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Buck knew something was wrong the second Eddie pulled into the driveway.
There were too many cars.
Chim’s. Maddie’s. And—
Buck went very still.
His parents’ rental.
For a second, he couldn’t breathe. The bruises around his ribs ached with the sudden, shallow drag of air, and every place Bonnie’s cattle prod had touched him seemed to flare back to life under his skin. He stared through the windshield at the familiar shape of his house and felt like he was outside himself, suspended somewhere above the moment, watching a man in his body grip the passenger-side door hard enough to whiten his knuckles.
Eddie killed the engine and looked over at him immediately.
“Buck.”
“I’m fine.”
It came too fast. Reflex. Instinct. The same lie he’d been telling since New Mexico, since the hospital, since the sheriff’s office, since the first moment anyone had asked if he was okay and he’d realised that if he stopped moving, if he stopped joking, if he stopped pretending—He might never get back up.
Eddie didn’t call him on it. Somehow, that was worse.
“You don’t have to go in right away,” Eddie said quietly.
Buck laughed once, hollow and sharp. “It’s my house.”
Eddie’s jaw tightened. He looked like he wanted to argue, but Buck was already reaching for the handle.
The front door opened before they even made it up the path.
“Buck!”
Maddie was down the steps in a second, throwing her arms around him with enough force to make him gasp. Pain lanced through his side, and he bit it back, pressing his face into her shoulder anyway. She was crying—he could feel it in the hitch of her breath; in the way she clung to him like she was afraid he’d vanish if she let go.
“I’m okay,” he murmured automatically.
“Don’t do that,” she whispered fiercely. “Not right now.”
Behind her, Chim hovered in the doorway, trying for a smile and not quite managing it. His eyes flicked over Buck’s face, cataloguing the fading bruises, the stiffness in the way he stood, the raw abrasion along his jaw.
“Good to see you upright,” Chim said, voice rough.
“Was there another option?”
“Buck,” Maddie warned.
He gave a small shrug, because what else was he supposed to do? If he stopped joking, everyone would expect something else from him. Something real. Something he didn’t have words for yet.
And then he looked past them.
Margaret and Philip Buckley were standing in his living room.
His mother stepped forward first, face drawn and pale. “Evan.”
That name. Soft and careful and late, always late. Years too late.
He wanted to turn around and get back in the Jeep. Drive until California disappeared in the rearview mirror. Drive until New Mexico, until that house, until the locked bedroom and the bars on the window and Bonnie’s voice calling him Derek all blurred together into something distant and unreal.
Instead, Buck smiled. It felt terrible on his face.
“Wow,” he said. “Didn’t realise I was hosting a party.”
Eddie, just behind him, made a low, unhappy sound.
Margaret flinched. “We wanted to see you.”
Buck limped past her into the house. “Great. You’ve seen me.”
“Buck,” Philip said, more sharply than Buck would have expected. “That’s enough.”
Buck turned. He didn’t know where the brittle edge in him came from, only that it had been building for days now, maybe longer—since the lab, since Bobby’s fevered goodbye, since almost losing him, since trying to act like he hadn’t heard death in Bobby’s voice and felt his whole world tilt under him.
“No, actually,” Buck said. “I think that’s kind of the theme lately, isn’t it? That’s enough. Don’t ask for more. Don’t make it difficult. Don’t talk about it.”
Silence dropped over the room.
Maddie looked torn between relief and alarm. Chim crossed his arms. Eddie closed the front door quietly and stayed where he was, close enough for Buck to feel him there like an anchor.
Margaret took another step. “Honey, we were worried.”
The words hit him wrong. Too soft. Too easy.
Were worried.
After all of it. After his whole life spent learning how little room he took up in their hearts. After Daniel. After the truth. After every time they’d looked through him like he was a shadow cast by someone they’d actually wanted.
He laughed again, and this time it broke apart halfway through.
“Were you?”
“Buck,” Maddie said gently.
“No, I’m asking.” He looked at his mother. “Were you worried? Or did Maddie call and tell you that your son got kidnapped and tortured, and you thought you should stop by before heading to the airport?”
“Evan—”
“Because I gotta tell you, Mom, the timing feels weird.”
Philip’s expression hardened. “We are here, aren’t we?”
Buck rounded on him. “Yeah. You’re here now.”
Eddie stepped closer. “Buck—”
“No, it’s fine,” Buck said, though his voice was starting to shake. “This is good. We can all just stand here and pretend this is normal. Pretend I didn’t get dragged out of a wreck and locked in somebody’s house because she needed me to be her son.”
