thinks fuzzily. Good.
He opens his eyes. It takes a minute, remembering how. Eyelashes, eyelids. Eyes opening. Sunlight entering his pupils, sparkling along his optic nerves into his brain. The ceiling is a ceiling now; regular hospital tiles he wishes he wasn’t so familiar with. What happened to him?
He has a body. He must have a body. If he didn’t have a body, he wouldn’t be alive. He is alive, right? Everything is dry.
Buck turns his head on the pillow towards the sound of the page turning. His head is on a pillow. He can feel it – he can feel it now, the pressure of the back of his skull against the cushion. So, he still has a head, that’s good news.
Someone is near the bed. Buck’s in a bed – a hospital bed – and he seems to be sitting partially elevated. He doesn’t feel like he lying down completely. Buck tries to move and his whole body (he does have a body, a solid body) feels weighted down, filled with concrete. Buck tries to think about his arms and legs, tries to feel them, his toes flutter underneath the blankets. Okay good, probability of spinal damage decreasing.
It’s Eddie. Eddie is sitting next to his bed. Buck blinks slowly and worries he’s going to fade away again. Reappear in Eddie’s kitchen two days from now. But he doesn’t. His eyes open and Eddie is still there. He’s reading a book; Buck can’t tell which one.
Buck opens his mouth to say something but can’t. He’s so tired. Why is he so tired? His tongue feels unwieldy in his mouth. It hurts to breathe.
His hands are above the blankets (he still has both hands, good) and Buck tries to pat the bed. He ends up scratching his fingertips against the coarse fabric. Back and forth. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
The book falls to the floor.
“Buck?”
Eddie’s out of the chair and leaning over the hospital bed before Buck can take another breath.
“Buck?” Eddie asks again. His hand, big and warm, settles on top of Buck’s. Warm. It’s real, so fucking real and alive, that Buck’s eyes slip shut again.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Eddie says, panic in his voice and Buck forces his eyes open. “There we go. Come on, stay awake this time.” Eddie squeezes his hand, hard, and it feels so good Buck could cry. Skin and heat and pressure and life.
Buck wonders how many times he’s done this – opened his eyes and then slipped away? How long has he been lying here? What happened?
Buck licks his lips again and swallows. His throat is so dry and it’s hard to take a deep breath.
“Hold on, let me get you water,” Eddie says and moves to pull away. Cold zips up Buck’s spine and he grips Eddie’s fingers as tightly as he can and holds on, keeps him from leaving. Eddie doesn’t laugh. “It’s okay, you’re okay. It’s just right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
Buck squeezes Eddie hand again and Eddie grips back, and then he’s up and over to a small table where a beige plastic pitcher is waiting. Buck watches him pour a cup of water and unwrap a straw before returning to his bedside.
“I don’t need to tell you small sips, do I?” Eddie asks, holding the water up for Buck. He isn’t smiling, not yet. There are bright, unshed tears in his eyes. Buck can’t look away. His throat is tight with the love he discovered falling five stories down.
Eddie holds the straw steady while Buck takes a few slow, careful sips. The water’s ice cold, which he loves, and he wonders if Eddie’s been refreshing the ice just in case he wakes up.
Eddie finally puts the cup down on the tray next to Buck’s bed, within reach once he gets his arms working. Buck watches him. Eddie looks good, wearing an old hoodie and jeans. And he looks worn down, ragged and wan. Dark circles under his eyes and a week’s worth of facial hair. Buck loves him so fucking much. He feels it in his chest finally, a warm thud in time with his heart.
“Hi,” Buck whispers hoarsely. It’s like there’s a heavy weight sitting on his sternum.
Eddie shivers and smiles and a tear slips down his cheek. “Hi.”
“Not…ghost,” Buck says. His voice feels stronger. His body is starting to feel more like a body, like he might have control over it.
Eddie frowns. “No. Do…do you…” he trails off, struggling for the words. Buck stretches his fingers out. His arm moves this time, lifting off the bed. Something aches deep inside, like the pieces aren’t all fitting together right, and he winces.
“Stop it,” Eddie chides, clutching his hand while simultaneously grabbing the chair he’d been sitting in and dragging it right up against the hospital bed. “You fell through a building, Buck. You, you —”
“Died,” Buck supplies, when Eddie can’t say it.
