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“When does a war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?”

― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Buck thinks about mortality like he does birthdays. He doesn’t put a lot of weight on his own, and it all somehow leads back to his childhood. 

His mentor at the Fire Academy called it a bad habit, something to be trained out of him. It’s probably the sole reason he didn’t graduate at the top of his class—because he kept making calls that would save the most lives instead of his own. Apparently, that’s frowned upon; Buck never understood why until his best friend cut his line 40 feet under the ground.

“You act like you’re expendable, ” Eddie had said, back in May, after Buck had watched him lay in a pool of his own blood for a few seconds too long for it not to be permanently seared into his brain, and had broken down crying in front of his son like he had any right to. “But you’re wrong.”

The words register and sink in and Buck swallows them for about 24 hours until he clocks on for shift—where there’s a car dangling precariously on the edge of a bridge and a harness in Buck’s outstretched hands. He looks at Ravi, and Chim, at Hen or Bobby, and maybe he deserves to live, but not as much as they do.

I am expendable, he’d thought, hovering above an ocean of jagged rock and choppy waves. I am, I am, I am.

Eddie told him he wasn’t expendable in May. He sat on a hospital cot high on pain meds, and gave him Christopher documented on paper like it was nothing. He asked Buck if he would maybe look at these new circumstances and consider not holding his life in the palm of his hand like a basketball, throwing it wherever it’s needed to score, and Buck agreed, because it was May and they were sitting on a hospital bed. And because Eddie had just been shot in the shoulder.

But if it came down to it…if there was ever the slightest chance of Eddie’s survival, over Buck’s or not, then Eddie has to know that Buck would throw his body down the side of a cliff to save him. Because any part of Eddie will always, always, be better than all of Buck ever could be. 

And Christopher needs his father. Just like the rest of the 118 has a real, tangible family to go home to while Buck strides in to work every day with a head tangled up in things that weren’t made for people like him. He lets Taylor kiss down the hollow of his throat at one in the morning and figures this is about as close as he’ll ever get. And that’s fine. It’s Taylor; she’s funny and familiar and the sex is good, but she’s not—

“Hey,” Eddie stretches beside him on the couch, arm no longer in a sling as of three weeks ago, and taps Buck’s foot with his own. “Are you even watching? You know Chim’s going to want a book report on this movie the next time you’re on shift.”

It’s July now and Buck still can’t get over the way Eddie says it so easily. You’re on shift. 

It’s July and Eddie’s doing well—or, at least, as well as can be expected. He still mutters frustratedly about physical therapy when Christopher’s not listening, and doesn’t fare well with loud noises (they don’t send Eddie diving for concrete or anything but always seem to lead to a headache that can never be solved with a few Ibuprofen), but it’s getting better with every passing day. And for the rest of it…well, it’s manageable.

“Course,” Buck smiles back easily—everything’s easy in the Diaz house, he never has to feign it. “Sorry, just zoned out for a sec.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but goes to pause the movie. “I’ll explain it to you,” he says, like it’s the greatest inconvenience in the world. “It’s fine. Ana and I watched it again a few weeks ago.”

Buck hums in response. He’s actually never really spoken to Ana outside of a hospital room or without Eddie there to mediate, but she seems familiar to Buck in the same way Eddie’s parents were. Simple. Proverbial somehow, in the way fake-innocence and a southern heart sometimes are.

It’s a nice story: a man finds a woman that his parents approve of, and they fall in love. She’s perfect in every way, and he’s happier than he’s ever been.

“—and then he comes back, right? Makes some money and buys a boat for Bubba and all that, and then he reconnects with Jenny, his childhood best friend, and they get together except she leaves him the morning after and...you’re still not listening, are you?”

And, the answer’s no. The answer’s somewhere in between Eddie’s laugh lines and the care-free look in his eyes. “I am,” Buck drawls sarcastically, because it’s the only defense mechanism he knows these days. “I mean, what’s more fascinating after a long shift than a movie from the 1990s-”

“It’s a classic!”

“Yeah but I was like, 3 when it came out. You were—”

“I was 7.”

“—like 20 or something

Eddie grins into his beer. Buck does not watch his Adam's apple as he swallows. “Are you calling me old?”

Buck snorts. “I'm saying I think you were born as a 70-year old technophobe.”

“A technophobe that’s seen Forrest Gump,” Eddie points out. “Also, fuck you.”

It’s not silence that lapses over them, not really, with the refrigerator humming and the cars and emergency sirens ever so often in the distance, so Buck doesn’t feel tempted to fill it. Eddie sings some obscure Spanish song beneath his breath as he sips at his drink, and doesn’t move to grab the TV remote off the coffee table. They bask in it long enough that condensation drips down Buck’s fingers onto his wrist.

Eddie looks peaceful here, in that, eyes half-closed, tilt of neck sort of way. He’s illuminated by the warm glow of the kitchen light and something else golden that seems to follow him around; live inside of him. He catches Buck looking—he always does—and quirks his lips up at him. 

Buck lingers in it, the same way one might under the blankets on a cold winter morning. He’s no longer a big fan of waves; but, here, with Eddie, he’s never wanted to drown in something so badly.

“I should go soon,” he mutters, mostly to appease the glaringly bright oven clock. “Early morning.”

He’s got a shift without Eddie tomorrow and has to pretend that the simple fact of it doesn’t calm him; has to act like it doesn’t make him breathe easier to know that Eddie’s safe at home and not on the streets of Los Angeles, where there’s no longer a sniper on the loose but the memory of one, and Buck feels the sting of May just as sharply now as he did back then. 

Buck’s never been particularly worried about his own sanity. He still isn’t really, but he’d rather not reach that breaking point at work. Actually, he’d rather not reach it at all, but on days like these, when the world is being a little too kind, it seems inevitable that he will.

“You don’t have to,” Eddie says, like he always does. “Plenty of room on this couch.” 

“It’s a really early shift,” Buck says apologetically, a bit pathetically if he thinks about it so he tries not to. “Bobby’s hauling all in at 6 in the morning.”

Eddie moves to stretch his arms out behind him and Buck makes an urgent noise that stops him before he pulls at his shoulder. It's a habit, of course, something that can’t be trained out of a person in 3 months when he’s actively been doing the motion for 33 years, but somehow, Buck’s warnings have become something of a habitual practice too.

Neither of them mention it, or, they don’t anymore at least, and Buck stands to gather his things: keys, wallet, collect the beer bottles and put them in the recycling on his way out since tomorrow’s garbage day. Eddie watches him, finally switching off the TV and standing to accompany Buck to the door. By now, Christopher is fast asleep in his room. Tomorrow Buck will get a text from Eddie wondering if there’s any way Buck could swing by the store to pick up things for his science project due next week.

He never asks Ana these things and Buck doesn’t know what to make of it. There’s evidence of her around the house—the glass cups are kept on the lower shelves now and there’s new baking trays in the oven that Buck never bought and Eddie doesn’t know how to—but it’s Buck that Eddie asks to run to the store for him, and a small part of Buck takes satisfaction in that.

It’s not even that…Buck doesn’t hate Ana—he doesn’t hate anyone—but if they’re getting into the specifics he can’t bring himself to hate Ana. Eddie will talk about her in a quiet voice, or mention something about how they went to the park last weekend, and it’s different. It’s not loud or teasing like it is with Buck, and Buck really shouldn’t compare himself to Ana anyway, but he can’t help it. 

He’s never seen Eddie actively date someone before, is the thing. He’s seen Eddie with Shannon, shoulders relaxed with familiarity even if they fought like cats and dogs. He’s seen Eddie get flirted with on calls, a touch assured but also a bit surprised each time. But he’s never seen Eddie falling in love with someone. He thinks this might be what it looks like.

“Well if Bobby asks, don’t tell him you were here,” Eddie says, leaning against the wall as Buck puts his shoes on and looking down at him. “You know how he gets. About you.”

“Sure,” Buck replies, a vivid image in his head of Bobby texting Eddie, stop keeping Buck up all night in the groupchat and Chim’s hurried reply of at least 15 question marks in response. “He gets, ‘Buck if you’re going to fall asleep in the ladder truck at least don’t drool on the windows’ and then he’ll call me into his office and demand to know why.”

“Buck,” Eddie says in a perfect imitation of Bobby. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right? Even if you stole the fire truck again. I promise I won’t fire you this time.”

Buck snorts and Eddie grins and Buck kind of wants to stand here forever but then his phone buzzes because Taylor’s texting him, asking Buck which dress looks better on her for some journalism conference, so it’s a little too close to midnight for forever and Buck wasn’t joking about the Bobby thing.

“I should go,” Buck repeats, for what feels like the fifth time that night. “But, uh, I’ll be here on Tuesday? Text me if you need anything. And probably, you might want to get some sleep before Chris wakes you up in…” He checks his watch, “Seven hours.”

Eddie blinks like the latter half of the sentence went over his head and he’s about to argue with Buck over something nonsensical—never let it be said that they don’t know each other—but his face clears at the last second. “Right,” he agrees. “18-hour shift.”

Buck scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, and well.” Both of his shoes are on; Buck has no reason to keep standing here in Eddie’s doorway any longer but he can’t help it. “Taylor’s coming over too.”

Eddie doesn’t have a poker face. Most of the time, it’s incredibly entertaining, especially when they’re stuck on a 24-hour ons with batshit insane calls to match. Now, it makes Buck feel a bit unnerved. Eddie hasn’t got a poker face, but Buck can’t quite pick out what he’s trying to say. The whole knowing each other thing got shot down fast, it seems.

“She’s coming over at midnight,” Eddie states. “Doesn’t leave a lot of room for interpretation, does it?”

Eddie doesn’t like Taylor—Buck knows that. Hell, half of the greater Los Angeles area must know that, what with “Your girlfriend's probably not gonna help out with that” and “go team”, but it’s always been superficial to Buck. Of course, Eddie doesn’t like Taylor. It’s Buck, Eddie’s best friend, and it’s Taylor, dating said best friend, and since Eddie’s not in love with him, it’s probably okay to hate Buck’s girlfriend without anyone calling you out on it.

“What?” Buck asks, because he’s his own self-saboteur. He should’ve left minutes ago. “You and Ana don’t—”

Eddie picks at a spot on his jeans. “Not at midnight,” he mutters, looking at anything except Buck, still stuck on the timing like it makes any sort of difference. “I’ve got Christopher.”

They glance at each other like they haven’t discussed it before—(dating not, you know, the proper schedule for sex). For some reason unknown to Buck, they shuffle their feet like Hen doesn’t ask about their girlfriends at every 118 family dinner, or Buck and Eddie don’t text each other restaurant suggestions as a segue to talk about how their date went. 

Then again, discussing it doesn’t mean they’ve spoken about it. Buck never told Eddie about him and Taylor going official and Eddie never asked. Buck subtly begs for information about Eddie’s feelings for Ana and Eddie doesn’t give. It’s a careful balance, and Buck would hate to interrupt it here, in Eddie’s doorway on a sticky July night, so he chooses not to.

Buck laughs and Eddie’s face morphs into something almost bashful, if it wasn’t, well, Eddie. “Well, as long as she makes you happy,” he teases. “Night, Eds.”

Eddie’s eyelashes flicker, a trick of the lamp light. He nods and then yawns and then grins sheepishly as he bids Buck goodnight as well, backing out of the frame. He closes the door with his left hand out of habit and Buck—

Buck walks straight to his jeep without looking back at the Diaz house, kitchen light flickering off in the background. He puts the beer bottles into the recycling as promised and trips over himself until he slumps over in the driver’s seat, head pressed against the steering wheel. His loft is empty tonight. He’s got no one to go home to. He sighs and starts the engine.

(Two years ago, on October 7th, war-torn and shaking with the relief of Christopher, Buck realized he was in love with Eddie Diaz.

By dawn the next morning, still spitting up god knows what into the toilet, he remembered that only good people were allowed to have good things.)

Buck thinks he could fall in love with Taylor, but it’d probably be easier if she put down her phone.

They’re underneath the covers of the bed in Buck’s loft, feet tangled together and arms noticeably distant—since Buck has his behind his head, watching TV, and Taylor’s simultaneously scrolling through Twitter and taking notes on her tablet. 

It feels incredibly domestic. Except, for the part where it doesn’t at all.

“Whatcha reading?” Buck finds himself asking, craning his neck and squinting to read the words: some article about the new wave of journalism in grassroots politics. He knows that politics has never interested Taylor. It can’t be more interesting than laying here in bed with him.

“Just some notes,” Taylor peers down at Buck who’s resting his head on the pillow while she remains sitting up. “Nothing super important. Covering my bases in case they assign me to something at work.”

“They’re switching you to politics now?” Buck asks, shuffling closer to her, to the glow of her phone screen. “I thought you liked staying on the ground. The mysterious stuff.”

Taylor laughs and Buck gets a real grin out of her. Not the Taylor Kelly Channel Eight patented charm thing either but a warm one, the one that, as far as Buck knows, only he gets. 

She’s gorgeous all of the time; gives Buck a heady feeling when they see each other out on calls and she’s wearing the heels and the makeup and the wit. But sometimes, after 9 like now, she’s soft around the edges. She sets her things on the nightstand and crawls on top of him, resting her head on the groove of Buck’s shoulder. “Mysterious, hmm?” Her breath is warm against his ear. “Where’d you hear that?”

Buck’s heartbeat speeds a little faster. Taylor has her hands pressed to his chest. She must feel the thud but she doesn’t comment on it. Instead, her palms trace down to his ribcage. Buck intertwines their legs together and reminds himself that he wants this; that this is all he’s ever wanted. 

He’s been doing that a lot lately—the remembering. Being with Taylor never used to be this complicated, even in the back of a news van or a bathroom stall with trashy, too bright lighting. He’s pretty sure, at the very least, sex never used to be this complicated, with this many right or wrong answers. Taylor’s enjoying herself, Buck’s enjoying himself, and there shouldn’t be anything more to it.

And yet, there is, pooling in Buck’s stomach like the gel of an ice pack, only compounding with every visit to see Eddie and Christopher and every mention of Ana and every red strand of hair on Buck’s pillow when he wakes up. Buck wants this—he really does—it’s just having a hard time sticking.

“Oh, you know,” he says lightly, because he’s good at this part, the flirting, doesn’t have to try too hard or wonder if it’ll be the last straw. “Around town. Y-you’re kind of a hot topic.”

Taylor kisses a spot on the underside of his jaw and he inhales sharply. They move against each other and it’s all just so practiced and complicated that it’s driving Buck insane. She slides her hands underneath Buck’s black tank top and Buck, for no discernible reason at all, goes, “Wait.”

She pauses. “Wait,” she half-asks, semi-states. “Okay. Waiting.”

And Buck just…doesn’t have an answer for her. He wanted this. He wants this. He thinks. He’s not sure. (Something about the pressure of Taylor’s fake nails touching the soft skin just above his hip). He feels light-headed about it. Something. Not this. What could possibly be—nothing.

“Nevermind,” Buck swallows; looks at the curve of Taylor’s chest until it disappears under Buck’s t-shirt, too large on her and begging for someone to take it off. He wants this. He does. “You were saying?”

Taylor smirks and pulls off his tank-top in one swift motion. The sex is practiced, but that also means it’s familiar. And it’s not the…not the other thing, woman. It’s a bed, not a couch in a therapist’s office.

(Something about the way Taylor’s hair dusts against Buck’s lips).

Eddie comes to the station a few days later with Christopher to drop off his reinstatement paperwork in person. 

Buck’s stretched out on the couch when they arrive—pretty much everything attached to him aches for no reason, and he really must look miserable enough because Chim doesn’t even sweep his legs off the arm rest like he usually does—but he hears the shout of “Buck!” and the laughter that comes with it and somehow makes it on to his feet by the time Chris reaches the top step.

“Hey, buddy,” he cheers, a warmth he doesn’t have to fake blossoming in his chest where his heart is. He scoops Christopher up in his arms as Eddie shoots them an amused look and leaves them to it, like they didn’t all just see each other two nights ago. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re going to the Natural History Museum,” Christopher explains. “Dad’s taking me. He said we could go to the zoo, but I told him we couldn’t go without you.” He looks around suspiciously, cataloging everything that’s happening around the loft—which is essentially nothing, since they’ve only had three calls since shift started. “You are busy, aren’t you?”

“Bobby’s holding me hostage,” Buck replies, rolling his eyes dramatically. 

Cap glances over at the sound of his name and raises an eyebrow, like he knows Buck’s disparaging him in front of a 10-year-old, but Christopher giggles and starts talking about what he’d researched about the exhibits at home, and for a moment, Buck can breathe again. So he doesn’t dare look back.

“First, we’re going to see the dinosaurs,” Christopher announces. Buck’s still on his knee; he and Chris are at eye-level and it’s probably strange for both of them because Buck usually behaves like a normal adult in front of Chris and he’s also old enough that he’s joints will ache if he stays there too long, but he doesn’t want to more and shatter the illusion. “My science teacher says they’re…60 million years old.”

“Kinda like your dad then,” and Christopher’s laughter peals through the loft. Hen’s got a fond expression on her face that Buck hasn’t seen directed at him in ages. 

“Hey, Chris, wanna try one of these chocolate chip cookies?” Chimney offers from the other side, closer to the coffee machine. “Cap made them, so you don’t have to worry about food poisoning like you do with your dad.”

Buck squeezes his eyes shut. The click of Chris’s crutches as he goes feels like a drum beat echoing in his skull—he doesn’t have a headache, objectively—but something has felt wrong since January. A series of events one after the other with no reprieve. 

He’s not tired, but every bone in his body screams with exhaustion. And it’s no one’s fault, because it’s Eddie’s on the weekdays and Maddie and Jee-Yun on Fridays or a quick (2-hour, he can’t help it, okay?) stop when he gets off shift during the daytime. It’s Taylor on Saturday and some Sundays and at midnight when he can’t sleep and she can’t either. And then it’s the station, with none of the four, and for some reason, that’s the only time he notices it.

“Come on,” Buck protests, standing. “Eddie’s not that bad. I’m teaching him breakfast foods. Uh, it’s going better two-handed though.” He looks at Eddie, who’s leaning against the back of the couch, grinning at something Hen’s saying. Like…Buck doesn’t know. Like Eddie’s having the time of his fucking life being on the streets of L.A. again. 

Shouldn’t he be? Some small, rational part of Buck wonders. Eddie’s always been braver than you. He’s probably over it by now. Don’t drag him down with you.

“—Buck?”

He blinks. Chim’s looking at him expectantly and Buck’s been staring at his head like a creepy person so he’d better think of an excuse before anyone calls Bobby’s attention to it and he asks Buck if he wants to be man behind this shift and—

Wait. Still staring.

“Sorry,” Buck saves, tapping his head. “Just, kinda, tune you out sometimes.”

Offense is the best defense and Chim immediately forgets what he was even talking about in favor of swatting Buck on the arm. As they bicker, they slowly meander towards the other three. Bobby raises his eyebrows in amused disappointment. Chimney and Buck don’t stop hitting each other.

The 118 seems to buy everything Buck throws at them without too much protest, but he feels the need to overcompensate somehow. Bobby and Eddie are in the middle of a conversation as Eddie listens, one hand on Christopher’s shoulder, who’s standing in between Buck and his dad nibbling on his second cookie and examining a print-out map of the museum. It’s clearly not the place for Buck to interrupt. He does anyway.

“Should you even be driving?” he nudges Eddie’s arm. 

Eddie gives him a look that’s…Buck thinks it’s supposed to be fond but there’s something else in the gesture. The crinkles around his eyes when he smiles aren’t nearly as pronounced as they usually are. “Doctor cleared me. Physical therapist cleared me. Don’t tell me I need your permission too.”

“I’m not talking about the sling,” Buck replies, sharing a meaningful roll of his eyes with Christopher. “You know how you get when there’s weekend traffic.”

“Road rage,” Chris confirms. “He said, like, two bad words.”

“Eddie,” Hen faux-gasps and Eddie throws his hands up and mock-glares at Buck for bringing it up. Bobby looks like he might actually want to chide them, depending on the word, and Chim doesn’t say anything, because god knows how many swear words Jee-Yun’s picked up over the months.

“Still say less than Buck,” Eddie mutters. “Traitor.”

“He said three when we were working on my science project,” Christopher chimes in. And Bobby claps Buck on the back like both he and Eddie aren’t fighting a losing battle.

“Ah, we should go,” Eddie says, glancing at the watch on his wrist. “Gotta get through all the exhibits before they close.”

Bobby offers Christopher a cookie for the road and Buck stands by the couch as Hen and Chim head downstairs to restock the ambulance. Eddie takes the chance to practically box Buck into the arm rest. Metaphorically speaking, of course. 

“Are you okay?”

Buck doesn’t…really he’s fine, he’s actually better than he was before Eddie and Chris arrived, so he doesn't know what Eddie’s talking about. And anyway, it feels like Buck’s the one meant to be asking the question. “What?”

“Like,” Eddie shrugs, like it’s something they ask each other every so often (it’s not). “You look kinda tired.” 

A strange quality shadows over his eyes and Buck feels like tugging it out of him, demanding that Eddie just say what he wants to, except he doesn’t think Eddie knows what he means by it either. 

“You can’t blame Taylor for this one,” Eddie continues, one eye on Buck and the other on Christopher’s post-lunch dessert intake. “I know she was covering that news story up in Pasadena.”

Buck feels his lip twitch upwards, it’s less natural than it used to be. He hopes he conveys poorly-concealed amusement and not that the hair on the back of his neck is stark straight like a frightened alley cat. “You watch Channel Eight?”

“No.”

“Then how—”

“It was an accident. I stumbled over the remote, that you probably left lying on the floor two nights ago—”

“You’re telling me you haven’t turned the TV on in two full days? Or that Eddie Diaz — father extraordinaire would leave something out where Chris could trip on it? I mean, not that he’s as clumsy as you are, but—”

“Dad, Buck,” Christopher interrupts with a dramatic sigh. The cadence of both words are the same. Buck doesn’t know how to feel about that these days. He hadn’t known how to feel about it before either, but he was ignorant enough about the legal document sitting in a safety deposit box at Eddie’s bank. “We have to see the dinosaurs.”

Eddie grins, and it’s so carefree that Buck can’t possibly be existing in the same space with it. He tries to remember if the doctors at the hospital back in May or July or any of the weeks in between said anything about retrograde amnesia, and if Buck is failing by not picking out the signs now because it seems like Eddie doesn’t remember any of it.

“Come on then,” Eddie agrees, motioning towards the stairs. He looks interested and involved and genuine and Buck doesn’t like to think about Eddie and Philip Buckley as opposites of each other—likes to pretend they exist in different spaces entirely—but God Eddie’s a really good dad.

And how is Buck supposed to compare with that?

Buck’s…he’s smart. He likes big words and random facts and he re-skims over his firefighter exam study booklet every couple of months as a refresher, because if he’s going to pull the risky shit then he might as well have the know-how to back it up. And he’s attractive, sure; a pretty face for a bar bathroom and to lead on for a few months before you inevitably find someone better, more real to fit into your dreamscape. But he’s not…

Buck is not good. Unequivocally, he’s not, in part because sometimes he doesn’t want to be, like when Taylor teases him or when Bobby lectures him about the last stunt that he pulled and Buck feels this twinge of annoyance build and build in his chest, the tendons in his forearms pulled tight with the effort of trying not to explode outwards. He thinks about his childhood, about how angry he was, always angry. He thinks good people aren’t malicious like he is.

He knows Eddie gets angry too. Or, ‘got’ angry would probably fit better because now everything on Eddie’s face is muted, a little quieter, a little more thoughtful. But it’s justified. Eddie got dealt a worse hand than Buck and he’s still…

Buck knows how a death in the family can affect your relationship with your kid, is all. Eddie joining an underground fight club instead of pushing himself away from Christopher feels different after February; a little more significant now. And Buck would move hell and high water for Christopher, but if Eddie died in May, Buck thinks he’d be walking around with cracks around the edges for the rest of his goddamn life. 

“Are you sure you can’t come?” Christopher asks Buck. “We could wait for you.”

“Shift gets off at 6, bud,” Buck replies, smoothing his hand through Christopher’s hair. “Tell you what, though. You take a bunch of pictures today, and if your dad’s okay with it, I’ll come over later and you can tell me about all of them.”

“You’re always invited, Buck,” Christopher says impatiently, and Eddie makes a faint noise of surprise, but he doesn’t contest it. “We can make dad order a pizza!”

Eddie steps forward sort of reproachfully. “No pizza, kid,” he says, but it’s a little half-hearted. “Ana’s coming over tonight, remember? She’s making some, potato pasta thing.”

“Gnocchi,” Bobby offers helpfully from behind Buck. He’d had forgotten that Bobby was even there, and when Buck turns, Cap’s watching them with the curve of his mouth turned upwards, resting his hand on his coffee cup like he’s gearing up to give some sort of life lesson about tiny potato dumplings.

“You’re still welcome, Buck,” Eddie says. Always welcome. “I’m going to make a salad.”

“I can bring garlic bread,” Buck offers, and doesn’t point out that he doesn’t so much as bring things to the Diaz place anymore but monopolize their kitchen entirely. “You sure she won’t mind?’

Eddie shrugs and says, “Nah” at the same time and Buck’s not really sure what to make of that even though he’s pretty sure there is something to make of it. But Christopher is pulling at Eddie’s t-shirt and they exchange hurried goodbyes because it’s nearing 3pm and Buck knows the exhibits only stay open until 5.

Then it’s just Buck and Bobby in the kitchen. And not for the first time, Buck feels like when Eddie leaves, he takes Buck’s happiness with him.

“So,” Buck says, finally turning around from the view of the app bay. “Know any good garlic bread recipes?”

Bobby opens his mouth to reply, or maybe just to point out what Buck already knows—that as soon as Christopher and Eddie leave Buck’s line of sight, his shoulders drop like a marionette doll with its strings cut—but Buck’s phone buzzing on the counter between them stops Bobby before he can say anything. 

It’s Taylor, and Buck’s heart beats a bit faster because it’s Taylor and he isn’t in love with her yet but he’s clinging to the idea that he one day might be. So his heart rate speeds up and adrenaline pumps through him; infatuation but maybe also a Pavlovian response to her contact picture. Buck’s given up on trying to intellectualize it.

He waves his phone at Bobby and Cap nods, but it’s awkward because they still haven’t talked about Taylor or whether or not Bobby still doesn’t like her, and if Buck really gets into it, he and Bobby haven’t had a proper conversation since Buck confessed that it was his fault that Eddie got shot. Which is what makes these visits from Eddie so tricky, because Buck and Bobby have been on the edge of some life-changing conversation for the better half of two months, except Buck isn’t sure that he can handle anything changing right now.

“Hey,” Buck says into the phone. He’s leaning on the railing. Chim makes eye contact with him and motions at the ladder truck like ‘Hey, stop talking to your fucking girlfriend and do your job’ but Buck ignores him. “What’s up?”

“Just wondering what you’re up to tonight,” Taylor replies breezily. “And if you want to come over. I’m not sure when I’ll get off work but there’ll be plenty of time to have dinner and stuff.”

“I…” Buck shakes his head; distinctly, he feels like there are walls somewhere, off in the distance, and they’re closing in. “Actually, I’m going to dinner at Eddie’s place tonight.”

He can practically see Taylor raise an eyebrow. “Okay?” she asks. “Why are you saying it like that? You go over there for dinner half the week anyway.”

If there’s any bitterness in her tone, he can’t detect it. And it hardly matters in the grand scheme of things, when Buck’s already so selfish, but it does make him feel guilty, bringing up conflict where there is none. He likes Taylor, and that itself feels like a betrayal to Bobby and Athena, but he can’t even like her correctly. And that feels worse.

“I don’t know,” he mutters. “Ana’s going to be there. Eddie’s girlfriend.”

“The stuck up principal?”

“Taylor,” he protests, not half-heartedly. “I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to,” she answers. Hen laughs at Chimney down beside the ambulance. Buck thinks it’s a miracle the alarm hasn’t rung. “I was there at that welcome home party. According to her, you and Eddie have never sworn in front of his kid.”

Buck laughs, but he knows it comes across way too nervous. He shuffles his feet and there’s a few beats of silence that seem to last forever before he asks, “Do you want me to cancel?”

He regrets the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth. Or, he doesn’t but he wants to take them back anyway. Ana is perfectly nice, and Buck likes spending time at the Diaz house, but he thinks he likes it more than he likes spending time with Taylor right now and that’s…if they’re not in their Honeymoon phase still, only a couple of days after their two month anniversary that neither of them remembered to mark down, then who says they’re not right back to old habits?

Buckette 1.0, Chim had called Taylor. It makes Buck wonder if she’s gone through her upgrades.

“No?” Taylor says, and it feels like they’ve been having this entire conversation in questions. She must notice it too because there’s nowhere else to go after Buck just shot her down and they’re both still at work. “Listen, I’ll call you later. Or, if you need a rescue from third-wheeling just shoot me a text and I’ll fake an emergency or something.”

“I won’t be third-wheeling,” Buck points out. “Christopher will be there.”

“Right,” Taylor replies dryly. And then she hangs up the phone, and Chim hollers at him from down below with bags under his eyes because Jee has colic, and Hen is humming to herself and Buck is—

Buck doesn’t relive the shooting every time he’s at the Diaz house. He doesn’t dream about it at night or let it fuck with him on calls with skyrises making up their surrounding. But he does think about it sometimes, when Eddie’s not there; when he’s dressed in his uniform or a white button-down or when he can’t save someone and his first thought is, Well, at least I saved Eddie, like one day he might actually believe it.

And clearly, the uncertainty shows, because Eddie just asked if he was okay and Bobby’s been keeping an eye on him ever since that goddamn crane and Buck is just so overwhelmed that when he stops moving for more than 2 seconds to think about it, he can’t breathe. 

He wants to be selfish so badly. He wants to march up to Bobby and tell him how not okay he is and ask if he has any advice that isn’t just, Don’t do it again; wants to tell him that this time he’ll actually listen to his advice, Buck swears. Anything to get this feeling out from his throat and into the kitchen sink where it belongs.

But Eddie was the one who got shot. Not him. So he can’t. He won’t. Just in case; on the off-chance that Eddie might need him to be okay right now. Because Christopher needs Eddie more than he needs Buck, and Buck can’t fail the kid again—not after the tsunami, the lawsuit; Eddie’s undeserved faith in him. Besides, he’s learned his lesson: not every issue in the world is about him. 

Certainly, he’s not going to make Eddie’s shooting one.

“Buck,” Hen calls, cutting into his thoughts. “Can you please get down here before Chim starts washing the firetruck himself?”

He leaps up, not daring to look at Bobby behind him. “He always uses too much cleaning spray.”

Chimney sputters and Hen huffs, but she shoots her best friend a fond look. “Exactly,” she replies. “Now, stop texting your girlfriend and get your ass in line before you get fired again.”

Buck gives her a mock-salute and heads to work. Normally, he would have Eddie standing beside him. Buck would say “You missed a spot over there ” and Eddie would splash him with dirty towel water and call him nitpicky. Instead, he’s listening to Hen and Chim in the background, the latter always complaining about something these days, and trying not to make the silence any more overwhelming than it actually is.

Sometimes, when Maddie’s having a good day, Buck will follow Chimney back to their house to see his niece and eat a ridiculous amount of take-out with his big sister, and things will feel normal again. Then, inevitably it seems, Chimney will bring up Taylor and Maddie will do that thing where she very noticeably pretends that she doesn’t hate her.

“We don’t have to talk about Taylor,” Buck says around a mouthful of Lo Mein. “Clearly you don’t like her. That’s fine. We don’t have to talk about it.”

“Touchy,” Chim mutters. Buck wants to glare at him, but he’s trying not to ruin his sister’s once-in-a-blue moon days where she doesn’t go to sleep at 7 pm, so he’s magnanimous about it. 

Maddie puts the hand that’s not holding McDonalds french fries up in surrender. “I don’t hate your girlfriend,” she says, though Buck has to notice that she doesn’t say anything about simply disliking her. “I don’t even know her. All I know is what I’ve heard from him.” 

She nods at Chim and he quickly mumbles something about checking on Jee-Yun, who’s been asleep for the last hour and also makes it very widely known when she wakes up. Maddie watches him go with this hopeful expression on her face—one Buck hasn’t seen in ages. 

Buff-Fridays are getting fewer and farther in between and Buck feels like trying to handle it is like trying to collect running water in his palms. He’s not used to this Maddie, the one that doesn’t drop everything to ask Buck about new developments in his life as soon as he walks in the door; the one that doesn’t return his phone calls for a few hours or even a few days. 

Buck’s got his head underwater trying to talk to her, but he’s not…okay he is worried but in a way that makes Maddie’s happiness seem less like an impossibility and more like a stepping stone she’s yet to cross over. It’s Maddie—Buck’s sister Maddie—who got through Pennsylvania, and Doug, and then Doug again, and Buck’s pretty confident that she’ll get out of this one unscathed too.

Or at least, he’s hoping. But if he really dives into it, he thinks they’re both scared of the alternative.

“I know Taylor’s like…” Buck waves his hand in the air. “An acquired taste, but Hen likes her, so Chim’s just being annoying,” he says. “Bobby likes her too.”

Or something, he concedes. Or Bobby had pulled Buck aside at the end of shift one day in late May and told Buck he was proud of the man he was becoming. He’d offered no other clarification, and Buck hadn’t asked for one.

“Oh, well if Bobby says so,” Maddie teases. “What does Eddie think?”

“Hmm?”

“Eddie?” Maddie prompts. “Best friend? The one person whose opinion you’ve never mentioned?”

“Does it matter?” Buck asks aloud. At Maddie’s raised eyebrow, he doubles-back. 

“He likes her fine,” he corrects, lying through his fucking teeth because apparently Maddie and Eddie haven’t spoken to each other in a while. “Listen, I don’t know what Chim’s been saying, but Taylor’s—we’re good together, this time around. We’re not just seeing where it goes, you know? I…”

He thinks back to this morning—him and Taylor waking up next to each other. Before dawn, she’s so unguarded that it makes her seem five years younger; her eyes are wider, they catch the sunlight streaming through the loft windows and she gives Buck a cute smile, the one that makes her nose wrinkle and his heart squeeze until he’s sure it’s going to burst. 

He can imagine waking up to Taylor, before the day actually sets in—work and chores and appointments to make and people to text back—and he thinks about that version of her more than anything else. The one where her long hair is up in a messy bun and she asks him if he’s going to hurry up and make breakfast, so that they can eat it together at the dining table instead of tossing a granola bar into their bags on the way out the door. The version where someone stays.

“I want a relationship with her,” he says finally. “And she wants one with me. That’s what matters, right?”

Maddie nods slowly. There’s a weight settling over them that’s only exacerbated by Chimney’s absence and it’s strange. Buck and Maddie have been annoyed with each other, they’ve yelled and screamed and seen each other cry, but it’s never been awkward. Not like it is now.

“As long as you’re happy,” she says quietly. “I think we could both use some of it.”

“I’m fine,” Buck replies, gradually becoming aware that he probably shouldn’t have drunk so much wine. “So, you can take mine or whatever.”

Maddie snorts. “Thanks,” she says sarcastically.

She raises her glass of water to him in a mock-toast and they can hear Chimney baby-talking to Jee, who must have just woken up. Maddie’s face crumples a bit, and Buck yearns to help her. He just doesn’t know how.

He knows Chimney thinks that Buck’s relationship with Maddie is different, maybe better-suited, than his own. Like Maddie gets tired of seeing Chim’s face and needs a reprieve and Buck thinks that can’t possibly be true, but he gets it. Buck’s known Maddie his entire life. He knows the sound of her footsteps coming down the stairs; he knows how nervous she was driving with her Learner’s Permit for the first time, even if his experience with cars back then was limited to the Pixar movie.

Chimney knows Maddie now; Maddie in L.A., who got so caught up in things that she got reprimanded at work for trying to help someone. But Buck knows the version of her that grew up in Pennsylvania; knows that she’s always stuck up for people regardless. 

Like him. 

It’s a bit of childhood wonderment, a cliche in some way, but Buck’s still pretty sure that there’s nothing Maddie can’t do if she sets her mind to it. 

“How are you doing?” Buck asks, which is a total deflection but not ingenuine, so Maddie doesn’t call him out on it.

“Fucking exhausted,” she admits, but there’s a bitter twinge to it that has Buck wondering. It’s not like her. “Also, I told mom and dad that I was seeing a therapist. That was fun.”

“What did they say?”

“Well mom groaned,” Maddie says, wrapping her arms around herself and leaning forward into them. “She said, and I quote, ‘God, both you and Evan going to therapy is going to make people think there’s something wrong with you.’ And I said, well there is, mom.”

“I’m fine,” Buck reminds her, for what feels like the fifth time that night. “Just trying to be fine-er, remember?”

“So you’re saying there’s something wrong with me then.” She tries to sound like she’s teasing, but it falls flat and becomes incomprehensible with the hurt furrowed between her eyebrows. Buck hates that he put it there. He hates fighting with her.