Maddie sucked in a breath.
Margaret’s hand flew to her mouth.
And Buck hated that, too—hated the horror on her face, because some stupid, broken part of him still wanted it, still wanted proof that this mattered, that he mattered, and needing that felt like peeling his own skin off.
“She kept telling me I was Derek,” he said, quieter now, staring somewhere over his mother’s shoulder. “Wanted me to act like him, talk like him, be him. And when I wouldn’t—” He swallowed. “When I couldn’t—”
His throat closed.
He saw it all again in jagged flashes. The bedroom. The locked bars. The toy helicopter wing in his trembling hand. Bonnie catching him at the door. The first crackle of electricity arcing through him. The way he’d screamed. The shame of it. The way she only stopped when he sobbed out that he was Derek.
Buck folded his arms tightly over his chest as if he could hold himself together by force.
“No one had to tell me what she wanted,” he said. “I got it. Pretty fast.”
“Buck,” Eddie said, and there was warning in it now, and fear.
But Buck couldn’t stop. Something had split open.
“Because that’s the thing, right?” he said, looking at Margaret now. “I’ve done this before.”
Margaret went white. “Evan, no.”
He smiled at her, and it felt like bleeding.
“Haven’t I? Born for one job. One purpose. Save Daniel.” His voice thickened around the name. “And when I couldn’t do that, what was I supposed to be? What was left?”
“That is not true,” Philip said immediately.
Buck looked at him with naked disbelief. “Isn’t it?”
“We loved you,” Margaret whispered.
The room went still.
Buck stared at her. Really stared. Searching for something solid, something he could hold onto, something that didn’t feel like it was being offered now only because she had to see the damage up close to believe it existed.
And the worst part—the most humiliating part—was that he wanted to believe her.
He wanted it so badly his chest hurt with it.
Then Margaret took another faltering step toward him, tears bright in her eyes, hand lifting like she meant to touch his face.
“Oh, Daniel—”
Everything stopped.
No one moved. No one breathed.
Margaret’s face crumpled in immediate horror, but Buck had already gone rigid.
The floor dropped out from under him.
Not Evan.
Not Buck.
Daniel.
The name echoed through him like a gunshot.
A replacement. A mistake. A ghost.
He took one stumbling step backward. Then another.
“Buck,” Eddie said sharply, reaching for him.
Buck jerked away.
“No—no, don’t—”
His voice cracked so violently it barely sounded like his own. Suddenly, he couldn’t get air in right. The living room blurred. His mother was saying something—apologising, maybe, or crying—but all he could hear was Bonnie’s voice layered over it.
Derek.
His own voice answering, desperate and broken:
I’m Derek, I’m Derek, please stop—
His knees buckled.
Eddie caught his elbow, but Buck twisted free with a strangled sound, backing hard into the wall like he needed something solid behind him, something to keep the room from collapsing inward.
“I tried,” he choked out, to no one and everyone. “I tried, I tried, I tried—”
“Hey, hey, Buck, look at me.” Eddie’s voice was calm now, deliberate, moving closer inch by inch like Buck was something frightened and half-feral. “You’re here. You’re home. Look at me.”
But home didn’t feel safe. Home felt like being cornered by every version of himself he had ever failed to be.
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. It didn’t help. Nothing helped.
He heard the front door open behind him.
Then Athena’s voice, sharp and instantly assessing. “What happened?”
And another voice—steady, warm, beloved in the deepest places of Buck’s heart.
“Buck?”
Bobby.
Buck made a broken sound.
He didn’t even realise he was moving until Bobby was there, crossing the room faster than Buck had seen him move in months, despite the lingering weakness of recovery. Eddie stepped back at once, and then Bobby’s hands were on Buck’s shoulders, grounding and sure.
“Hey,” Bobby said softly. “Hey, kid. I got you.”
That did it.
Whatever Buck had been using to hold himself together shattered.
He folded forward with a sob so raw it tore through the room, and Bobby pulled him in without hesitation, one arm around his back, the other cradling the back of his head. Buck clutched at him with both hands, fingers knotting desperately in Bobby’s shirt like if he let go, he’d lose him too.
“I got you,” Bobby repeated, voice low and steady against Buck’s hair. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”
Buck shook his head helplessly. “I’m not—I’m not—”
“I know,” Bobby said. “I know.”
Across the room, Athena’s gaze swept from Buck’s parents to Maddie and Chim to Eddie, reading the wreckage in seconds. Her expression hardened into something cold enough to stop blood.