Eddie swipes a palm roughly across his face. “Not quite. You fell and it wasn’t good. You’ve – you’ve been in a coma. Again.”
He was a ghost. He remembers being a ghost. He didn’t have to breathe.
“Fire.”
Eddie nods. “Yeah, there was a fire. You went in.”
Buck tries to remember. He remembers the slow morning at the station. Making coffee with Eddie in the kitchen, complaining that Eddie took his favorite mug. He remembers the tones going off for a car accident (somewhere near La Cienega, someone ran a red light, Hen and Chim transported two patients to the hospital). He remembers Bobby making lunch (shredded BBQ chicken sandwiches, three-bean salad). He remembers Bobby sending them into the burning building, just like a thousand other calls. He remembers he wasn’t afraid.
“Not reckless,” Buck says.
Eddie presses his lips together. “No, you weren’t being reckless. It was just…” Eddie sniffs. “It was an accident.”
Eddie thumb moves gently across the back of Buck’s hand; he doesn’t even know if Eddie’s aware he’s doing it. It feels so good.
“It happened so fast,” Eddie says. There’s a horrible, faraway look in his eyes. “I was outside with the first round of patients who’d been brought out when it – when the floors collapsed. I couldn’t, there was nothing we could do.”
“Eddie.”
Eddie squeezes his hand again to shut him up.
“It took a couple of us to get to you. There was so much rubble. Fucking thing wasn’t up to code. You weren’t responding on the radio.”
Buck’s glad he wasn’t conscious for it, for Eddie finding him. They’ve been through this too many times — digging through metric tons of ice-cold mud, climbing into a lightning storm, crawling through gun fire to get to each other. Buck still dreams of Eddie’s blood washing over his hands, splattering across his mouth. His too-pale face staring up lifelessly in the back of a fire engine.
“Injuries?” Buck asks, not wanting to know but needing to. “My leg?” His ghost body hadn’t hurt, and that had been nice, actually.
“Laundry list,” Eddie responds, shaking his head. “Grade 3 splenic lac. Grade 4 liver lac. Didn’t like that. Broken ribs with hemothorax and pulmonary contusions just for fun. Re-dislocated your shoulder. You actually need to take care of it this time. Minor smoke inhalation from your gear getting knocked off. They got you into surgery pretty fast, but you needed blood transfusions. Chimney said we should get you a punch card for pints of blood.”
Buck tries to laugh, but pain flares through his middle – his broken ribs. How fun for him.
“I can call the nurse,” Eddie says, clearly seeing his discomfort.
“In a minute.” Buck turns his wrist until their hands are palm to palm and their fingers twine together. Eddie’s skin is darker than his, his fingers a little longer, and Buck revels in the touch, the way his body stops against Eddie’s and doesn’t pass through.
As soon as Eddie calls for someone his room is going to be swarmed with hospital personnel. People poking and prodding, checking his blood pressure and pupillary response. Gauging his reflexes and motor function. He’ll have to start his real recovery – physical therapy, occupational therapy, if he needs it. Whatever it takes to get out of the hospital and get home. He can’t think about returning to work, not yet. He just wants these moments with Eddie when everything is quiet, and Eddie can finally see him. Touch him.
“You’ve been out of it since surgery,” Eddie continues, “but you’ve been waking up over the last couple days.”
Buck doesn’t remember it. He was a ghost. He was in Eddie’s house and he was a ghost and now he’s back in his body and Eddie’s holding his hand and he’s so in love with him. Eddie doesn’t know that part. Not yet.
“Everyone else?”
“Everyone else is good. They’ve been in and out all week. Everyone wanted to take shifts sitting with you. The hospital is getting sick of us, I’m sure.”
Buck remembers that too, but not from this time. From every other time one of them has wound up in the hospital. How none of them wanted to leave, how it felt imperative to be there.
“Chris?” Buck asks.
Eddie nods. “He’s been here too, as much as I’ll let him. He’s been wanting to skip school to stay with you but–”
“School’s important.”
Eddie rolls his eyes. “Not as important as you.” The way he says it – Buck thinks he means to start it as a jab, but it ends heavy with truth. “I needed him to take a break.”
“He’s been talking to me,” Buck says.
Something flashes across Eddie’s face. “Yeah. He was, a lot. We didn’t know what you could hear, but.”