They dissolve into this same disagreement every time they spend time together lately and it feels like neither of them actually know how to fix it. Jee-Yun wails from the bedroom and they can hear Chimney shuffling out into the kitchen—she must be hungry—and Maddie’s face tightens.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Buck says firmly. “Not like…there’s nothing about you that’s unfixable.”

Maddie nods, but her eyes have already glassed over. Buck knows she doesn’t believe him. He’s pretty familiar with that feeling too.

“Alright,” Bobby announces, clapping his hands together. “Barbecue. Our house. This Saturday. You’re all invited and also coming, because Athena is cooking her truffle mac-and-cheese and if you’re not in our backyard at 3 in the afternoon this Saturday, you won’t get any until Summer 2022.”

It’s nearing the end of July, which in California means peak fire season. It feels like the 118 is covered in soot more often than not, rotating out who’s on the front lines that week so that none of them seem to be at the same place at the same time. Except Eddie’s not back yet, so that hardly matters anyway.

Today, most of them are at the station, including the probie, who Buck hasn’t really gotten to know past wide-eyed staring and an uncanny ability to solve treasure hunts set by dead authors. Chim barely looks up from his coffee; Buck feels the need to answer Bobby’s announcement, since it’s clear no one else is going to.

“Aw man,” he says, mourning the loss of Athena’s mac-and-cheese. Bobby shoots him a stern look and he puts his hands up in protest. “Not me,” he clarifies. “I will be there. I’ll bring cookies.”

“From the store?” Hen asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“No,” Buck draws out, mentally cataloging everything he has in his pantry before remembering that anything he would use to make cookies would most definitely be in Eddie’s kitchen—because Buck bakes sometimes with Christopher, and he never does with Taylor. “I can bake, Hen.”

“Oh,” she says, “Box mix then.”

“Why are you acting like you’re a Three Star Michelin—”

“No, it’s fine, obviously. I’m just pointing out that—”

“Guys,” Chimney interrupts. “You’re scaring probie.”

“I can’t come,” Ravi says immediately, twisting his fingers together and looking at his cellphone desperately where it lies on the table—like he’s praying for some sort of apocalypse-style emergency or maybe just a spam call. “I have to um, I have plans. With my roommates. We’re volunteering at an animal shelter.”

Hen blinks. “Are you really?” she asks.

“Fine,” Ravi mutters. “We’re having a Too Hot to Handle marathon. Happy now?”

Buck snickers; turns to his left to make a comment except Eddie isn’t there and Ravi is…Ravi’s cool and all but he’s also effectively Eddie’s replacement for the time being. And Buck would like to think he’s dealing with it well, because he really does like the probie—he’s clearly funny and fits in well with the team and not afraid of much though you wouldn’t be able to tell by the way he looks at Buck sometimes—but he just isn’t. And he’s not sure he can blame that entirely on Eddie’s absence.

Only, Buck’s not so sure he wants Eddie back either, on the streets of Los Angeles, charging into fires and all the rest. He’s got Buck by his side, sure; always watching him, but that hadn’t been enough in May and it doesn’t feel like enough now.

“I’ll check with Eddie,” Buck offers, pulling out his phone to text him. “I’m pretty sure he’s free.”

“And I’ll check with Maddie,” Chim says, as if that’s a statement that necessitates an ‘and’. He curls his hand around his coffee mug and some of the tension in his shoulders seeps out when Bobby claps it reassuringly. “But I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Cap. We’re kind of exhausted all the time.”

Buck stares up at the ceiling, counting the cracks in the tile, digging a dagger into his own chest, trying to find someone to blame. He’s sure everyone looks at him the same way as they’re looking at Chimney now when they talk about how Eddie must feel after the shooting, as if Buck has the answer.

And that’s the way it goes these days. Chimney will talk about Maddie and Buck will feel this unburdenable weight on his shoulders even though the comment wasn’t directed at him, or anyone really but definitely not at him. Still, he needs something to do with his hands; something to fix. Because if he can’t fix Maddie, and Eddie doesn’t want it, then he feels like he might as well cut them off.

“It’s tough,” Bobby agrees. “Especially with colic.”

“Yeah,” Chimney sighs, rubbing his face with his hands. “I just wish I could help her more.”

It feels like a fist to the throat, and then someone drops something large and metallic on the Bay floor, and the mourning washes over. It’s been doing that a lot these days, like the cruelty and carelessness of the ocean tide.

Buck’s phone buzzes. Yeah, Christopher and I will be there, Eddie replies. The three dots show up, disappear, then reappear again, which Buck thinks is kind of ridiculous. If Eddie has something to say, he usually just says it. Should I bring Ana?

I don’t know, Buck wants to text back, because that’s all they’re in the business of these days. Aren’t you supposed to be in love with her?

“Eddie wants to know if he can bring Ana,” Buck says, interrupting whatever non-conversation is going on. “Um, I should probably check with Taylor too. If that’s okay with you, Bobby.”

Please say it isn’t, he thinks. Please say that you’ve always disliked her and give me something to work with. Because it’s only July and I know she’s not right for me, but she’s all I have right now. Please Bobby, give me some foundation to stand on.

“Of course they can both come,” Bobby answers, just like Buck knew he would. Except, there’s a scrutiny to his response, all the way from the kitchen. 

Buck keeps his face even, nods, and texts Eddie back. He doesn’t know what the challenge is, but he refuses to lose. Eddie replies with an, Okay cool just like Buck fucking knew he would and—

He stops; blinks. This feeling in the pit of his stomach is…it’s not unfamiliar but it’s not one that he’s ever dealt with effectively, keeps popping up when he least expects it until his blood pressure settles and it dissipates. It always dissipates. He takes a few deep breaths now and shoves it down to the soles of his feet and ignores the way Hen is looking at him when he glances up.

The backyard party goes exactly how Buck thought it would, given that Maddie and Chimney don’t show up and Taylor and Ana do.

He and Taylor drive there together. She tells him about her newest project at work and Buck listens, asking all the right questions and making all the right comments. That’s the best thing about Taylor—Buck knows he’s doing something right when he’s with her, because she gives him that pleased grin and goes and tells all her colleagues that she has him wrapped around her finger.

But overall, it’s not a bad morning. Taylor doesn’t cancel on him and even remembers to buy the chocolate chips from the store on her way over. She sets up shop on the dining table and hums to herself as she types away at her laptop and Buck makes a mess of the kitchen.

Now that they’re here though, on Bobby and Athena’s front porch, his hands are sweaty. 

All of Buck’s friends know Taylor, of course. From rumors after their hookup in the bar or just from the breakfast after the treasure hunt. But this is the first time Buck will be introducing her as his girlfriend, and while he’s gotten pretty good at ignoring the look Hen shares with anyone in the proximity when he talks about Taylor—a bit annoyed but also more than a little pitying—he’s never known Taylor to let sleeping dogs lie.

“Buck!” Athena greets, opening the door. “And Taylor. It’s good to see you both. I feel like it’s been—”

“Forever,” Buck agrees, feeling something settle when he realizes that there’s going to be no interrogation. He hugs her and then gestures to the plate in his hand. “I brought cookies! They’re homemade.”

Athena nods, taking them from him swiftly even when he protests that he can do it himself. “Bobby’s lessons are paying off I see,” she says. It’s a little too polite. Buck doesn’t think about it. “Do you bake, Taylor?”

“Oh no,” she laughs. It’s what Buck calls her camera laugh, the one that’s just for show; the one that everyone—including Buck—is more familiar with. “I leave the kitchen to this one. I’m usually too busy with work to sit down for it anyway.”

“Bobby takes over the kitchen here too,” Athena replies smoothly. “But you know, I try and help out once in a while. It’s nice doing something, just the two of us.”

“It’s nice that you two get to spend so much time together,” Taylor answers. 

When Buck looks at her, she’s barely got a hair out of place; perfectly cordial, except Buck feels like he’s standing on the precipice of a street fight. They make it to the backyard before Athena can respond with something even more implicatory. 

When Buck lays eyes on Eddie, every siren in his head starts going off at the same time.

He looks…good is the thing. Better than good. Buck hasn’t seen him in a couple days but he doesn’t think that has anything to do with it. Because he has his hand around Ana’s waist and they’re both laughing at something Bobby’s said and Ana’s always got one eye on Christopher which makes something twist in Buck’s stomach and he only pretends it’s because of the skateboarding incident because the other feeling is tinted too green for the sunlight.

And the other thing is that Eddie looks happy and Buck hates that, which sort of makes him the worst person in the entire world.

“Buck!” Christopher cheers, running up to him and momentarily abandoning the boys’ soccer game. “I haven’t seen you in forever!”

It feels like it, with Christopher’s hair running wild and the thin strip of sunscreen on his nose. It feels like Christopher is growing up right in front of Buck’s eyes, which he is but also isn’t, since he’s not…he’s not really Buck’s to watch grow up. Not like he is Ana’s.

And even with that thought, every weight Buck’s carrying crumbles in comparison to the way he’s lifting Christopher up in the air, whooping in excitement as Christopher giggles. “I saw you three days ago,” he points out. “What’d you do? Grow a foot taller?”

Taylor smiles, and then pulls out her phone from her purse and answers her texts. “Maybe,” Christopher declares. “And then one day I’ll be even taller than you and dad.”

“I ate my vegetables,” Buck tells him. “So that’s why I’m so much taller than your dad. Trust me, it’s foolproof.”

“You’re only two inches taller than me!” Eddie walks over with a beer in hand, the condensation dripping over his fingers. Ana gives Buck a small smile, resting her hand on Christopher’s shoulder. “Stop slandering me in front of my kid.”

“I’m not slandering you,” he protests. His hand somehow finds Taylor’s and he grabs on to it like a lifeline, which is new. Taylor being grounding, he means. “It’s the truth. I am two inches taller than you. Are you saying eating your vegetables doesn’t make you taller, Eds?”

Eddie bites down on his tongue, effectively cutting off whatever he meant to say. “No,” he replies slowly. “Christopher, eat your vegetables.”

Christopher throws his hands up in the air. “I always eat my vegetables,” he says, like they’re insane. “You two are weird. I’m going to go play with Harry and Denny.”

Buck grins at Eddie, whose eyes soften when they land back on him. Something almost…almost fond, if he didn’t turn to Ana at the next second and smile to match in a way that he never does with Buck. “That’s safe, right?” Ana asks. “The soccer?”

Buck opens his mouth to respond except Taylor nudges him sharply with his elbow so it turns into more of a stuttered cough. He’s about to ask her what the hell that was about in the nicest way possible but then Eddie answers Ana’s question with a, “Yeah, Christopher will be fine,” and it hits Buck that Ana was absolutely not asking him.

Jesus Christ, Buckley, he thinks. Get a grip.

“Good to see you again, Eddie,” Taylor says, with a pinch to Buck’s palm. 

“You too,” Eddie offers, and he sounds like he means it enough, which is nice of him, even though both Buck and Taylor are aware that he hates Buck’s taste in women. “It’s been…what since that Welcome Home party?”

“Yeah. But I mean, you were high on pain meds.”

“Taylor,” Buck protests, and Ana’s hand curls tighter around Eddie’s arm, protecting him from something. Buck and his girlfriend maybe. The thought makes his stomach churn.

But Eddie just laughs, like Taylor just said something particularly funny. “Fair,” he says, dryly. “I promise you I’m much more sober these days if you ever want to just come with Buck somewhere.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“We could do a double date,” Ana suggests, looking between Taylor and Eddie nervously, apparently never having noticed her boyfriend’s distaste for Channel Eight news. “My schedule is pretty open after school hours!”

For once, Eddie and Taylor look like they’re in agreement, wearing matching expressions of disdain on their faces. There’s a high-pitched metallic ringing noise in the air when Eddie bites his lip and glances up at Buck briefly, trying to figure out how he should proceed. And Buck—

“I’m going to go get a drink,” he says, a little—a little too sharp to play off. “Be right back.”

Taylor’s phone buzzes then in quick succession. A work call. He wonders if that means they’ll have to leave as quickly as they arrived and finds that he doesn’t particularly mind regardless. Before she can pick up, he heads inside and grapples for the first alcoholic beverage he can find, which turns out, of all things, to be a Truly.

He grips it just tight enough that it digs into his palm, eerily familiar to Taylor’s nails digging into his skin a few minutes prior. There’s a few people inside the house, trying to escape the heat most likely, even though it isn’t working, but no one tries to talk to Buck and he doesn’t seek anyone out either.

“Didn’t know you drank anything except beer,” Eddie comments, letting the sliding door shut behind him.

They’re the only ones in the kitchen and the music in the living room is turned up too high for anyone to be able to hear them. Buck doesn’t know why that’s important, but he winces and puts his drink back onto the ice anyway. 

“I don’t,” Buck replies steadily, grabbing two when he notices that Eddie doesn’t have his own in hand anymore. “What are you doing inside?”

Eddie shrugs. “Got hot,” he says dryly, tugging at the collar or his shirt. It’s stained with sweat around the edges. “That for me?”

“Well it’s not for Taylor,” Buck grumbles. And he reaches out to hand it to him, except he lets go too fast or maybe Eddie’s just a little too slow on the uptake and the glass slips through his fingers, onto the tile floor of the kitchen, and with a loud shattering sound, it splinters to pieces.

Neither Buck nor Eddie did anything to slow its fall, but now that it happened, liquid seeping into the leather of Buck’s boots, his muscle memory comes back to him. He blinks and bends down to take off his shoes so that he doesn’t track glass everywhere else. When he looks up, Eddie is still frozen in place.

“Uh, Eddie?” he asks, even going so far as to wave a hand in front of his face, which is what seems to do the trick, though he still looks far away. Before he can pull himself out of whatever daze he’s in with a jerk that lands him in broken glass, Buck catches his arm. In any second, people are going to come to help them with paper towels and dust pans. He waits.

“Sorry,” Eddie says, after a moment too long. “I just—”

“Where did you go?” 

“Nowhere,” Eddie responds firmly, lips pressed together, ready for argument. Eddie comes back to work in less than one month, if he’s not up to the job, Buck doesn’t know what to make of it. “Just a little hazy still. My shoulder twinged this morning and I took something for it.”

Buck doesn’t know whether or not to believe him. On one hand, Eddie’s clearly prepping for some sort of push back, like Buck is going to call him a liar; like he is one. On the other, Buck’s been there—weeks after surgery; phantom pains that just won’t quit, and when he searches Eddie’s eyes again, they’re easier, ready for whatever Buck throws at him.

“Are you two going to move at any point?” Hen asks, appearing seemingly out of thin air and offering Buck a roll of paper towels. “Because it’s nearly lunch and I hate to break it to you, but we’re not waiting.”

Eddie laughs and whatever spell they’re under breaks. They make a show out of it, throwing crumpled up wads of paper, still sticky with beer in each other’s direction as Taylor and Ana rolls their eyes but oblige in their antics until Buck and Eddie end up taking too long and Ana offers to go and help Christopher eat like he needs help eating and Taylor gets another work call, and then they’re alone again.

Buck feels lighter though; lighter than he did when Taylor and Eddie were standing across from each other, glancing at Buck like he was meant to choose between them. Which he never has an answer for until he sees the way that Ana touches Eddie and does his best not to think about when he’s spending time with Taylor.

Beside him, Eddie’s drumming his fingers on his thigh, not making eye-contact with anything higher than Buck’s shoulder. 

It’s so unlike him that Buck chances it; digs into the bruise just enough to ache. “Do you ever think about—?”

“No,” Eddie replies with too much teeth, and Buck thinks that means he wasn’t supposed to ask in the first place.

They get Eddie a cake that says You Edmun-did it! and Chimney can’t stop cackling for the rest of shift.

Nothing happens, is the thing. They get to a car crash at nine in the morning and after they’re done clearing the wreck, Eddie squints at the sun; does a whole 360 like he hasn’t been to this part of L.A. before, with its skyscrapers and bustle. He doesn’t flinch when Hen’s phone catches the light, and no one tries shooting at him.

It’s August and Buck hasn’t thought about the shooting since the last time Eddie brought it up, at the barbecue, but he’s thinking about it now. Not in a terrified way, really, but just pondering it, trying to remember if he and Eddie were standing in the same positions they are now or if he was just a little to the left. He looks up at The Century building and wonders if he could spot the gleam of a sniper rifle right now, if it came down to it.

But by the next call—a fencing tournament gone wrong—he’s forgotten all about it. Eddie grins at him on the way in, bumping his shoulder, and Buck is helpless to smile back.

“Where do you want us, Cap?” Eddie asks. It’s so familiar that Bobby doesn’t even have to think about it before picking up the next beat, asking them to get the swords unstuck from the drywall before anyone attempts to do it themselves.

“You know,” Buck says, crossing his arms while he makes the probie do all the tugging. “It’s good to have you back, man.”

Eddie’s expression twists. Only momentarily, but you couldn’t miss it if you were facing the other direction. “You don’t look like it is.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Buck demands, and when he gets no response, nudges Eddie’s foot with his own. “Eddie.”

“Nothing.”

“What nothing? Why did you say it then?”

Eddie rolls his eyes, pulling his own sword out of the wall even though it doesn’t do much except shift the plaster around. Still, he seems determined to prove himself today, as if getting shot on the job wasn’t dedication enough. “You’re hovering.”

“No I’m not.”

“Yes, Buck,” Eddie replies, with all the air of a parent watching a game of am not, are too taking place in front of him. “You are. You’ve been doing it since I got here this morning.”

“So?” Buck feels something tighten in his chest. His cheeks feel red and flushed in spite of the air conditioning. “I’m your partner. We’re supposed to watch out for each other.”

“Well, you don’t have to watch out for me all the time.” The words are said dramatically, accompanied by a huff of fake laughter, but they don’t sit right in Buck’s stomach. He can’t choke them down.

He’s caught in this self-constructed—and he knows it’s self constructed, alright? he’s not dumb—web inside his head. He’s stuck somewhere between What else am I good for and Why don’t you trust me?, can’t really think of a sufficient answer to either one.

If Eddie notices, (because he’s just so good at noticing these days, apparently), he doesn’t comment, and Buck forces himself to lower his hackles; tells himself that Eddie probably didn’t mean it like that. It’s his first day back, after all.

Even though Eddie doesn’t…he doesn’t typically say things he doesn’t mean, does he?

The ride back is normal too. Chimney and Hen banter and don’t talk about Maddie even though Buck can’t stop. And for the first time in a while, Eddie’s there to pick up the slack that Buck’s been carrying—so sharp-witted that even Ravi laughs nervously at inside jokes he probably doesn’t understand.

Buck must be silent for too long because when he looks up, Hen is narrowing her eyes at him. “What’s wrong with you today?” she asks. “You’ve been frowning since lunch.”

“No I haven’t.”

“He’s been doing that too,” Eddie comments, knocking his knee into Buck’s. “You can’t be right all the time, Buck. What’s wrong? And don’t say you aren’t sleeping well.”

“I’m not,” Buck replies, but he scrunches up his nose at Eddie anyway. “Maybe I’m just tired from picking up your slack.”

“You didn’t do anything on that last call,” Eddie complains. “You just stood there while that mother flirted with you.”

“Uh, I was turning her down,” Buck corrects, with a quick glance at Bobby who looks mildly entertained in the front seat. “Because I’m not single—”

“Don’t we know it?” Chim mutters under his breath.

“—and even if I wasn’t, I would never,” Buck says emphatically. “Flirt with someone on a call. That would be very Buck 1.0 of me.”

“Right,” Hen agrees dryly. “The same Buck that hooked up with Taylor in a bar bathroom?”

Buck flushes red. “Woah, woah.” Eddie interrupts with a laugh that isn’t dismissive so much as it is combative. “Come on, Hen, lay off. Like we haven’t all done worse things.”

He doesn’t know whether Eddie’s talking about sex or he’s passing some sort of moral judgement on his first day back on shift, but Hen bites her lip. “You’re right,” she says. “That was too far. Sorry, Buckaroo.”

“It’s fine,” he replies, raising his eyebrows and not looking at Eddie because he doesn’t need him to fight his battles for him. You don’t need to watch out for me all the time. “That was Buck 2.0 anyway.”

“Buck…two?” Ravi asks, with a nervous edge. “There are—there are more of you?”

Hen snorts and Buck and Eddie do their best to keep a straight face, but then they make eye-contact and dissolve into laughter, which doesn’t answer Ravi’s question so much as it clearly unnerves him even more. Bobby wears an amused expression in the passenger seat, and doesn’t comment.

Chimney though, clearly isn’t paying attention. He’s staring down at his phone like he can will it to buzz with a text if he tries hard enough. Eddie shoots Buck a questioning glance, motions to Chim with a twitch of his hand that Buck doesn’t even know how he picks up, but Buck doesn’t have an answer that isn’t just the truth.

He understands why Maddie doesn’t want to tell anyone. Sort of. She told their parents because they’re disappointed in their children regardless; told Chimney because she loves him, told Buck because she had to. And Buck isn’t in the business of hiding things from Eddie—nothing except for the one thing—so this feels a little like ash on his tongue. 

He shrugs and Eddie lets it be and then they get back to the station and Bobby pulls Buck aside as soon as his feet touch the ground. Buck tries to balance his relief with his apprehension.

He can count the number of times he’s been in Bobby’s office since getting rehired on one hand. There are plenty of secrets running through the 118, but none they’ve hidden from the upstairs loft; nothing that’s so weighted that it needs to be discussed here, in the Captain’s office with it’s one window and tinted door and overwhelming burden.

Buck shifts his feet; winces at the squeaking of the desk chair, an, “I’m fine,” on the tip of his tongue. There are three birds sitting on a tree branch outside, all semi-distant from each other. One of them chirps, and the other two sort of look at each other and fly away.

But he never gets the chance to deliver his practiced, two-word line. “Do you know what’s wrong with Eddie?” Bobby asks.

Buck blinks. “No, what?”

“I’m asking you,” Bobby clarifies. “He looks…You haven’t noticed?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bobby,” Buck bites out. Because Eddie looks fine and maybe that’s a problem too but it’s clearly not the one Bobby is getting at. “He took three months off. Saw a physical therapist. Did a few sessions with Frank. Clearly, he’s doing great.”

Bobby bites his lip. It’s a familiar cry to what Buck already knows; instead of “Buck, what were you thinking? You could’ve died.” it’s “Buck, have you tried not thinking about yourself for once? ” Which probably isn’t a fair assessment since he’s pretty sure Bobby cares equally for all his firefighters, but Buck can’t help but think he’s always been on the pitying end of it.

“If you’re sure,” Bobby says finally. “He just looked a little off at that car crash, is all.”

“I would have noticed,” Buck insists. “It’s Eddie. I would’ve noticed.”

Bobby doesn’t know about the will. Bobby doesn’t know that Buck stayed up researching the legality of making your best friend the legal guardian of your child in between 24 hour shifts and running himself into the ground because he couldn’t think of anything else other than sitting on that hospital bed. If Eddie was off, Buck would’ve noticed. It’s his job.

“Do you ever think about—?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Cap agrees, a bit…it’s a bit placating, meant to calm Buck down from the brink of whatever he’s worked himself into. “Well, shift is over, so I won’t keep you.” They walk out together. It’s 15 minutes after which means everyone else from A-shift is gone, but Bobby makes small talk anyway, like he knows Buck doesn’t have anything for him at home. “Hey, did you catch the new episode of MasterChef?”

“Yes,” Buck replies declaratively. “A meringue and a puree? I mean what was she thinking?”

“Clearly, she wasn’t,” Bobby responds dryly. “Do you know how to make meringue? Come over one of these days. It’s about time we move from dinner foods to dessert.”

They plan to meet up over the weekend—because Taylor won’t be home on Saturday and Eddie will be with Ana and Athena is taking May out shopping to try and convince her to go to college in September. Bobby doesn’t ask if Buck is okay, and he thinks they’re both too terrified of the answer.

“Buck,” Dr. Copeland tells him. “You can’t expect to intellectualize everything forever.”

His therapy sessions with Dr. Copeland feel like the only steady footing Buck has these days. Monday evenings at 5 every other week, Buck sits at his dining table and airs out his trauma for everyone in his empty loft to hear. 

“I’m not intellectualizing,” Buck says. “If I was intellectualizing, I wouldn’t be so angry all the time, you know? I wouldn’t still be thinking about…about that call, where Eddie told me I wasn’t allowed to…I mean I know he didn’t mean it like that, so I’m definitely overreacting. If he says he’s fine, then he’s fine. It’s Eddie. He’s not stupid.”

Dr. Copeland jots something down in her notebook. Buck kind of hates when she does that, because it means she’s about to say something that tilts Buck’s universe on its side. “And do you think he’s fine?”

“I…” Buck pauses, slows down and considers. “I don’t know. I try not to think that Eddie would hide something like that from me on purpose.” Something itches under his skin; he’s lying to himself and his brain hates it, so it reacts accordingly. “But, um.”

“But?” the I-pad prompts.

“I mean I must have a reason for hovering, right?” he wonders aloud. “I can’t just—because I don’t think of the shooting when I’m by myself, not—not really—not like I do with Eddie and I’m not worried about him but it’s…” Something squeezes in his chest and not in the good way. “It just feels like a bunch of fucking bull.”

“Buck,” Dr. Copeland says, not unkindly. “That’s the first time you’ve used the word ‘feel’ since we started this session.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know,” she replies. “Why do you think Eddie isn’t okay?”

“I do think he’s okay.” Buck scrubs at his face. This is going nowhere—most sessions don’t until Dr. Copeland says something incredibly profound in the last 5 minutes and Buck stares at that one spot in the wood of his table until he can work up the nerve to make dinner—like every other session where Buck talks about Eddie. “I trust him.”

“With what?”

“Huh?”

“What do you trust him with?” Dr. Copeland clarifies. “If you were to make a list?”

Buck doesn’t even have to think about it, which scares him; the way it rolls off his tongue. “My life,” he starts. “My general safety. I trust him to have my back about…I don’t know, pretty much everything. I trust his advice, just as much as I trust Maddie’s. I trust him with everything that has to do with me.”

“Okay,” she says, nodding. “A lot of that seems to be about yourself—”

“Wait, a second—”

“—and that isn’t a bad thing,” Dr. Copeland finishes, and waits to see if Buck wants to keep hashing his argument. He doesn’t, even though he kind of does. “But do you trust Eddie with himself?”

“Yes,” Buck says firmly, with a little bit of bite. “You already asked me that. I trust Eddie with everything. It’s Eddie. Bobby doesn’t, clearly, so he’s asked me to watch out for him.”

“Bobby asked you to watch out for Eddie?”

“He—” Buck cuts himself off; doesn’t know whether he’s saying too much or not enough. “He asked me what was wrong with Eddie, on his first day back. Nothing is wrong with Eddie. Bobby just has a habit of seeing shadows everywhere so that’s probably why,” he’s more or less speaking to himself at this point, “I’m hovering.”

“You’re intellectualizing again,” she comments. “Rationalizing isn’t the same as feeling things, Buck.”

If I feel everything, I think I’ll explode with it, he wants to snap. Shake Bobby by the shoulders and ask him what the hell he meant by ‘Is Eddie okay?’. I’ll ask Chimney why he isn’t spending every waking hour trying to fix Maddie and I’ll ask Maddie why she isn’t letting me help her either. If I feel everything— anything at all—I’ll march down to Bedford Street and ask Eddie why he gets to forget the shooting, and I don’t.

But he doesn’t say that, because his hour is up and all that came from it was a clear indication that Buck is slacking somehow, in some way, and that he needs to be better. He can’t feel angry, because it’s not justified. He doesn’t deserve to feel angry, because Eddie got shot, even if he won’t acknowledge it, and Maddie is drowning with her head above water.

Then again, so is Buck if he thinks about it—no longer dreaming about the shooting but the startled look on Eddie’s face when the beer bottle shattered on the ground between them, hardly concerned with the shards flying; more focused on trying not to fracture himself. It feels inevitable that this’ll blow up in their faces, one way or the other, but Buck just can’t—

He cannot talk about the shooting. He can not talk about the shooting under any circumstances even though he was the one who posed the question at the barbecue. A safety net. Because now he has the defense of, “Well, I asked you about it and you said ‘no’.” ( Just like I knew you would).

Eddie is…Buck isn’t worried about Eddie because he knows Eddie. He’s predictable. He’ll push it aside until he breaks for a couple hours, a day maybe, confessing to Bobby because they both share that bond of Catholic Guilt or whatever, and then build himself back up from it a week later. It’s what he did with Shannon; it’s what he did with Afghanistan; it’s what he’ll do to this.

Eddie’s a medic. He’s not going to put anyone else’s life in danger because he’s too busy pushing everything away. And if he needs Buck to fix him, to listen to his memories about the shooting, then Buck will—of course he will—he just…

He can’t handle talking about his own, right now. 

Because Buck isn’t predictable like Eddie is. He’s pretty sure. Eddie thinks he knows him—“I know you did” “I knew you wouldn’t” and that’s fine. It’s not inaccurate. But Eddie only knows the good parts. So Buck is safe. He always will be.

And besides, he’s not going to make everything about him. Buck doesn’t have it good, but he has it better. And right now, that feels like the same thing.

Buck and Taylor have their first fight on a Tuesday evening in the living room of her apartment.

He doesn’t mean for it to turn into one, walking through the door with takeout in his left hand and a bottle of red in the other. He figures it’s an apology for last night, when she dug through Buck’s phone, searching for evidence that she doesn't even need. 

And, of course Taylor doesn’t need to apologize for not having sex with him—Buck isn’t like that. But this side of Taylor hasn’t shown its face in weeks. He’s gotten used to the domestic version. So sue him for thinking that Taylor would be more focused on her boyfriend than this news story she wasn’t even assigned to.

When he gets to the living room, Taylor’s sitting, feet perched up on the chair, at the dining table. There are two coffee cups in front of her, like she hasn’t moved in hours which she might not have. Her roommate gives Buck a nod and then a wince, like she was the one to bring Taylor the second cup, and Taylor hadn’t even said ‘thank you’, which Buck really wouldn’t put past her, when she gets like this.

“Hey,” Buck announces, sinking down in the seat across from her. It hadn’t been a rough shift, but a hot one—August in California and not nearly enough water in the station pipes—so he aches, but in a pleasant way now that he’s in AC. 

Taylor doesn’t immediately respond; doesn’t even look up, which would sting if it was anyone else. But it’s Taylor, red hair in a neat bun instead of free-flowing, eyes narrowed in concentration with her perfectly manicured fingernails tapping on the table subconsciously. She really does look pretty like this, in a way that makes Buck think he should feel lucky to have her.

Except…he doesn’t have her, does he? No one does except for the next big scoop. 

Buck nudges her with his foot. She looks up this time. Inexplicably, he kind of wishes she didn’t.

“I got you your favorite salad,” he presses when Taylor blinks, because she's the type of person to have a favorite salad. “I was thinking we could watch a movie or something?”

“Oh,” she replies, a bit boredly but also like Buck just suggested they spend the evening swimming with sharks. Like she doesn’t get why Buck would even bother. Like he should’ve seen her on her laptop and walked right back out the door. “I’m working but you can hang out if you want?”

Taylor’s roommate slips out of the house and locks the door with an audible, click! Buck doesn’t really know what to do then. Taylor isn’t the type of person you just, hang out with.

“Are you still researching that ransomware thing?” he asks instead. “Hasn’t that been over for a while now?”

She’s already looking back at her laptop screen, scrolling with one hand and taking notes on her tablet with the other. “They’re gone for now,” she corrects. “That doesn’t mean they won’t come back.”

“So you’re skipping out on dinner because something might happen?”

That gets her to narrow her eyes at him and tilt the screen closer to her. Her pencil still doesn’t leave her hand and Buck thinks his end goal here might literally just be to get her to throw it at him because it seems like that’s the only interaction he’s going to get out of this: an angry one. 

“I could get assigned to the story.”

“Right.” And he hates himself for how sarcastic it comes out, but he can’t help it, and he hates that too. “Of course.”

“You don’t have to be here,” she says back. It’s not even…Taylor doesn’t get emotional. It makes him feel ridiculously overdramatic on his best days. “I won’t hold it against you like you seem to be doing.”

“I’m not—you’re always busy, Taylor!”

“Well maybe that’s because I’m not a white man who has everything handed to him!” She snaps back, which isn’t untrue but seems to be the only defense she ever has. “So I have to work twice as hard. Sorry if my ambitions upset you, Buck, but you could have some too. If you tried even a little bit.”

He scoffs at that. “What is that supposed to mean?” he demands. “I—I’m good at my job and I’m trying to be a good boyfriend. I can multitask.”

“Multitasking isn’t real,” Taylor says cooly; loves to nitpick wherever she can. Wear down Buck’s defenses to nothing. “And you can’t be a firefighter forever.”

“This isn’t about the firefighting, Taylor!” The humming of traffic outside is nothing but a dull buzz. “It’s about—I support your career, you know that. I just wish you thought work was less important than your boyfriend.”

Her face twists into something like fury—she looks significantly less pretty like that and more like she’s about to yell at him in refutation. “God, you’re so fucking nee—” But her phone starts buzzing, and it’s more important than Buck, which by now he knows is a low bar, so she answers it. 

And Buck is…he’s already standing, somehow. On his feet with his shoelaces tied and the clock on the oven reading 6:30. Taylor raises her eyebrows at him like, what are you still doing here? and Buck leaves the takeout bag on the dining table.

(He doesn’t have a breakdown about it in his car. Not really. But he does tell Eddie to break up with Ana two days later, and try as he might, Buck can’t rationalize the difference.)

Buck finds out that Eddie broke up with Ana through the 118 grapevine.

Well, really he finds out that apparently the dozens of muffins sitting in the station kitchen were made by Ana and then consequently brought here, because Eddie and Christopher can’t “possibly eat that many muffins between the two of them,” which is also how he finds out, biting into one, that they were made during the blackout a week and a half ago and are probably 5 days past their expiration date. 

He thinks, spitting the gummy pieces into his palm, if you really wanted an ex to remember you, baking muffins that taste like this is a good way to do it.

And maybe there’s an explanation for it, but something curls at Buck’s stomach anyway. Hen shoots him concerned glances when he’s not looking. Neither Maddie nor Chimney will answer their goddamn texts except to push him further away, and Bobby hardly says anything to Buck at all. He hurts Ravi like he’s made for it; has to hold back from snapping at Taylor more often than not and…

Eddie not telling him about Ana feels like something Buck can’t find a name for. Something along the same lines as the shooting last May—like if Buck digs at it, he won’t like the answer. He finds out that Eddie broke up with Ana two weeks ago and then tries to leave the 118 two days later. 

He fails at that too.

“So,” Buck says, over beer one night. Christopher is in the den playing video games and Buck has about 2 minutes to have this conversation before he’s summoned to get his ass kicked at Fortnite. “How did it go? The breakup, I mean. How did Ana take it?”

Eddie doesn’t hold eye-contact with him as he scrubs the kitchen counter. That’s strike one. Buck takes a step forward and Eddie takes one back. That’s strike two. Buck stands in place, back against the refrigerator. He won’t let himself get to three, not even to quell the feeling of hysteria building in his chest.

“It was a breakup, Buck,” Eddie replies, except there’s a sort of weariness to him. The same one that etches over Taylor and Bobby these days; Buck’s starting to learn that it comes with the territory. “What do you think?”

“You can’t answer a question with another question,” Buck mumbles, but there’s no feeling in it. “You should’ve told me when it happened.”

The clean dishes don’t clatter into the sink, but it’s a near thing with the way Eddie turns clumsily. His face morphs into something Buck can’t read and that’s strange too. “You were helping Chim,” he says. “Ana didn’t seem all that significant.”

“I could’ve—”

“Buck,” Eddie interrupts, and finally he breaks into a smile that’s too soft for this kitchen and it makes him blink; take a few steps back. Remember the Eddie he got too close with—the one he hasn’t seen in ages. “It’s okay.”

And Buck stumbles on air, slightly. Eddie runs a hand through his hair and glances at the tile. He doesn’t notice Buck’s misstep and doesn’t make any move to catch him and Buck can’t do this. He doesn’t know how to be in love with Eddie correctly—this version of him or any other.

It was so much easier when Eddie was with Ana because Buck knew he couldn’t have him. He’s only known Eddie to be a single man for about 10 minutes but it’s already overwhelming in a way that makes him want to break up with Taylor right now over text and be kind of a dick about it—even though she cleared three whole evenings this week for just the two of them and was only on her phone for 70% of it.

Except, Buck remembers, May happened. May where Eddie told Buck that he wasn’t expendable, and then made it very clear that the only way Buck would ever get to prove it, was if Eddie died.

“Well, what about the panic attacks?” Buck presses, trying to push down the rising hysteria in his chest like a drumbeat. “Are you—have they stopped? Now?”

Eddie shrugs, which is neither a yes or a no. “It’s only been two weeks,” he says, and that’s not much of an answer either. But Buck doesn’t push it. He doesn’t…

It’s not fair of him, Buck, to have conversations with Eddie inside these four walls. He can’t ask Eddie anything, here, not when he’s already taken so much; got it into Christopher’s head somehow that Buck is just as important as the next person that Eddie falls for.