“What did they do?” she asked.
No one answered immediately.
Buck was crying too hard to care, the kind of crying that hurt, that dragged itself out of the centre of him with every ragged breath. Bobby just held on tighter, one hand rubbing slow circles between his shoulder blades.
Eddie turned then, placing himself squarely between Buck and his parents.
“What they always do,” Eddie said, voice trembling with fury. “They showed up and made it worse.”
“Eddie,” Maddie said, startled.
“No.” He pointed at Margaret, then Philip. “He walked into his own house after being kidnapped, after being tortured, after nearly being killed, and your first instinct was to what? Expect him to manage your feelings? Pretend he’s fine so none of you have to deal with what happened?”
Margaret was openly crying now. “That’s not what—”
“You called him Daniel.”
Her face collapsed.
Philip stepped forward. “It was a mistake.”
“A mistake?” Eddie snapped. “You don’t get to call that a mistake. Not with him. Not after everything you know.”
Athena moved to Eddie’s side, not stopping him, just standing there like backup in human form.
“You should leave,” she said to Buck’s parents, voice like steel.
Maddie made a distressed sound. “Athena—”
“No,” Chim said quietly, stepping beside his wife. “She’s right.”
Margaret looked at Buck, still crumpled in Bobby’s arms, and seemed to understand at last that there was no version of this where she could fix it tonight.
“Evan,” she whispered.
Buck flinched so hard Bobby felt it.
Athena opened the front door.
Philip took Margaret by the arm. His face had gone grey with shame or anger or both. For one brief second, Buck thought he might argue.
Then he looked at his son—really looked—and whatever he saw there sent him silently toward the door.
The room stayed frozen until it shut behind them.
Only then did Buck sag completely.
Bobby adjusted his grip and guided him carefully toward the couch. “Easy. Easy, I’ve got you.”
Buck let himself be manoeuvred, which was maybe the clearest sign yet that he was truly falling apart. Eddie hovered close, eyes red-rimmed and frantic, while Maddie knelt in front of the couch and took one of Buck’s shaking hands in both of hers.
“You’re safe,” she whispered.
He wanted to answer. Instead, another sob punched out of him.
Bobby sat beside him and pulled him close again, Buck folding sideways against him, forehead pressed to Bobby’s shoulder.
For a while, no one pushed. No one asked. Maddie stayed kneeling in front of him. Chim brought water and set it on the coffee table. Athena touched the top of Buck’s head once, gentle as a blessing, before retreating to give him space. Eddie remained standing just off Bobby’s shoulder like he couldn’t decide whether to pace, punch a wall, or drop to his knees.
It was Bobby who finally said, “Tell us what happened.”
Buck’s fingers tightened convulsively in his shirt.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” Bobby’s voice was soft but certain. “You don’t have to do it all at once.”
Buck took a shuddering breath. “She—” He stopped, swallowed, tried again. “She kept saying I was her son. Derek. She kept—” His voice thinned. “I told her I wasn’t.”
Maddie’s eyes filled instantly.
Buck stared at some fixed point on the floor. “She locked me in this room. There were bars on the door and the window. I tried to get out.” His hand shook harder in Maddie’s. “I thought I could pick the lock.”
Eddie closed his eyes.
“She caught me.” Buck’s breathing turned shallow again. Bobby’s hand moved up to the back of his neck, grounding. “She had this cattle prod thing and she—” He sucked in air like he was drowning. “She kept shocking me. Over and over. I couldn’t—my body wouldn’t—”
Maddie made a small, broken sound.
Buck’s voice dropped to a whisper. “She only stopped when I told her I was Derek.”
No one in the room spoke.
Bobby’s hold around him tightened almost imperceptibly, the only sign of his own emotion.
Buck laughed wetly, miserably. “Guess I learn fast.”
“Don’t,” Eddie said immediately, voice rough. “Don’t do that.”
Buck looked at him then, really looked, and saw the devastation there. The guilt. The fury. The fear.
“She was gonna kill me,” Buck said.
The words landed like a weight.
Athena exhaled slowly. Chim went very still. Maddie’s grip on his hand went painful.
“In the shed,” Buck said. “I woke up tied to a post and she was… she was done pretending by then. Said I’d ruined it. Earl didn’t stop her. And then—” His face crumpled. “Then I heard Eddie.”
Eddie took a step forward.
Buck’s gaze locked on him. “I heard them talking about killing you.”
Eddie’s face drained of colour.