“I was a ghost,” Buck tells him. It feels important. “But he was the first to see me.”
“Okay,” Eddie agrees, running his thumb towards Buck’s wrist.
Buck will have to tell him more, but another time, when he’s not so tired.
“I want to go home,” he says instead.
Eddie smiles and his eyes go very soft. “I want you come home too.”
Buck goes home four days later.
He goes home to Eddie’s house with his arm in a sling, a slate of prescriptions, orders for physical therapy and rest, and directions to not do that again.
Chris is there when Eddie takes him home, so are the rest of the 118. An entire family seeing him out of the hospital. Maddie cries again, even though she was there the day before and the day before that. Chimney cries as well and struggles not to hug him too tightly. Ravi’s spent too much time in a hospital himself for excessive sentiment, but he helps carry out all the personal items Buck’s accumulated over the week. His own pillow. A softer, warmer blanket from Eddie’s house. A book Chris has been reading to him.
And it turns that out once people know there’s a hero firefighter in a public hospital the flowers and balloons don’t stop coming.
Bobby is the one who guides his wheelchair with steady hands while he’s flanked by Chris on his left and Maddie on his right as they leave the hospital. The blast of fresh air on his face when the automatic door open makes Buck want to cry. A lot of things make him want to cry these days.
Eddie is waiting for them in the patient pick-up area. Seeing him in the sunlight, finally out from under the hospital fluorescents and the haze of his coma, has Buck’s breath catching in his chest.
“Thought you quit Uber,” Buck says.
“So funny,” Eddie responds, opening the passenger door. “Glad to see that part of you survived just fine.”
Between Bobby and Eddie, they get Buck into the truck with minimal jostling. It still hurts though, broken ribs and healing organs, and Buck grits his teeth against the pain. He’ll take it over the nothingness of being a ghost.
“Hen, you couldn’t have brought the ambulance around to take me home?” Buck asks, catching his breath.
Hen rolls her eyes. “B-shift’s using it.”
Eddie reaches across Buck to buckle him into his seatbelt, so careful of his shoulder and his ribs. Buck can’t help but lean a little closer, nearly brushing his nose into Eddie’s hair. He smells like traces of hospital – disinfectant wipes, the harsh laundry soap, so much hand sanitizer. But at least he smells like something.
“All right, let’s get you home.” Eddie draws back. Buck wants to grasp onto him.
“You guys all following us back to the house?” Buck asks the team.
Chim shakes his head and pats Buck’s gently on the knee. “We’re gonna let you get some rest.”
Buck doesn’t want to say that resting is all he’s been doing.
“We’ll be by in a few days to check in on you,” Hen adds. “Making sure you’re not trying to get re-certified already.”
Buck smile ruefully but doesn’t feel it. Instead, he feels a sharp ache of uncertainty behind his sternum. He can’t even begin to think about that. Not yet. Maybe not —
“I’ll bring some food ‘round for you boys tomorrow,” Bobby says. “Something easy to freeze and reheat. Something you can eat one-handed.”
“Hey now,” Eddie protests, but he’s grinning. “I can cook for us.”
Bobby claps him on the shoulder. “I know.”
Maddie ducks in and kisses Buck on the cheek. “Love you. Your bag is in the back. I’ll keep Howie from invading too soon.”
“Love you, too,” Buck replies.
“All right, time to go home,” Eddie closes the passenger side door.
Buck gets set up in Eddie’s bedroom, propped up on a mound of pillows he never remembers seeing before. Eddie’s not a pillow guy but here they are.
“You can’t heal properly on the couch, Buck,” Eddie chides when Buck protests taking over the bedroom.
“I’ve spent plenty of nights on the couch before,” Buck reminds him. The bed is nice though, just the right amount of firmness, and the sheets smell like Eddie’s laundry detergent.
“Yeah, but not with busted organs and broken bones,” Eddie responds, tugging the comforter into place around Buck’s waist. His movements seem oddly nervous.
“Debatable.”
Eddie looks up, meets his gaze. Buck expects to see something teasing, maybe playful there; Eddie eyes, his whole face, are shadowed in pain.
“Eddie,” Buck starts.
“You really fucking scared me, Buck.” His voice is low, raw, scraping out of his throat.
Buck reaches out with the arm that currently works and closes his hand around Eddie’s wrist. His skin is warm. “I need to tell you what happened.”