“He’s not your son, Buck,” Taylor said, once. “You don’t always have to worry about him.”

He can’t help but worry about them though: Eddie and Chris. That’s…that’s all he’s good for most days, the worrying. All that he knows how to do is push people to their limits and hope that they stretch enough to include him. Eddie’s more patient than most. But you would think Buck would know not to press his luck.

“But,” Eddie continues, and this time it sounds like he means it. “You don’t have to worry about me. Keep moving forward and all that, right?” He nudges Buck towards the living room. “Go. I’ll be a few minutes.”

And Eddie’s not being as strange as he was before, but there’s still an undertone to it. Something like a wall between them, so that Buck can’t tell what Eddie’s thinking anymore. Buck keeps pushing, but he’s starting to realize that this feels a lot like the fallout.

“You never think things through, Evan,” his father snaps. “One day it’s all going to catch up to you.”

That’s never been the problem. Of course Buck thinks things through — he thinks about the future so hard that he ends up on the other side of it, haunted by his past. What does Buck know? He knows that he shows up to the station and Hen blinks before she offers him a smile; he knows that Eddie’s eyes rest on him a little longer or a little shorter than usual; he knows that yesterday Bobby made mac-and-cheese but couldn’t quite hide his grimace when he set it on the table.

He knows he sounds insane. He also knows how to put the fucking pieces together. Buck’s been down this road a million times. He’s never found his way home.

“I swear I’m going to win this time,” Buck announces as he picks up a controller and plants himself on the couch beside Christopher.

“Buck.”

“Seriously, I mean it!” He insists, grinning when Christopher laughs at him. “Oh, come on. Just go easy on me this once, okay?”

It’s like this: Taylor keeps pushing for things to change too fast and Eddie wants everything to stay the same. 

Buck’s pretty sure that love is one of the two, but he’s not sure which.

Ever since Buck got held hostage, Hen won’t take her eyes off him.

Buck notices because it’s just about the only thing he does these days and he’s clinging to it—catching her looking on the ladder truck or while he’s dozing off on the couch and thinking that this fog resting on top of his rib cage can’t be that detrimental, if he can still pinpoint Hen looking at him sometimes, and know that it’s real. 

Hen won’t take her eyes off of him, and he doesn’t want her to.

So he doesn’t call her out on it, because if there’s someone who needs to be watched over, it’s Eddie, who switched his shift at the last minute to take Davis’s and didn’t tell anyone except Bobby that it was happening. Buck doesn’t call her out on it because he doesn’t know that he can have the conversation without demanding to know how she justified the chainsaw to Ravi. He doesn’t call her out on it because it’s Hen, and she’s always right anyway.

Except, then, they rescue a man who got buried alive. And Hen looks at him with that same sympathetic gaze. And when everyone falls asleep in the bunk room except Buck who can’t close his eyes without feeling that weightless line in the palm of his hand, between his fingers, she’s waiting for him on the loft couches after he comes back from retching up bile in the bathroom.

“Hey,” she says, medical book in hand like she’s studying even though Buck is pretty sure he’d seen her in the bunk room earlier, dead asleep. “You look like you’ve seen better days.”

“It’s nighttime,” he chokes out, half-heartedly, wondering if he can chalk his exhaustion up to Taylor taking up all the time he’s not on shift. Hen fiddles with her phone and Buck’s hit with a longing so deep, here at nearly 3 in the morning, that it feels like a lump in his throat. “Um, has—have you—”

Hen’s face flickers, like she’s on uneven ground; like Buck could be asking about anything other than Maddie and Chim. And sure, it’s…sure he thinks about Eddie all the time, but that’s different. It’s private. Something Hen can’t begin to understand.

“Okay,” she takes his hand and pulls him onto the couch beside her. “Okay, Buck, take a second.”

“I don’t need a second,” he says, like a child, because Maddie won’t talk to him, and Eddie won’t tell him if he’s still having panic attacks while Buck isn’t even sure if wants the answer, and Hen is here, holding Buck’s hand like he deserves it, and he can’t help but make everything just a little bit harder.

“I don’t need a second,” Buck repeats, except it comes out a little choked. Hen squeezes his hand tight. 

The thing is, he doesn’t even know what he’s grieving. Chim, sort of, but maybe just the normalcy. Maybe he’s just grieving how much easier everything was before Eddie got with Ana and left Buck on the sidelines—a stray on the side of the road for Taylor to pick up.

He doesn’t know what to do with all this. He stays with Taylor because it’s safer. He hurts Ravi like he’s made for it; you need to protect yourself, a voice hums. If it’s Buck’s own, he doesn’t recognize it. And no one gets it. And—

And here on this sofa, holding Hen’s hand, Buck thinks he’s going to break into a million pieces. He wants to confess, “Eddie’s been having panic attacks and he says they were Ana’s fault but I’m pretty sure they’re mine” or maybe, “I’ve been in love with Eddie since before I can remember but I don’t know if he feels the same and I can’t risk the best thing that’s ever happened to me, even on days like this.”

“Have you heard from Chim at all?” he asks finally, clamping down on his lip so hard he draws blood. “A text? Anything?”

“Is that what’s got you so twisted up, Buck?” she asks soothingly, always a steady presence on his arm even though she must know it’s not processing, because he already tried to leave two weeks ago and now he’s just being…just too much altogether. “Chimney’s coming back. You just have to give it time.”

And that’s probably the right advice, but god, Buck’s so goddamn tired of waiting.

“You’re sure you’re okay otherwise?” she pushes. “I mean, you got held hostage. That’s a little—”

“Nothing happened though,” he dismisses, clinging to it. “It’s not like—it’s not like May. Nothing happened.”

“But you thought it did,” Hen prompts. Her hand is still resting on Buck’s and he pulls it away, pressing his eyelids together so hard that it hurts.

“I don’t need a therapist, Hen,” he musters up, as kindly as he can. “I’m just—I’m allowed to be tired sometimes.”

“Buck—”

“We’ve got it handled.” There’s a warning stinging at his skin—a danger sign flashing above Hen’s head that he’s getting too close to some sort of reprieve. One that he’s been staving off his entire life. “Eddie and me, we’ve got it handled.”

It’s the biggest fucking lie he’s ever told, but Buck’s pretty sure that Eddie will find this line of questioning too invasive to reply truthfully if Hen asks anyway. Buck doesn’t know much about Eddie these days, but he’s pretty sure of that.

Relief settles over Hen’s shoulders like a blanket. “You’ve talked to him about it?”

“Yeah.” No. The last time he spoke to Eddie off shift was when Eddie called Buck to ask him if he minded taking Christopher to the museum by himself. Something came up. Buck never asked what it was. 

She releases a breath and Buck doesn’t know whether or not to be offended. “Good,” she replies. “I was worried about you two.”

“Well, I mean I don’t think you need to be worried about me,” Buck protests. He can’t live with that knowledge. It’ll eat him alive to know that Hen thinks about him when she doesn’t have to. “I’m doing okay. I didn’t get shot.”

“There’s no prerequisite for it,” Hen frowns. “Are you sure you’re o—”

“I’m bisexual,” he interrupts, and thankfully Hen doesn’t finish her sentence. 

He feels like his confession can only hold off questions about the shooting for so long. Hen makes a soft affirming sound, like the words, “I’m bisexual” aren’t synonymous with, “I’ve been in love with Eddie since before I knew what to do with it.” 

So he doesn’t know why he admits it other than to ward her off about shooting, or getting too close to the will. It’s ridiculous. He knows it is. Because he’s known he was bisexual for most of his goddamn life anyway so it’s not like it’s some big revelation. But still, telling her, not knowing if it’ll work, makes him feel worse. It makes him feel stupid. And not even Hen can absolve him of that.

“Thank you for telling me,” she says dutifully. “Is that—have you been struggling with that recently?”

I’ve been struggling about being in love with Eddie. “Kinda,” he says, which is neither here nor there. “I just wanted to tell someone.”

That part is true. It's a weight off his shoulders to be honest about something, no matter how insignificant it is in the grand scheme of things. Still, he hopes Hen will take the deflection for what it is.

Before Hen can say anything else, the bell rings. She says, “I’m proud of you,” and means it. And there’s no indication that she’s going to force Buck to talk about it later.

It feels a little like staving off an inevitability, but Buck doesn’t want to talk about that either.

The night after Buck tells Taylor he loves her, he has a nightmare about falling in love.

There’s a short story by Andy Weir called “The Egg”. It doesn’t take very long to read, maybe two minutes, give or take. But the point of it is this: You are everyone who has ever existed and will ever exist on earth. Every time you’re kind, you’re being kind to only yourself. And when you hurt someone, the only person you’re hurting, is you. 

And then there’s another word, solipsism—that you can’t prove anyone else’s consciousness, only your own. There’s no way to prove that anyone else isn’t real, but there isn’t a way to prove that anyone else is either. 

Buck’s sat on the two concepts for years. He’s not fond of either, but he can’t decide which one is worse, being the only sentient person on earth, or being responsible for his own heartbreak.

The nightmare goes like this—Buck is drowning, he always is, and Taylor is solid ground. She’s right there in front of him, hand outstretched, and it’s only a nightmare because he sees Eddie standing 5 meters away and doesn’t make any move to save himself.

Except…that’s exaggerating his relationship. Because Eddie leaves the 118 on a Wednesday, and it doesn’t hit Buck until he’s gone.

Chapter Text

Let’s not talk about it, let’s just not talk.

Not because I don’t believe it, not because I want it any different, but I’m always saving

and you’re always owing and I’m tired of asking to settle the debt.

— Richard Siken, Wishbone

When Eddie was eight years old, his father told him that if he didn’t think about the pain, it would cease to exist.

He’d scraped his knee at a baseball game or something stupid—something to be forgotten by the time he walked off the pitch. His older sister, Adriana, gave him two more pieces of blue cotton candy than she gave Sophia, and winked at him, and that felt like the end of it. He got into the backseat, didn’t think about his knee, and the pain disappeared just like his father had said it would. 

He’s been trying, since last May, to stop thinking about the hole in his shoulder where they patched him up. He had an excuse until July hit—he was healing; the pain wasn’t so much something to rid himself of as it was an indicator. Less pain meant he was closer to a full recovery. 

Then, in August, he had a panic attack in a suit store when the salesperson called Ana Christopher’s mother. It’s hard not to think about the shooting after that. 

There’s nothing to dilute it with Ana gone; nothing to distract him. If he’s not thinking about the shooting, then he’s thinking about Buck—a whole different type of ache, or maybe just another shade of the same color—and that brings him back to May anyway.

Or…or it takes him to the hospital fire, or Buck trying to transfer, or the Christmas party or January. May or any of the days after it. They all sort of blur together, at this point. 

Really, the only reason Eddie knows it’s a Tuesday is because Buck comes over on Tuesdays and stares at him like clockwork when it hits 10 pm. Today, he’s pacing, and Eddie’s trying really hard not to set his hands on Buck’s shoulder and force him to sit down.

He does eventually. And that’s kind of him. But he’s still staring, like Eddie can’t see him or something. “When did you cut your hair?”

They don’t take their evenings to the living room these days—hardly make any move to start a conversation that isn’t forced by Christopher’s presence, after everything that happened in January. There’s one, unopened beer bottle resting in between them. It’s Eddie’s, because Buck hadn’t taken one, and Eddie hadn’t offered.

“Does it matter?” Eddie replies. He means for it to be soft, except Buck’s eyes harden so he must be doing it wrong. “It’s not like you can go back and glue it on.”

“I—”

“Besides, I’ve had the same haircut since January,” Eddie laughs. “So I don’t get why you’re asking me now.”

Buck pauses. “Do you want me to leave?”

“What? No.”

He throws his hands up in the air, nearly knocking the beer bottle onto the ground. The expression on his face is familiar but Eddie still can’t parse out what it is, and that scares him more than anything. That he’s still Buck but also not. “You’re being really irritating.”

“Perks of working at dispatch. You would think people would know not to call 911 if they’re not actively dying.”

Buck lets out a shuddering exhale, and Eddie kind of feels like the worst person alive. On days like these— returning from an exhausting day at work to Christopher and Buck, who’s started letting himself in with his key even when Eddie isn’t home—everything feels like a gut punch. He can only blame himself for the fact that Buck has nowhere else to go.

Because the thing with Buck recently is that there’s a vacancy sign posted on his neck and a glassy film wrapped around his skin: air tight and not letting anyone in. Eddie supposes that’s his fault. He made Buck this way all those weeks ago, and yet Eddie still can’t stop pushing.

“Whatever, man.” There are bags under his eyes and Eddie can’t stop staring at them. “Have you—I mean, have you given any more thought to what Bobby said about Frank?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

Buck runs his tongue over his front teeth in lieu of the smile Eddie was pushing for—has been pushing for—and splays up his hands. “You can’t answer a question with another question.” Which Eddie has come to figure out is Buck's way of saying, You don’t get to be let in anymore.

Eddie goes to therapy two times a week and Buck doesn’t know about it, because if he ends up quitting that too, he’ll only disappoint everyone who knows him. He can’t let that extend to Buck. He doesn’t think he’d be able to take it. Really, the only reason he hasn’t yet is because he’d made a promise to Bobby, even if he has to be dragged down to Frank’s office kicking and screaming more often than not. And that sounds like a ridiculous basis for being subjected to medieval torture in a small room with one window for 2 hours a week, but Eddie just…

He can’t bring himself not to try.

“I cut my hair three days before I started working at dispatch,” Eddie says finally. “Over the sink and then at the barbershop with a hat over my head until I got there so Christopher couldn’t see my breakdown. Which you would’ve known if you’d picked up the phone when I got home. Or texted me back at all.”

Buck’s face twists into something just shy of hatred and Eddie’s heart is in his stomach. “That was January. You can’t hold that against me anymore.”

“Yes, I—”

“No, Eddie,” Buck snaps back, pushing himself to his feet and gathering his things. Just like he always does when Eddie crosses this invisible boundary Buck’s suddenly set for them. “You can’t.”

Except…except Buck keeps his voice low, because Christopher is still sleeping. Doesn’t shove anything around or do much else except dig his nails into the palm of his hand. He puts his left shoe on first, ties the lace, and then does his right. Except he’s still Buck, underneath it all, so how Eddie supposed to keep his feet planted on his side of the line?

Eddie watches Buck tie his laces. He’s never cried in front of him, but he thinks he might start these days, spare Buck the Catholic guilt and go straight for the heart: where the more tangible things lie. The shooting and the beer bottles and the black eye Eddie had traced his fingers over for several seconds too long before getting the ice from the freezer. 

He can blame Catholicism for a lot of his flaws, but not this one. He believes in Buck too much to regret any part of this.

“When will you talk to me about the shooting?”

Buck pauses; hand on the doorknob, and Eddie thinks this time he’s finally got him. This time he’s pushed him enough for him to stay here where he fucking belongs.

“I have nothing to say,” Buck replies, emotionless as ever except for the hint of white-hot anger swirled in with the blue. The part of Buck he doesn’t know at all. “I wasn’t the one who got shot.”

Eddie dreams about Afghanistan.

Dream probably isn’t the right word for it. The chopper blades sound just as loudly as they did when he was living it, and his shoulder screams with that same familiar pain of a bullet piercing through the skin. His squadron is all there, taking fire from enemy troops and he remembers this part. He remembers the sequence; the series of events that got them here.

Then he turns, and Greggs’s dead body has Buck’s face. And that isn’t familiar at all. He scrambles backwards, back hitting the mound they’re hiding behind for protection. Greggs—or Buck’s—eyes are closed, but Eddie knows the shade of blue like the back of his hand.

“Buck,” he chokes out, voice hoarse. Everyone is still shooting at each other but Eddie can’t bring himself to care. “Buck, come on, wake up!”

And then the colors change. Buck’s no longer wearing an army uniform but a white button down shirt, dotted with some…some sort of red pattern. When Eddie touches his arm to try and jostle him awake, his hand comes up stained red. They’re on the streets of L.A. now—or maybe still a war zone, it feels impossible to tell—and everything is so, goddamn—

Someone screams outside of his house. It’s a bunch of teenage kids, but Eddie sits bolt upright with his heart doing somersaults where it’s caught in his throat. 

He tries to inhale but can’t, and that’s fucking familiar too but it’s hard to rationalize when you feel like you’re dying. His chest won’t expand. His fingers clutch at his damp bed sheets like he’s being choked by an iron first.

He’s shaking; feels like his t-shirt is strangling him. Everything is so warm and it’s February and everything is too warm and Buck’s blood is still on his fingers except that’s not right. Buck wasn’t the one who got shot. Outside, someone shrieks again, and Eddie’s heartbeat drums louder.

“If you don’t think about the pain, it’ll disappear.”

“That’s not going to work this time,” Frank says bluntly.

“Why not?”

“Well, if it did, I doubt you would be here, would you?”

There are two pictures of Christopher on his dresser: one is of him and Shannon on Christmas morning, bundled underneath blankets, three cups of hot cocoa resting on the coffee table in front of them. The other was taken at the park—Buck, Eddie, and Christopher in frame, holding on to the skateboard they’d built over one weekend and a couple of beers.

It seems like forever ago, and doesn’t do much to alleviate the ache in Eddie’s shoulder, but it calms him all the same. One gasping breath turns into two, turns into three. He’s gotten through a panic attack by himself before—he can get through this one. That’s the part that helps more than anything else. 

It’s nearly 5 in the morning. A Wednesday. Christopher will wake up for school in a couple of hours but Eddie thinks if he goes to sleep now, he won’t wake up on time and Carla will have to shepherd Christopher to school 10 minutes later than usual like she had to last time. 

The memory twists at Eddie’s stomach. After what seems like forever, he goes to the kitchen and puts on the coffee.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, staring at the wall, waiting so long to drink what Buck calls his milk with coffee that it becomes cold—he can’t bring himself to care, not much tastes like anything right now anyway. One hour passes and then another. Eddie’s alarm goes off at 7 and almost on auto-pilot, like he hasn’t been awake for two hours already, he knocks on Christopher’s door frame.

“Hey, bud,” he says, flicking on the lights. “Time to wake up.”

Christopher groans and yawns but gets up because he loves school more than Eddie ever could, and they maneuver through their morning routine in a warm silence. Eddie pours himself another cup of coffee and makes them both a bowl of cereal. Now that he’s getting some feeling back, he realizes he’s starving.

“Thanks,” Christopher mumbles, sitting down at the table. 

Eddie hums in acknowledgment. “Excited for school today?”

“I mean, yeah,” Christopher replies. “I’m always excited for school, Dad. It’s not going to change the next time you ask me.” 

Eddie puts his hands up in surrender. Christopher is getting sarcastic these days, and Eddie knows he gets it from him, so he doesn’t say anything. It’s 7 o’clock in the morning and until the army, Eddie wasn’t a morning person either. So yeah, he doesn’t push it.

But he can’t help but notice that it’s a new development. Christopher would tease, but he never used to sulk in the mornings, or answer Eddie’s questions with a mumbled half-sentence instead of a recount of everything that happened. Things have been hectic since he left the 118 in December, but he would’ve thought that Christopher would have more to ask about the workings of dispatch, just like did when Eddie joined the Fire Academy.

“Is Buck coming over today?” Christopher raises instead. “We’re supposed to finish the lego starship before the next one comes out on Sunday.”

Eddie raises his eyebrows and mentally starts running through his expenditures for the next month. “You never told me about the new one,” he says, trying to seem as nonchalant about it as possible so that he can figure out what exactly he’s supposed to be looking for. “What’s it called?”

Christopher glances at the floor. “It’s a new first responder set,” he explains. “Buck already pre-ordered it for me. You looked…” He trails off, and then shrugs. “I don’t know, I think you were busy cooking dinner or something.”

Eddie nods. Stands up, ruffles Christopher’s hair, and then goes into the kitchen, leaving his coffee on the table. He stares out the window, palms flat on the counter space, and waits for the sinking feeling that he felt when the salesperson called Ana Christopher’s mom.

It never comes.

Just like he knew it wouldn’t.

The sinking truth is that Buck has been a part of this family since he came back to them after the lawsuit. Maybe even before that. Maybe it was after the earthquake, when Buck drove Eddie to Christopher’s school, and Eddie’s just slow on the uptake. He put Buck in Christopher’s will. He’s family. That’s the part Eddie’s sure of.

The part where Eddie wants to kiss him is new though. 

It’s also the part that Eddie’s desperately trying not to think about. And it’s already 7:45 so he pours the rest of his coffee down the sink and gathers the bowls from the table, and herds Christopher into the truck around the noise of some audiobook he’s listening to about dragons and magic.

He taps his fingers on the steering wheel and prepares himself to head to work, all feelings at bay. Except Buck bought a first responder lego set for Christopher without telling him, and Eddie thinks there’s too much symbolism in that for the universe not to be mocking him.

The gossip circle at dispatch is just as extensive as the one at the fire station. Eddie hears everything, sitting at his desk, but he can’t bring himself to participate. Mostly because there are days where May, Bobby’s daughter, gives him an unsure glance, and he gets the feeling that when he’s not in the room, they talk about him too. 

They’re all nice enough, but overwhelmingly, it’s clear that he doesn’t belong here. Not that he’s trying too hard—his breaks are spent in his car, googling ‘Easy Dinner Recipes’ or scrolling through the 118 group chat because Ravi keeps texting the old one accidentally. He just doesn’t have the energy for it. Somehow, working at dispatch is more exhausting than even their worst 48-hours at the station.

So mostly, he stays at his desk and helps people. And if he’s praying to end up on the 118’s route once in a while so that he can talk to Buck without having to pull out his phone and actually text him, then that’s his business.

“He’s stuck in a vending machine, Cap,” Eddie says. “He’s fine. He can breathe. But I told him not to move until y’all get there.”

“It’s a kid?”

“No,” Eddie looks at his screen, typing while he answers. “Adult male. Once again—no idea how he got in there.”

“Maybe he was looking for a snickers bar,” Ravi offers. “You know, you’re not you when you're hungry.”

Eddie can hear Hen groaning in the background and he waits for Buck to say something in response, but it never comes. The new guy, Eddie’s replacement who he stubbornly refuses to learn the name of, mutters something under his breath that lands them in an awkward silence. Eddie keeps waiting. Buck’s voice still doesn’t make an appearance. Eddie wonders if he’s even there.

He’s about to sign off and switch channels back to the vending machine guy and the on-looker who’d dialed 911, when, “Once Eddie ran a red light to get some fries from McDonalds,” Buck says under his breath, and Eddie has the visual image of him, slumped over in his seat being a total grouch. “In case Athena wants to press charges or something.”

“I love these calls,” Ravi chirps, seemingly to no one in particular. “They’re always so heart-felt and friendly— ow, Buck!”

“The light was yellow,” Eddie insists, and he knows he’s talking about running a red light at a dispatch center and that sort of thing is typically frowned upon, but the words tumble out of him. “I think you’d be under more heat for bullying the probie, Firefighter Buckley.”

It stings on his tongue. Firefighter Buckley. Because he used to be that too, right there next to him. Equals. He doesn’t mean the work—dispatch is a tough job—but equals in another sense. He supposes what he really means is partners, but he’s not going to admit that to anyone but his therapist.

“You—” Buck starts. He sounds exhausted and something else Eddie can’t place. When Bobby cuts him off, Buck doesn’t even make an effort to finish his sentence on the hand-held.

“Alright, dispatch, we’ve arrived at the scene,” Bobby announces. Eddie can hear them getting out of the vehicle. Ravi says something like, “ —wonder if Lucy followed us to the vending machine call” whatever that’s supposed to mean. “Thanks for your help, Eddie.”

“Thanks, Eddie!” Hen calls, and the radio goes to static. 

He’s got about 2 seconds to sit there before someone else calls his line—it’s Los Angeles, there are no shortage of emergencies—and he takes them, with a sinking feeling, to try and visualize who would do what at the vending machine call. If Ravi knows intuitively what Buck needs as well as Eddie does.

His headset rings. “911, what’s your emergency?”

“I…I need help,” a low voice coughs. It’s barely audible. “I got shot.”

Eddie regrets everything he’s ever said about the universe being a scam. There’s no way his luck can run this bad. Sure, a gunshot victim the same day he wakes up at 4 in the morning from a nightmare about Afghanistan. Why the fuck not?”

“Okay, sir,” he replies. The 133 is the nearest available ambulance out. “What’s your name?”

“Danny,” he replies, shaking. He coughs again. “My chest…”

Eddie keeps his voice steady, but it’s a near thing. “Can you tell me where you are?”

“Warehouse,” Danny manages. His breath is rattling. Eddie types as quickly as his fingers let him. “Arts District. Palm—Palm street?”

He means Palmetto. Eddie doesn’t know how he knows that but he’s glad he does. No one else is making the call for him. He’s alone. “The 133 is 5 minutes out, Danny.” 

It’s not his job to ask what happened, so he doesn’t, but on calls like this he can’t help but wonder if there’s some rationality behind the bad things happening to otherwise good people. Like if he can, there might be a reason for Eddie getting shot twice that isn’t just: he didn’t manage to die the first time.

He thinks the only solid proof he’s found is in Buck and Christopher. The tsunami or the pulmonary embolism or the ladder truck. The one thing he’s always known for sure is that Buck is good. That heart of gold people keep talking about; the one that he’s witnessed first hand. 

Buck doesn’t deserve his trauma. It’s good evidence that Eddie doesn’t either. Somehow, it never seems to stick.

“How are we feeling, Danny?” Eddie asks when Danny doesn’t respond to his statement. 

“Kinda—kinda numb,” he replies. He sounds young, maybe in his early twenties, but Eddie doesn’t know for sure. “That’s the shock, right?”

“Well, it’s February, Danny,” he says, praying to God that the 133 gets there just a little bit faster. He has a habit of that, praying when it’s not about him. He doesn’t know what that means. “Put pressure on the wound if you can. Are you lying down?”

“Y—Yeah,” he stutters out, and that’s definitely the shock, but Eddie’s not about to tell him that. “I’m still…”

“Danny?”

“There’s a lot of blood,” he chokes out. Eddie winces. His fingers drum uselessly on the keyboard. He’s supposed to be saying calm, but Danny coughs again and it feels impossible. “There’s…”

Eddie’s about to prompt him again, ice-cold fear washing over him. He hasn’t lost a victim on a call yet, and even though everyone here has told him that it’s inevitable, he’ll do anything to stave it off. He opens his mouth, but Danny splutters.

“There’s this girl,” he says, gaspingly. Eddie hates this. He can’t bear this not being in his control. “Sammy.”

“We’re not doing this, Danny,” Eddie warns. “Whatever you need to say to your girlfriend, you can say to her face.”

“Dude, I—I’m…” Danny trails off. “Or—or I could be…she’s not my girlfriend…She’s…she’s my sister’s friend, really. Known her for years and…man, I’ve been in love with her since…since like 8th grade. Never found a good time,” his words slur. Eddie’s realizing that for the first time in 5 weeks, he’s hearing a man die in front of him. “It—”

“Danny?” A voice calls sharply. It sounds like Captain Mehta, but Eddie can’t be sure. “Is anyone here?”

“Here!” Eddie calls through his headset, hoping that Danny put him on speaker. His voice comes out shakier than he’d wanted it to, and several people at dispatch glance over at him, but he doesn’t care. “He’s over here.”

Someone picks up the phone. “Got it, dispatch.” It’s Albert, but Eddie doesn’t have time to tell him they know each other before he hangs up. He’s no longer at the warehouse, but inching closer to being on the streets of Los Angeles, surrounded by skyrises, Buck, and a sniper.

He’s not going to have a panic attack here, surrounded by people he’s known for less than a month. He refuses to. But his chest tightens and it’s so fucking familiar and this is the second panic attack he’s had today which makes him feel like the biggest failure on the face of the planet because he’s here, out of danger, and he’s freaking out anyway and—

His chair scrapes the floor when he pushes it back and he just has the wherewithal to push the Inactive button on the computer and scrambles to his feet. The bathroom is just a right turn past the break area. There’s no one there. Eddie’s supposed to be at his desk for another 30 minutes.

He locks the stall door behind him and retches breakfast into the toilet, shaking just like Danny was on the phone. No one comes to check on him—the only people he knows here are Josh, May, and Linda from parties at Chimney’s house, and it’s all just so fucking weird, being here at dispatch, that he thinks about it, and it sets off another round of gagging.

There’s a part of him, leaning his head back against the bathroom stall and counting down the minutes before he has to be back at his desk, buried a little too close to the surface of his chest that thinks he was supposed to die in Afghanistan. That Los Angeles was his way of cheating death.

God knows he’s done it enough times before. He’s getting late for his own funeral. 

No one comes looking for him, and his 15 minutes are nearly up anyway, so he shoves himself to his feet and takes Buck’s fucking advice: get up and move on to the next one.

“Look, I’ll be frank—”

“Nice pun.”

Frank ignores Eddie’s stellar joke, or ‘deflection’ if you’re being particular, in favor of a question that’ll make Eddie spiral for hours after he goes to bed. “I’m not going to make you tell the people in your life that you’re going to therapy,” he continues. “But, if you’re up for it, I’d like to know why.”

“Why what?” he asks, like a child. 

Frank fixes him with a look. Eddie sighs and thinks about his answer.

The last time he was in therapy was in July. It wasn’t really department mandated, but it was a near thing, so Eddie just groaned inwardly and went if it would put him back at work sooner. Now, he wonders if he’d just been a little more honest with Frank the first time, they wouldn’t be here today.

“I don’t know,” he says. “They knew about it the first time around, and the second. Is it so bad of me to want some privacy the third time?”

“What’s different about the third time?” Frank asks. He scribbles something down on his notepad, but most of the time Eddie thinks he’s just doodling. 

“Well,” Eddie picks at his jeans. He always feels confined sitting here, and he feels terrible afterwards, so he doesn’t know why he continues coming except for the fact that he gets more answers about his own psyche when he does.

“Well, this time wasn’t department mandated, or requested, whatever,” he says, something tightening in his chest. “This is the first time I’m, you know, the first time I came here by myself.” 

There’s a globe on Frank’s desk and Eddie has no idea why a therapist needs a globe except that it might be symbolic somehow and Eddie’s going to be tested on it later. “Isn’t that a good thing, though?” Eddie asks. “That I came here myself? Isn’t that like, a sign of progress or whatever?”

“Depends,” Frank replies, vaguely as always. “Do you want it to be?”

“You make no sense,” Eddie tells him. “I could be at home, doing…I don’t know, something. There’s a new season of Amazing Race I’ve been meaning to catch up on. And the puzzles aren’t nearly as annoying as you.”

Frank looks vaguely amused, which wasn’t Eddie’s goal but it’s definitely a clear sign that he’s winning at therapy, so he’ll take it. 

“Of course I want it to be,” Eddie says. “It’s—progress means getting better, right? Of course I want to get better. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well,” Frank says, frustratingly calm even though Eddie’s sure they’re on the precipice of something life-changing. Therapy is such a scam until it isn’t. “You never have before. So I was wondering if something changed.”

Eddie bites the inside of his cheek. He feels vaguely like he’s just been backed into an alleyway like a feral cat. “I didn’t need it before.”

“You didn’t need to get better?”

“I wasn’t having panic attacks,” Eddie drawls out. “And the rest is…look we’ve all got our shit, right? The point is I wasn’t having panic attacks. I was dealing. I was fine.”

Frank purses his lips, like Eddie’s a puzzle he’s trying to figure out, which can’t be true. As far as patients go, Eddie knows he’s one of the easier ones to crack. He wears all his feelings on the surface and just chooses not to acknowledge them until he has to—it doesn’t mean they aren’t glaringly obvious to everyone else.

“Besides,” Eddie continues, probably digging himself deeper into a hole for Frank to fill with water in the last 5 minutes and drown him with. “Christopher’s the first priority. Always. Do you have kids?”

Frank shakes his head.

“If you can push through, you do,” Eddie tells him. It’s odd, to be the one explaining things to Frank. “My dad’s job was long hours away from home. He never complained about it, but you could tell, sometimes. I mean, we were all smart kids. So, I wasn’t dying. I knew how to push through. I didn’t need it.”

“It?”

“Therapy.” Eddie waves his hand. “Help. If I did, I would’ve come here, just like I am now.”

Frank pauses. Eddie’s got the sinking suspicion he’s just failed a pop quiz. “If you need it this time,” he says, “Then why can’t you tell anyone about it?”

There are times when Eddie wishes he was more complex; that all the emotions he shoved down into his stomach made a proper home there instead of just being remnants of his childhood. Frank has Eddie exactly where he wants him. He fell for Frank’s line of questioning hook, line, and sinker, and now he’s boxed in a corner with nowhere left to go.

But Eddie also grew up stubborn—it was the only chance he stood against Adriana and her incessant need to shove herself into Eddie’s business. “Who says I can’t tell anyone?” he demands. It’s a losing battle. “Bobby knows.”

Frank nods. “Look, I’m not assigning you homework.”

“That sounds promising.”

“I just mean that you don’t have to do it if you’re uncomfortable,” Frank smiles; lips pulled tight, but it seems genuine if Eddie had to guess. “You’re not being graded or anything. But I’d like you to tell someone in your life that you’re going to therapy because you deserve to get better, not just because you want to stop having panic attacks at work.”

Eddie crosses his arms and looks up at the ceiling, trying to blink tears out of his eyes by staring at the light fixture. I want you to tell people you deserve to get better. He chokes on it as it goes down, sniffing. The tears don’t disappear but he still feels ridiculous using his hand to swipe at something so small.

“You can tell Bobby, even,” Frank continues. “And it doesn’t have to be in those exact words. But I’m sure you get the sentiment of what I’m asking.”

He lets out a watery laugh, because yeah, he knows what Frank’s saying, but it’s also the first time Eddie’s heard it. “What if I don’t believe you?”

“We’ll work on that part,” Frank replies; crinkles around his eyes. “In therapy. In the meantime, I think you’ll find that there are lots of people in your life that do.”

As if summoned by his last therapy session, he gets a text from Adriana the next day that reads: Isn’t that your friend on the news?

You’re going to have to be more specific, he replies. 

Adriana dislikes the text and sends back, It’s not like you have many friends, which is a ridiculously unkind statement coming from someone who’s 35 and should know better, so he responds with the clown emoji (Christopher taught him) and Adriana just dislikes that too.

His older sister lives in San Diego, three hours away, so chances are she’s watching NBC or something national. It wouldn’t be the first time. Once, some girl Sophia went to middle school with became famous for owning a ridiculously ugly Pekinese.

Army buddy or ephs? he asks, already flipping on the TV. It’s his day off. Christopher’s at school and the 118 is working. What else is he meant to do? Because if it’s someone from high school, I think I’d rather not know.

Your friend from LA idiot. The tall one that mom and dad met when u drove through el paso. A pause, Buck! and then another text: He’s literally on channel 4.

Eddie finds Buck before Adriana sends the last text. He’s below a skyrise, dressed in uniform, and the reporter seems to be doing most of the talking. Eddie doesn’t know what happened, but he’s familiar with the look on Buck’s face; the crease between his eyebrows. His hands are shaking too, below frame, just the slightest of tremors running up through his forearms.

His first thought is, I hope everyone is okay. His second, which he’ll only feel bad about later, is Well, at least he’s not being interviewed by Channel Eight. 

As a rule, Eddie finds it unproductive to think about Taylor Kelly now that she and Buck are over. Or, at the very least, he thinks about her less than he did two months ago. He doesn’t hate people much, as a rule, but no one’s ever strung his best friend along like a dog on a leash and still expected him to stay after the fact.

The interviewer on screen keeps talking, and this time Buck answers. Eddie catches glances of the conversation—the words accident, and my fault get thrown around—but he’s more focused on Buck’s breathing. He inhales shakily, and then seemingly, forgets to exhale.

The red button in the corner signals that it’s live. Eddie calls Bobby before he knows whether or not he’s free.

Thankfully, Cap picks up. Eddie’s next move was begging Karen to locate the 118 through satellite imaging and then driving there. “Eddie,” he greets, sounding unsurprised. “I assume you’re watching the news?”

“Yeah,” he replies. He doesn’t ask how he knows—doesn’t need a joke cracked about how in tune Buck and Eddie are when that’s clearly not true right now. “What happened, Bobby?”

Cap sighs. “Look,” he starts wearily, and Eddie’s heart pangs in his throat. Buck looks okay, physically, but there are bags under his eyes that even television lighting can’t cover up and Eddie just wants to know how everything just keeps going wrong. 

“Buck volunteered,” Bobby explains. “And the lady didn’t die. She’s just…I mean she’s injured but she didn’t die. Look Eddie, it was a bad rescue from the start. A fifty-fifty shot. I told Buck he didn’t have to but—”

“I’m not blaming you,” Eddie says, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose like that helps anything. “That’s not—look, I know Buck. I just thought that, after I told him about the will—”

Bobby makes a noise of surprise. In the background, Eddie can hear people coming and going. They’re still on the scene. Eddie keeps his eyes trained on Buck. “You told him about the will?” Bobby demands. “When?”