“I couldn’t—I couldn’t do anything.” Buck’s breaths came faster now. “I kept thinking, not Eddie, not Eddie, please, he has Chris, he has a kid, he has to go home—”
“Buck.” Eddie was kneeling in front of him before anyone could stop him. “Hey. I’m here.”
“Then I heard a gunshot.”
Eddie’s face drained of colour.
Buck’s hands shook harder. “I panicked. I thought—” He swallowed, struggling for air. “I thought Eddie was dead. I couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him, and I just—I lost it. I managed to get loose, I don’t even remember how, and I just ran. I snuck up behind Earl and grabbed the cattle prod. I shocked him. I didn’t even think, I just… I needed to get to Eddie, needed to know he was okay.”
Eddie knelt in front of Buck, eyes rimmed red. “I’m okay. I’m here. I was never gone.”
Buck met Eddie’s gaze, desperate. “I thought I’d lost you. It felt like—like everything good could disappear in a second.”
Eddie squeezed Buck’s hand. “You didn’t. You saved me.”
Buck let out a shaky laugh, tears blurring his vision. “I just needed you to be alive. I needed… I needed someone to still be here.”
Bobby squeezed Buck’s shoulder, Maddie pressed in closer, and the room held him together.
Bobby rubbed a steady hand down his back. “And before New Mexico?”
Buck went still again.
That question. Quiet. Precise.
Not just what happened there.
What happened before.
Buck closed his eyes.
“The lab,” he whispered.
The whole room seemed to shift and Bobby’s hand stopped moving.
Buck felt him tense and hated himself instantly. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologise,” Bobby said, so fiercely that Buck opened his eyes in surprise.
Buck looked down at his hands. “I keep seeing it.”
“Seeing what?” Athena asked gently.
Buck swallowed hard. “You.” He looked at Bobby, and the admission came out shredded. “You saying goodbye to me.”
Bobby’s face changed. Pain, deep and immediate.
“In the lab,” Buck said. “You thought you were dying and you—you told me goodbye.” His voice wavered. “And I know you lived, I know that, I know, but I keep hearing it. I keep hearing your voice and every time the phone rings or someone’s late or Eddie doesn’t answer right away or Maddie sounds off, I just…” He pressed a fist to his mouth. “I keep waiting for the moment everything gets taken away.”
No one interrupted.
“I almost lost you,” Buck whispered to Bobby. “And then in New Mexico I thought I was gonna die and all I could think was that I hadn’t said anything. To anyone. About any of it.”
Bobby’s eyes shone. “Kid—”
“I’m so tired,” Buck said, voice collapsing entirely. “I’m so tired of pretending I’m okay because everybody else needs something. I’m tired of being the one who can handle it. I can’t. I can’t do it anymore.”
Bobby pulled him in again, and Buck went willingly, shaking with quieter sobs now, wrung out by the force of finally saying it.
“You don’t have to,” Bobby said into his hair. “Not with me. Not with any of us.”
Maddie stood and sat on Buck’s other side, leaning in until her shoulder pressed to his arm.
“You never did,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry you thought you did.”
Chim crouched in front of him, his usual humour gone completely. “You scared the hell out of all of us, Buckaroo.”
A watery huff escaped him. “Yeah, that seems to be my thing lately.”
Chim pointed at him. “That was one joke. You get one.”
For the first time all night, Buck’s mouth twitched for real.
Athena noticed. “Good. He still has a pulse.”
Eddie let out something halfway between a laugh and a sob and scrubbed both hands over his face before sitting on the coffee table directly across from Buck, like he refused to be farther away than that.
Buck looked at him and saw a hundred things in his face he didn’t know how to name. Fear, relief, anger…love.
Maybe that last one was wishful thinking. Maybe not.
Eddie leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You should’ve told me.”
Buck blinked, raw and exhausted. “About which deeply traumatic event?”
A tiny, unwilling smile pulled at Eddie’s mouth and vanished just as fast. “Any of it.”
“I didn’t want…” Buck looked down. “I didn’t want to make it worse.”
“For who?”
Buck opened his mouth and closed it again.
Eddie shook his head. “That’s the problem, Buck. You always think your pain is gonna be too much for everybody else, so you carry it by yourself until it crushes you.”
Buck had no defence against that because it was true.
Bobby spoke before the silence could turn sharp. “He’s not carrying it alone anymore.”
“No,” Maddie said. “He’s not.”