“I know what happened.”
“No,” Buck shakes his head, “while I was out.”
Eddie narrows his eyes.
“Can you sit down?” Buck asks, tugging on Eddie’s wrist. He thinks about asking to call Christopher in, who’s been tasked with setting up Buck’s medication and getting lunch started in the kitchen, but he kind of wants these moments just with Eddie.
Eddie carefully sits on the mattress, tucking a leg up, and angling himself towards Buck. “Coma dream?” He asks.
“Coma dream.”
Eddie presses his lips together, scrunches his nose. “You said you were a ghost, as you were waking up.”
Buck takes a deep breath. It still hurts, broken ribs flexing around his lungs, but he likes that he can feel something. “I fell through the building and I was dead. I knew I was dead. And I was in your house – this house – and I was ghost.”
Eddie’s wrist shifts in Buck’s hold until they’re palm to palm, until their fingers tangle together. Buck looks down at their hands, at the way they fit together, and wonders why they haven’t been holding hands for years.
“I could see you,” Buck continues. “And I could hear you and Chris. But you couldn’t see or hear me. I didn’t have a real body. I couldn’t leave the house. Time was – time was weird. It’d be morning and I was in the kitchen trying to get you to see me and then it was night and you were somewhere else. I kept trying. I was trying so hard.” Buck’s voice breaks. Tears are hot in his eyes.
“Buck.”
“It was Chris. I got Chris to notice me first. With the Ouija board.”
Eddie’s forehead wrinkles adorably. “The Ouija board?”
“The one I brought over last Halloween,” Buck reminds him. “The one you said was stupid and didn’t want to play with us.”
“Ah.”
“He believed me – that I was there.”
Eddie nods, so fond. “Of course he did.”
“It was just —” Buck wants to run a hand through his hair, and he begins to lift his arm until pain throbs through his shoulder, halting his movements. “Fuck,” hisses between his teeth.
“Let me get you something.” Eddie starts to stand, but Buck grips his hand tighter.
“It can wait. I just need—”
Buck doesn’t know what he needs. Before, when he was a ghost, every ounce of his energy was spent trying to get Eddie to see him, trying to get Christopher to hear him. That was the only need he had, the only thing he wanted.
(He knows now he wasn’t actually a ghost, of course he wasn’t. But it was all so real, every detail of Eddie’s house so perfect, that he’s having a hard time unraveling the tangle of reality and illusion. He might still wake up again broken in the basement of a collapsed building.)
Stuck in a hospital fighting for his life – caught in the time between realizing he was in love with Eddie while falling to his death and awakening to the conviction that he wasn’t dead – Buck only needed to survive. What is he supposed to need now? What is he supposed to ask for? Is being alive enough when he’s escaped death grasping hand more times than should be allowed. Is he being greedy wanting for more?
Buck’s pulse is lightning and his toes are numb. “I just need to tell you something.”
“I love you.”
Buck blinks. Thunder is in his ears. He might be dying again. He blinks and Eddie’s still smiling. He was smiling when he said it. It’s very quiet in the room. The fan that’s always on is white noise. Buck can hear the memory of the floors crumbling and collapsing beneath his feet. Eddie is still smiling.
“I—”
Eddie places his other hand on top of their twined fingers and leans closer. His palm is so warm, his face so earnest. “You keep trying to die on me and I’m getting tired of it.”
A laugh threatens behind Buck’s curving mouth.
“I heard it, that grinding awful sound of the building just before it came down and I knew you were still in there and I couldn’t do anything. I was stuck outside and I just thought ‘fuck, I love him and I can’t save him’.”
Eddie eyes are huge and beautiful in his face, and he’s stroking Buck’s knuckles.
“It’s probably the worst way to figure out you’re in love with your best friend,” Eddie continues. “Trying to hold back a panic attack.”
Buck wants to kiss him so badly it’s making it hard to think. It’s probably also the narcotics.
“You know what they say.”
“What do they say?” Eddie indulges.
“Relationships that start under intense circumstances never last.”
Eddie presses his lips together. “Are you quoting Speed at me when I’m trying to tell you I’m in love with you?”
Buck grins, he can’t help it. “Well, you stole my line from me.”