It takes a second to process. Buck is in front of him, sweat making his hair slick and a frown pulling at his birthmark and Eddie’s chest aches with this want that’s so…if he thinks about it, he thinks it’ll make him sick. And talking about the will with Bobby isn’t much safer, but it feels like the only option he has.

He’s getting really tired about being trapped in conversations with no escape route. It’s a hard thing to get rid of though. Everything these days is about the will or the shooting, or Buck and Eddie’s inability to talk about either.

“He didn’t tell you?” Eddie asks, bewildered. “He didn’t…come to you for advice or something?”

“No,” Bobby says. “And he couldn’t have gone to Maddie either, which means—”

“That the only person Buck’s spoken to about the will is maybe Dr. Copeland,” Eddie finishes. “And I don’t even know if he’s seeing her anymore.”

“Eddie—”

“No, I know!” He resists the urge to pull at his hair. On screen, Buck looks like he’s trying to do the same. “I made my bed and I’ve got to lie in it. And it’s not like I haven’t tried talking to him, Bobby. I’ve—”

“Buck is the most stubborn kid I know,” Bobby interrupts. “You’re the second. But believe me when I say you’re doing good, kid.” 

Nothing about this conversation feels right—too convoluted; not deep enough—Eddie wants so desperately to help people, and Bobby is on the phone telling him that this is what that feels like. It’s ridiculous. Because if Eddie was helping Buck at all, then he wouldn’t have that miserable expression on his face on the TV screen in front of him. His head would be on straight, and he wouldn’t have agreed to do that goddamn interview in the first place.

Eddie isn’t going to pretend he knows Buck as well as he once thought he did, but he has no doubt in his mind that Buck pushes things till they ache—the same way you poke at a bruise, to see how much you can take before it stings enough to stop. 

Buck lives every part of his life like that. This interview, both public and recorded, doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone that knows him even a little bit.

He feels like existing around Buck is like walking through fog without headlights. They talk or they don’t, and everyone only sees the BuckandEddie of it all; this feeling, still defrosting in Eddie’s chest, that maybe they deserve good things in this lifetime—which sounds ridiculous in the face of oncoming traffic. 

What he really wants to say to Bobby is, I think Buck hasn’t been okay since he rolled under the firetruck to save me in May, I think he got worse when Maddie left in September, I think January is going to go down as one of the most awful months of our lives, and I think not everyone always comes out the other side of things stronger than they used to be.

“Frank says I deserve to get better,” Eddie blurts out, instead.

“You do,” Bobby replies, and if thinks it’s weird he doesn’t say it. A part of Eddie knew this would be his response, but a larger part always warned him not to trust it.

“Maybe,” he allows. “But I don’t think I know how to get there if Buck’s not better first.”

Somewhere in the background is Adriana’s voice, always sticking her nose in his business. “Careful, Eddito,” she grins, wrapping her arm around his shoulder. “That’s how people who are in love talk.”

Bobby must know that too, but thankfully, he doesn’t call Eddie out on it. Thank God. Even the mere implication would send Eddie on a spiraling slope down.

He loves Buck. That part’s not in contention. And he loves Buck for Christopher, a second parent almost. That part isn't up for debate either.  But that’s the extent of it; it has to be. Because that would mean…that would make it real. There’s a line between wanting to kiss Buck and being in love with him and Eddie’s a stubborn, stubborn fool, so he refuses to cross it.

Besides, even if Eddie is… in l-word with Buck, he’d never be able to act on it. Buck deserves better, even if he doesn’t know it. Because there’s something fundamentally wrong with Eddie anyway. 

He’s not superstitious, but every time he’s ever admitted to being in love with someone—from Shannon to this girl he had a crush on in the fifth grade—it always ends poorly, and Eddie thinks that means there’s a common denominator. 

Bobby sighs, and Eddie’s pretty sure that translates to, “What am I going to do with the pair of you?”  

“Well, healing doesn’t happen in tandem, Eddie,” he says. “Listen, I have to go. I’ll talk to Buck. But take care of yourself, alright?”

“Tell him to come here,” Eddie replies. He doesn’t even mean to say it; doesn’t know if he wants Buck to come over, certainly doesn’t mean to make it sound like demand rather than a request. “When he gets off shift, tell him to come here.”

“Okay,” Bobby agrees.

He hangs up and Eddie goes back to staring at his TV screen, trying to decide if the Buck on screen will even say yes.

Eddie wakes up from his nap to the sound of the lock at the front door and Christopher rapidly headed to the hallway, even though he can’t be sure who it is.

He doesn’t usually nap while Christopher’s at home, but there’s a weariness to his shoulders that he can’t help. Everything feels exhausting. Existing feels exhausting—which is worrisome, but he’s too tired to do anything about it anyway. 

His shoulders feel like they’re made of lead. Like they’ve got the weight of the world on them even though his day consisted of nothing but watching Buck on TV and then having a small breakdown about it. He stretches, and it makes every scar on his body scream, just a little bit.

“Christopher,” he calls, sleep lacing his voice. “You don’t even know who it is.”

“It’s Buck,” Christopher replies with an absolute certainty Eddie wishes he possessed. “He’s the only one with a key, Dad.”

Eddie knows that. It’s Buck or Carla or his tía, but his aunt knocks before she enters and Carla isn’t going to barge into his home without Christopher. So it’s Buck, using his key again, which he started doing again in February for the first time since August, and Eddie nearly trips over the blanket around his feet trying to stand up and get to him.

“Hey, buddy!” Eddie hears. Sure enough, Christopher’s high off the ground in Buck’s arms, giggling. He’s starting to reject bedtime stories and even trips to the zoo in favor of a lie in, but he hasn't refused the hugging just yet. 

“What are you doing here?” Christopher asks suspiciously. “Movie night doesn’t start for another, like, 3 hours.” He wrinkles his nose. “And um, usually you take a shower first.”

Buck catches Eddie’s eye and the smile plastered across face falters—just a little bit. Hardly enough to be noticeable, except, well, Eddie notices. 

“Had a bit of a rough day,” Buck admits, keeping his tone light and unassuming. “Thought I could use some time playing video games with my favorite kid.”

The implication doesn’t say near death so much as just a crazy shift, but Eddie’s a bit surprised at the admission anyway. He doesn’t know how Buck does it, like he’s wearing his heart on his sleeve but under a thick overcoat. It’s like Eddie knows everything and nothing about him. Which, when you put them together, just cancel out.

Christopher frowns. “I have to finish my math homework,” he says dutifully. He side-eyes Eddie, “Unless…”

“No,” Eddie interjects firmly—always playing the bad cop. “Buck’s going to shower, and if you finish your homework by then, then you can play video games.”

Chris shrugs in response. “Okay,” he agrees amicably, because he knows the rules don’t shift just because it’s Buck, even though he definitely didn’t learn that from Eddie. He turns to Buck, “Shower slow,” he says earnestly, and he rushes back to the kitchen table and flips through his homework packet.

Eddie watches him go and then looks back at Buck. He’s taking off his shoes and staring at the wood floor. Eddie dares him to say something, anything, before Eddie picks up the conversation, but then he remembers the interview and takes pity on him.

“Shower,” Eddie tells Buck. He smells like sweat and cleaning liquid. “You still know where everything is, right?”

That’s low and they both know it but Eddie’s confident that neither of them will contest the point. Hurt flashes across Buck’s face but Eddie’s grown to expect it, at least once, whenever they’re in the same room. Buck’s always sad, and that can’t always be Eddie’s fault, but he feels guilty about it anyway. It’s not Eddie’s fault, but he can’t seem to help Buck either, so it kind of is.

“Yeah,” Buck mutters. “My bag—”

“Just borrow some of my clothes,” Eddie says mindlessly, before he can realize that Buck might hate that idea except it’ll kill Eddie if he refuses, and Buck’s always known Eddie better than Eddie knows him, so he won’t. 

Buck’s eyes go wide. “O-okay,” he stutters. And then, as if trying to justify it, “I’m just going to borrow some sweats and a t-shirt.”

Eddie wants to tell Buck he can borrow whatever he wants if it’ll get him to stay right here where he belongs. “Okay,” he agrees, and backs into the dining room like a coward.

Christopher shoots him a look like he knows what Eddie’s thinking. “Dad,” he says, “Are you hiding from Buck?”

He hears Buck lumber into the hallway and hopes he didn’t hear the question. “Of course not,” Eddie replies, trying to make it sound at all believable. “Buck just—he just had a rough day. So I’m giving him some space.”

Christopher pauses, pencil in hand—he’s working astonishingly fast now that video games with Buck are a possibility. “Should I be giving him space too?” he asks, almost cautiously and it’s…“I mean, we don’t have to play video games.”

Eddie feels like the worst father on the planet. He’s pretty sure he is the worst father on the entire planet, because Christopher is 12 going on 13 and he’s trying to balance his dad’s issues along with middle school, and it’s not his responsibility but Eddie never told him that. So two months after he quit the 118, Christopher’s sitting at the dining table trying to finish his fucking math homework, and Eddie doesn’t have an answer for him now either.

And that…all of the decisions Eddie’s been making lately are impulsive ones, but he thinks this has been building since his last therapy session. He hears the shower turn on in the distance and pulls out a chair, sitting across from Christopher, who slowly puts down his pencil, and doesn’t tell Eddie, for the first times in weeks, that he’d rather do his times tables than have a conversation

“Okay,” he says, crossing his arms and leaning across the table. “Christopher, I need your help with something.”

Christopher looks at the hallway and then back at Eddie. “Is it a secret?”

“It’s…” Eddie’s not going to ask Christopher to keep secrets from Buck if he can help it, but he also thinks Buck wouldn’t be able to handle hearing it from anyone that’s not Eddie. 

“Not a secret,” he decides. “Not really. But it’s something I need to do myself. If that’s okay with you.”

Christopher doesn’t look convinced, but he nods dutifully. “Yeah, it’s okay,” he replies. “It’s your secret, dad.” He looks at Eddie’s mock-frown and giggles. “Not secret,” he corrects. “It’s your—what’s the opposite of a secret?”

Eddie thinks it would be revelation or confession but that doesn’t really seem to fit the circumstances. This isn’t a secret because Eddie’s going to go through with it, one day. It’s going to take a lot of self-determination and more than a couple mental breakdowns, but he will get them out of this hole they’ve found themselves in.

“I guess it’d be a promise then,” he tells Christopher, who seems to grasp the weight of it almost immediately. Smartest kid in the world. “So, every Tuesday and Thursday I’m going to therapy to get better.”

Christopher purses his lips together. “Because you got shot?”

Suddenly, Eddie remembers why he didn’t have this conversation before. There’s something about your 12-year-old son talking about a gun—a sniper—that coils at Eddie’s stomach. It makes him feel nauseous; makes the scar on his shoulder ache like a heartbeat.

He exhales shakily. Christopher keeps his eyes on him. “Yeah,” Eddie chokes out. “Because I got shot. And…and because I still think about it sometimes—”

“You said you didn’t,” Christopher interrupts, eyes narrowed. “In the hospital. You lied.”

“Well, sometimes these things have a way of sneaking up on us,” he explains. Christopher’s face clears,  just a little bit, so he keeps going. “Back then I thought I could just push through it. That’s what my dad taught me. It turns out he was wrong.” He tilts his head. “Just like I was.”

Christopher looks like he’s debating whether or not to say something. He gets that from Eddie, and one conversation isn’t enough to change learned habits, but it’s a start. “Then why did you quit being a firefighter, dad?” he asks. “Is that—did that make you sad too?”

Eddie knows the answer, but he thinks about it anyway. He knows the answer, he’s sure of it, but according to Frank, what he ‘knows’ doesn’t have stable ground to stand on anymore. 

“It’s complicated,” he says finally. “I’ll always be a firefighter. It doesn’t—it’s not something that just disappears.” 

Christopher shoots him a look and Eddie snorts. Definitely his kid. For the first time in a while, it doesn’t seem like a bad thing.

“I…” He drums his fingers on the table. The shower turns off. He’s only got about 5 more minutes. “I don’t think it made me sad, mijo. But it wasn’t good for me. It made me remember the shooting more. And I didn’t want you to be afraid—”

“I wasn’t afraid,” Christopher interrupts. “I didn’t want you to quit your job, dad. I was just angry. Because you wouldn’t talk to me about it, and it kinda seemed like you didn’t care whether you lived or died.”

And suddenly, his chest feels too tight. Everything feels too much. He’s having a panic attack, right here in front of his kid, just like the first one, only this time nothing expands outwards. Everything sits right there, in his throat; an elephant-sized weight pressing down on his lungs, leaving Eddie unable to breathe. 

“Dad?” Christopher asks uncertainly, and Eddie knows what it looks like—a warning. Like maybe he just lost his train of thought or got dizzy; maybe he can push through it. He opens his mouth to say something and nothing comes out except for a choked-off noise. 

All he can see is Christopher, like some sort of tunnel vision. The rest of the dining table, the living room, everything turns white around the edges. And then, suddenly, Christopher’s chair is scraping back and he’s gone too.

“Okay, Eds.” And that’s Buck’s voice. Low; measured—calm like he hasn’t heard in a while. “You’re going to breathe with me, in and out.”

Eddie nods. He inhales sharply but it pierces the back of his throat like a dagger and stings so hard he nearly doubles-over with the pain of it. He tries to exhale—try again—but all that comes out is a wheezing noise. 

“Christopher,” he chokes out.

“Is in his bedroom,” Buck says patiently. He takes Eddie’s hand and puts it on his own chest, where Eddie can feel the steady rise and fall. “In and out. Slowly.” 

His lungs scream with effort. For some reason, all he can focus on is the fact that he can’t feel Buck’s heartbeat. The kitchen comes into view and fades again and Eddie thinks he’s going to die like this—here with his hand on Buck’s chest—his heart just a few paces over if only Eddie could move his hands.

“Hey, come on,” Buck cuts through. “None of that. No…panicking, Eddie. You’ve gotten through one of these before, right? You can get through this one. No sweat.”

“How do you know that?” Eddie gasps out. But he’s right, and it works, and he’s not dying. Somehow. The brown of the table gets a little less blurry. “I never told you that.”

“Told me what?”

Another breath. Another sentence—less halting than the first. “That’s what I do,” he says. “When I…that’s what I say to myself.”

He’s sort of wrapped around Buck, with his left hand gripping his forearm and right one on his chest, but neither of them make any move to separate. Eddie realizes, with distinct fascination, that this is the closest they’ve been since July. And then Eddie remembers it took him having a panic attack to get them here, and he swallows.

“This is…Jesus, Eddie.” Buck hesitates, and then as if finally remembering what to do with his hands, they hover in front of Eddie’s eyebrow. Not touching, but almost. “How many of these have you had?”

Because of course that’s what he wants to know. Of course that’s the part Buck is stuck on. A sob gets caught in Eddie’s throat and stays there, unmoving. Frank says he deserves to get better, but fuck, Buck’s right there. He’s right there with more goodness than he knows what to do with. How can Eddie begin to get better when he knows he’s leaving Buck behind?

So Eddie just laughs breathlessly at him, because this whole thing is so absurd. Buck is right in front of him; Eddie’s got his hand pressed flush against his chest, and he still feels like there’s a gap between them a couple miles wide. 

Buck’s face twists in confusion, and then morphs into something like annoyance. He pulls away first, cautiously, still searching Eddie’s face for signs of an imminent spiral, but Eddie doesn’t reach back out and he doesn’t either.

“Now what?” Buck asks harshly. “You think you can just keep having panic attacks and everything will be fine? Go to therapy, Eddie.”

Except, he’s still hovering, right in front of him. Just like he has been since August, even from a distance. And Eddie wants to tell him about Frank; he wants to ask Buck to pick him up on Tuesdays and Thursdays and talk to him about how frustrating it was—that therapy is actually helping—wants Buck to laugh and call him an idiot and not mean it. 

He wants Buck to smile at him. The real one, not just the one he puts on for Christopher—still genuine but a little forced around the edges. He wants to botch Buck’s fancy dinner recipes that require cheese that doesn’t come pre-shredded and hum along to his perfectly curated Spotify playlist while Buck tries and fails to hit the high notes. He wants to kiss him—fuck, he wants to kiss him and tell him that he’s good and worth it and wants it not to feel the guilt at the end of it all.

Mostly, he wants Buck to be happy. Here, in the Diaz house, with Christopher down the hall doing his math homework or wherever else life takes him. A new city. A girlfriend that has Eddie seeing green. He just wants Buck to be happy, with or without him. And he thinks, if he told that to his sister, she would have a word for it.

Eddie has a word for it too, but trying to put the letters in the right order feels comparable to pushing a stone up a hill.

“I—” Buck’s phone starts vibrating. 

Eddie doesn’t flinch, but it’s a near thing. He should’ve known better—before reality came crashing down—Buck doesn’t need a reminder that Eddie’s healing after he’s the one that hurt Buck in the first place. 

He watches as Buck picks up the phone. “It’s Hen,” he says, obviously bewildered. It’s not completely unheard of, but it’s clear Buck has no idea why Hen would be calling him one hour after they got off shift. “I should…”

“Yeah,” Eddie replies, still riding on autopilot. “I should talk to Chris—”

“You should take a second,” Buck interrupts, little furrow to his brow. But then he pauses, inexplicably, and takes a couple of steps backwards into the living room and shakes his head like he’s coming out of a spell. “I mean, sorry. I’m, um, I’m just going to take this.”

Eddie lets him go, leaning back in the dining chair with his hand over his eyes like he’s been woken up too early. He allows himself five seconds before he hauls himself to his feet, and tries to figure out how to explain what had just happened to Christopher, who he knows was eavesdropping through the whole thing.

He knocks on the bedroom door. It opens in the time between his first hit and his second. Christopher is wide-eyed and waiting, not as if he expects to be reprimanded for something, thank God, but like he half-expects Eddie to be a walking corpse, which doesn’t feel too great either.

“Hey, Superman,” Eddie offers, motioning to the only half-open door. He’s exhausted, and he’s going to have this conversation, but he’d rather not be swaying back and forth as he does. “Mind if I come in?”

“I’m sorry!” Christopher blurts out before Eddie’s even fully in the room. “I didn’t know—I was just upset, I didn’t—”

“Woah, woah, woah!” He sits down on the carpet, and after a few seconds, Christopher drops down beside him, their backs against the bed frame. “This is not your fault, okay?”

Christopher’s usually more of a skeptic than this, but he looks desperately like he needs to be told something is okay, even after the confession at the kitchen table, so Eddie will give it to him until they both calm down. “What was that?”

“Okay.” He puts his arm around Christopher’s shoulder so that his hand rests in his curly hair. Christopher doesn’t protest, but he shudders and digs in closer to Eddie’s side. “That was a panic attack. That’s part of why I’m going to see Frank.”

“Is it…” Christopher pauses. He looks like he has about a million questions. “Does it hurt?”

“A little bit,” he admits. “Sometimes more and sometimes less.

“Are you okay now?” he presses. “What should I do if it happens again?” Eddie makes to answer him in the seconds of silence in between, but Christopher isn’t done. He looks up at Eddie; blinks at him like he’s 8 years old and they’re moving to Los Angeles again. Trusting. “Were you scared?”

Eddie chokes out a laugh. “Yeah, Chris,” he answers, running a hand through his hair. “I was terrified, but you know, talking about it,” he pokes Christopher’s side, “with Frank, makes it a little less scary every time.”

“And when it’s less scary, that won’t happen anymore?” Christopher asks. Eddie nods and Christopher purses his lips like that settles it. “Then you can talk about it with me, Dad.”

This kid. Eddie’s so full of love he thinks he could explode with it. He wants to wrap Christopher in his arms and stay there until he demands to be let go, to grow up or something else that’s a dagger to Eddie’s heart. He’s never loved another human being this much. Not even close.

“That’s what I pay Frank for, kid.” Eddie smiles down at him and of course he understands why Buck comes through the front door grinning every time. He loves this kid just as much as Eddie does. “I tell you everything and you’re going to start demanding a paycheck.”

“Derek from my math class gets an allowance.”

Eddie snorts. “We’ll talk about it.”

Christopher grins at him and gets up, but reluctantly. “My math homework is still due tonight,” he mutters. “Who assigned stuff on a Friday?” 

“That’s what you get for living in the technology era,” Eddie replies. “But hey, if you finish before dinner, you can kick Buck’s butt at Horizon.”

He hears Buck cross Christopher’s path in the hallway—“Hey, kid, your dad in there?” “Uh huh.”—and he’s fully expecting to hear another lecture about therapy and bettering himself, but there’s not even a smile to slip from his face when he enters. Instead, Buck looks just like Christopher had minutes earlier: wide-eyed, a little stunned.

Eddie waits. Buck inhales shakily.

“Chimney and Jee-Yun are back,” he says, completely monotone except for the tremor of his lips as he says it. “With—they brought Maddie back home.”

And Eddie…he wants so badly to touch him in comfort just like Buck had done for him in the kitchen. Fingers to his chest so that he knows something, something in all this chaos is real. Except he knows Buck won’t take it. And that aches just as much as his chest, struggling to inhale.

“Don’t you see how painful it is?” Eddie wants to scream. “For you to hate something that I love so much?”

It slips out of him, the feeling. Tomorrow he’ll spiral about that too but for now there’s only Buck, shaking like a leaf in front of him. Buck, who apologized for breaking down in front of Christopher when Eddie got shot and then calmed him down from a panic attack with no judgment; who’ll put himself back together just as quickly as he fell apart when Christopher calls him in five minutes to play video games in the living room.

Good God, Eddie thinks, would they ever get a break?

“She didn’t call you?” Eddie asks tentatively. “Maddie. She didn’t send you a text message?”

Buck’s face nearly collapses in on itself. His eyebrows knit together like they’ve been stitched there and he shakes his head. “I don’t even know if she’s okay,” he whispers, so heart-felt that Eddie nearly drowns under it.

“Do you want to go check up on her?” Eddie tries again. Needs Buck to say something that isn’t so nonsensical. “I can drive you.”

Really, neither of them are in any state to get behind a wheel right now, but if Buck wants to go then hell, Eddie will pay for the Uber. Buck shakes his head again, no, and Eddie doesn’t know how to reconcile with this Buck. He doesn’t know how to let Buck keep his distance from Maddie and Chimney when it’ll just hurt him even more in the process.

“Hen said to give them a day,” Buck manages, but it’s hardly…it’s audible, but it’s hardly anything else. “I don’t—I don’t know what to do.”

“So, give them a day,” Eddie says, as if anything is that easy. “They’re home now, Buck. They’re not going anywhere.”

“It’s movie night,” Buck states, but it’s all dull and colorless. “I’m here with you and Christopher. It’s movie night, Maddie knows that.”

“Buck—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he snaps, and it aches. The turmoil on his face just aches and it aches and it aches. There’s nowhere for it to go except down, but Eddie wishes he knew how to be there to catch him. 

It just feels like anything anyone does just serves to hurt Buck more. He’s not seeing Dr. Copeland anymore, Eddie’s sure of it. So all this, Buck standing here, angry and in pain and not headed to see his sister and niece and brother-in-law who he loves, is just a long winded way of saying what Eddie already knows: all he does is drag people down with him.

“Okay,” Eddie says placatingly, except he knows Buck hates that too. “Spend the night here then.”

Buck hasn’t done that since August either, but Eddie’s given up trying to pretend that summer was a good thing.

“I think Buck spends too much time with us,” Eddie confesses at his next therapy appointment.

Frank raises his eyebrows, but doesn’t look fazed other than that. Which is ridiculous because it’s Buck and it’s Eddie and they’re supposed to be attached at the hip and Frank has never set foot into the 118, but Eddie’s pretty sure half the greater Los Angeles area gets this information in a pamphlet when they cross the state line.

Except Frank clearly didn’t, because he doesn’t look fazed. Instead, he just motions for Eddie to continue. 

Honestly, Eddie didn’t think he’d get this far. 

“It’s like,” he tries to find the words. “He spends way too much time with us and nowhere else, and he always looks…he always looks so sad and I don’t know what to do about that. It’s not like I can just tell him to leave, you know?” He picks at the hem of his t-shirt. “But if he stays then I’m just dragging him down with me.”

“Shouldn’t you give Buck more credit than that?” Frank asks. “You told me he resolved the conflict between him and Chimney perfectly fine. Why doesn’t that apply to you?”

Because it’s me. “Well, Chimney didn’t put Buck in his will,” Eddie replies clippedly. “I think. Buck’s not tied to them. And even if he was, Chim’s a lot less fucked up than I am.”

Frank nods. “So, if that’s how you feel, then why did you put Buck in your will a year ago?”

“For Christopher,” Eddie replies, raising his eyebrows, because that’s a stupid question if he’s ever heard one. “He needs a legal guardian. And I trust Buck.”

“Then why are you deliberating over the will now?” Frank presses, pen in hand, probably doodling flowers in the background of Eddie’s patient notes: very repressed; should’ve gone to therapy several years ago; in love with best friend question mark?

“I think,” Frank continues, because Eddie can’t come up with an answer which makes him feel inexplicably embarrassed. “You know, Eddie, it’s okay to do things for yourself.”

“The will isn’t for me,” Eddie protests. “I put Buck in the will for Christopher. That’s what I’ve been saying.”

Frank jots something down. Talk more abt will?? if Eddie had to take a guess. “You can either have Buck in your will for Christopher or be dragging him down with you,” Frank tells him. “You can’t do both.”

Some obstinate part of Eddie wants to demand, Why not? like a child. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he points out. “Those two things aren’t even comparable. And,” he pauses. “I mean, the will was for Christopher, but if Buck is my safety net, then isn’t it a little bit for me too?”

“It can be for you in whatever way you want it to be,” Frank says patiently. “It can be for you and not be a bad thing, Eddie.”

One of the first things Eddie learned about himself was that he could not grow up to be selfish. “Not under this roof,” his father warned, when Adriana took the bigger piece of chocolate instead of splitting it equally with Sophia. It still sits with him, in this chair in Frank’s office, among all the other damage.

Eddie’s not much of a Catholic anymore—he was never a good one to begin with—but it lingers under the surface. If he rationalizes it, he needs something to feel guilty over, or nothing else sits right. He doesn’t know how to exist without the nausea pooling in his stomach, screaming at him that he has something to atone for.

His hands are shaking where they rest on his thigh. He looks up at the ceiling again to try and blink away the tears that are stinging at the corners of his eyes but they just slide right back into his throat. 

This isn’t the first time he’s cried in front of Frank, but it’s the first time it’s bubbled up so suddenly. “You’re not religious, are you?” Eddie asks shakily.

Frank shakes his head. His face remains emotionless but there’s sympathy in his eyes. Eddie lets out a watery laugh and clutches at the material of his sweats so that they ball up tight in a fist.

“I think that you think the will is allegorical,” Eddie spits out, clenching his teeth together so hard they dig in. “And I’d rather you just say that.”

He gets a shrug in return and that’s infuriating. “I’m not going to force you to say anything you’re not ready for,” he says. “But it might help to say it outloud. What you really want, if the will isn’t just for Christopher.”

“I want—” Eddie cuts himself off with a watery laugh. “What I want isn’t for people like me.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Being happy.” He doesn’t shout; never shouts, but it feels like something cutting through the silence anyway. “It’s not—Frank, I’m here because there’s something wrong with me.”

Frank nods. “And people who have something wrong with them don’t deserve to be happy?”

That’s not fair! “Not when it’s me me,” Eddie snaps, roughly brushing at his face. “That’s not—God, Frank, I’m not alive to be happy!”

It sits there between them for a second. His hour is almost up, and he’s going to get into his truck red-faced and torn from the inside out, but if he’s going to do that, he wants to do it in a proud way. He wants to do something he knows he deserves, for the first time in his life, instead of second-guessing.

“You asked me before,” he says quietly, because he knows what he sounds like. He’s settled with the fact that he deserves to get better. Happiness is next on the bucket list except the thought of it makes him want to vomit. An uphill battle if he’s ever heard one. “Why I put Buck in my will.”

Frank nods, and Eddie inhales sharply. Outside, it’s sunny; warm for mid-February. The scar on his right shoulder twists, but not with pain. This feels like something else entirely. Something like a pipe dream. Like July all over. 

Eddie squeezes his eyes shut, mouth twisting in an effort not to break down completely. He feels unfixable. He knows he’s unfixable. He’s just waiting for Frank to share the sentiment.

“If I died after making Buck Christopher’s legal guardian,” he says shakily. “Then at least I would’ve gotten one thing right.”

And with that, their one hour is up.

The next time Eddie hears anything about Maddie, Buck is laughing.

It stops him in his tracks, at the entrance of this bar downtown underneath the flashing neon sign. Their group isn’t difficult to spot—they’ve got the largest table, chairs pulled around so that everyone is nearly on top of each other—but Eddie finds himself hesitating anyway.

It’s Ravi’s graduation party and Eddie would’ve been there for the actual ceremony itself, but he was at work, taking calls and wondering what Buck’s face would’ve looked like. He doesn’t wear pride around often enough for Eddie to recognize it, and he wonders if Hen showed him a picture of the cake they bought, Eddie would understand the joke.

Honestly, Eddie wasn’t expecting an invite. It’s not like it’s just firefighters there—unmistakably, Eddie picks out Karen and several of Ravi’s roommates—but it feels private somehow. All of these people came with someone. Eddie’s holding a light-up dumpling in a cardboard box with a terrible wrapping job, and he’s alone.

i want you to come, Ravi had texted him three days earlier. and it’s my graduation party, so whatever weird thing is going on between you and buck doesn’t matter.

What can he say? Ravi’s grown on him—kinda like a dandelion with a heart of gold that they couldn’t get rid of—but still.

Someone jostles Eddie from behind. It’s not that type of bar, but it’s still a Friday night, so it’s pretty crowded. Buck is sitting next to Hen and across from Chimney, smiling so wide that Eddie’s heart does a flip in his chest, and then, when he spots Eddie, he falters.

“Hey!” Ravi grins, stumbling forward, clearly more than half-way to drunk. “You made it! How was work?”

“Well, no one died. So pretty decent.”

“Cheers,” one of Ravi’s roommates, the blond one, says drily, raising his glass. “That would be a good day in the marketing field as well.”

“Would be?” Albert asks, pausing, his cocktail halfway to his mouth.

Ravi’s roommate doesn’t reply. But there’s something haunting about the silence. 

“Here,” Eddie says, placing the gift in front of Ravi and resolutely not looking at Buck. “It’s a light-up dumpling. Christopher picked it out.”

“Dude,” Ravi protests, picking up the box and shaking it by his ear like Eddie was lying to him. “Spoilers!” And then he takes another shot of something fluorescent blue, and the dumpling is forgotten in favor of his boyfriend.

“Hey, man,” Chimney greets as Eddie sits down next to him. He can hear Buck saying something to Hen, but he’s not focusing on it. Obviously. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

The morning after Chim and Maddie came back, Eddie dropped Buck off at their house on his way to work because his hands were shaking so badly. He doesn’t know what happened—doesn’t know if there was screaming or crying or just a bunch of hugging and well wishes that Eddie missed out on—but he saw Chimney open the front door, and nodded at him before leaving to give them their space.

“I mean you’ve been back for a week or so,” Eddie comments. “You’re not even—when are you back at work?”

Albert offers to go get some more drinks for the table. Eddie asks for an IPA like he always does and Buck asks for a double gin and tonic on ice which he never does, and Eddie almost calls him out on it when he catches Buck’s eye, but Chimney leans forward on his arms, blocking Eddie’s line of sight almost entirely.

“I come back on Monday,” Chimney replies easily. “When are you?”

The question takes a second to process. Eddie blinks and Hen, who’s clearly been listening in, swats Chimney on the arm and shoots him a warning look. Buck sighs and stares at the ceiling, and Ravi and his roommates take stock of the situation, nod, and head for the dance floor.

“Chim—”

“It’s Ravi’s graduation, guys,” Karen interrupts, giving Eddie a wide-eyed glance that could really mean anything but effectively makes him shut up. “Let’s do this another time, okay?”

“What Karen said,” Hen agrees. Albert comes back with the drinks and Eddie feels the need to chug his beer like he’s shotgunning them in the parking lot of his high school. “How’s Maddie doing, Chim?”

Buck sighs loudly, quirking his lips up a little when he catches Eddie looking like, Nothing’s wrong, I’m just a little tired of everyone saying things, which happens sometimes, and takes a large sip of his cocktail, lips wrapped around the straw because he hates the feeling of ice cubes on his teeth and—

Eddie’s not drunk enough for this. Eddie’s hardly past sober. He goes to therapy two times a week and grew up Catholic and refuses to hold eye-contact with Buck when his eyes are that fucking shade of blue that Eddie thinks he could live in, and his lips are wrapped around a stirring straw like he has fucking practice. 

Clearly, this isn’t Buck’s first drink. He’s wearing a maroon button-down with the sleeves pushed up around his elbows and his eyes flicker from Eddie’s nose to his lips to his chest and back up. Somehow, no one notices. And Eddie—

Eddie hates that there’s a part of him that would say yes, if Buck asked him right now.

“It’s her first night alone with Jee since…I mean for a while,” Chimney says, and Karen and Hen make identical noises of sympathy. “She wanted to stay at home. And she’s got this. She’s doing so much better, I just hope that maybe tonight she’ll start to believe it?”

Buck says nothing, which…isn’t like him at all, especially when they’re talking about his sister and niece. Albert notices too; he’s sitting right next to him, looking back at Buck and biting his lip like he can feel the tension running through his forearm. 

Eddie wonders how their conversation went, if Buck and Chimney are sitting across from each other like nothing happened, and not speaking to each other, like nothing ever has.

“Well,” Eddie says, taking a sip of his beer. “It’ll be nice to have a friend at dispatch when she comes back.”

“We haven’t—”

“You think you’re staying then?” Buck interrupts, loose-lipped and almost vengeful under the dim glow of the bar lights. Like he’s looking for a knife to twist regardless of who it hurts, even though the hilt is buried in his own chest. “At dispatch?”

Buck doesn’t look so enticing now, and Eddie hates that too. It’s like there are two versions of Buck—the one Eddie knows and the one that’s waiting for something Eddie can’t give him. Eddie’s in love with both, either, all. And that’s so fucked up he can’t even begin to pinpoint where he ruined it.

“It’s a safe job,” Eddie protests weakly. “And it’s not a bad one. I’m still helping people.”

Buck stares at him like he’s insane. “You told me you hated it,” he says, accusatorially. “Were you lying?”

Hen presses her hand to her forehead while Chimney zones off and stares at the couple doing an extremely poor rendition of ‘Since U Been Gone’ by Kelly Clarkson. Albert asks Karen if she wants to dance, and with an apologetic look at Hen, they leave too.

So now it’s just the four of them—without Bobby—and Eddie’s sitting here drinking his craft beer like he belongs at all. He doesn’t say anything; doesn't think there’s anything he can say to placate Buck when he’s… like this.

“Come on, Buck.” Hen taps her nails on her glass. “He did it for Christopher.”

And Buck just…he scowls at Christopher’s name and it makes Eddie do a visible double-take. Chimney worries his bottom lip and Eddie thinks if it was anyone else, any other time or place, he would have something to say about the reaction too.

But then, Buck blinks—a shadow crosses his face and then is replaced with a neutral expression that’s so familiar it makes Eddie want to scream, because if that’s what Buck’s been hiding the anger behind this entire time, then who’s to say it’s not Eddie he wants to take it out on?

“I’m going to get some air,” Buck announces, like nothing happened, nearly tripping over the chair legs in his haste. 

Eddie watches him leave. Buck’s going to get air but Eddie feels like the one struggling to breathe. When he turns back to the table, Hen’s lips are pursed like she knows exactly what’s going on, which she usually does.

“He and Ravi had a conversation earlier today,” she tells them. “I have no idea what it was about, but he’s been cooking since then.”

Chim looks uncharacteristically on edge. “I don’t know, Hen,” he contests, rubbing at his pinky finger. “He was being weird when he came over the first time too. Honestly, he and Maddie have seen each other nearly every day, and Buck’s been weird for all of them.”

“He wasn't being strange at work though,” Hen argues. “Not before today. I mean, we were all expecting—after the breakup—but he’s been perfectly fine since then.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says without really meaning to. “Because he wants Bobby to trust him enough to let him jump off a cliff without a fucking safety harness.” He gets up from the table. “I’m going to go talk to him. If he’s not back inside, assume I took him back to his apartment.”

He pats his back pocket: keys, phone, wallet; waves at Ravi and his friends who are not nearly sober enough to care, and considers what he might’ve said to Buck to set him off like this—not that he needed that big of a push—but it’s still a far cry from where he was two nights ago. He steps outside.

Outside is chilly, but not frigid. 50 degrees give or take, so Eddie spots Buck immediately. He’s leaning against the brick wall, arms wrapped around his stomach, shivering, because he always runs cold and he always forgets to bring a jacket anywhere unless it goes with his outfit. 

Eddie thinks Buck should be used to it, growing up in Pennsylvania, but then again, he’s already taking off his jacket to offer it to him. “Here.”