Athena rose. “Okay. Here’s what’s going to happen. Chim, call and make sure whatever meds they sent him home with are actually useful, because clearly, some doctor in New Mexico lost their mind. Maddie, you’re staying. Eddie—”
“I’m staying too,” Eddie said immediately.
Athena gave him a look. “I assumed.”
For a second, Buck just listened to them. To the low murmur of people who loved him, making plans around him as if his hurt was real, as if it deserved tending, as if he did not have to earn care by being useful first.
It was almost too much.
Bobby stayed beside him through all of it, one hand resting warm and steady between his shoulders.
When the room settled again and the first wave of movement passed, Buck tipped sideways until his head rested against Bobby’s shoulder.
“Sorry,” he murmured, half asleep already from exhaustion, pain, and the crash after panic.
Bobby looked down at him. “For what?”
“For… all of this.”
Bobby’s expression was heartbreakingly gentle. “Buck, listen to me. Nothing that was done to you was your fault. Not in New Mexico. Not in that lab. Not when you were a kid. And you never had to be anyone else to be worthy of love.”
Buck’s face crumpled again, but this time the tears came quieter.
Beside him, Maddie took his hand.
In front of him, Eddie held his gaze, unwavering.
Athena stood guard by the door like no one would ever get through her.
Chim was already on the phone, voice brisk and competent in a way that somehow made the room feel safer.
And Bobby—Bobby was there. Alive. Warm. Solid.
Buck let out a trembling breath.
For the first time since the truck ran them off the road, since the diner, since the crash, since the locked room and the cattle prod and his mother’s voice and all the years before that—
He stopped trying to hold himself together.
He let them hold him instead.
~~~
Once the worst of the storm had passed and Buck was finally starting to breathe again, it was quietly decided among the group that the best thing for now was space.
Eventually, the house quieted as the others gathered themselves to leave. Athena lingered at the door, her gaze steady on Buck. Chim gave Buck’s shoulder a gentle squeeze and promised to check in tomorrow. Maddie hesitated longest, only letting go when Buck reassured her with a tired, genuine smile and a whispered, “I promise, I’m okay with Eddie.”
Bobby was the last to rise. He pressed a hand to the back of Buck’s neck, meeting his gaze with that steady, fatherly warmth. “Call if you need anything. Anything at all.”
Buck nodded, the reassurance settling somewhere deep in his chest. When the door finally closed, the house felt impossibly still—like the echo of everything that had just happened was finally fading, leaving only the two of them behind.
Eddie hovered for a moment, uncertain, and Buck found himself slumping onto the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees, head bowed. The exhaustion in his bones was overwhelming, but right underneath it was a jittery, unreal feeling—like the world might tilt at any second.
He could feel Eddie’s presence, a solid gravity a few feet away. Eventually, Eddie gave in and crossed the room, lowering himself with a gentle thud onto the coffee table in front of Buck, close but not crowding.
“You should lie down,” Eddie offered, voice soft.
Buck snorted, managing a crooked grin. “You should see the couch from my perspective. It’s already lying down. If I get horizontal, you’re carrying me to bed.”
Eddie’s lips twitched, not quite a smile but almost, and Buck took that as a win. He finally made himself look up, catching Eddie’s gaze—intense, worried, but patient.
“Eddie.”
“What?”
“You’re doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The intense staring thing.”
“I’m not staring.”
“You absolutely are.”
A long-suffering sigh came from Eddie as he scrubbed a hand over his face, then gave Buck a look that was half exasperated parent, half best friend. “Buck…”
“Oh, here we go,” Buck muttered, bracing himself. He shifted on the couch, wincing as a rib twinged. “If this is about the cattle prod—”
“It’s not.”
Buck blinked, a little off-balance. “Really? Because I’ve been working on my apology speech.”
Eddie shook his head, smile finally breaking through. “You scared me.”
Buck’s defences wavered. “You found me.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
There was an openness in Eddie’s voice that made Buck’s chest ache. He recognised the fear in Eddie’s eyes—the kind he sometimes saw in his own reflection. Eddie’s voice got a little rougher. “When I woke up in that hospital and they said you weren’t in the car… I thought you were dead.”
Buck stared down at his hands, suddenly shy. “I kept hearing the diner conversation,” Eddie continued. “You saying I should just kill you and put you out of your misery.”
Buck groaned. “Yeah, that was poor wording.”
“You think?”
Buck huffed a weak laugh, but Eddie didn’t smile.
“I thought those were one of the last words I’d hear you say,” Eddie said, voice barely above a whisper. The room went still, the weight of it settling between them.