Eddie’s smiling again, soft and fond. It crinkles the corners of his eyes; there’s still darkness there, purple bruising he can’t hide that tells the story of the pain he’s endured waiting for Buck to wake up. Hoping he would. Buck knows it will fade eventually, like his wounds and new scars. They have the time now.
“Yeah?”
Buck rolls his eyes, but he’s so happy he feels like it might burst out of him. “Yeah, of course.”
Eddie’s blushing now, a pretty pink staining his cheeks. “Okay, good.”
“Good?”
“Can’t go getting mushy on you.”
A laugh bursts from Buck and it’s okay that it hurts his ribs, his whole body.
“I’m gonna kiss you now,” Eddie states.
“I’ve been waiting.”
Eddie scoots closer on the bed. Buck’s eyes track to his mouth, that full lower lip. If he thinks about it, he’s probably been staring at Eddie longer than he’s realized – years, a decade even. Someone should have told him.
“It’s probably going to be weird.”
Buck tilts his head. “Because I’m a guy?”
Eddie puts a hand gentle on Buck’s knee over the comforter. “No.”
And then Eddie’s leaning in and Buck has nowhere to go but towards him, inexorably drawn in. Moths and flames and magnets and gravity and ions. Certain. Unquestionable. Buck breathes and it’s Eddie’s air he’s drawing in. He licks his lips and it’s Eddie’s mouth he tastes.
Buck makes a noise that could be a moan and gets his good hand out of Eddie’s grip and on Eddie’s jaw, his hair, his shoulder. His body is too small for everything inside of him. It’s Eddie’s first day on the team. It’s a U-Haul leaving him behind. It’s a tsunami ripping Christopher from his arms. Eddie watching him clean up at poker. Eddie falling apart in his bedroom and letting Buck help put him back together. It’s Eddie giving him his son if something ever happened. It’s a targeted bullet nearly taking Eddie from him. It’s ten years that have felt like no time at all and the entirety of his life.
“Are you crying?” Eddie asks, pulling back just enough to wipe his thumb under Buck’s eye.
“You’re crying,” Buck counters, sniffing a little. He is, they both are. And it’s okay this time.
Eddie kisses him again with an audible wet smack of their lips and he’s still holding on to Buck’s knee. Buck hates his healing body that he can’t wrap his arms around Eddie, pull them down to the bed, feel him completely. He’s been waiting so long without realizing.
“Lunch’s ready!”
Buck hears it but doesn’t register it at first – Chris calling for them from down the hallway.
“Wonder what he made,” Eddie murmurs. He’s petting Buck’s hair, his cheek, his good shoulder – slow, soothing strokes. His eyes are so pretty, and it feels so good. Everything feels warm and whole.
“Hopefully something you can feed me in bed,” Buck says. “Got this bum shoulder.”
“Mhmm.” Eddie kisses him again, slow, purposeful, before he moves to get up from the bed.
“I love you,” Buck almost shouts. Eddie pauses, up on one knee. “That’s what I was going to say.”
Eddie’s smile could raise Buck from the dead. Maybe it already did. “Then stop trying to die.” He bends down and kisses Buck again and maybe Buck will get used to that in a few more years.
“I’m gonna get us lunch,” Eddie continues, “and get Chris, and then we’re all gonna talk about which house we’re going to live in and your PT schedule and which board games we’re gonna play first while you’re laid up. Good?”
Buck nods and wonders how long he has to wait before asking Eddie to marry him. “Yeah, good.”
In a year, Buck will be a Los Angeles Recruit Academy trainer, working as an instructor and mentor, shaping the brightest recruits into competent firefighters. And loving it.
In a year, Buck’s shoulder won’t hurt anymore, although he’ll end up needing surgery to repair labrum tears a few months after he gets home from the hospital. Eddie makes sure he does his PT exercises by doing them with him.
In a year, Eddie’s nightmares about Buck falling through an inferno will subside and he’ll sleep through the night most of the time, curled around Buck in their shared bed. Or leaving space between them when it’s too damn hot.
In a year, Buck will bring Chris with him to a vintage jewelry store in Beverly Hills and both of them will cry a little bit.
In a year, neither Buck nor Eddie will believe life can be as good as it is. Morning coffees. Combined laundry. Heated touches. Lazy evenings on the couch. Decades stretched out before them where neither of them has to worry about being seen, being known, being loved by the other.