Buck glances at it absently, moving at the speed of syrup—like he hasn’t gotten a good night’s rest in a few days. “I don’t want it.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he says, and Buck takes it, just like Eddie knew he would. Because he hates being cold and he hates looking stupid.

They stand outside in silence for a few…minutes, really. People walk in and out; a drunk couple, or maybe just two desperate strangers pause their makeout session to get into the back of a sedan in an unlit corner of a parking lot, and Eddie just waits, leaning against the same brick wall that Buck is.

He isn’t expecting it, but Buck breaks first. “Ravi told me that he had cancer today,” he confesses shakily. “When he was a kid. Childhood cancer, and—” his voice breaks. “And, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with that, Eddie.”

It’s a cry for help if Eddie’s ever heard one. And there’s nothing he can really do about it—nothing he can say about Daniel that’ll mean anything; nothing he can say about Buck and Ravi’s relationship that Buck doesn’t already know—but he can give Buck his jacket, and press their arms together, and listen, and hope for now that that’s something.

“That’s what did it for you, huh?” Eddie murmurs, not unkindly. “The cancer?”

Buck scoffs. There are tears pooling at the corners of his eyes. “Not to make this all about me,” he chokes out, slurring his words together, obviously drunk. He glances at Eddie. Exhales like he thinks it might be his last one.

“Not to make this all about me,” he repeats. “But it feels like it is. It’s—I can’t look in the mirror without seeing the same person who couldn’t save Christopher in the tsunami or my own fucking face splattered with blood in the hospital mirror, because I couldn’t save you either. I can’t look at myself without hating myself a little bit. Because I look in the mirror, and I see that, and then I still wonder why people leave me like it’s not right there.”

And if Christopher is Eddie’s heart outside his body then Buck makes up the rest of him. His ribcage, his chest, the tips of his toes up to the crown of his head. If seeing Christopher hurt was like being stabbed, then this…

This is a little bit like death by a thousand cuts. 

“I wish I could help you,” Buck says; swallows; pinches the bridge of nose like he’s trying not to cry. “You should see Frank.”

“I am,” Eddie answers, and he sighs. “You might not even remember this when you wake up in the morning, and I don’t even…I don’t even know if I can tell you this when you’re sober, but I go to see Frank twice a week.” His hands curl into fists by his side. “I’m trying to get better.”

Buck stares at him, like the words aren’t processing; like he’s so used to putting up a shield that nothing sinks in. “Oh,” he replies finally. “I stopped seeing Dr. Copeland.”

“I know.”

“I wish you’d told me.”

“I know, Buck,” Eddie makes out through gritted teeth. “But you just told me that every time you look in a mirror you see my blood on your face and I can’t even remember it. The shooting. Of course I didn’t want to tell you. I’m the one that did this.”

Buck’s eyebrows scrunch in confusion. “I didn’t save you, Eddie,” he says slowly, like he’s speaking to a child. “I’m the one who didn’t put myself in between you and the bullet.”

And finally, standing here, under the shitty bar lighting with Buck who’s swaying on his feet, heel of his palm pressed into his forehead, Eddie’s starting to understand who the anger is directed at; where it comes from; where it’s going. He reaches out and—

Buck flinches away. His very own safety net to keep people he loves from hurting him. Just like the will.

“Just,” he says, very small, entirely too quiet. “Can you take me home please?”

Eddie takes Buck back to his apartment and unlocks the door with the key that still lives on his keyring. He’s not entirely sure if this is what Buck meant by ‘home’.

Three nights after Eddie falls asleep on Buck’s couch because he doesn’t trust him to put one foot in front of the other, or he does and he’s afraid of where that’ll take him, he’s back in Frank’s office with a little more resolve.

He says, “I think I’m afraid of dying on the job,” and Frank replies with, “Great.” And then possibly, because he hears how that sounds, he clarifies, “Let’s talk about that.”

Frank’s office is becoming familiar, which is just as unsettling as it is persuasive. Eddie spent a long week trying to reconcile with Buck confessing that he was somehow supposed to stop a bullet from entering Eddie’s shoulder, and suddenly, comparatively, therapy doesn’t seem as terrifying.

But there’s still a part of him that’s still fighting against what Frank said a few weeks ago—this vague concept of getting better as it applies to him, who’s never “gotten” anything in his life without having to pay for it. It’s almost printed into him like a brand. But healing isn’t linear, and Eddie wants to talk about this now instead of the old stuff.

“I spent my entire childhood learning that I was born to die for something,” he ponders. “At church. Or when the army guys would come to the cafeteria during lunch and try to recruit us, because most of us had nothing else going for us anyway.”

He picks at his sweatpants. That part is a habit by now. “I was a straight B student,” he explains. “Middle of the pack. I could go to university, but not on scholarship. And my parents would’ve paid for it, but then I would’ve spent my entire adult life having it used against me, you know? And plus, if I was supposed to die for something, I didn’t want it to be a Bachelor’s degree.”

“Is that why you joined the army?” Frank asks. “To feel like you were doing something?”

“That’s why everyone thinks they join the army,” Eddie replies. “To give back to their country, or for… moral reasons, I don’t know. Really, they just join the army because they’re 19 and no one else ever gave them a chance otherwise.”

And isn’t that the thing? All these years, he’s been living his life trying to make up for the fact he was born. He doesn’t know how to exist otherwise—every time he has, it always comes down on him. Joining the soccer team made his grades slip; getting Shannon pregnant was a one-way ticket to an army base. He makes it his mission to help Charlie and he gets shot in the shoulder.

Frank taps his pen once on his clipboard. “Would you say you were afraid of dying before you joined the army?” 

Eddie snorts. “I was like 21, Frank,” he answers. “I thought I was invincible.”

“What do you think changed?”

“Well,” Eddie replies. There’s an emptiness in his stomach that feels settled; doesn’t really match with the guilt he’s so used to feeling. “I got shot.”

“Do you dream about the shooting?”

“What—yeah, Frank, I dream about the freaking shooting. That’s why I’m here.”

“Okay,” Frank nods, but there’s a gleam to his eye that Eddie knows to mean he’s going to get fucked over in a few seconds, no matter how hard he tries to resist. “Could you—and feel free to stop me here—could you tell me what you dream about exactly?”

The ache is back. The feeling that he now knows as panic makes its way up from his lungs to his chest. Eddie twists his mouth in an effort to keep his voice steady. “Afghanistan,” he starts, obviously enough. He’s spoken about it in front of a classroom full of fifth graders, how difficult can Frank be?

“The helicopter,” he continues. “The blades chopping right next to my ear. I—I remember everything going dark. Waking up to the sound of bullets. Trying to rescue Greggs.”

Frank frowns and looks over his notes. “I thought you did rescue Greggs.”

“He’s dead, Frank,” Eddie snaps. “So, no, I didn’t.”

He doesn’t get a response: neither a disagreement or an affirmation. “Tell me about May.”

“I…” Eddie shakes his head. He tries to grasp for something, anything, and here’s where the guilt hits tenfold. Eddie doesn’t even remember it. He’s fine.

“I don’t know. I got shot, obviously.” He glances out the window where the leaves have started greening on their way to spring. Christ, he’s been here so many times he’s noticing the leaves change color. “And then I woke up in the hospital three days later.”

“Buck was there,” Frank announces, like that’s new information. “You don’t remember that?”

Eddie exhales shakily. He lifts his hand up scratch at his ankle for something to do and they’re trembling. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

Frank nods for what feels like the tenth time this session. “So you quit for Christopher,” he says, changing the subject so fast Eddie gets whiplash. “Do you think that decision needs some reconciling?”

“What, like, within me?” Eddie mutters. “Didn’t take you for a spiritual guy, Frank.”

Frank doesn’t say anything. Eddie thinks that means his quip was superbly entertaining and not at all an attempt at deflection. 

“Being a firefighter is a dangerous job,” Eddie says, because in his experience it has been. And he’s about to make another joke but then he thinks about December—the gingerbread house, Christopher—and his voice trembles. He can feel tears pool in the corners of his eyes again. He looks at the ceiling and says nothing.

Several seconds pass. Then minutes. Eddie has time to count every tile if only he could focus on them. He knows what this is; knows what it’s leading to. He tries to inhale to stave it off but he chokes on it and wheezes. Takes another breath and finds that it’s too thin. It isn’t going down right. 

A blurry image of Frank opens his mouth to say something, but Eddie has to speak or everything, everything will come crashing down in this office. He’s here to get better but that feels overwhelmingly like something he’ll never recover from.

“Christopher’s already been through so much,” he gasps out. “I—I left him when he was a baby, trying to prove something like—like anything was more important than him. His mother died. He went through a tsunami,” Eddie raises his voice. “And I didn’t even know. I didn’t even—if Buck wasn’t there—”

“Just like he was at the shooting?”

“Places he wasn’t even supposed to be, okay?” Eddie spits out. “Places—I’m the one who forced him to take Christopher out when the tsunami hit, and he wouldn’t have been at the shooting if I hadn’t dragged him—”

“Eddie, if Buck hadn’t been at the shooting, you could’ve died.”

“That doesn’t matter,” he snaps, even though he doesn’t mean it. Doesn’t know what he’s saying past the Buck and Christopher of it all, white-hot where they live burrowed behind his chest. “Because Buck thinks he failed anyway.”

“And you see it otherwise?”

“Buck saved me,” he says, voice sharp and certain like a livewire. “At least, that’s the way I remember it. And I’m not going to let that go to waste by dying on him.”

“Eddie.” There’s something about Frank’s voice, comforting as it’s supposed to be, that stands his hair on edge. He’s not supposed to be placated like this. Not supposed to be entertained past, You know better than to think about that, Eddito. “Buck wasn’t on duty.”

Eddie can’t breathe. “What?”

“For both the tsunami and the shooting,” Frank clarifies. “Buck wasn’t on duty for either one. He wasn’t in uniform when those things happened to him.” He pauses. “What are you afraid of, Eddie?”

Everything, he wants to scream. I’m afraid of fucking high rises and going outside at 7:30 in the morning and the silver star in my closet. I’m terrified that Christopher will grow up to be like me. I’m afraid of the fact that I sometimes want to kiss someone that’s not a woman. I’m afraid that Buck will throw himself off the side of a building just to do it and it’ll be my fault. I’m afraid of my parents dying before I’ve done something they can be proud of. I’m scared that I left a part of me in Afghanistan that I’m never getting back. I’m not afraid of being alive or being happy, but I’m afraid of being both at the same time.

“What are you afraid of?”

“I think I’m afraid of dying by myself,” he chokes out. “I think I’m afraid that when I die, it’ll all be for nothing anyway.”

On Saturday, there’s a fire at dispatch. Because of course there is.

Obviously, the day doesn’t start like that. Eddie shows up for work promptly at 8:50, 10 minutes before his shift starts. Josh shoots him a familiar smile and May glances up at him with a little less uncertainty than she usually does and Eddie puts on his headset feeling half-way decent. For once.

It’s not the type of decent that makes him want to stay here. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get that far working at dispatch—sitting in a seat for several hours, taking calls and never knowing the ending. But he feels better than he usually does—hasn’t had a nightmare since Thursday—so he’s okay, today, on this Saturday morning with the sunlight streaming through the windows.

“911 what’s your emergency?” he asks, hands hovering over the keyboard. 

“Yeah,” a man says, voice extremely dry. “I work at the Los Angeles Zoo. This guy’s trying to steal a goat and put him in the back of his pick-up.”

Eddie fights the urge to reply, “Well that’s illegal,” and clears his throat. “Don’t you have zoo security for that?”

The man makes a noise of agreement. “They don’t carry anything more than a taser though,” he replies. “The crazy goat man has a knife. So if you could sent the police over—”

“Got it,” Eddie snorts, taking down the man’s name and dispatching the nearest police officer to the Los Angeles Zoo. Thankfully, Christopher and Buck aren’t there. God knows Buck would try to fight the guy with nothing but a keychain from the gift shop.

They haven’t really spoken since that night at the bar. Or they have, over Christopher’s new Lego set and when Ravi accidentally texts the old group chat, but Eddie has to scroll down to get to the thread between the two of them. Eddie doesn’t know what Buck remembers, but he’s pretty sure there’s been no new appointment scheduled with Dr. Copeland.

So Buck’s angry and Eddie’s drowning under still waters and they’re just as far apart as they were in August except now nearly everything’s out in the open. He hasn’t had a nightmare in two days, and he feels okay, relatively, but there’s still a lingering ache with Buck’s name on it. 

Eddie’s so tired of Buck being out of his control. He’s unfamiliar with this side of him: the anger, yes, but also the carelessness. There’s a difference between treating your body like it’s expendable and not thinking about it at all, and Buck falls somewhere in between the two, but Eddie doesn’t know that there’s anything he can say right now that won’t just make the situation worse.

He’s never known how to help Buck without hurting him, is the thing. On that balcony in October it was a joke—“Kidding, I’m kidding.”—but it’s transformed into something else entirely. Eddie’s not good at this. He doesn’t know how to fix the things he can’t control, and he’s never witnessed Buck to be as feral as he is now.

“911,” Eddie says into the headset. “What’s your emergency?”

He takes his lunch break around 1, popping his back as he walks into the breakroom. It’s a pretty quiet day—no yelling, no life or death situations from the look of it—but there's a chatter that only gets louder as he gets closer to the kitchen area. He squints.

“Maddie?” he asks wondrously. It’s definitely her, perched on one of the chairs, with her hair cut short and dyed black. He hasn’t seen her since—well if he thinks about it, he hasn’t seen her in almost a year.

She looks…good is the thing. And Eddie’s well aware that he wasn’t there for the bad stuff, but she looks like someone who belongs here. Unlike him. 

Josh and Linda are talking rapidly, maybe to her but also maybe just at her because there’s no way she can keep up with two conversations at once, and Sue stands a little off to the side, watching warmly. Eerily Bobby-like, when Eddie thinks about it.

“Hey stranger,” Maddie says, smiling at him. It’s still a bit worn around the edges but it’s familiar, and here at dispatch, Eddie clings to it. “I heard you were working at dispatch, but I couldn’t believe it.”

“Did Buck tell you?” he asks. Doesn’t know what he wants the answer to that to be. “He hates that I am.”

Maddie shrugs. “Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do,” she replies, with the air of someone who knows what they’re talking about.

Josh and Linda nod at Eddie when he enters too and it’s…it’s nice. Eddie could make friends here if he wasn’t thinking about the 118 three-fourths of the time. The timer on Josh’s watch beeps—always dedicated, sort of like Buck—and he and Linda leave with one last hug around Maddie. They’re a family here. Just like the A-shift.

Sue follows them, so it’s just Maddie, Eddie, and the sad, sad, sandwich he put in his work bag. They consider each other for a moment, neither sure what to say, and then Maddie offers, “Do you want to get lunch?”

“Yes,” he responds without hesitation.

They settle at some burger point not too far from dispatch. Maddie drives—she’s got nearly an identical playlist to Buck which tugs at something in Eddie’s chest—and he doesn’t really know what to say. “ So, what have you been up to?” doesn’t feel right.

“How are you feeling?” he asks instead. “You seem better. I mean, not that I have much frame of reference, but you seem—” he winces. “Not, sad?”

Thankfully, Maddie doesn’t seem perturbed. “I was coming back to drop off my rehire papers,” she explains, plucking out the tomato and setting it on the edge of her plate. “Chimney mentioned you were working the morning shift.”

He points a french fry at her. “Ah, so you planned this.”

“I wouldn’t use the word ‘planned’,” Maddie counters, but she’s grinning. “You don’t get to plan anything when you’ve got a two year old. She’s with the Lees,” she clarifies, anticipating Eddie’s next question. “You want to see pictures?”

“Of course.”

Jee-Yun looks much different than she did in October. She has Chimney’s hair. His eyes and his nose. But the smile is all Buckley. Eddie thinks he would know it anywhere. 

She’s wearing the hat Hen bought her—he knows because he was in the station loft when she ordered it, polling anyone who would listen—and he remembers that Buck wanted green, and Eddie voted for light blue, which is the color Jee-Yun has in the picture.

Unrelated, Eddie kind of starts crying.

To her credit, Maddie takes it in stride. And he’s not even crying really, but he knows his eyes are a little glassier than they were seconds ago, and there’s a lump in his throat that’s stuck somewhere in 2013, with Christopher in his crib, wondering where his dad was. 

But he’s here now. Eating burgers with his best friend’s sister and going to therapy twice a week. He’s not in the army anymore; doesn’t know whether he’s working his way back to being a firefighter. But for the first time in a while, it feels like an option.

“She gets that reaction a lot,” Maddie says, tapping the knuckle of her finger against Eddie’s arm. It’s smug, but warm, and Maddie radiates it. “She’s kinda perfect.”

“Kinda?” Eddie lets out a watery laugh. “Don’t let Buck hear you say that. It’s all or nothing with him.”

“Yeah.” She twists a ring on her finger. They’re talking about something completely different now. “Yeah, he tends to do that.”

Eddie doesn’t know how to respond to that. He feels like admitting that Buck—the Buck who snaps at people and does reckless shit just to see if he can; the Buck who’s so put together to everyone that doesn’t know him as well as Maddie and sometimes Eddie do—is all of Eddie’s making. 

But he doesn’t think Maddie would take lightly to that. Not sitting here, taking time out of her day to have lunch with him. 

Buck is Eddie’s best friend, but as the silence falls on top of them, he can’t help but be a little resentful too. If Buck would just allow himself to be helped, then they wouldn’t be in this mess.

“I put him in my will,” he blurts out, before Maddie can say anything. “Almost…two years ago, I put it in my will that if I die, Buck becomes his legal guardian.”

Even though it is, the will doesn’t feel like his secret to share. He doesn’t like talking about Buck behind his back, but he finds himself doing it these days more often than not. Which makes him feel terrible, but Buck’s not stupid. And if he wants Eddie to stop worrying about him, then he’s going to have to give him a reason.

Her eyes widen. “Oh, Eddie,” she murmurs, like this is about Eddie at all.

“I know he’s pissed at me for leaving,” Eddie continues. “He’s upset but he also gets—it was for Christopher, you know? Until it wasn’t. And,” he shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t know how to help him.”

“You can’t.”

“Perfect. Thanks.”

Maddie purses her lips together. “When Buck was in fifth grade, he didn’t get to go on his class field trip,” she says. “It was white water rafting. Our parents thought it was too dangerous. So he was one of, like, three kids that had to stay back and watch a movie or something.”

“And he hated it,” Eddie states. “Obviously.”

“Oh, yeah,” she replies, twirling her straw around in her ice water. “So much so that instead of walking to the bus stop that morning, he packed his backpack with food and ran away.”

There’s a sinking feeling in Eddie’s stomach. The story fits—it’s Buck to a T—but he hates it. He hates that he knows the next part. Maddie was 18 and out of the house and his parents didn’t notice that Buck was gone until a couple hours after school let out. Because of course they thought it was too unsafe to go white water rafting surrounded by lifeguards, but they wouldn’t know how to take care of their son if it was laid out in front of them.

“So it’s not you,” Maddie explains, an unreadable expression on her face, so similar to Buck. “And it’s not really Buck either. It’s just our parents. How we grew up. Because I think he’s spent his entire life pushing the limits so he can prove to them that he can survive them.”

“They don’t care,” Eddie points out, anger flaring in his chest, beneath his fingernails. It’s mixed with resignation though, because the Buckley parents are out in Pennsylvania, and there’s nothing he can do to change the past anyway. “They didn’t even show up to that therapy session.”

“I know that,” Maddie says. “You know that. But it’s not really in Buck’s nature not to try.”

“It feels like it is right now, though,” Eddie replies, suddenly not very hungry. “Recently.”

Maddie looks just as upset about that as Eddie feels, but she doesn’t retract her statement. “Sometimes, the only way out is to help yourself,” she tells him. “And it sucks, but he’s got the rest of us in the meantime.”

Eddie doesn’t know what that’ll solve, if it comes down to it. Because if Buck stops trying, then he doesn’t know that there’s anyone in Los Angeles that can help him.

As soon as they walk into dispatch, Eddie knows something isn’t right.

Most people are still at their desk taking calls, but there’s a small group missing. Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever set foot into this building without either Sue or Josh manning the floor. It’s unnerving.

Something is very wrong. Clearly, Maddie’s on the same page. “What is—?”

“Do you smell that?” Eddie interrupts. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end. He takes the keyboard from the nearest dispatcher he sees. The 147 is the nearest truck out. “Maddie, get everyone out of here!”

She doesn’t need to be told, and people are already muttering to each other about the burning smell. Eddie doesn’t know how bad it is, but he’d rather not take chances. It’s like he’s working on auto-pilot. At his announcement, several people get up from their seats.

Several others stay, and motion that they’re helping someone on the other end of the line. 

“Tell them to route all the calls to the other center,” he hears Maddie saying to Linda behind him. Not nearly as many people are evacuating as need to. There’s a line hovering by the elevators. No one knows how bad it is yet, but Eddie wants to scream.

“Captain Mehta, come in,” he says into the headset. “Listen, something’s up with dispatch. You guys need to get over here now.” 

He hardly hears the ‘Copy that’ before Josh is clambering up the stairs—panic written all over his face. “Everyone needs to get out of here now !” Josh yells. “The building is on fire!”

Right on cue, flames burst through the second-story window.

Chapter Text

Isn’t all that rage so ugly?

And isn’t it mine, still?

Good god, isn’t it mine?

— Buried, Ashe Vernon

Buck sits on the station couch alone these days.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration. Ravi’s there, studying for his 11 month exam so that he can become an actual firefighter, sitting in total silence so that Buck can’t even chide him for anything since he’s doing exactly what he’s supposed to—even if he mumbles to himself every once in a while like a ghost with a strange affinity for firefighter terminology—and Buck magnanimously takes it upon himself to help him when he inevitably gets everything wrong.

Anyway, the point is he’s not really alone, but look, Buck’s not here to debate what constitutes loneliness. If it were up to him, he thinks it’d feels a lot like the absence of Chim’s laughter ringing through the kitchen and the Eddie-shaped hole in the cushions beside Buck’s feet. 

Still, he’s coping. Not particularly well or satisfyingly, but except for Hen last month, no one’s called him out on it, so Buck’s coping. He settles into the cotton, leg aching with the weather, and tries not to think about—

“Buck!” Ravi says sharply, and Buck jolts so hard he cuts his finger on one of the pages of the stupid self-help book in his hand—no, he doesn’t miss the irony of that—and narrows his eyes at Ravi next to him.

“What?” He demands. “We have a bell for emergencies, you know. You don’t have to start shrieking like you’re training to be the alarm.”

Ravi pauses. “That was rude,” he decides. “I just wanted to let you know that Bobby’s been calling your name for the last thirty seconds.”

And yeah, Buck gets it. It’s a bad look; he’s snappy and stupid on his good days, and Ravi certainly doesn’t deserve it. But Buck’s never known what to do with this anger, spilling around the edges. Uncontainable. He doesn’t know where to put it. And, like, he’s not going to go join an illegal underground fight club or anything, but he’s not going to act like it isn’t tempting.

He’s coping, but for that to be true he’d have to be grieving something first. It’s…listen, Buck can admit when there’s something wrong with him, to himself at least, but he doesn’t want to. It’s the anger talking again, lashing out at everyone so that maybe he has a chance of hurting them before they hurt him. None of them deserve it, but Buck didn’t either.

So it comes back, as it does, to Chimney and Eddie and Maddie. Sometimes he thinks he wants to yell at them; he wants to yell and scream and break things, and that overwhelmingly makes sense to him. He wants to lash out at them, right? That’s the thing, right? That’s what this anger means? 

He clings to it, because really, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone at all. Really, he thinks he just wants to know why they keep hurting him. And that’s just a little too much to bear when you’re not alone but you’re still lonely.

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” because like most things with Buck, the anger always dissipates, and he’s actually grown pretty fond of Ravi. “Let’s go see what Cap wants.”

Ravi jumps up eagerly enough—he is still a probie after all, and the newest recipient of Hen’s ‘golden retriever’ nickname (and Buck doesn’t take that to heart, because he’s been in the absolute worst mood since September, but he does just a little bit).

 “Oh, maybe it’s about Eddie’s replacement,” he chirps. “It’s been nearly two weeks.”

Like I’m not counting down the days, Buck thinks. The hours, the minutes, the seconds. Like Bobby hasn’t been waiting, giving Buck a grieving period to get his shit together, even if neither of them are allowed to call it that.

“Not that—” Ravi stutters as they jog down the staircase in tandem. “You know, not that Eddie’s replaceable. Of course he isn’t! He’s—”

“Eddie’s been gone for two weeks,” Buck says, unable to hide the bitterness (unable to pretend that he wants to). There’s still scheduled movie nights and texts and phone calls, but the fact of the matter is that Eddie hasn’t set foot in this station in two weeks. “I think maybe it’s time we start to move on.” 

“Buck—”

“We’re moving on, Ravi.” Buck laughs to hide the fact that he can’t really breathe. “Don’t make me get out the chainsaw. I will.”

Ravi scowls. They’ve built rapport over the last two weeks that they didn’t really have before that. And they all know the reason for it, so Buck’s not going to pretend it’s a fluke or anything—it’s hard not to become close friends with someone when they’re one of the two people you see every day.

 Ravi and Hen are predictable. Good, in a way that Buck is currently unfamiliar with; something he’s desperately in want for from Eddie or Taylor. Something he’s searching for every day and running out of places to look.

Buck’s not being irrational…he thinks. He knows there’s good in Eddie and there’s good in Taylor and more often than not there’s more good in Eddie than there ever will be in the way Taylor praises him for things he has no control over—it’s not in Buck’s nature not to try, even when he knows he shouldn’t—like following her to Oklahoma. But it’s hard to remember now, when neither of them are here to defend themselves, and Buck doesn’t know that, if they were here, they’d want to bother.

Hen’s already standing beside Bobby when they get down. She’s laughing easily enough, but there’s a twist behind it—something sour and reminiscent. There’s a third person waiting a little off to the side, with a genuine but nervous smile on his face and his hands behind his back. The nametag on his uniform reads ‘Paramedic Greenway'.

Not to repeat old patterns, but Buck hates him immediately.

He knows Bobby’s not the type of captain to value scores and skill over his morals, and he knows what happened the last time he judged someone too quickly—defensive over territory that isn’t really his to defend—but something about Greenway just makes Buck want to snap. Namely, the fact that he isn’t Eddie.

“What’s this I hear about a chainsaw?” He grins, blinding white teeth and an easy-going, kind chuckle that has Ravi huffing out a laugh and holding out his hand for Greenway to shake. 

“Inside joke,” Buck says flatly, and Bobby shoots him a warning look but Buck just…he just doesn’t care. And that’s terrifying, or at least it should be, but he’s so tired watching over the people he loves—people who don’t even want to be watched over—that he doesn’t have spare parts for fucking Greenway.

Hen’s arms are still crossed, and she doesn’t look overjoyed or anything but she doesn’t look like she gets it. A part of Buck wonders if he’s the only one that sees the point of a new addition. Greenway’s not green behind the ears. He’s not going to grow and be shaped by this firehouse like Ravi is. And that all goes to mean that Eddie hasn’t stepped food in this fire station in two weeks, and Bobby’s pretty damn sure he never will again.

“I’m Ravi,” Ravi offers, breaking the awkward silence. He’s already shaken Greenway’s hand once but looks like he might do it again so that Buck doesn’t have to—as if Greenway has the memory of a goldfish. “Nice to meet you.”

Recognition dawns on his face. Buck wonders how much Bobby shared about them in the confines of his office. “You’re the probie,” he says. “How’s the training going?”

The small talk feels as sharp as a dagger, cutting through the air like some sort of metaphor. They don’t know Greenway, but it feels like they hardly know each other anymore either. And this conversation feels a little too familiar for Buck not to choke on it as it goes down.

“Not bad,” Ravi chirps. “I’ve got my 11 month exam in a few days. Buck’s been helping me with it. Um, he’s a pretty good teacher when there’s no chainsaw.”

And there’s no way Greenway doesn’t know who Buck is—with the ladder truck bombing and the tsunami and the shooting and the way he ends up on TV more often than not—so he doesn’t say, “Oh, you’re Buck,” like he did with Ravi. In fact, Greenway looks like he knew who Buck was before they even walked down the staircase, like Bobby is going around telling people what happened to Buck’s last partner specifically.

“Greenway’s going to be working with Hen,” Bobby announces, and Hen nods sharply but Buck thinks the words were more for his benefit anyway. “And I’ve worked it out with the 133. Albert is going to be taking some shifts here and there too. Until things get settled.”

Buck dips his head in acknowledgement. “Cool,” he says. “I’d rather work alone though.” 

Bobby has this look on his face that’s so fucking familiar it takes Buck back to two years ago almost instantaneously. That dinner at the Grant-Nash house. “Buck—” 

“—will be fine, Cap,” Hen interrupts. “With all due respect, we’re a team. We’re all going to be working together anyway.”

Buck isn’t sure whether that’s a rebuke of his need to throw Albert at Ravi because he reminds him a little too much of his brother and Buck thinks if he has to work with a mini-Chimney who Buck hurt so badly the last time they spoke that he ended up with a black eye, he might scream, or whether it’s just Hen looking out for him like she always has. Honestly, Buck would prefer the latter, but he can’t be the one to tear his family apart. Not again. So he shuts up and takes it.

“Fine,” Bobby replies, that pinched look between his eyebrows like he knows best. Like he’s about to make comparisons between this situation and the fight he’s having with Athena about her retirement. “Well, welcome to the 118, Jonah. Ravi, do you want to give him a tour?’

“I’ll do it,” Hen offers, before Ravi can jump at the chance to say yes. “If we’re going to be working closely together, we might as well get to know each other.”

She sounds calm; pleasant enough—much more so than Buck anyway—but she keeps glancing at the bay doors, as if Chimney might stroll through and save them, or like maybe they’ll have an emergency walk-in so she can put Greenway’s alleged skills to the test. It’s clear that she dislikes this guy. Maybe almost as much as Buck does.

Buck heads back up the stairs as soon as the conversation is done, settles on the couch, and tries his best not to wait for a text message from one of the three people that aren’t actually speaking to him.

The next evening, Buck knocks on Eddie’s door with all the force of a sledge hammer.

He’s ready to snap, really. One shift with Greenway and Hen’s sighing and Albert’s ridiculous enthusiasm as he and Ravi bicker with each other like teenagers vying to win a popularity contest, and everything feels ten times worse than it did when he woke up beside Taylor this morning, which says something that Buck doesn’t entirely want to think about. Something about the grimacing and his haste to get up and go make the coffee.

It’s Carla who answers, wearing the same pinched expression as Bobby; the one that seems to follow Buck around like a ghost of his parents, always waiting for him to explode. “Eddie’s in the shower, Buckaroo,” she says immediately. “Did he know you were coming? Or did something happen—?”

“Do I need a reason to come over?” Buck asks. It’s a bit blunt but Buck’s tired of smoothing everything around the edges, so he doesn’t really care. Or the pulsing in his chest doesn’t, at least. 

“No,” Carla replies, slowly, opening the door wider to let him in. “But you do have a key, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“Carla—”

She holds up her hands in surrender. “I’m not commenting on anything if you don’t want it,” she says defensively. “But I think, after everything you boys have already gone through, you don’t need to start and widen the gap all by yourselves.”

“I’m trying—”

“Try harder,” she responds firmly. “They need you right now, Buck.”

Buck doesn’t know what on earth he could give them that would mean anything at all. He doesn’t know how he could say anything to Eddie that isn’t just, “I know it’s my fault you got shot but I’m so fucking angry that you did. Because then I could’ve lived the rest of my life without having to try so hard to survive."

“Eddie’s made it very clear he doesn’t want to talk about it.” Buck shoves his hands into his pockets in an effort not to rifle through Christopher’s art projects strewn across the dining table, hiding from the familiarity of them under his touch. “He doesn’t need me me to—”

He clamps his mouth shut as Christopher enters the kitchen, pencil in hand and mouth twisted into a frown, waving his homework back and forth as he makes to root through the kitchen for a snack. Buck’s heart twists at the sight of him. It’s getting close to dinnertime. Almost reluctantly, Buck realizes that means he’ll be asked to stay.

And he can do dinner. He can ask about Christopher’s classes, which are always ridiculously cooler than the ones Buck took back in Pennsylvania, and he can put second helpings on Eddie’s plate because he thinks no longer working at the 118 means he doesn’t need a stable diet. He can do all that. 

But he can’t fix them by himself. And that realization over beer after Christopher’s gone to bed is almost too much, even at 6 pm before any of it has even happened.

“A little late for a snack, bud,” Buck comments, stepping into the kitchen light. “It’s nearly dinner time.”

Christopher pauses mid-stride and it feels like someone’s just reached into his ribcage and started pulling. “Buck?” he asks, a bit too wondrously. “I didn’t know you were coming over today.”

“Well, I don’t need a reason to see the greatest kid in the world,” Buck grins; doesn’t even have to force it when it’s Christopher. He ruffles Chris’s hair and he dodges laughing because he’s nearly a teenager. “Do I?”

The question is meant to be rhetorical but it hangs between them anyway. “I guess,” Christopher draws out. He’s still smiling, but he sounds doubtful. Carla gives him a look that means everything in the world, except that part of Buck is standing right in front of him. 

He looks hopefully towards the Milano cookies and Buck snorts and grabs one from the top shelf. “Don’t tell your dad.”

“Don’t tell your dad what?” Eddie says, walking into the kitchen with an expression that’s so…he must know that it’s see-through; translucent as a window-pane. He’s wearing sweatpants and a jaded expression that he tries and covers up just enough for Christopher not to notice. “Buck you can’t always play good cop.”

“Why not?” Buck and Christopher ask at the same time. Christopher offers Buck a Milano cookie—mint flavor—and Buck accepts it conspiratorially. 

Carla chuckles to herself. “You boys need anything else before I head out for the night?”

Eddie makes a gesture like, Milano cookies where I can see them, and it’s so dad-like that Buck forces himself not to blush about it, because it’s not even—it’s just Eddie being Eddie. Except that’s always been the problem. “Thanks, Carla. Let me walk you out.”

“Buck,” Christopher says, herding him into the dining room. “Do you know anything about domains and kingdoms?”

“Oh, are you reading a new book?”

Christopher looks deeply unimpressed. “The science kind, Buck.”

Buck isn’t much help, but Christopher bounces answers off him before he writes them down and it feels like yesterday they were talking about the five senses and Chris was in 4th grade. The front door closes gently and Buck waits, but Eddie just heads straight to the kitchen. Buck half-expects him to shut them out entirely.

When he looks back again, finally, Christopher is staring at him like he wants to say something but doesn’t have the words. Buck thinks, a little selfishly, that that’s the part Christopher gets from him. 

“Dad’s being weird,” he decides on finally. “He’s like, we ordered take-out twice last week. We never order take-out unless you’re here to convince him.”

Buck bites his lip, but he knew it was coming. Knew the second he walked in the door that Christopher, a little too wise for his age, had a million questions that he couldn’t ask his dad, lying in wait. Still, Buck splays his palms up in an, I don’t know, motion. He’s not sure where he stands in this house anymore. 

“He’s transitioning,” Buck points out. “Maybe it’s just that? Like when you moved to California, things were shaky at school for a bit, right?”

He’s talking out of his ass for that one—partly because he has no idea and partly because Christopher is one of the most charismatic kids he knows. Back when abuela was in the hospital, Buck could fix it with Carla. There’s nothing he can do here except get on his knees and beg Eddie to come back, which he’s not above doing, if only he thought Eddie would listen.

Christopher sighs with a weight that he’s probably been protecting his dad from, if the glances at the kitchen are anything to go by. “Do you know why Dad quit his job?” he asks. “Is he okay? You can tell me the truth, Buck. I’m—I can handle it.”

Buck feels like he’s actively dying. Here, sitting at this dining table that has a stain of nail polish from when Christopher and Carla painted Buck’s fingernails a sparkly hot pink color. When he’d asked Eddie how it looked and he responded with a grin and, “Anything suits you,” so Buck had jerked his hand so hard that a huge drop of it fell on the oak. 

You shouldn’t have to, Buck thinks. You shouldn’t have to handle your mom dying and your dad getting shot and have the only safety net be me. And he has half a mind to march into the kitchen and demand Eddie to fix it, somehow, like he always does. Revoke Buck’s guardianship and give it to one of his sisters. He wants to march into the kitchen and do exactly what he should’ve done back in May, when Eddie was only half-lucid and high on pain meds.

“He’ll be okay,” Buck says, because that feels like the only thing he can guarantee right now. 

He doesn’t know how; doesn’t know what he’ll have to give up to get him there, but Buck will get them there—both Eddie and Christopher. Because that’s his job on paper, sure, but it’s more than that. Eddie and Christopher, they’re Buck’s entire life. The 118 and Maddie and Eddie and Christopher. How could he possibly live with the alternative?

Christopher fixes him with a hopeful look. “Okay,” he agrees, like because Buck said it must be true. It sounds like a mistake, but Buck doesn’t dare point it out. Christopher shoves his science worksheet at him to show all the lines filled out. 