“I would’ve spent the rest of my life wondering if one of the last thing you heard from me was me being an asshole.”
Buck looked up sharply. “You’re not—”
“Buck.” Eddie’s voice cracked. “Do you have any idea what that did to me?”
Buck’s chest tightened. He’d seen Eddie angry, grieving, but this—this was raw, stripped of all defences.
“I climbed out of a hospital window,” Eddie continued, a little wild. “I stole clothes. I hitchhiked with a guy and a horse.”
Buck blinked. “There was a horse?”
“Yes, Buck. There was a horse.”
Buck stared at him, lips twitching. “That honestly might be the weirdest part of this story.”
Eddie pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s not the point.”
Buck’s voice softened. “I know.”
Silence fell, but it was less brittle than before.
Then Eddie said quietly, “I thought I lost you.”
Buck’s heart twisted. “I’m still here.”
“Yeah.” Eddie looked at him again. “And I realised something when I thought you were gone.”
Buck felt his pulse start climbing. “Oh boy.”
Eddie frowned. “Why is that your reaction?”
“Because every time someone says that in a dramatic tone it’s either a love confession or someone telling me they secretly hate me.”
Eddie blinked.
Buck winced.
“…please don’t be the second one.”
Eddie stared at him for a long second. Then something helpless broke through his expression.
“Buck.”
“What?”
“You’re unbelievable.”
Buck shrugged weakly. “It’s a gift.”
Eddie shook his head. “You almost died and you’re still doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Deflecting.”
Buck opened his mouth, then closed it. Yeah, fair.
Eddie took a breath. “I realised I can’t keep pretending this is just… friendship.”
Buck’s brain stalled. “…what?”
Eddie’s gaze didn’t waver. “I’m in love with you.”
The words landed softly but Buck felt them like an explosion.
For a second he just stared, processing, or more likely, buffering.
“You… what?”
Eddie exhaled sharply. “I know the timing sucks.”
Buck still hadn’t blinked.
“I know you just went through hell and you probably need space and therapy and like—six months of sleep—but I can’t go back to pretending this isn’t real after what happened.”
Buck finally found his voice. “You’re… in love with me.”
“Yes.”
“Like—romantically.”
Eddie stared at him. “Yes, Buck.”
“Not like a platonic life-partner situation.”
“Buck.”
“Just checking.”
Eddie let out a frustrated breath. “I thought you were dead!”
Buck flinched and Eddie’s voice softened immediately.
“And the idea that I never told you… that I never gave us a chance… I can’t live with that.”
Eddie fiddled with Buck’s hand, thumb tracing gentle circles, nervous but determined. “I just… I needed you to know. I can’t keep pretending. I want more—if you do. We can take it as slow as you need, or not at all, but I had to say it.”
Buck swallowed, eyes shining with something between disbelief and hope. “You really mean it? You want… this? Us?”
Eddie nodded, earnest and steady. “I want all of it. The late-night talks, the stupid arguments about takeout, movie nights where you fall asleep on my shoulder, and—God, Buck, everything. I want you.”
Buck laughed wetly, wiping his eyes with his free hand. “You’re really bad at pretending, you know that?”
Eddie’s answering smile was soft and crooked. “Yeah, well. Never was good at hiding things from you.”
Buck squeezed Eddie’s hand, his voice going quiet and serious. “I’m scared. But I want this too. I want you.”
“Yeah?” Eddie’s voice was barely a whisper.
“Yeah.” Buck’s answering smile was small but real. “And not just the hand-holding, either. When my ribs are better, you’re getting the kiss of your life.”
Eddie’s face broke into a grin, relief and joy flooding his features. “I’ll hold you to that, Buckley.”
“Promise.” Buck nudged him playfully, then let the moment settle, both of them grinning like idiots.
They fell quiet again, but this time the silence was full of something warm and bright. Buck let his head rest lightly on Eddie’s shoulder, feeling the solid comfort of being wanted, chosen, loved.
Eddie pressed a gentle kiss to Buck’s hair, lips lingering for a moment. “You’re safe now. We both are.”
Buck closed his eyes, letting the truth of it sink in. For the first time, he didn’t feel like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. He just felt… home.
“Hey, Eddie?”
“Yeah?”
Buck looked up, eyes clearer than they’d been in weeks. “I’m really glad you climbed out that hospital window.”
Eddie chuckled, shaking his head. “Yeah, me too.”
They sat together, hands clasped, hearts open, the future unwritten but finally theirs.
And as the sun crept softly into the room, Buck and Eddie—together, at last—let themselves hope.