“I got a new book yesterday,” he explains, standing. “And I’ve got to finish it before Eli does. He always spoils them.” 

“You’ll have to tell me what it’s about when you’re done,” Buck says, and Christopher shoots him a quick, boyish smile and disappears down the hall.

Eddie’s still in the kitchen, and Buck still is on the opposite side of the half-wall, drumming his fingers on the dining table. There’s music playing, Buck thinks, but it’s so soft that Buck doesn’t know whether Eddie put it on or if it's drifting from the house next to him. Because Eddie only puts on music when he’s happy, and Buck used to know that about him.

He stands and spares a glance inside before proceeding any further. Eddie’s got his hands placed on either side of the sink; his eyes shut, nearly tipping him over. The music—Buck’s playlist, he thinks—isn’t nearly loud enough to drown out the conversation Buck just had with Christopher, and he wonders, retrospectively, if this silence from Eddie was what Chris had been talking about.

“How was your shift?” Buck ventures, back against the fridge. “You keeping up with all the new tech?”

Eddie unthaws in front of him. He doesn’t look surprised that Buck’s there, watching him, but he holds his gaze for a moment anyway, like he can’t quite believe it. “New tech, Buck?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “Just because you sound like a teenager doesn’t mean you are one, you know.”

“Are you calling me old?”

Eddie laughs but something about it doesn’t land right and Buck winces instead of snorting back. There’s a joke playing on Eddie’s lips but it disappears with the next inhale. Neither of them comment on it. Buck starts getting out the vegetables to make a salad.

“I was the one who took the truck call,” Eddie replies after a few heartbeats. He opens the freezer to look at the frozen pizza, blinks twice, and then opts for the bag of pasta in the pantry. “So I have the technology down just fine, thank you.”

Buck tosses him the pasta sauce and goes to work cutting a cucumber—no tomatoes because neither Buck or Christopher can stand it raw—and doesn’t make eye-contact as some Kelly Clarkson song from the early 2000’s fills the silence. 

Apparently, it doesn’t work well enough, because Buck chops down on a carrot a little too hard and at the same time they ask—

“How did the call go anyways?”

“Are we going to talk about why you’re being so weird?” Eddie pauses and Buck takes the opportunity to talk over him. “Eddie, I know you heard—”

“I’m pretty sure Christopher told you that in confidence.” There’s a hard edge to his voice and Buck doesn’t entirely know what to do with it. Buck wouldn’t have brought it up if he wasn’t so sure they’d been overheard, and he thinks Eddie knows that too.

“Eddie—”

“Buck,” he retorts, almost identically. He looks perfectly fine except for the tense line of his shoulders and the way his breath shakes with every exhale. “I’m trying to protect him.”

“And being at dispatch makes you happy?”

Eddie’s eyebrows knit together. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Buck’s not sure if he can come up with an answer past, ‘You deserve to be''. Standing here, in the kitchen looking at the deep circles under Eddie’s eyes and the way his jaw is clenched a little too tight though, he knows he needs to. Because there’s no universe past, present, or future where Eddie puts Christopher’s happiness above his own.

“I mean,” Eddie continues, shaking the pasta into the pot of boiling water. One misses and hits the stovetop and Eddie stares at it like he means to pluck it out with his fingers but then gets a spatula at the last minute. “Have you ever met someone who likes their job?”

“I like mine.”

“Everyone loves being a firefighter.”

“Maddie liked her job too,” Buck points out, gripping the knife in his hand a little too tight. “Before she left. So maybe it’s just you.”

Eddie turns around finally, letting his hands limp by his side and he doesn’t fall over because of it. Steady and faking it as always; hiding something behind the curve of his spine that’s a little less straight than usual. 

Buck’s expecting a snappish retort. He half expects Eddie to throw his hands into the air and bite out something in frustration. That’s how Buck always feels these days—Maddie, shooting, will—he wouldn’t blame Eddie for being the first one to call him out on it.

Instead, Eddie slumps against the counter, wrapping his arms around his ribcage like he’s shielding himself from something. Buck, maybe. 

“What’s the alternative?” he asks, but it sounds more like he’s pleading. “I don’t know, Buck. I feel like I’ve got my head underwater here. You can’t expect me to fix everything all the time.”

“I’m not.” Except that’s a lie. Except Eddie needs Buck to sit down and explain to him that he isn’t expendable either, just the way he did for Buck, and he can’t. It’s stuck in his chest like a time-bomb—give it a few more twists and it’ll explode. “You could try therapy.”

Eddie’s face twists into a scowl. His nose wrinkles sort of like a child and despite everything, it’s warm where it hits Buck’s chest. “I tried therapy,” he mutters. “It didn’t work.”

“Didn’t it?” Buck pushes, because that’s all he feels like he’s good for right now. The pushing. “Listen—I know you and Frank didn’t, didn’t click or whatever, but things are different now, right? You could—”

“What would I even talk about, Buck?”

And everything breaks. “I don’t know,” Buck snaps. “You fucking got shot last May, Eddie. Try that for starters.”

There’s a beat. Buck can’t even be sure he’s talking to his Eddie—or not his but the one he knows hates green peppers and leaving the TV on odd numbers—because he’s got his teeth clamping down on his lip like he’s constantly trying not to scream, or cry, or maybe both. And Buck wouldn’t know how to reckon with either. 

“Why are you so angry?” Eddie asks finally, but there’s a sting to it. “Okay. Let’s just drop it.”

Buck has to resist the urge not to throw something; not to squeeze his hand into a fist so tight that he cuts his palm on the knife. “What does that mean?”

“It means we’re not talking about this,” Eddie says, turning back to the pot on the stove. “You have other things to worry about. I don’t—it’s not your job to fix me either, Buck. There’s nothing that needs to be fixed in each other that we can’t do ourselves.”

He opens his mouth to say, Of course it is. You put me in the will. Which you meant to do, right? but his phone buzzes in his back pocket. It’s Taylor. Buck pulls it out to read the text and fully plans on ignoring them, but something on Eddie’s face stops him. 

“Taylor?” he asks, with a neutral expression.

Buck nods, feeling, suspiciously, like this might be a trap. “She’s waiting at my apartment. Ordered pizza from that place I like, The—”

“The Pasta House,” Eddie finishes. Buck can never remember the name anyway. “They have shitty pizza.” He looks mournfully at the cucumbers and then back at Buck. “You should go.”

It doesn’t sound like a request. So Buck does, pausing in the hallway to tell Christopher goodbye. His heart sticks in his chest when Christopher shoots him a disappointed look but Buck knows this isn’t the last time it’ll happen. Buck’s good at running. 

He’s never known how to stay.

The third time Taylor does something nice for him in the span of three days, Buck calls her out on it.

They’ve been going steady since the beginning of January—eerily so. Buck still doesn’t confide in her the way he used to Eddie or Maddie, but they’ve come to an understanding that way. Taylor doesn’t pretend she wants to know, and Buck gets out of telling her. 

Because Firefighter Retires After Getting Shot isn’t a flashy headline to anyone except Buck. To Taylor, Eddie isn’t a very compelling story. 

Or maybe it’s Buck’s fault, at the end of it, because Taylor still asks him about the hostage situation in the ambulance sometimes, and Buck can’t bring himself to remember. He sees blue and red flashing lights and remembers a gun going off and everything else seems like an alternate reality.

So he thinks Taylor’s given up on him, in the way that people tend to do. But there’s enough to stretch out like taffy, make it work for something like forever, if he wants to.

“Taylor?” Buck calls into the loft. The lights are on and her car is in the lot, but he can’t hear the familiar clicking of her keyboard. “What are we doing for dinner?”

It’s around 7 and he just got off a shift that wasn’t tiring so much as it was boring. Hen kept subtly rolling her eyes at Greenway and Ravi kept yawning every three minutes until Cap took him off chores and pushed him to the bunk room. Buck tried to keep himself entertained, but dispatch doesn’t seem to have as much down time as they do.

There’s a suspicious shuffling noise from the kitchen and no answer. Buck leaves his work bag by the front door and treads in carefully. He hears the oven door shut, so if it’s not his girlfriend in his house then who—

—Taylor has sky blue oven mitts on and an unfamiliar pinkish-gray apron tied loosely around her waist. She flashes Buck a grin that he returns hesitantly and gestures to the rest of the kitchen—the cobbler she just pulled out is cooling on the stovetop—which is nearly clean save for some kind of batter crusted on the granite just next to the mixing bowl.

“Did you make all this?” Buck asks in surprise. Or, tries to. He thinks it comes off warm but he’s more shocked than amazed. “Are, is your office having a potluck we’re supposed to be going to?”

He knows there isn’t one, but the alternative is…anyway, he wishes there was. Taylor rolls her eyes. “There’s pasta still in the oven,” she explains, taking off the oven mitts. “I wasn’t sure when you’d be coming home.”

It stops Buck in his tracks there, leaning against the breakfast bar. Home is not a together thing. Home is not Buck and Taylor in his empty loft that lets in too much sunlight in the morning and isn’t insulated with the sound-proof foam that lets Buck blast his Spotify playlist while he cooks dinner. This apartment is not home. It can’t be.

“What’s the occasion?” 

“What?” Taylor laughs but it sounds distinctly like the one Buck’s used to hearing on Channel Eight News. Not the Taylor he wakes up to. “I can’t make a nice dinner for my boyfriend?”

She walks over to him, because something’s buzzing under Buck’s skin and he can’t really move, and puts her arms around his neck; kisses him a couple of times for good measure, and then hums to herself. There’s light streaming through the windows—the harsh kind that comes with a winter sunset.

“It’s nice,” Buck replies, scanning the countertops for some sort of sign. “Didn’t know you could bake.”

“I’m from Oklahoma,” Taylor points out. “I can make a peach cobbler.”

The mention brings everything rushing back: Oklahoma, her dad, the near break-up and the I love yous. “Taylor,” he says, unbinding himself from her. Her gaze goes back and forth between him and the front door like a ping-pong match. “What’s going on?”

“Depends.” She twists her hands in front of herself nervously. It’s strange. It’s not like her to be nervous. “What kind of mood are you in today?”

Irrationally, it stings. Buck knows anything she means by it is completely of his own making, but he could’ve lived without the reminder. “What is that supposed to mean?”

She looks younger like this, with her long hair pinned up in a claw clip and the pink apron—like someone who might want to have a family that she loves over everything else. But the blue in her eyes is unmistakably Taylor—fierce and often relentless—and Buck is hit by the realization that one day, he’s supposed to fall in love with that version of her too.

“Nothing. Look,” Taylor says, bracing herself against the wall. She inhales. “Okay, look, I got a job offer.”

Buck knows where this is going. Some part of him has known since they first talked about it 2 years ago in the back of a news van. “Congratulations?”

“It’s in New York,” she confirms. “Buck, I’m moving to New York and I’m asking you to come with me.”

And Buck knows his answer. He knows the answer just as much as he knows what the weight in his chest is made of—Maddie and Eddie and Taylor—but it sticks in his throat, because out of those three, Taylor’s the only one who’s ever stayed, and Buck feels like that has to count for something; has to tip the scales a little in her favor. 

“Buck?” she pushes. She’s the only one that’s as good at it as he is and some twisted part of Buck thinks that means they belong together, despite how either of them may feel in the long run. “What do you think?”

“You got a job in New York.” He nods his head, gives her what he thinks could be a reassuring smile. “That’s great! When do you start?”

“Two weeks,” Taylor replies evenly. “With or without you.”

It sounds a lot like the proceedings to an argument. They haven’t had one in months and Buck’s starting to realize why. “Taylor,” Buck says carefully. “You know it’s not that easy—”

“You know, a part of me doesn’t even know why I’m asking,” she interrupts bitterly. “I love you, Buck. I want you to come with me. It should be an easy choice, but I’ve spent the entire week playing the perfect girlfriend for the chance to compete with Eddie—”

“What the hell does he have to do with this?” Buck demands. “I—I barely even talk to him these days.”

“Yeah, and look what’s happening,” Taylor retorts. It’s…Buck’s never seen her anything less than composed. Really, he never expected Eddie Diaz to be her undoing. “You’ve been angry and snappish for weeks.”

“I’m not angry!” Buck snaps back, angrily. “You just sprung this on me, and now, what? You’re saying if I don’t come with you, that means I don’t love you?”

“More than your firefighter friends?” Buck half-expects her to pick up one of the spatulas and fling it at him. “No, Evan. They’re always your first fucking priority.”

“They’re my family,” Buck protests, a yell of annoyance building in his chest, left with nowhere to go except directly out, at Taylor. “You’re the one who said my life was full of meaningful relationships or whatever, weren’t you?”

“Well, we weren’t dating!” She throws her hands up in frustration. “What makes them more your family than your girlfriend?”

“I’m in Eddie’s will.”

Buck doesn’t even mean to say it, because he’s not sure that hasn’t changed since the last time he and Eddie spoke about it last May, but somehow, he’s glad he did. Taylor pauses as the words sink in, her face scrunching in confusion. “What?”

“It’s in Eddie’s will,” Buck repeats. “If something happens to him, Christopher goes to me.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean why ?”

“It’s just—” Taylor struggles to find the words. Buck feels something ashy coating his tongue. “It’s just that you’re not really the most…dependable, are you?”

And there’s something about that. Something about Taylor calling him undependable when he’s spent the last 9 months trying to play the part of the perfect boyfriend—there for all her work events, dinner on the table, following her to Oklahoma—just stings at his skin. He’s never been called that before, not even with Abby, who told Buck he was good for waiting; for holding on until he couldn’t anymore.

Buck is dependable. That’s the part he’s sure of. But when it comes to Eddie putting him in his will over everyone else, Buck wonders if Taylor knows that he’s looking for an explanation too.

Taylor’s eyes widen. “The pasta,” she says hurriedly, rushing to the oven, and only then does Buck notice the burning smell. 

The heat of their argument is lost in the scramble to get the tray outside before the smoke alarms go off—man, wouldn’t that be embarrassing—and Buck doesn’t know if he’s glad for it or…Taylor looks over her masterpiece and shakes her head, glancing back at Buck like she’s already metaphorizing all of it, even though she doesn’t believe in symbolism. Taylor and Eddie are alike that way. Buck isn’t really sure where that leaves him.

“We could order takeout,” Taylor suggests. “We’ve still got dessert.”

Buck thinks if she stays here any longer, they’ll inevitably go right back to where they were 2 minutes ago. “I think you should go,” he replies, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to process something even though it feels like his brain is made of cotton wool. “When do you need an answer by?”

She runs her tongue over her teeth like she’s about to yell, but then takes in the sight of him, his kitchen, and manages to think better of it. “As soon as possible,” she says flatly. “You would love it there, Buck.”

“Yeah.”

He’s staring down at the tile, arms crossed around himself because if he looks up at her he thinks he’ll give in and ask her to stay—and they’ll order take-out and fuck and Buck might say something ridiculous to morning Taylor like, of course I’ll come with you even though he doesn't mean it—and he’ll regret it all 24 hours later. The door opens, and then pauses for a second too long. Buck risks a glance.

“You’re in his will?” she asks, expression unreadable. 

Buck nods. Taylor shuts the door firmly behind her and locks it herself.

“She’s moving to New York,” Eddie repeats, with a strange expression on his face. “And she wants you to come with her?”

“Well yeah, Eddie.” Buck takes a sip of his beer and tries to relax his grip on the bottle. “That’s generally how it works, when you’re in a relationship.”

It’s a Friday evening—Christopher’s at a sleepover for a birthday party and Eddie’s doing the laundry while Buck cleans up from dinner. Some stir-fry recipe Bobby insists is better than the last one. Buck doesn’t know. He couldn’t really taste it.

Even though Eddie’s keeping his tone carefully neutral, there’s something fierce in his eyes; wide and that same rich-brown color that Buck could sink into. He’s hit with a sense of familiarity; that this was how he fell in love with Eddie the first time. At the Diaz house over a beer and some simmered broccoli. 

Except, Eddie wasn’t throwing his t-shirts on the couch with this much force, back then. So maybe Buck’s romanticizing it.

“Do you love her?” Eddie asks, which is unexpected. For as long as Buck’s known him, Eddie’s always preferred to smile and nod over picking up confrontation. If Taylor’s the one putting that steely resolve on his face, Buck isn’t so sure he wants it.

Then again, if Buck doesn’t know everything about Eddie. If he did, he would’ve known that Eddie was going to leave the 118 long before he actually went. He puts the rice into a tupperware container, does a once-over of the countertops, and makes his way to the living room. If they’re really going to have this conversation, Buck’s going to try, for once, to figure out what the hell Eddie means when he asks things like that.

(And there’s also…Buck’s hopeful, when Eddie says things about Taylor in that voice. He’s not irrational enough to label it jealousy—Eddie doesn’t get jealous—but it’s nice to think that, no matter how misguided it is, someone, somewhere thinks he could do better than the best thing he’ll ever get).

“I told her I did.”

Eddie’s face twists into—something, something. “Oh.”

There’s been a chasm between them since July, and Buck’s more than content to keep it that way. Because if he talks about the will then he’ll just come to the same conclusion that Taylor had: that there’s absolutely no basis for it. But he slips up sometimes, because it’s Eddie, and because the anger that lives in him has never grown to hold the same rationality that the heart in his chest does.

“You’re not going to say anything else?”

Eddie resolutely doesn’t look at him and continues folding the laundry, but his shoulders are more tense than Buck’s ever seen them. “I don’t think it’s my place.”

“I made it my place with Ana,” Buck pushes. “And you listened to me. I—I mean I don’t know why but—”

“I wasn’t in love with Ana,” Eddie replies, still staring at Christopher’s yellow and pink striped socks. “Clearly, you’re…I mean you and Taylor are working out more than we did. If she’s asking you to come to New York with her.”

And Buck is…Here, standing in the living room, he’s so sure he’s just about to make a mess of things but he never could help it. He knows he’s only setting himself up for heartbreak by pushing, because when Eddie wants something, he’ll fight for it. More than this, anyway. 

“I told her I loved her,” Buck repeats. “I should—this is what you do when you love someone, right?”

Eddie inhales sharply like he’s fighting against it. There’s a pause. Uncertainly, like Buck isn’t watching his every move, Eddie glances up. They hold eye-contact for 1 second, and Buck sighs; moves to walk away into the kitchen, when Eddie mutters, so quiet that Buck isn’t sure if he meant to hear. “You can’t love her, Buck.”

And Buck opens his mouth to reply, but Eddie doesn’t let him get half a chance. “You can’t—you have to stay,” Eddie snaps. Buck isn’t sure who the anger is directed at. “What about Christopher?”

It’s a near thing, but Buck manages to keep from throwing something. He wants, so desperately, to slam his hand into the wall, to feel an ache that’s greater than this one. For Christopher. Of course. Never for Eddie. “I’ll explain it to him.”

Eddie scoffs. “Yeah, right.” He crosses his arms in front of his chest. There’s no longer any doubt to him. “You can’t do that to him. And besides, what if something happens to me?”

“Eddie.” He’s..it’s..Eddie’s standing on firm ground right now and Buck feels like everything is spinning. “You’re at dispatch now. Nothing is going to happen to you. That’s the whole point.”

They hold eye-contact long enough for Buck’s chest to squeeze. He doesn’t dare take a breath, just in case he’ll miss whatever refutation Eddie might come up with. He doesn’t know why he keeps doing this—the self-sabotage, like one of these days it might actually work in his favor.

“I don’t get it,” Eddie says finally. “Why are we even having this conversation? If—” he inhales, shuddering, “If you’re already planning on leaving?”

I want you to fight for me, Buck thinks. I want you to remind me that my life isn’t expendable. I promise you I’ll try my hardest to believe it this time. “She’s my girlfriend.”

“So was Abby—”

“Abby didn’t ask me to come with her!” Buck doesn’t mean to yell but he’s really not going to have Eddie lecture him about Abby like he knows better. Buck’s worked very hard on keeping himself below wraps. Eddie doesn’t know shit. “Taylor did!”

Eddie throws up his hands in annoyance. He’s glaring now, and Buck feels a certain satisfaction of getting him to this point—where he feels something for Buck that isn’t just crafted sentiment—and then, when Eddie keeps glaring, Buck just mostly feels sad.

“Well, clearly I can’t stop you,” Eddie snaps, venom coating everything he says. “I mean, I’m not going to tell you to break up with her if you can see yourself marrying her one day, Buck.” 

He takes a step back, and the expression that crosses his face is so unfamiliar, so sad, that Buck feels like he might fare better emotionally if another tsunami hit California. “She’s my girlfriend, Eddie. She loves me. So, I don’t really know what you want me to do!”

It’s not fair. Buck knows it isn’t. He knows he has no right to try and ask Eddie to choose between going to New York and an unstable future here in L.A., but he can’t help it. He’s selfish that way—always needs to know where he stands before he leaps.

“You have to stay, Buck,” Eddie says finally, holding his gaze. There’s a hollowness to him, a worn expression, because Buck has a habit of making it all about him. “Christopher needs you. The 118 needs you.” He pauses. “I…”

The end of that sentence might be, I need you too, but Eddie doesn’t say it, so Buck will never know for sure. And he’s got a terrible sense of self-worth, but he still knows what it looks like when someone’s asking you to stay for their kid, and someone’s asking you to stay because they’re in love with you.

“Taylor’s the best option I’ve got,” he says shakily, because sure, he’s been baiting Eddie this entire time but the fact of the matter is that he’s 31 and out of options. They mimic each other's breaths, just three feet apart, and Buck can’t tell which one of them is winning. “And I’m tired of being alone.”

Eddie swallows. Buck can map out his Adam’s apple where it rises and settles. Even like this, bags under his eyes and skin peeling around his fingernails, all he wants to do is touch him. “You’re not alone,” he says. 

“Yeah?” Buck chews at his lip. Outside, there’s a sudden clattering noise. Some teenage kids hoot and make entirely too much noise for how late it is. “Sometimes it feels like I am.”

He waits for the noise of disagreement—a protest—but it doesn’t come. Eddie’s face hardens like a shield that Buck can see right through. He swallows again and this time exhales shakily. “Then do what you want, Buck,” he spits out. “You always do anyway.”

And the dam breaks. “Yeah, fucking right, Eddie,” Buck snaps back. “I asked you in July—”

“Six months ago, and you haven’t talked to me about it since!”

“I asked you!” Buck repeats, clinging to it, because he’s so fucking done with this conversation where neither of them have a safe place to land. “I asked you in July at the barbecue and you said—”

“I didn’t think about it!” Eddie retorts, the exact same tone he’d used at Athena and Bobby’s house. “Because I didn’t. Not in July. Not until we got held hostage.”

There’s a drumming in Buck’s chest. A squeezing feeling in his forearms where all his emotions lie, hidden on his sleeve. They stare at each other for a moment and Buck is hit with a rush of deja vu so strong that he’s nauseous with it. He reaches out his hand slightly to brace himself on something, and the steadiness of wall beneath his palm nearly takes him out at the knees.

“You didn’t tell me,” he says, fighting the urge to double-over and rest his hands on his knees. “I would’ve helped you but you didn’t tell me.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and to Buck’s horror his voice cracks. “Because one week later, at the hospital, you told me to move on to the next one.”

 And Buck just…he just can’t listen to this knowing that he was the one who caused it. He can’t—he—the food sitting in his stomach wants to revolt. He opens his mouth to say something and fails. Tries again except there are tears stinging at the corners of Eddie’s eyes and Buck doesn’t know how they got there, really, but the only suspect still standing is him.

“I have to—I…” He runs a hand through his hair. It unsticks and falls in his eyes but this is Eddie’s house, so he doesn’t need to be able to see anything to grab his keys from the dining table.

He’s out the door before he can comprehend what he’s doing. This time, Eddie doesn’t ask him to stay.

Buck jerks awake to the sound of sirens.

He’s been dreaming about the shooting off and on since Eddie left the 118. Some nights are better—he blinks awake with a sharp inhale and Taylor doesn’t even stir beside him—and then sometimes it’s a little more than that, with sweat pooling on his pillow beneath his neck and his heart racing so fast he doesn’t think he’ll ever get it to slow down, with Taylor’s arm pressed against his too much, too unfamiliar. Those kind usually happen after he comes back from the Diaz house.

This one is the worst so far. He’s frozen there; his covers kicked off onto the floor and his head spinning like someone’s taken a blender to the inside. He choked out a breath, and then coughs up another, but he can’t bring himself to inhale. The air just seems to stick in his throat. He can’t gasp it down. 

Everything feels too cold and Taylor isn’t there. But she wouldn’t be able to fix this anyway. Everything else feels like it’s melting. And all he can feel is the phantom touch of Eddie’s palm against his fingernails.

Truthfully, Eddie’s hand felt the exact same in May as it did when Buck was being crushed by a firetruck. So these days, Buck doesn’t know whether he’s having nightmares about Eddie getting shot, or being the one to rescue him, which makes him feel just as shitty as it sounds.

The siren sounds grow louder. It’s four in the morning. Buck grits his teeth together and forces himself up and into the bathroom to take a shower. He turns the water up as high as it’ll go and tries not to drown in it.

“Fuck!” he shouts, slamming a fist into the wall of the tile. It stings, but not nearly enough to count for anything. “Fucking dammit!”

Buck remembers tasting the copper first. He twitches involuntarily before the blood on his fingers—all the way down to his fingers—registers in his brain. And then he sees Eddie, lying on the ground, crimson red, and somehow, Buck only hears the first gunshot after the second.

He switches off the shower. His arms are bright pink. In the mirror, his birthmark stands out like a brand.

Next, he notices the gasoline. Captain Mehta shoves him down so suddenly Buck nearly hits his head on the metal railings of the ladder truck. His head feels a little sharp with pain anyway, with the acrid smell burning its way up into his sinuses. Eddie doesn’t move. For a second too long, Buck doesn’t either.

Buck is so angry all the time. He’s so…there’s a cavity behind his chest that remains permanently empty and he thinks something in there used to quell the anger before his parents took that from him too. Dr. Copeland says it’s a product of grief; a loss of childhood or something, but it still doesn’t feel justified. He was born to save someone else, and he failed. There’s nothing there to grieve. 

“Fucking.” He slams his closet door shut hard. His hand stings with the force. “Sniper.” Puts on his running shoes and kicks the wall—it leaves a mark and stubs his toe in the process. “Fucking New York. Fuck!”

He’s a mess; thinks he might not get out of this apartment without burning it down first. Suddenly, jogging through downtown L.A. doesn’t seem like nearly enough. Nothing does. It’s 4:30 on a Thursday morning. He takes out a plate to make breakfast. Everything is too quiet. 

The plate shatters on the tile where he hurls it at the refrigerator. It’s 4:30 on a Thursday morning, and everything is too goddamn much.

Buck stares at it; searches the mess for some sort of deeper meaning and comes up empty. Above it, there’s a picture of Christopher at his science fair, giving the camera a toothy grin. 

It fills the cavity. 

He sighs and goes to get the broom.

“I called him yesterday,” Hen is saying as Buck climbs the stairs to the loft. She’s speaking to Bobby and Ravi is, once again studying, but he has his airpods in. Greenway is nowhere to be seen, but Buck isn’t very inclined to care. “He sounded sad.”

“Eddie sounded sad?” Bobby asks. Buck freezes in his tracks. 

“Well, he said ‘he had a meh day at dispatch’,” Hen clarifies. “And it’s Eddie. So when you translate it—”

“It was me.” It’s Buck speaking, but he doesn’t recognize his own voice. “It was my fault.”

Hen and Bobby share a glance, but they’re several feet apart so it’s less than inconspicuous. Ravi slowly removes one earbud, and doodles in the margins of his Fire Safety book so that it looks like he’s taking notes and it’s all so ridiculous except Buck can’t bring himself to laugh at the joke.

“Buck,” Bobby says quietly; too soft for the roaring of the station. “Eddie getting shot wasn’t your fault.”

Buck isn’t talking about the shooting, but then again that’s all they talk about these days, just in metaphors. “Taylor’s moving to New York. She wants me to come with her.”

Hen probably already knows why he’s telling them—she’s always right about everything. Bobby doesn’t look so sure. “Are you going to go?”

Ravi scoffs. Then winces. Then excuses himself to go organize the ambulance, muttering something about salads as he disappears.

Buck doesn’t answer the question. He fiddles with the sleeves of his bomber jacket and heads to the coffee machine, but Hen catches him before he can pull out a mug. “How’d you get these bruises?”

“Accidentally caught my hand in the door,” Buck mutters, snatching it away. He didn’t think it would color so quickly. “I already put cream on it. Don’t worry.”

“You make it easy to, Buckaroo,” Hen replies, fixing him with that same soft look he’s come to expect these days when Eddie and Maddie and Chimney aren’t exactly where he needs them to be. “So you told Eddie about Taylor?”

“I guess.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. That’s the second look he’s come to expect. “It’s a yes or no answer.”

Behind her, Bobby moves to grab a coffee cup from the cabinet on the other side. Buck watches in a daze as he puts half a spoon of sugar and a dash of oat milk and stirs with the small spoon that Buck is partial to. When Cap slides it towards him, along with a banana nut muffin that’s clearly fresh out of the oven, Buck thinks he could cry, here in the station loft.

“Yeah, I told him,” Buck replies, his voice doesn’t break but Bobby and Hen can probably tell that it wants to by the everything about him. “He already knows that I…Anyway, it’s not really about Taylor.”

“So if it’s not about the shooting and it’s not about Taylor,” Hen says. “Then what’s it about?”

It’s about me asking for things that I don’t deserve. “I don’t know. Kinda everything?”

Down below, a group of firefighters laugh and trail off as they exit through the Bay doors. “It’s like…” Buck chews on his lip and glances up at the ceiling. There are tears pricking at the corners of his eyes and it’s more than he’s felt in months, but he refuses to let them fall. He clears his throat and looks back at Bobby and Hen, who are waiting with more gentleness than Buck deserves.

“I don’t know,” Buck says finally. “It’s like I keep hurting him but neither of us want to admit it. Like we’re talking in circles all the way down.”

“Are you sure he’s the only one hurting?” Bobby asks, like he knows something. Except he can’t, because Buck doesn’t. And no one knows Buck like he knows himself. That’s the entire thing.

“That’s different.”

“How?”

It’s me, Buck wants to reply. I’ve been hurting my whole life. I’m used to it. And I’ve never been granted a reprieve, so after 31 years, I’m coming to the conclusion that I don’t deserve one. 

But that’s too self-deprecating to say out loud, even for him. He thinks it shows on his face anyway though, because Hen puts her hand on his, the one without the bruise, between his forearm and his untouched breakfast, and says softly, “You deserve to be happy, Buck.”

There’s a sudden whirring noise from downstairs. Buck shakes himself a little, brushes Hen’s hand off as he takes a sip of his coffee. “I don’t want to make this about me,” he says easily, slipping into the statement he knows everyone will agree with. “We were talking about Eddie.”

Bobby and Hen share another look. Buck knows that his deflection is perfectly obvious to anyone who knows him, even a little bit, but he can’t help that either. They’re encroaching on dangerous territory, talking about Buck’s feelings. Things that really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Not compared to Eddie and the bullet that went through his shoulder.

Thankfully, they let it go. “Frank has an open spot on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Bobby says. “I’ve been making sure he keeps it open. I’m just not sure how to bring it up with Eddie.”

“He doesn’t work here anymore,” Hen points out. “You can’t make it department-mandated.”

“I don’t want him to go because I forced him to.” Bobby replies. 

His face reads a lot like Buck’s—in the worry lines stark on his forehead and the way he chews on his bottom lip. It’s just that instead of it being his fault Eddie got shot, Bobby’s somehow gotten into his mind that it’s his fault Eddie never recovered. Buck will share the blame on that one. If they’re playing a pool game, May was a scratch. Buck’s the one who lined up the cue ball. It’s not Bobby’s job to take the shot, even if he thinks it would help.

“I just wish…” Bobby sighs. “Anyway, I just worry about him and Christopher.”

“Eddie’s a great father,” Buck says immediately. “Christopher is fine. Eddie’s fine.” 

“I’m not talking about Eddie’s parenting skills, Buck.” Bobby’s patient, fixing Buck with that calm, collected look until he lowers his hackles. “He’s a great father. But a single one. And after everything. Well, that can’t be easy.”

Buck has this sudden, overwhelming feeling that they shouldn’t be having this conversation at all. They’re practically psychoanalyzing Eddie when he’s not around to hear it—and that’s not new; those are the foundations the 118 was built on, and it’s all out of kindness—but Buck can’t help but wonder if they talk about him too. 

He doesn’t know that he’d be able to take that. He doesn’t know that Eddie would take this offer of help without throwing it back into their faces either. 10 months ago, Buck would’ve unequivocally said that there’s no point to this conversation—Eddie wouldn’t appreciate their worry. Now, he’s not so sure.

“And besides, thinking that everything’s fine is what got you into this mess in the first place,” Hen points out. “I don’t know, Buck. Maybe it’s time we all stop pretending.”

Eddie was the one who wanted everything to stay the same. Eddie who, back in July, told Buck he didn’t think about the shooting. 

He’s pretty sure that what Eddie meant to say was, “I don’t think about the shooting anymore.” He thinks that could’ve made all the difference in the world. So really, Eddie wants everything to stay in April 2021, and Buck doesn’t want anything about May to change them.

It’s a futile effort. Because Maddie was here, in May, and Chimney was still talking to Buck about Jee-Yun’s colic in the station loft. But it still feels right there, within arm’s reach. And Buck thinks if he stops outstretching his hand, even for a moment, it’ll all come crashing down.

He doesn’t get a chance to reply. Greenway comes up the stairs and with a hum and a hand brushing over Buck’s shoulder, Bobby moves to the tables and pulls out a file of paperwork.

Hen leans in close on the breakfast bar stool, Buck wants to ask her for a hug and advice with absolutely no sugar coating, but he doesn’t think he could take it. “Do you love him?” she asks under her breath. No one else can hear them.

“It’s Eddie,” he replies. It’s a yes or no question, but it shouldn’t be. It’s not like Buck had any choice in the matter.

She nods, like anything about it is that simple. And then, the alarm rings, and for the first time in his life, when Bobby subtly suggests that Buck be man behind, he doesn’t argue.

Eddie hasn’t responded to Buck’s text messages in 5 hours and the only reason Buck knows he’s still alive is because he texted Hen about a sleepover for Christopher this Sunday.

It’s one in the afternoon and their 24-hour just ended with a car accident and some overtime, because it’s February in California and no one here ever learned how to drive on the rare days when it ices. Buck does his job—rescues people from their cars and helps Ravi triage the victims for Hen and Greenway, but he goes to hand things to a non-existent Eddie one too many times, and leaves the scene feeling significantly worse than he did entering it.

It’s not like Eddie not to text back, but Buck gets it. Only two days prior, he stormed out of the Diaz house and left Eddie hanging—Eddie of all people—with his heart bared out in front of him. Buck fucked up. He gets it. He’s used to apologizing. This time, he really doesn’t know how he can expect Eddie to forgive him.

“Just don’t do it again,” It’s not another lawsuit, but the distance feels the same. There’s nothing illegal about it, but Buck still can’t talk to Eddie without facing repercussions.

Anyway, he’s not going to Eddie’s house. The traffic is moving too slow; it gives Buck enough time to think. He lets the guy turning into his lane merge in front of him and taps his finger on the steering wheel, crossing the turn into Bedford street in favor of Downtown L.A.—Taylor’s apartment, where she’s supposed to be, since it’s the weekend and she’s taking the day off to pack.

“You’re not alone.”

“Well sometimes it feels like I am.”

“Hey, Eddie,” Buck says, after his call goes to voicemail for the third time in a row. He’s sitting at a red light. “Look, can—can we talk. For real this time? I’m…look, I’m sorry okay? I—”

A car behind him honks loud enough for Buck to jerk, slamming on the gas pedal instinctively before getting his bearings again. The voicemail is still going. 

“I—I’m on my way to break up with Taylor,” he continues, hands gripping the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles turn white. “I think. So I guess that means I’m staying. Here. Anyway, call me back if you, um, if you want to. Bye.”

There are a few beats of extra silence because Buck has to turn into the parking lot before he’s able to end the call. Taylor’s apartment looks different in the afternoon—he can see the cracks in the exterior when the sun catches on the white brick. Taylor’s key is on Buck’s key ring. He takes it off and shoves it into the pocket of his hoodie.

“Okay, Buckley,” he mutters, getting out of the Jeep. “Okay.”

He’s never broken up with someone before but he doesn’t think it’s supposed to feel like this. There’s a clenching feeling in his throat—something about kids and a white picket fence—but he doesn’t know that he would’ve gotten a family with Taylor anyway. 

He’s grieving Taylor, but not a future together. And it still stings, but not as much as it should. It feels inevitable, somehow, when arguing with Eddie hurts more than breaking up with Taylor will. He’s known for years that Eddie would be difficult to get over; he didn’t think it would be impossible.

He knocks on the front door once, and it’s silent. He’s half-way through his second round of tapping when it swings open—Taylor in an oversized t-shirt and sweatpants, looking confused to see him, and a little like she knows where this is going, but graciously, she lets him inside before she says, “You’re not coming to New York with me.”

“I can’t,” he replies, fiddling with his cellphone. Taylor’s lips purse together like she’s trying to stop them from shaking. Her eyes are narrowed, but Buck can see her twisting her fingers behind her back. He swallows. “I’m sorry, I wish I—”

“No you don’t,” she interrupts sharply, turning to walk into the living room like she can stave off this conversation. Like it might be softer there. Taylor’s apartment is perfectly decorated—not a thing out of place—but it still feels empty. “If you wished anything, you would be coming with me.”

“Taylor—”

“I thought you loved me,” she says, it’s still cutting, but there’s a quiet edge to it now. “I thought you…come on, Buck, I thought we weren’t messing around here. I thought you loved me.”

He hesitates. “I do.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” she scoffs. It’s a bit watery, but like him, Buck doesn’t know whether she’s upset because she’s losing Buck or the concept. “Your sister’s gone. Chimney went after her. All that you have left in Los Angeles is—”

“Christopher,” he finishes. “And the rest of the 118.”

“And Eddie,” Taylor spits. “Who’s somehow more important than me every single time.”

“That’s not—” What is he going to say? That’s not true? It is and they both know it. “That’s not fair.”

He thinks there must be something fundamentally wrong with him—that he always chases what he can’t have. He wanted Taylor for months before they got together and yet now that he’s here, all he feels is empty. So, maybe he’s never been chasing that white-picket future, but the ache. The two seem interchangeable, standing here in Taylor’s living room.

“That’s not fair,” he repeats. “If anything happens to Eddie, it’s my job to take care of him. I don’t—I can’t betray that trust.”

Taylor blinks. She’s crying, a little bit, enough to play it off if she wants to, and Buck thinks he should—he should mimic that, but he can’t really feel anything at all. There’s a numbness to her, a vacancy to the whiteness of the walls surrounding him that’s almost dizzying. An unfamiliarity, really, that this is Taylor’s house, and he doesn’t belong here.

“No one else is going to date you,” she sneers. “I put up with the movie nights—Friday nights—and even when you had to leave early on Sunday mornings to go to the zoo with a kid that’s not even yours.”

And that stings more than anything else. He can handle Eddie pushing him away. He can handle being told that he’s put Eddie on a pedestal while Taylor watches from below sea level, but the implication that anything about spending time with Christopher is a wasted effort sets him on edge. “Hold on—”

“No one is going to marry you when you’re wrapped around your best friend’s finger like you’re fucking in love with him,” Taylor snaps. “God, Buck!”

He wants to tell Taylor she’s a really bad investigative journalist. Here Taylor is, saying that Eddie’s effectively ruined him for anyone else and Buck can’t even bring himself to care, which is exactly the crux of the matter anyway. 

“Why are you acting like you don’t choose your job over me?” Buck asks, crossing his arms like he’s shielding himself from something. He doesn’t know what. “Why doesn’t that matter, Taylor?”

She doesn’t say anything. Buck’s pretty sure that means she doesn’t have a good answer. He thinks he’s spent so long playing the part of a good boyfriend that he doesn’t actually know what it means, but neither does Taylor. So they were always going to hurt each other. And Buck’s getting really tired of being a part of something inevitable that doesn’t ever seem to end.

He knows he should leave it at that—shuffle his feet and hand over her key and leave—but he’s never been good at making things easy. And Taylor, well Taylor clearly has no reservations about hurting him, and Buck’s been stewing for days. He doesn’t want to snap at her so much as tell her the truth, but he thinks the two are interchangeable anyway.

It’s Taylor, after all.

“When I met you, you were going to expose Bobby to the entire city of Los Angeles,” he bites out. “If the—if the freaking network hadn’t stopped you, you would have.”

Taylor narrows her eyes. “You seem to be the only one still stuck on that,” she replies, trying for even except her voice shakes. “Your Captain and I get along fine.”

“Because I never told him, Taylor!” It all comes rushing back, now, everything he was keeping at bay. “I was trying to protect you from them. Even though I knew they care about me a lot more than you do.”

“You were my boyfriend—”

“I was good!” he snaps, cataloging the ‘was’ so harshly that it gives him whiplash. “I was a good fucking boyfriend, Taylor!”

“Yeah,” Taylor scoffs. “Except for the part where you weren’t in love with me. Except for the part where you want to fuck your best friend.”

The tips of Buck’s ears burn like he’s walking through Hell. “You’re really mean sometimes, you know that?”

Taylor takes a step closer like she’s about to jab her finger in his face and he takes one back. A couple more to the door. “Evan Buckley,” she sneers, continuing on her tirade. “Always so needy. Come on, Evan, you slept with your therapist. It’s not me who’s fucked up.”

He doesn’t want to think about the implications. He can’t or he’ll fall apart, right here in Taylor’s apartment, and she’ll take that as a vindication somehow, like she still has him wrapped around her finger. Because he knows Taylor, and she’ll take this as a win in whatever way she can.

Even though he wants to throw it at her, he sets the key on the coffee table, nails scraping against the glass. Some part of him wishes it could’ve been more mutual, or that he could turn back time and tell her she shouldn’t have kissed him that day when they were both tipsy and emotional and prone to making bad decisions, but he can’t. 

“I think maybe this would’ve worked out if you were a better person,” he tells her. “Because I’m used to doing anything to stop people from leaving, and with you, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to stay.”

She doesn't say anything for a moment; looks up at the ceiling and then back down. “I’ll pick up my stuff from your place tomorrow.”

“It’s a Sunday,” he reminds her. “I won’t be there.”

Taylor scoffs at him. “Right,” she laughs bitterly and it hits Buck like an arrow, but it’s Taylor, so it bounces off easily. “I’ll leave my key under the mat.”

Buck checks his phone in the car. Eddie responded to his text about the breakup 5 minutes ago. Okay. Buck never understood Taylor, but these days, he hardly knows what Eddie means either.

He drives home to his loft, and makes dinner alone. And then he thinks about the therapist, and has a panic attack in his bathroom.

Chapter Text

“The center of every poem is this: I have loved you. I have had to deal with that.”

— Salma Deera, Letters from Medea

“Eddie,” Maddie protests. She looks determined—a bit terrified—but she stands her ground, hand gripping Eddie’s forearm. “Don’t play a hero.”

Around them, smoke fills up every crevice of dispatch, like a shadow to a sidewalk in the evening. Maddie and Josh are beside him, and Eddie feels their breaths pinprick at his skin—an army of ants crawling up his neck and making a home there among the sweat. 

“May and Claudette,” Josh had said, thirty seconds after the smoke alarms started wailing, with wide-eyes and something like guilt hovering around him. “Fuck. They’re on the second floor. The quiet room.”

The building is in flames and the truth is Eddie doesn’t know how not to play the hero. A part of him thinks the fire is exactly what he was born from. Cut from the same cloth.

“I’ll look for them,” he promises, even though the floor feels less than stable and there’s glass scattered everywhere like confetti, jagged and crunching beneath people’s feet as they try and clamber up the staircase, heading for higher ground because the level right beneath them is where the fire started—from electrical wires and a spark. It’s probably a raging inferno.

“Call me when the 133 gets here,” he continues. Heat stings at his eyes, but somehow he’s sure that this isn’t a suicide mission. Somehow, wading into the fire is the one thing he’s certain of. “I’ll find a way to rendezvous with them.”

(It’s an electrical fire, he remembers. You noticed the burning nearly as soon as you got into the building. It’s not your fault.)

“If something happens—” he starts.

“We’re not doing this,” Maddie interrupts, tears filling the corners of her eyes. “I know I can’t stop you, Eddie. But we’re not doing this.”

“Maddie—”

“I’m going to see you outside in thirty minutes,” she says firmly, almost exactly like Adriana would. “I’m going to see you outside, uninjured, in thirty minutes re-regardless of what happens down there.” She takes in a shallow breath. “You have a kid,” she tells him, like Eddie doesn’t know. “Nothing is more important than your kid. Not even the guilt. Do you understand?”

Because the thing is, you don’t choose this life. Eddie’s not running into the fire because he wants to. Really, when you’re a first responder, there’s no alternative. Maddie knows that just as well as he does. There’s good karma, and there’s praise and recognition, but really, there’s just a space in Eddie’s chest, somewhere behind his ribcage, that tells him this is what it means to be human.

“You know that’s not how it works,” he replies and it’s…Eddie was supposed to be afraid of dying. He was supposed to…“I’m going to try my absolute best, Maddie, but you know that’s not how it works.”

(“I think about Christopher all the time,” he says, picking at the sides of his fingers. “Every rescue. Every decision I make is for Christopher, in some way. I don’t know how to change that. So of course I was thinking about Christopher. Mostly, I was thinking about how he deserves to be taken care of by a dad that he can be proud of.”)

Eddie gets to the second floor and May is pinned underneath a sofa and a steel beam in a room without a single exit strategy.

They’re on the far end of the second floor, at least. A couple hundred feet and a few shuttered windows separate the three of them from the electrical room, but it’s not nearly enough to save them. May’s leg is slowly getting crushed by a ton of steel, and there’s nothing Eddie can do about it.

“You gotta tell me if anything changes,” Eddie warns, brandishing the fire extinguisher in his hand like a weapon. “The second anything feels cold.”

May clenches her teeth together. Claudette, for her part, has been holding her hand this entire time, manicured nails darkened with soot. They both look worse for wear, but determined, and that’s all Eddie can ask for really.

“I know, Eddie,” she mutters, breathing labored with pain. 

“What did Captain Mehta say?” Claudette asks, for the third time in as many minutes. 

The building shakes again before she finishes her question. The steel beam shifts a little, but not nearly enough for Eddie to lift it (he’s tried), and Eddie thinks that, even if they weren’t stuck here, there’s no way they’re surviving the hallway unless someone comes to rescue them.

“You guys should go,” May bites out. Again. 

Her voice trembles and Eddie’s hit with the realization that she’s only 20. She’s spent the last year of her life in a pandemic—watching her mother go to trial and her brother get kidnapped. At least, when Eddie enlisted in the army, he had Shannon, regardless of how that worked out in the long run.

“Help is coming,” Eddie says firmly. “You know your dad just as well as I do. You know that nothing’s going to stop him from saving his family.”

(“The 118 and the 133 showed up at the same time,” he explains. “Albert came in first, and then Buck, and then Bobby and then Chim, with the circular saw. They’d extinguished the flames in the hallway. The building was about 5 minutes from collapsing, give or take. And the structure was so weak, it felt like the entire floor was melting.”)

As soon as they enter the room, Bobby and Chimney make a beeline for May. For a moment, the whirring of the saw cuts through the roaring in Eddie’s ears. Albert checks over Claudette, trying to get her to her feet, but May is still pinned so she refuses. 

Buck doesn’t seem to be paying attention to any of it. “Eddie!” He yells, practically leaping over the debris scattered across the floor. “Eddie!”

It’s…well, God. It’s the first time Buck’s said his name like that for a while, isn’t it? Here, in the middle of this fucking fire where Eddie can hardly take a proper breath anyway. Buck clutches at him like they’re the last two people alive on earth, never mind that their life-raft is still sinking, and Eddie—

Eddie doesn’t know if they’re going to be okay. Not then, in the quiet room at dispatch where Eddie’s been working for the last couple of months. He still doesn’t know how to get them there, because Buck is grabbing at his hand so desperately that Eddie can’t look him in the eyes for fear of what he’ll find. 

But he comes to the conclusion, in that moment, that both of them want to be. He thinks that’s the part he’s always been warring with. Eddie doesn’t want to get better without getting Buck there first—Buck who’s scraping at Eddie’s palm like he can’t find purchase there—until then, he was under the impression that Buck just didn’t want to get better at all. Not that he might be waiting on Eddie too.

(“So we get out into the hallway,” he continues. “Buck, he—he gives me his freaking turnout coat, like just because the fire’s out he’s suddenly indestructible. Refuses to take no for an answer, which means we keep arguing all the way until we hit the stairs. Bobby and Chimney go down first with May and Claudette. Buck, Albert, and I follow them. We’re almost down when the staircase collapses.”)

Eddie can’t stop coughing long enough to see anything.

There’s a high-pitched ringing noise in his ears. Every inhale feels like a trap; the air goes down his sinuses easy enough, only to revolt when it hits his throat. Beside him, Chimney and Bobby are yelling something, masks covering their faces. Eddie doesn’t know what they’re so freaked out about until the rubble in front of him materializes past a hazy gray color.

The same rubble that Buck and Albert were just standing on.

He watches numbly as Chimney tries the radio—receiving only static in return. He was fine. Eddie was fine. He was fine and alive except now Buck isn’t responding and Eddie feels like he’s actively dying.

“They’re okay,” Eddie insists, when neither Buck nor Albert give them any indication that they’re uninjured. His voice is trembling. Everything tastes like ash. Buck’s turnout coat feels like it weighs a hundred pounds. “They’re—Buck—they’re okay.”

No one bothers to placate him. “Buck!” Chimney shouts, because they’re only 10 fucking feet away; they’re only separated by a thin wall of rubble. If Buck or Albert could, they would’ve said something back by now. “Albert!”

“Chimney,” Bobby says evenly, but his hands shake where they’re carrying May. “Take everyone else and get out of here.”

“No,” Chim and Eddie snap at the same time.

Cap stills; glances down at May in his arms, nursing a broken leg; looks at Claudette beside him, quiet—watching everything with wide eyes. Eddie watches him swallow, breath coming out shaky. Chim, Eddie, they’re Cap’s family. But May, Buck, they’re Bobby’s kids. He waits for the piercing shriek of Buck’s PASS device. 

“I’m not leaving,” Chimney announces, feet planted firmly where he is. “Those are my brothers. I’m not leaving.”

Eddie has Buck’s turnout coat in his hands. Bobby turns to him, a pleading look in his eyes. Except Eddie anticipates what he’s going to say before he says it. 

“I’m a firefighter, Cap,” he tells him. “I’m not leaving either.”

“Then the rubble moves,” Eddie finishes, coming back to Frank’s office with its white walls and globe sitting on the desk behind him. “So the entire thing is anti-climatic anyway. They’re alive. They’re safe. They couldn’t hear anything for a while though since the staircase collapsed basically on top of them—cuts and bruises, but they’re all superficial.” 

He inhales, deep, because he can now. Because it’s been a week since it happened and he hasn’t had a panic attack about it yet. Because he and Buck are on almost speaking terms now—which is—they’re not really talking about it still, but Eddie thinks they might. One day. Soon. 

“I completed my reinstatement paperwork today,” Eddie says, tilting his head in a way that feels comfortable. Like something settled. “I go back to the 118 two weeks from now.”

“And how does that make you feel?”

“Well, I feel a bit proud of myself.” He exhales, shoulders falling like a steady ocean tide. “Which is a bit new, if I’m being honest.”

“As I’d prefer you were,” Frank says drily. Eddie laughs, and that part feels a bit unfamiliar too.

Two nights ago, Eddie had a dream that he was stuck back in the well and he woke up with his heart thudding where it took up residence in his throat. He’s under no impression that he’s completely healed from the past, even remotely, but that’s not what he wants to talk about today. Outside, the birds sit in a line, staring into the window and Eddie fights the urge to wave at them like he would a puppy.

“There’s another thing though,” he says, sobering. The chair feels a little like plastic under his palm. “About the dispatch fire. I can’t stop—I mean, I’m not actively trying to stop thinking about it—but I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Frank nods. “It,” he repeats. “It being…”

There’s been this white-hot burning feeling building in his chest since the accident, like the fire stained his ribcage black with soot. He’s long-since given up on trying to wash it out, and it’s not really even that bad. It doesn’t sting like the shooting or the well or Afghanistan, but it does ache—just like it did when he was 13 and saw Jacob Anderson changing in the locker room after soccer practice.

“I think there was a hand on my back just before the staircase crumbled,” Eddie tells him, twisting his hand between his fingers. “I’m not sure for sure though. And it’s over so there’s no point relitigating it. Especially not when—not when Buck’s like this, but you know,” he bites. He’s not even crying but his voice breaks clean in half like a heart. “For a couple minutes there, I thought he was dead.”

“Tell me that moment,” Frank requests. “About how you felt when the staircase came down.”

Eddie runs his tongue over his canine. He’s not sure he trusts himself to speak. From the first time he walked into this room, he knew that Buck would be his undoing. The one thing he was right about even before Frank warped his sense of self entirely—really, he’s never been wrong about Buck—never second-guessed about the parts of him that matter. Which is everything but the anger, if he had to qualify it.

“I think you could’ve told me I was dying and I would’ve believed you,” he says. “I think—I mean a part of it was familiar, for a second. Almost like deja vu.”

“Deja vu?”

“Yeah, from the shooting.” Eddie rubs at his face, scrunching it up. “I wasn’t lying about not remembering it—”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“—but I remember the blood staining Buck’s shirt sometimes.” The words hover in between them, waiting to fall. “It was a white shirt. Blood kinda sears into your brain when it’s on a white background. No one ever tells you that.” 

“Anyway.” He clears his throat. “There was a second after I got shot—I’m assuming—I don’t know—where I thought Buck,” he emphasizes, “was the one who got hurt.” He pauses. “And I thought I was dying then too, but it turns out I actually was.”

“And that unsettles you?” Frank asks. “That feeling?”

Eddie thinks about it. He wishes he could give Frank a different answer, for Buck’s sake even though he’s not here to hear it, but it doesn’t come up that way. 

“Yeah,” he replies. “It’s weird. I know…I mean, I’m not stupid. But I didn’t feel like this with Shannon. I thought it was something—I thought that what I feel for Buck is the same thing I felt about Shannon, but it’s not. Because Shannon didn’t feel like this.”

His hands curl over the armrest. He doesn’t want to cry about this of all things, but there’s a sob building and building in his chest with a familiar name to it. Something about waking up early on Sunday mornings to find out if today’s the day God will finally love you. 

He feels like he’s on a ship rapidly headed towards an iceberg. Water is sloshing over the edges and someone has just handed him a shot glass to try and stave off the crash. Nothing feels right. Everything feels like an end.

Frank appraises him, looking for something that Eddie himself is trying to reconcile with. “Eddie,” he says. “Not everything has to feel like something else.”

Eddie twists his mouth, stares up at the ceiling, and says nothing.

“My wife is a relapsed Catholic,” Frank tells him, when it’s clear Eddie’s not going to continue. “She majored in Philosophy, so she’s agnostic now, but she says a lot of former Catholics still believe in God.” He shrugs, like anything about God is that easy. “They just don’t have a lot of faith in the Catholic Church.”

“I’m not an atheist,” Eddie refutes immediately; feels compelled to. “I’m not even—I’m not that religious, but I’m not an atheist.” 

He gestures around at nothing. “It’s not about God,” he says. “My parents didn’t make us go to church after we turned 13. And I went for a few years after that, but there were soccer games and I got busy, so around 16, I stopped going completely. It’s not about the church.”

“But?” Frank prompts.

Eddie inhales, but that just exacerbates the lump in his throat even further. A bomb about to explode. One he’s never spoken about, because he’s never known how to keep the shrapnel at bay. 

“My dad was more religious than my mom,” he explains. “Catholic from Mexico, you know? He grew up middle-class, but it was still…anyway, sometimes God was the only thing he had.” 

“And I respect that,” Eddie continues, nodding. “I’m not faulting him for whatever keeps him steady. But it’s rigid. My dad, he doesn’t—it’s his way or the highway.” He swallows thickly. “And it’s…look, I can come to terms with the fact that I’ll never make my parents proud. The only time I’ve ever come close is when I almost died in Afghanistan, which is about ten different kinds of fucked up. But I can deal with it.”

He bites his lip. “I think my parents love some part of me,” he says. “I think they mean well, most of the time. I just—they wouldn’t get it, if I talked about a future with someone that’s not a woman.” He licks his lips; finds that they stay dry anyway. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt like anyone was worth justifying when I know that would never change.”

“But Buck,” and here Frank holds his hands up in surrender, “if that’s who you’re referring to—is?”

Eddie looks at anything except for Frank. He knows this feeling is supposed to be a proud one. He knows that, since he’s a man, he’s supposed to declare his love from the top of the nearest hill so that everyone can hear it. But for some reason, this doesn’t feel like anything close to pride. And that makes him sick. 

“It’s Buck,” he says, because Eddie didn’t know he was in love with Buck walking in this session, but then again, what else could it be? “He deserves everything.”

“If that’s how you feel,” Frank says, tapping his pen on his notepad. “If that’s how you feel when he gets injured and that’s how you feel in spite of your parents, then I think, with Buck, you’ve got a pretty solid foundation to stand on, Eddie.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he croaks out; exhausted. 

“Well, this is by no means an empirical statement,” Frank tells him, and he’s got that serious expression to him—the one that pinches his eyebrows together that Eddie has taken to mean he doesn’t know what Eddie’s thinking. For once. “But it seems like Buck is the one thing you’ve always chosen for yourself.”

Eddie chews at his top lip. “Like in a selfish way?”

“No,” Frank says slowly, expression clearing. “More like, despite everything that’s happened between the two of you these last couple months, Buck is still a sure thing.”

He ponders that. Frank said it wasn’t empirical, but it feels steady enough to lean on. 

Yeah, he agrees. Buck is a steady thing, but Eddie knew that. Buck is a steady thing, but he always was. So maybe it’s Eddie’s turn to man up and talk to him about the shooting, because it’s not like Buck is going to run away.

And then, Bobby calls Eddie to tell him that Buck is in the hospital, and everything shatters.

Eddie’s getting really goddamn tired of ending up here.

He would wager that Buck is too, but racing in with his heart in his throat, he can’t be sure of it.  The ambulance isn’t outside, but Eddie spots Bobby’s car in the parking lot. So logically, he figures Buck isn’t bleeding out or anything, but that hardly makes him feel any better when he can’t see Buck right in front of him—okay, breathing. Alive.

Fuck this, he thinks spittingly, hands shaking with some combination of anger and guilt and worry. Absolutely fuck this, actually.

He knows he looks like a maniac, marching through the hospital doors wearing sweatpants and crocs because he was supposed to go straight home after his therapy session and running his hand through his hair like it’s the only thing he knows how to do. Buck is a sure fucking thing, until he goes and pulls shit like this.

Bobby is there waiting for him, standing with his arms crossed in front of his chest. His foot taps on the tile and there’s a crease between his eyebrows but not the venom Eddie’s expecting in the purse of his lips. He spots Eddie as soon as he charges in. It’s hard not to. “He’s okay.”

“Bobby—”

“He’s okay, Eddie.” And maybe Eddie would be more reassured if it didn’t sound like he was trying to convince himself too. “It’s a concussion. Grade two—”

“Grade two means he lost consciousness,” Eddie snaps, like Bobby doesn’t already know that. “Wh—I need to see him. Where is he?”

He’s aware of how insane he sounds, but just like anything when it comes to Buck, he can’t help it. He doesn’t understand how everyone who knows him isn’t walking around with this sinking feeling that their legs are only a few seconds from buckling. It’s overwhelming. Nearly indescribable except for the way Buck’s name sounds on Eddie’s mouth, like a prayer, or something just as holy.

The ache building in his throat is different than Shannon. It’s in a distinctly separate part of him than the cavities of his brain—worn and punctured—that hold the shooting or the well or Afghanistan. The ache in his throat is wholly and entirely Buck’s, and Eddie thinks if he’s known that, if he’s always had Buck’s name branded on the pain, then it’s just taking the rest of him a minute to catch up with the program. 

But he’s getting it now, slowly. Entirely and irrevocably here in this hospital. Nothing Eddie feels about Buck has ever been comparable to anything else. It would stand to reason that falling in love with him wouldn’t either.

“He’s coming out of the CAT scan now,” Bobby says, hands by his sides. “It’ll only take a minute before they discharge him, Eddie. And I don’t know that they’d let you back there right now anyway.”

You’re not family, the tense line of his shoulders seem to say, like he’s expecting Eddie to put up a fight. Waiting for him to brush past Buck’s first line of defense and go straight for the kill. And Buck made it that way on paper. On purpose.

No one is staring at Eddie anymore, so when Maddie comes through the automatic doors carrying Jee-Yun in her arms, it takes her a moment to spot them. When she does, she narrows in on Bobby first. “Hey,” she says, breathlessly rushing over. “Is he—what happened?”

“Grade two concussion,” Bobby relays. He describes the call—all new information to Eddie too because he didn’t care much past the words Buck and in the hospital. “It was—he was just climbing a ladder to a roof. It was perfectly safe. I don’t know how—”

“Family of Evan Buckley?” A nurse calls from the other side of the waiting room. 

The three of them share a look. Eddie’s chest still feels tight, like he might not make it the few paces from the waiting room back to Buck. Maddie places a hand on his arm.

“We’ll go,” she tells him, like she can tell all Eddie wants to do with Buck is throw not entirely baseless accusations at him. She hoists Jee a little higher. “And then I’ll see if he’s up for more visitors.”

Eddie watches them go before turning back to Bobby. He thinks he couldn’t have this conversation with anyone else, because Maddie, Hen, Chimney, they all know Buck. The one side of him. They know the Buck that’s—“ It’s not in his nature not to try,”—but Eddie knows the other part. Just like Bobby does.

“When you were in the hospital last May, Buck climbed a crane without any protective gear,” Bobby bites out, dazed, like he’s telling Eddie not entirely of his own accord.

He waits for Bobby to keep speaking. Around him, the hospital moves and breathes and someone runs a stretcher down the hallway and Eddie hates that he’s been here, waiting, enough times for none of it to faze him. Bobby’s mouth gets tighter, his hands tremble by his sides, and just as Eddie opens his mouth to ask what the hell he’s talking about, it clicks.

“When I was in the hospital,” Eddie repeats, that slow sinking feeling that’s come to be synonymous with Buck and life or death situations. “While the sniper was still out hunting.”

Bobby nods, and Eddie thinks he’s going to be sick for the rest of his life. He sits, shakily, because it’s Buck and Eddie’s legs are always one breath from giving out for it on a good day, and there’s nothing about that statement that is minutely, remotely good.

“He—”

Eddie barks out a laugh. “I can’t talk about this,” he chokes out. “Not with you. Not until I—” he waves his right hand in the air and it feels like he has about two seconds before gravity brings him down completely. Every word comes out gaspingly. “Not until I get the full story, okay?”

Only he doesn’t need it. Just like the story about the white water rapids, this fits Buck perfectly. Sniper on the loose; someone needs to do the rescue; everyone else is less expendable than Buck is—Eddie knows that part of Buck just as well as the burning feeling in his throat. He is really, the burning feeling in his throat, and everything it’s comprised of.

“Does it ever dawn on you,” Eddie says, trembling so hard that it feels like he’ll never get control over his hands again. “When you talk about Buck, does it ever dawn on you that you’re talking about one of your firefighters being actively suicidal?”

Bobby inhales, but it doesn’t seem to do a thing. “At the 118, I can keep an eye on him,” he replies, glancing back to the hallway before looking at Eddie again. “So, I don’t really see the alternative.”

“You could make him go to therapy,” Eddie bits out. “You made me go to therapy. It worked. Why can’t you do the same for Buck before he throws himself off another train car, huh?”

He’s never spoken to Bobby like this in his life—always a good soldier; grew up in Texas saying his “yes sirs and ma’ams” —but with Buck, everything goes out the window. At any rate, he doesn’t think he’s being callous. Bobby holds more power over Buck than anyone else here. And he’s standing in front of Eddie while Buck’s in the back getting stitches, telling him he doesn’t plan on using it.

“Honestly, Eddie?” Cap says back, scrubbing a hand over his face like someone who’s lost too much and doesn’t know how to chance it anymore. “I think therapy is only going to help Buck if you’re better first.”

And that’s…that’s a lot of pressure to put on Eddie’s shoulders. It’s not like Bobby’s asking him to do much, in the grand scheme of things, but getting better—better enough to help Buck—feels like a task more monumentous than anything his parents set for him as a child. Maddie comes out before either of them can say anything else, glancing between the two—Eddie’s who’s legs still feel too shaky to stand, and Bobby, arms still crossed, glaring down at the tile. 

“He’s just waiting for his discharge papers,” Maddie tells one of them, maybe both. “They’re pretty backed up today so it might take a while. If you want to go back and wait with him.”

Bobby checks his wristwatch. “I have to go back to the station,” he says, even though it looks like it’s killing him. “Send me updates. Whichever one of you stays with him.”

“I will,” both Maddie and Eddie say at the same time, and Maddie barrels over him before he can protest. 

“Buck is staying with us,” she repeats firmly, staring Eddie down like he’s some sort of wild animal. “We’ve got a guest room.”

“I can sleep on the couch.”

“Eddie,” Maddie says, worrying at her lip. She looks weary, like she knows what Bobby and Eddie were talking about before she came back. Protectiveness radiates out from her in waves, and he’s hit by the realization that she’s protecting Buck from him. “Can you honestly tell me that if you took Buck home right now, you wouldn't argue with him?”

And Eddie…Eddie hates that. Because Maddie calls Bedford Street Buck’s home, and then warns him that the entire thing is sitting on shaky foundation in the next breath. And there’s a part of Eddie, bitter and pissed off, that wants to suggest they have Buck decide that for himself. Except he doesn’t know how he’d come to terms with it if Buck comes to the same conclusion his sister did.

“Fine,” he mumbles, like a child. “I’m going to go see him now.”

He half expects Maddie to stop him, but he makes his way to the room—146—without issue. His crocs squish down the hallway. When he grabs the door handle, he hesitates, and then, after what feels like an eternity, pushes it open. Buck is frowning at the floor just like Bobby. He doesn’t bother looking up at the sound of the door. 

Eddie just sighs. He’s getting used to this.

There’s a bandage on his forehead where the stitches are, just above his birthmark and nearly the same place next to his eye where Eddie had traced his fingers over ages ago, out on the balcony. He’s still dressed in his station shirt and pants, and there’s a dark spot on his collar where the dried blood caught. He looks too pale for Eddie’s liking, but these days, Eddie can’t tell whether it’s the injury, the lighting, or just the look of him.

“How did you—”

“I fell and hit my head,” Buck says, and it sounds monotone in a way that makes Eddie’s stomach curl. Buck’s a lot of things—kind, good, angry, down on his luck—but he’s always something, at the very least. This sounds entirely practiced. Entirely too robotic to be any version of him. “It was an accident.”

“How do you fall off a ladder, Buck?”

“I missed a step.”

“Funny,” Eddie replies, even though there’s nothing close to funny about it. “I don’t believe you.”

Buck’s scowl just gets deeper, but he finally looks up and something flashes in his eyes as he does a once over of Eddie, looking for something, except Eddie doesn’t know how he’s planning to use it. He doesn’t know what’s worse—this staring contest they’re having in which neither of them want to come out the winner, or January when they were hardly looking each other in the eyes at all. “Did you just come here from therapy?”

Eddie thinks the words are meant to hurt, and they do a little bit, but not as much since he knows Buck’s not saying it out of malice but jealousy. “Yeah,” he replies. “You should try it.”

Something like fear makes Buck’s nostrils flare. He rubs at his birthmark before Eddie can stop him and winces. Which is terrible but reassuring at the same time—that there’s a part of Buck that still knows how to hurt. “I—”

“No, wait I’m sorry,” Eddie says, shuffling his feet because Maddie was right and seeing Buck here, okay, alive, is a bit better but not by much. Because Buck hates looking stupid and he would never fall off a ladder if he was paying attention. “Maddie says I’m not allowed to be mean.”

“You’re not being mean.”

“Yeah, well thanks, but you don’t have to—”

“Eddie,” Buck interrupts, except there’s a small almost half-smile playing at his lips and it’s not much but Eddie will take it. “You’re not being mean.”

Eddie falls in love with Buck every day when he’s least expecting it. They look at each other—Eddie leaning against the wall and Buck resting on his palms back on the hospital bed—and even though Buck’s got a bandage covering nearly half of his forehead, it looks kind of like forever. 

Eddie’s never had that before. Or he’s always had it, ever since Buck drove him to Christopher’s school after the earthquake. Either way, he doesn’t think it matters. They’re in liminal space now anyway.

“Nurses are taking a while, huh?” he asks to cut through the silence. He has a habit of doing that. Self-sabotaging. The nurses can take as long as they want if it means he gets to stay here with Buck a little longer.

“You can’t fault them for the bureaucracy, Eddie.” He can feel his name in Buck’s mouth all the way down to his feet. “I watched a documentary a while ago…” Buck trails off and squeezes his eyes shut. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Buck repeats, ignoring him entirely. They’re back to monotone now and Eddie wishes he knew what he was doing to flip the switch. “It was a long time ago and I don’t remember it.”

Eddie nods. “Cool,” he says. “So we can talk about why you fell off the ladder then.”

They keep the hospital cooler than it is outside, which in March in Los Angeles is a low bar, but they clear it well enough that Eddie can feel it seep through his long sleeve. Buck is wearing a t-shirt. He’s not shivering and Eddie doesn’t know what to make of it except that it scares him and he wishes he’d worn a jacket to Frank’s office. He thinks he would’ve, if he’d known he was going to end up here.

“I am fine,” Buck tells him, like Eddie is very stupid and Buck is very close to having a mental breakdown because of it. “This isn’t the worst injury I’ve had. This doesn’t even come close to the top stupid things I’ve done. Which, I’m assuming you and Bobby keep a list of.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Why did he call you?” Buck demands. Eddie gets the distinct feeling that there’s gasoline between them, waiting to be lit, and Buck’s just pulled out a match. “I didn’t ask him to call you. I didn’t want you to come.”

Eddie blinks. That’s just—well, Eddie doesn’t know how to respond to that one, but he tries. “Buck–”

“Not like,” Buck tugs at his own hair. He’s definitely pulling on his stitches but Eddie doesn’t know that it’s his place to stop him. He wants to stop Buck from setting himself on fire, but he feels like he’s armed with nothing but his own turnout. “Not like that! I just—you have other things to worry about that aren’t,” he gestures to himself, arm hanging limply. “Me.”

“I think you should let me make that decision for myself,” Eddie replies, considering Buck with a careful expression that doesn’t go unnoticed. Not with the way Buck’s tracing every movement Eddie makes with his own eyes. “Don’t you?”

Buck’s shoulders slump. He looks up at Eddie and then off to the side. Like he’s hiding something—or he wants to—but it isn’t taking.

“A car backfired,” he says finally. “Off in the distance. Not close enough to matter. And I stumbled.” He looks distinctly like he’s expecting someone to hit him. Like a dog trapped in a cage at an animal shelter: completely unwilling. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Not this time, feels like the end of that sentence. I didn’t do it on purpose this time, but I could’ve and we would’ve ended up here anyway. “Buck,” he asks carefully. “During the dispatch fire, did you push me out of the way before the staircase crumbled?”

Buck looks just as miserable as Eddie feels. He shrugs, which Eddie takes as a yes. “You were in danger,”' he replies. “I couldn’t help it. You can’t be mad at me if I couldn’t help it.”

There’s a lump in his throat so large, Buck must be able to see it from where he’s sitting. They’ve been going in circles for months now—on a spiral staircase to nowhere—and Eddie still feels so far away from Buck they might as well be living in two different realities entirely. One where Buck is loved, and another where he isn’t. 

One where Buck is good, and one where he knows that.

Eddie barely has any legs to stand on when it comes to self-worth, but with Buck, that feeling is familiar anyway. “I told you that you weren’t expendable,” he chokes out, desperate and vaguely like he’s on his knees.

Buck looks through him, eyes glassy like someone’s wrapped plastic over them. Eddie’s hit with a punch to the stomach that some part of him might not be all recoverable. 

“Eddie, I trust you with my life,” Buck says, scrubbing at his birthmark. “But I’ll never believe you.”

The 118 isn’t really in any state to be throwing barbecues, so Athena Grant calls it a ‘get together’ and tells them if they don’t show up, she will be coming to their houses to find out why.

The morning of, naturally, Eddie has a nightmare about the shooting. It’s a bad one—not that any of them are good, really—but this one that has Eddie sitting bolt upright in his bed like a marionette doll and gasping for air that won’t come. So it’s a bad one.

It’s five in the morning three nights after Buck walked out of the hospital with Maddie and without him. It’s five in the morning on a Sunday, three days after Buck looked Eddie in the eyes and told him that everything about May was bullshit including the two of them sitting on that hospital bed. It’s the day of the barbecue that Eddie’s supposed to see Buck at, and they haven’t spoken to each other in 72 hours.

Eddie sends a text to Frank immediately. It doesn’t read U up? but Eddie thinks the sentiment is the same: Had a dream about the shooting again so I think I am uncancelling our Tuesday session if that works with you.

Frank doesn’t text back—because it’s nearly five in the morning—and Eddie wraps himself under his comforter and tries to fall asleep again.

“Eddie, I trust you with my life,” Buck said. “But I’ll never believe you.”

It’s not going well.

Never is a difficult word to reconcile with. Never is a one way trip to the psych ward at Mercy General under constant surveillance. It’s…Look, Eddie doesn’t think Buck is going to do anything dangerous inside the confines of his apartment.

He also doesn’t think Buck will try very hard to stay alive, if it comes down to it.

Dawn peaks through his blinds, barely that much different from the pitch black a few minutes before. Eddie hasn’t gotten a good night’s rest since the hospital, for obvious reasons. Lying here, Christopher down the hall and the 118 a few hours out from voluntarily spending their Sunday with each other, he wonders if Buck is awake too.

The shooting is coming back to him in pieces. Not all of it—Eddie doesn’t think he’ll ever remember all of it—but fragments, which seems fitting under the circumstances. There’s an image branded in Eddie’s mind of Buck crawling underneath a ladder truck, with blood dotting his clothes, trying to get to Eddie.

That’s the part he has a nightmare about this time. But really, they’ve all been about Buck one way or another these last few days. Buck’s face in the train car, what he must have looked like scaling the crane with no protection, Buck falling off the ladder and hitting his head because a car backfired in the distance.

Eddie covers his face with a pillow and screams, just a little bit, and then he gets up to start the coffee in the Hildy, because Buck bought it for him and Eddie isn’t going to just throw it away.

He researches, How to help someone that doesn’t want it, for a few hours before Christopher walks in, bleary-eyed with sleep and yawning. The results have mostly been along the lines of: You can’t, which is what Maddie said a week ago, but Eddie thinks the internet is stupid most of the time anyway.

“Morning,” he says, standing up to ruffle his son’s hair and get out pancake mix. “Excited for the barbecue?”

“Harry says it’s a get together,” Christopher reprimands him, leaning forward with his elbows on the dining table. “He says his mom is being really strict about calling it a get together.”

Eddie snorts. “I stand corrected,” he replies, hands up in surrender. “Do you want to help me make pancakes?”

Christopher sighs dramatically and stands, dutifully going to the sink to wash his hands. “Someone has to.”

Making progress is similar to the weather in Texas. Some days it’s summer in March and the next it’s below freezing and Eddie never bought a new window coat because he was under the impression he wouldn’t need one. He knows that healing isn’t linear, but the concept never seems to stick. So every couple of days he feels like he’s right back to where he was in October, in the back of that ambulance, a gun pressed to the back of Buck’s head.

But things feel better with Christopher. They’ve been working on a steady slope upwards ever since they started talking about it—which Eddie could very easily take and apply to Buck except for that he can’t, actually—and the only painful thing about spending time with his son is watching him get older. 

He’s probably half a foot taller now than he was in May, hair running wild. He looks a lot like Buck, sometimes, so much that Eddie’s heart pangs with it—something about a family and a white-picket fence—but Eddie’s recently been coming to terms with the fact that Christopher takes after him too.

“Are you feeling okay, dad?” Christopher asks as Eddie cracks two eggs into a bowl only a little gracelessly. “You look tired.”

Eddie doesn’t think he can explain Buck’s mind to a 12 year old. Honestly, Eddie’s hardly sure he understands it himself, but words like expendability and Buck’s terrible, good for nothing but journalism girlfriend sit on the tip of his tongue, threatening to show themself if he says even one word about it. So he hums noncommittally instead. 

“I’m just worried about Buck,” he replies, mixing the batter even though it’s lumpier than it is when Buck makes them. He wonders what it says about them, that Buck hasn’t made breakfast in this house since last July and Eddie still remembers the consistency of his pancake batter.

“He hurt his head the other day, remember?” As if Christopher would forget. “So I just hope he’s feeling better.”

Christopher nods sagely. At Eddie’s request, he grabs the blueberries from the fridge. “He should come home,” he says. “After the get together. So, you stop worrying.”

Eddie has a feeling the request has nothing to do with his worrying and everything to do with the nearly completed Lego set in Christopher’s bedroom. “It’s a school night.”

“It’s Buck,” Christopher returns.

And well, yeah. He’s got a point there.

Honestly, Eddie’s not above kidnapping Buck from this barbecue. He’s snappish and annoyed with Eddie, but throw Christopher in the mix and you’ve got an easy solution: ice cream in the freezer, Legos with Chris, and Buck, on the couch, in the Diaz house where he belongs.

“Well,” Eddie says, as if Christopher’s forcing his hand at all. As if this might not be the first night in the last three that Eddie might actually get some sleep, because Buck and Christipher will be under the same roof, and they’ll be alive, and they’ll be safe, and Eddie will have a couple more seconds to think about the rest. “I’m sure if you ask him—”

Christopher cuts him off with a loud cheer. Eddie laughs and flips the pancakes and tries not to think about what’ll happen in the space of time between Christopher’s bedtime and dawn.

“Buck and Bobby have been snapping at each other all morning,” Chimney whispers to Eddie, sipping his drink and looking like he wished he had binoculars, and also maybe a string and a tin can. “Look at them. They’re nearly about to blow.”

Eddie squints. “I doubt they’re going to have an argument at a barbecue.”

“Get together,” Hen and Chimney correct in tandem, like this isn’t the first time someone’s been chastised for it since they got here. 

The three of them are sitting around the patio, attempting to look like they’re not gossiping about the rest of the people wandering around the backyard. Maddie, Karen, and Athena are with May, talking about getting their nails done while fawning over Jee, while the boys are playing some made up game that involves both a football and a tennis racket.

Bobby and Buck are by the grill, equidistantly separated from the next closest person so that it’s impossible to overhear them. Bobby’s facing away from them, towards the fire, so it’s hard to get a good read on him. There’s still a bandage on Buck’s forehead that Chris had oohed over when they first got here, but his face is expressionless. For all anyone knows, they’re talking about the weather, or the latest episode of MasterChef.

Eddie knows they’re not, though. Because Buck is rubbing his fingers over his thumb, and he’s looking at anything but Bobby, and they haven’t been broken nearly long enough for Eddie not to pick up on the way Buck’s running his tongue over his bottom lips like he’s about to disagree with whatever Bobby suggests before he’s even heard it.

Eddie’s more familiar with that expression than he’d like to be.

“He looks a little pale,” Hen murmurs. “He did go back to the doctor, right? They made sure everything was okay?”

“Well, there’s no fixing the…” Chimney gesticulates and Eddie rolls his eyes. “Everything, but yeah. He’s cleared to come back to work in two days. A couple of days before you come back, Eddie.”

Hen turns to him then, pursing her lips and looking him over like she hasn’t seen him in a couple of weeks. He supposes that’s not untrue, but the distance doesn’t seem so wide when it’s Hen—always warm and somehow always there when you need her to be.

“Now, tell me the truth,” she says, waving her margarita at him to emphasize it. “How are you feeling?”

Across the backyard, Christopher yells for him and points at the goal like, Did you see that? Eddie doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be looking for, but it doesn’t matter. He grins back easily, easier than anything he’s ever done these past few months, and flashes him a thumbs up.

Christopher turns to Buck and motions something similar. It’s not very hard to get his attention—Buck’s entire body language changes at the sight of him—but Eddie has no idea why Buck didn’t turn when Christopher shouted ‘Dad!’ the first time.

“I’m doing okay,” he admits, feeling a little bit like he’s 7 and kneeling at Confession. “Buck needs me to be better, so I’m trying to be.” He wipes the condensation off his beer. “Good enough to come back, clearly.”

“According to Frank,” Hen clarifies.

“According to Frank,” Eddie agrees, stretching. He glances at Buck before looking back at Hen; never could help it. “But, you know, according to me too.” He nods his head. “I’m worried about him, though.”

Chimney scoffs. “Aren’t we all?” He focuses on the drink in his hand before continuing, like he’s not brave enough to say it to Eddie’s face. “You don’t—I mean you don’t think I set this off, right?”

Hen starts to say something but Eddie cuts her off with an apologetic look. “You’ve talked to him?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“And you both apologized?”

“I mean, yeah, Eddie. But I could’ve still—”

“There’s nothing more to that then,” Eddie says firmly. “Nothing…Listen, this about the shooting. Me and Buck, and maybe Bobby. Because there’s going to be a fallout, and he’s going to need you guys to be there for him when it happens.”

Hen and Chim share a glance. “Eddie,” she starts slowly. “Are you actually going to—”

“Talk to him about the shooting?” he asks, running a hand through his hair. “It’s about time I do, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, the shooting.” Hen keeps her voice low, side-eyeing Chimney again who’s staring back with wide eyes, a little past half-way drunk but no less expressive. “Or, you know, the other thing.”

She’s seemingly trying to drill into Eddie’s forehead. He holds her stare, unflinching, which is new when it comes to Buck and moving on from Shannon and something like love. “Can’t have one without the other.” 

Hen bites her lip and looks back at Buck. The crease between her eyebrows softens, and Eddie remembers Buck telling him about the period of time he had no one but Hen in Los Angeles, Chimney in the hospital with a piece of rebar sticking out of his forehead, and Bobby caught up in other things that Buck wouldn’t elaborate on.

Chimney blinks. “Wait,” he says. “What are you guys talking about?”

Eddie snorts. Bobby calls everyone for burgers, and he looks a little worse for wear but not as much as Buck, spinning on his heels and heading inside, annoyance dotting his face and crossing over his brow bone, does.

He’s on his feet before he knows what he’s doing. Everyone else moves towards the grill, but Eddie feels caught between Buck and everything else, as he tends to. He scans the backyard for Christopher, who’s being herded to the patio table along with the rest of the kids, nods at Maddie who’s already looking at him in question, and walks into the kitchen.

“We’ve got to stop ending up here.”

Buck looks up from where he’s sitting on the couch and frowns at him, like it takes a second to process. When he does realize that it’s Eddie standing there, his expression doesn’t change; doesn’t morph into that same unreadable one he had on outside. Buck isn’t trying to protect him. Eddie doesn’t know whether that’s a good thing or not.

“Only when you stop using really bad pick up lines,” Buck mumbles back, but his heart clearly isn’t in it. Eddie can’t say he’s surprised. Buck’s heart barely seems to be attached to his body, these days.

He doesn’t know what to do after that. Buck crosses his arms and slumps against the couch, staring up at the ceiling without blinking, like he’s forgotten how. His face is more green inside, sickly, and the bags under his eyes are more pronounced.

Eddie should’ve texted him.

There’s a spot on the couch with Eddie’s name on it, so he chances it and sits down beside Buck. Their arms don’t brush, but this is the closest they’ve been in ages, so it feels like they do. He waits for Buck to stop hunching his shoulders like he’s hiding. Buck sighs and doesn’t move.

“What were you and Bobby talking about?” Eddie asks him, playing with the mouth of his beer bottle. “Looked pretty serious.”

Buck glances at him briefly, so quick Eddie wouldn’t have caught it if he hadn’t already been looking, and something in his eyes soften. It feels entirely too much for here somehow, in Bobby’s living room, but Eddie finds himself calming along with it. It’s his Buck. The one he knows. He’s still in there and Eddie realizes suddenly it’s his job to get him out.

Buck’s face shutters closed again in the next breath. “You look like shit,” he says instead, looking at Eddie’s eyes and then down to his chest. But it’s different from the bar. More domestic despite the sentiment. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

“You can’t answer a question with another question,” Eddie retorts. “I asked you first.”

“Oh, so that’s the way it goes now?”

“That’s the way it’s always gone, Buck,” and his hands curl into fists on his lap. Eddie takes a step back. “What were you and Bobby talking about?”

Buck digs his nails into his palm. Eddie vaguely remembers him explaining the psychology of it after dinner one evening, months ago. That when you’re injured in two places, your brain only processes the sharpest pain. Eddie only sees him digging his nails into his palm, the Band-Aid still stuck on his forehead, but he imagines those aren’t the ones Buck is trying to escape from.

“Therapy,” Buck spits out, almost desperately, like Eddie will be the person who agrees he shouldn’t go. There’s something wild about the way he says it. A tremble that Eddie’s not entirely familiar with. “He wants me to go to therapy.”

Eddie frowns; asks bluntly. “And what, you don’t think you need help?” He motions to Buck’s general demeanor. “I—Come on, Buck, you’re hiding out in Bobby and Athena’s living room.”

Buck shakes his head fiercely. “I’m not talking about this with you,” he mutters, as if he’s talking about it with literally anyone else. “Just, let me figure it out on my own.”

“Yeah, well you’re doing a pretty bang up job of that so far.” Eddie’s phone buzzes with a text, but he ignores it. “I just want you to talk to me, man.”

“You first,” Buck grits out, except a part of Eddie thinks he doesn’t mean that either. Because if Eddie talked about the shooting, then Buck would have to listen. So Eddie thinks, what Buck really means isn’t so different from him: You get better first, and then we’ll work on what’s left of me.

Someone shouts in the backyard and inexplicably, Buck flinches. Christopher, Harry, and Denny come barreling in, yelling about “ I’ll find the sodas!” “No, I will!” and eventually Harry wins, because he’s the oldest and this is his house, but before they leave, Christopher spots Eddie and Buck on the couch and makes a pitstop.

“Buck,” Christopher crows, tugging on his sleeve. And thankfully, Buck manages a smile—it doesn’t really reach his eyes, but it’s a smile nonetheless. Eddie doesn’t want to imagine what he’d do if it wasn’t. “Come over afterwards so we can finish the new set!”

He doesn’t phrase it like a question and Eddie thinks that was on purpose. Buck’s mouth twists like he’s about to refuse. Eddie wouldn’t know how to handle that either—Buck’s never said no to his kid. 

“Sure thing,” Buck says finally, and Eddie lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Buck looks at him for a second. Something changes. Eddie doesn’t know what. It feels like the same old fucking story. “I’m, uh, I’ll have to leave after you go to bed though.”

And what Eddie thinks doesn’t matter anyway, it seems. Because Buck knows Eddie well enough for the both of them.

But Christopher takes it. To him, anything is better than nothing. Eddie’s not so sure how he feels about that, but he lets him go back to the backyard and doesn’t push it either. Christopher stands a chance against whatever’s going on in Buck’s head; Eddie’s pretty sure that if he said anything, it would just make it worse.

“Come over,” he repeats instead, testing how it sounds. How much he can push. “We’ll have a beer and I can talk first, if you don’t want to.”

Buck nods. “I’ll leave at nine,” he says, and gets up to go to the backyard. 

Eddie sighs and checks his phone. Frank responded 10 minutes ago. If you and Buck are willing, the message reads. I’d like to try something.

“I’m not sure Buck is a sure thing, actually.”

Frank raises his eyebrows ever so slightly, but for the first time, Eddie doesn’t feel like he’s won something. “Has something changed since the last time we spoke?”

These days, Eddie measures time in how long he has left until he comes back to the 118. In four days, he’s going to take his recertification test. 10 minutes after that he’s going to find out if he comes back on Monday, or has to wait 90 days to try again. He’s trying not to think about it, but it’s either that, or Buck, so he tries to think about the recertification.

Most of the time he ends up thinking about Buck anyway though.

“It’s just…” Eddie falters. He doesn’t know how to put it into words without seeming like… “I would trust him with my life. I would trust him with Christopher’s life in a heartbeat.” He plays with the strings of his hoodie. “I’m not sure I would trust him with his.”

Frank’s eyebrows get even higher. “Do you think Buck is suicidal?”

“I’m not…” He doesn’t know how to navigate this. He’s not even sure he should be talking about it; doesn’t know if he can without wanting to throw up his breakfast. “I’m not going to get him involuntarily hospitalized or anything am I?”

“Do you think he needs to be?”

“No.”

“Then no,” Frank replies evenly. “But we can talk about how that’s affecting you. And I think we should.”

The words unsettle something in Eddie’s stomach. “It’s not about me though.”

“Well, you’re the one who brought it up in therapy,” Frank counters. “So I’d wager it is. What changed between last time and now, Eddie?”

“He ended up in the hospital,” Eddie bites out. “Again.”

“And?”

“What do you mean ‘and’? Isn’t that basis enough for me worrying about him?”

Frank nods in that familiar, infuriating way and taps his fingers on his clipboard. Outside is dreary for March—some kind of winter storm from the north even though it’s supposed to be spring. “You always seem to be worried about him,” he says. “You’ve never told me he wasn’t a sure thing before.”

“I was processing,” Eddie shoots back defensively.

“That’s good,” Frank replies easily. “It’s good to process things.”

“Whatever,” Eddie grumbles. “Anyway, the point is—Did I tell you that Buck tried to transfer in October?” Frank shakes his head. “Well, he tried to transfer from the 118 in October, and then in January we had this big fight and he left, and that was all…I knew Buck was going to come back, you know? He was a sure thing.”

“And now?” Frank prompts.

“Now, I think about it, and I’m not sure he ever stopped leaving.” Eddie knows he’s not making any sense. He feels the distinct need to tear his hair out, like that might help describe the feeling in his stomach better than he currently can. “I thought he was a sure thing.”

There’s a silence that’s only filled with memories of the hospital—the train car or the numerous other times Buck’s put himself in harm’s way right where Eddie can see. He doesn’t—there’s a part of him that wonders now, if he did the right thing, putting Buck in his will if they’re right back here only a few months later.

There’s another part of him, the part of his chest that explodes every time he watches Buck talk to Christopher—spend time with him, fight for him—a part of his stomach that remembers Buck battered and bruised at the Veterans hospital, that’s pissed he could ever begin to doubt it.

“I can’t decide that for you,” Frank says. “Whether or not Buck is a sure thing is something you have to think about for yourself. I will say that he might view it differently.”

“What?” Eddie snaps back. “His life? I told him about the will because he told me it’d have been better for Christopher if he was the one who got shot. I told him he wasn’t expendable!” His voice trembles, but he can’t help it. “How do you view that differently?”

Frank shrugs. “Trauma,” he replies. “A bad childhood. All I’m saying is that if you want to help him, you can’t give up on it when it starts to get difficult.”

“Starts to?” Eddie demands. “It’s—he’s been difficult for the last 6 months!”

“And how does that make you feel?”

“Angry!” He spits out. “It’s like he doesn’t want to be helped. And maybe that’s not his fault but God, sometimes it’s like he’s not even trying!” He bites his lower lip. “We were supposed to be partners, and now he’s not letting me be that either.”

“Angry,” Frank repeats, nodding. “And how does that feel in relation to a couple of years ago? When Buck sued the 118?”

“That was—” Eddie shakes his head, trying to understand Frank’s point before he makes it even though he never has before. “That was different. Buck was trying to come back to the 118. And Shannon had just died, so I wasn’t even…” He trails off. “I was just sad. Most of the time.”

“Is it possible that’s what the anger is?” Frank asks. “Think about this for a second before you refute it. Is it possible that the anger you’re feeling is your way of grieving another partner?”

Eddie exhales through his teeth. He doesn’t think about it long enough to count, but he doesn’t need to. “I’m not grieving Buck,” he replies, entirely too harshly. “I saw him yesterday. I’m not grieving him like I was Shannon. I don’t want to punch things.”

“So Eddie,” Frank says, clicking his pen hauntingly. “You’re angry, or you’re sad or maybe both. Which you’re allowed to be. But I think it’s important to distinguish between which of those feelings are directed at Buck, and which ones are directed back at yourself.”

“You’re saying I’m projecting?”

“Not quite.” He glances at the clock on the wall. “I’m asking if you’re positive that Buck isn’t a sure thing for you anymore, or if really, you’re afraid of the prospect.” He wheels over to grab his cane. “And on that note, I suppose it’s time we head downtown.”

Eddie doesn’t expect Buck to be there when they arrive. 

He’s wrong because of course he is. Buck has a habit of doing the exact opposite of what Eddie thinks he will these days, so the Jeep is already parked in front of the apartment and Buck is sitting in the driver’s seat with the window rolled all the way up instead of his arm sticking out the glass like it usually is. 

Eddie wants to go tap on the frame; do something annoying like scare Buck out of the daze he’s in because Eddie drove here straight from therapy and he’s a bit miffed about it all still. But he’s afraid Buck will glare at him and drive back to his apartment. Magnanimously, he shoots him a text instead and forces himself not to stare as Buck opens his door.

“I think this will really help you both,” Frank says, opening the passenger door. And that’s nice, but Eddie figures the only reason he’s here is to ensure that Eddie and Buck actually go through with it and don’t have a screaming match where half of Los Angeles can hear in the process.

It’s not the first time Eddie’s driven by this street. Probably not even the sixth or seventh. But it is the first time he’s set foot on this asphalt, not even 20 feet from where a bullet entered his shoulder last May. It’s the first time he’s seen the building one block over from this close—the window the sniper must have taken his shot from.

“Alright,” Eddie mutters to himself after Frank’s gotten out and shut the door behind him. “Okay. Alright.”

He forces himself out of the truck on autopilot, like his legs aren’t really his to control, which might be true. He doesn’t remember getting shot, save for the pull at his shoulder. This is uncharted territory past Charlie getting into the back of the ambulance, and Captain Mehta asking Eddie if he wanted a ride to the hospital.

Good God. Had Charlie watched Eddie get shot before he drove away?

The thought makes him stumble. Buck is leaning on his Jeep and starts as if to catch him, but he doesn’t quite make it before Eddie rights himself. They walk over to each other on the sidewalk—a bit too cautiously, like one of them is going to break into a dead run—and meet in the middle, where Frank is standing.

They meet in the middle. And Eddie’s not a big fan of symbolism, but with Buck everything goes out the window anyway. How is the universe so different?

“Hi,” Buck says, hair straight where a few strands fall on his forehead. He’s wearing a navy blue hoodie and a frown that Eddie’s come to expect. 

“Hi,” Eddie replies, shoving his hands into his pockets so he doesn’t do something stupid like reach out and touch Buck’s shoulder; place his thumb by the crook of his neck, on his pulse point. “Didn’t think you would show up.”

Buck blinks. Hurt flashes across his face briefly and Eddie’s so tired of saying the wrong thing and regretting it immediately. Of course Buck would come if it was important to Eddie. When has he not?

Frank clears his throat. Eddie had kind of forgotten he was there. “Sorry,” Eddie murmurs, gripping the linings of his sweatpants so tightly he might pierce right through them. “I didn’t—Just pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah,” Buck agrees too quickly for it to be true. He stares at his shoes. “Of course.” He briefly glances at Frank before turning to the asphalt again. “What are we doing here exactly?”

Buck looks pale—always does these days—but it stands out even more against the darkness of his jacket. He resolutely doesn’t look at Eddie or his Jeep or anything else but his shoelaces, and Eddie thinks this part, he can figure out. Because the last time they were here, Eddie was bleeding out on the concrete. He doesn’t remember that part. Buck does.

Eddie wasn’t there, when Shannon got hit by the car. Only showed up for the aftermath like he always did. She was dead by the time they got into the ambulance. Eddie knows that, even if Chim and Hen never wanted to tell him.

He thinks about Buck standing there, staring at Eddie on the ground, horrified. When you’re not a paramedic, death feels like a sudden thing. When you’re a firefighter, death either happens on impact, or they live long enough to make it inside an ambulance. Brush your hands off, say a prayer, and move on to the next one. 

Buck doesn’t know how to watch someone die. Not someone he loves. And maybe it’s supercilious to assume that Buck loves him, but he’s here. On this street. And he’s not running. So maybe it’s not.

“The first step to healing is acceptance,” Frank says. “Eddie can’t begin to heal from the shooting if he doesn’t remember it—”

“Right.” Buck laughs bitterly and toys with his car keys. “There were plenty of other people there, so I think—”

“None of them saved Eddie though,” Frank replies, like it’s a fact. It is, but Buck won’t see it that way. “And it’ll be beneficial for both of you to talk about it.” He motions to a bench a few feet away—far enough that he won’t be able to hear them. “I’ll give you two some priv—”

“No need,” Buck interrupts. He looks at Eddie. “You really want to do this?”

He does, but now he’s kind of unsure about it. He nods anyway. “Buck—”

“You were standing a few feet from the crosswalk when it hit,” Buck interrupts, voice shaky. “We were parked on the road, so one of the lights was red but the cross street was green. The first ambulance had just left when the rifle sounded. I didn’t hear it go off until it was already in your shoulder, but it didn’t matter. I was too late by then. You had already been shot.”

“The first drop of blood landed on the corner of my eye.” Buck touches his birthmark, but it seems subconscious, like he’s not really aware of anything at all. His entire body is trembling. He’s swallowed by his hoodie; looks crushingly young. “And then I don’t know, but I could t-taste it in my mouth. Your blood. I could…I was right in front of you. You looked at me—” 

He inhales sharply, closer to tears than Eddie’s ever seen him. A part of him wants to look away; give Buck privacy. He feels like he’s taking a scalpel to the most intimate fragments of his brain and laying them bare. All Eddie’s wanted these last few months was to be able to understand him, but he never wanted it to be like this.

“You looked at me for a whole second before you fell,” Buck says, clearly reliving the shooting in his head. “You looked at me and reached out for me like I could save you and the rest it—”

“You did save me, Buck.” Eddie’s still wrapping his mind around the rest of it. It’s coming back to him in pieces—vaguely, he remembers saying something to Buck in the ambulance—gaps as to how he ended up there. That part though—that part Eddie doesn’t have to remember to know. “Or I wouldn’t be standing here right now.”

Buck doesn’t seem to like that. One step forward, about four steps back. “That’s not how it works, Eddie,” he snaps. “Stop saying—you don’t even remember what happened! That’s why we’re here!”

“I trust you with my life, Eddie. But I’ll never believe you.”

“This is a good start,” Frank says, not moving any closer. His expression is neutral, like always, but Eddie wants to gesture to Buck and go, “See?” like maybe Frank thought he was making everything up. “Eddie, anything to add?”

Eddie’s nearly made his peace with the shooting. He stands here, looking around at the apartment buildings and the pedestrians crossing the street—completely and totally unaware of what happened here in May—and the world doesn’t come to a standstill. Before this, he kind of thought that’s what healing meant.

He was raised on the idea that his entire life was to be lived in preparation of his death. Like a benevolent God would make him practice in this world for the afterlife; shoot him a couple of times in each shoulder as a test to see whether he’s fit for Heaven or Hell.

He’s not an atheist. Not really, when it comes down to things like life and death and the automatic prayer that comes to his lips every time Christopher goes on a field trip. But he’s starting to think that, maybe, God made Eddie exactly the way He wanted to. That maybe Eddie should stop trying to make decisions that aren’t his to make, like he wasn’t born just as good as he was always meant to be.

So he’s made his peace with the shooting. Reconciling with Buck comes a little harder. “I wish you would talk to me.”

“I know,” Buck says, but he doesn’t do anything, and Eddie thinks that’s the fundamental difference between them anyway.

Eddie wants to say he’s getting better at this whole traumatic experience thing. 

He’s not going to admit it, but, “You can only help Buck after you help yourself” wasn’t half-bad advice. There are two days before he returns to the 118, and Eddie hasn’t had a panic attack in three weeks. His sleep is restless—always thinking about Buck, even half-lucid—but he stays in bed until 6:30 in the morning, and he and Christopher make it out the front door with a few minutes to spare.

It’s going to be a good day, he thinks, humming to some song on the radio. Then, because he’s nothing if not a pessimist, he amends, half-decent, at least.

And then, he gets stuck in rush hour traffic.

Thankfully, he already dropped Christopher off at school. The cars seem to be moving at a snail’s pace. Really, Eddie isn’t entirely sure he isn’t in the exact same spot on the freeway he was 15 minutes ago. 

The sky is overcast. If he squints he can make out a car accident just a couple meters in front of him. Everyone else is taking the exit.

The 118 ladder truck passes him, stops a couple feet up, and Eddie can’t help himself. 

He maneuvers into the shoulder and locks the car, thinks about it, and then grabs his emergency tool kit from the back because he likes to look at least a bit helpful. He probably looks a little insane, trekking up the side of a freeway, but he can almost guarantee it’s not the strangest thing Angelenos have seen today.

Mostly, he’s thinking about the conversation he had with Bobby last night: “Look,” Eddie’d said over the phone, stirring a pot of pozole because he had the time and was trying to stave off any possible nervous breakdowns until after Christopher went to sleep. “I know Buck’s on shift tomorrow, but I don’t think you should let him go on any calls.”

“Well, I can’t make him man behind,” Bobby replied. “I’m not leaving him alone, Eddie.”

“Fine,” Eddie muttered, because he hates talking behind Buck’s back like he can’t handle himself and wants this conversation to be as short as possible as a result. “Just don’t let him wear a harness, and we’re all good.”

Eddie gets to the scene and Buck is wearing a harness.

And there’s a car hanging precariously off the Route 101.

Eddie sets down his toolkit.

To be fair, Ravi’s also harnessed up, something like a grappling hook in his hands. The sedan is dangling at least 50 or 60 feet off the road below, which police officers are in the process of clearing. Everyone seems intent on not making any sudden movements except Buck, who’s currently snapping at Bobby about being the one to risk his life, if Eddie had to place a bet.

Hen spots him first, eyes widening. “Eddie?” she asks out loud, drawing everyone’s attention. “You didn’t get caught in the accident, did you?”

Eddie shakes his head. Buck narrows his gaze, searching him over like Eddie’s lying about it—they’re barely inches away from each other—and Eddie spots something on Buck’s neck but doesn’t clock it before he turns back to Bobby. The sedan is hardly secure—an unconscious man in the driver’s seat. They’ve got to act fast.

Of course, ‘they’ doesn’t really include Eddie, but he thinks it’d be more productive than whatever Buck and Cap have going on. 

“Just let me do the rescue, Cap,” Buck snaps. He gestures at Ravi, who looks a bit upset about being gestured at, but he’s glancing between the two, trying to come to some sort of conclusion. There never is one, really. Buck and Bobby were cut from the same cloth—oftentimes, neither of them are completely in the right anyway.

“We’ve got a carabiner and a steel rope,” Cap replies testily. “We don’t—”

“Yeah, and what if it shifts?” Buck looks back at Ravi and something about his expression changes; sets Eddie on edge. “What if it takes Ravi down with him? I can get him out. I know I—”

“Enough!” Hen interrupts, frowning. “We don’t have time for this. Ravi is going to throw the hook, and we’re going to pull on three. One—”

And then several things happen at once. In one swift move, Ravi climbs onto the barrier, attaches the hook to the suspension belt, and scrambles back down—the rest of the 118 putting all their weight behind hoisting the car up, even though—

Even though before any of that happens, Buck tries to leap up onto the railing anyway. And before Eddie knows what he’s doing, his hand shoots out and grabs a fistfull of Buck’s t-shirt, heart in his throat. Because his harness is attached but barely, and Buck had just tried to perform a balancing act 50 feet in the air with no guarantee that he would’ve survived it.

Buck had just tried to throw himself off a railing. 50 feet in the fucking air. With no guarantee that he would survive it.

Ravi goes in and gets the driver out while 8 other firefighters carry the weight. They could probably use Buck or Eddie’s help, but neither of them can move. Or at least, Eddie can’t. He doesn’t know what Buck is thinking. If he did, he probably could’ve stopped him before he leapt. His hand is still tangled in the material of his shirt.

The car crashes on the service road beneath them with a loud clanging noise, some orange sparks in the distance and half of the fire company with extinguishers at the ready. Eddie stares at Buck. All he seems to be able to do is thank God for the fact that he wasn’t wearing a jacket.

Hen and Chimney get the patient into the ambulance. Everything comes to a stand still. Buck opens his mouth to save something, but nothing comes out. He’s shaking. Ravi is staring at him, wide-eyed and Bobby looks like he’s only a few seconds away from firing Buck for a third time. 

Eddie lets go of his shirt; steps forward so that he can nearly feel Buck’s heavy breath on his neck. His voice comes out venomous. Eddie doesn’t care. “What the hell were you thinking?”

Buck looks like—there’s an ache in Eddie’s chest that threatens to swallow him completely in the way love tends to do, overwhelmingly and without remorse—but Buck looks like it’s finally sinking in that you don’t have to sacrifice your life to save someone else’s. Eddie wishes he knew for sure that it would stick.

“I—” Buck stutters.

“You’re done for the day,” Bobby tells him, through clenched teeth. They’re both similar that way—the anger, bubbling and spilling over. “Get your stuff from the station and go home.”

“Bobby—”

“This is not up for debate, Buck,” Bobby snaps. “You disobeyed a direct order. You could’ve gotten yourself killed. So maybe you don’t want to hear it, but you need to!”

Buck winces, and Eddie gets the feeling he’s missing something. More so than usual. Ravi lets out a low breath and shoves his hands in his pockets. Almost guiltily. Like any of this is his fault.

And Eddie just—he remembers the day that Buck talked him down from a panic attack. He remembers the wild fear in his eyes then. He remembers wanting Buck to be happy—that part comes easy; Eddie’s never stopped—but he never thought, standing here, putting all his eggs in one basket, all he’d want is for Buck to stay alive long enough for Eddie to get them there.

He doesn’t think Buck is suicidal. Not on purpose. But he doesn’t know what to call this either.

Buck opens his mouth again, but Bobby’s radio crackles to life with his next dispatch call and Eddie isn’t going to let Buck drive home by himself. He catches Buck’s arm as he strips his harness off furiously, nearly biting through his bottom lip, rolling his eyes at the touch like this is anything to roll his eyes about. “What do you—”

“I’m taking you back to your apartment,” Eddie gets out, barely managing to stop himself from snapping. “Get in the truck.”

Buck searches his face, but he doesn’t argue, which should be reassuring but isn’t really. Ravi takes the harness to put back into the truck and Buck doesn’t look at him. And that’s pretty telling too, since it was Ravi’s safety Buck was trying to risk his life for. 

The truck engine is the only thing that breaks the silence between them. Eddie turns his keys with so much force he thinks he could bring a dead car battery back to life if he needed to. Buck stares out the front windshield bitterly like he has any fucking right to be.

I know you saw me get shot and you probably can’t even begin to forgive me for it, Eddie thinks furiously, scowling, but have you considered that for the last three years I’ve had to stand by and watch as you keep missing the bullet?

“You can drop me off at the station,” Buck mumbles, slouched over like he’s actually capable of making a decision about it one way or the other right now.

“No.”

“I need to grab my stuff.”

“So grab it and get back in my car.”

“You don’t have to treat me like a child,” Buck spits out, arms crossed and glaring out the window. Eddie has no idea why he thinks this argument would go his way, but maybe he can’t help it. Starting one.

“Humor me,” Eddie replies, in nearly the same tone. 

Buck scoffs. Clearly, he’s set on doing this, and Eddie’s not going to try to psychoanalyze him, but he’s familiar enough with the art of deflection. If Buck thinks they’re not going to talk about what just happened, Eddie doesn’t know what to tell him. “I’m not going to crash my Jeep, Eddie.”

Eddie thinks about the sedan in flames a couple of feet underneath them, the clouds heavy with rain above. He’s tempted to say, I don’t believe you, except he knows it would just make things worse. “I don’t want to fight with you, Buck.”

Buck blinks, like that’s unheard of. Maybe it is—between Taylor and Bobby and Eddie. Just as Eddie thinks he’s going to get another retort, Buck goes back to staring out the window, and stays quiet for the rest of the ride.

The ladder truck is out when they get to the station 15 minutes later, but the ambulance is docked and as Eddie steps out, he can make out the vague shapes of Hen and Chim in the loft. Buck follows him inside, hanging his head like he’s hoping it might make him invisible, and then trudges off into the locker room.

Eddie waits with his back against the ambulance doors, taking everything in. It’s been a while since he’s been here, but Buck is in and out of the locker room in 3 minutes, wearing a pinched expression, and Eddie has a feeling he’s not going to get the chance to revel in the nostalgia. 

Chimney and Hen lean over the railing, and Eddie shakes his head at them. Unfortunately, Buck picks up on it. He rubs at his neck and glares at the floor, clearly about to say something but Eddie catches a flash of—

“Is that a hickey?” Eddie asks, unable to stop himself; unable to pretend that he wants to. It’s barely there, covered with some sort of makeup, but it’s on the base of his neck, just above Buck’s collarbone. There’s no mistaking it for something else. 

Buck rubs at his skin again, just serving to make it even redder. Eddie doesn’t care if Buck wants to go out in his free time—or, he does but that’s neither here nor there—but something about it sets off warning bells in his head, an emergency alert created for Buck specifically.

“I was testing something,” he replies, whatever that means. He’s glancing at the floor though; offers no other explanation. Eddie figures he’s not proud of it, and that feels like a punch to the stomach for some inexplicable reason. Like he’s going to be sick.

“What were you testing?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Eddie inhales forcefully through his nose. Of course it matters, he wants to snap. It’s you, Buck! Of course it matters.

But he’s not doing this here, in the station where everyone can hear them. Grabbing Buck’s sleeve for the second time that day, Eddie drags him outside to the parking lot. Buck scowls and looks like he wants to protest, but Eddie’s not stupid—there’s no part of Buck that goes where he doesn’t want to.

They stand there for a moment, on the cement. Buck kicks a couple of pebbles in Eddie’s direction with the scuffling of his feet. The mark on his neck stands out like a brand. Buck pulls his shirt up a little higher but it does nothing.

“What are you doing, Buck?” Eddie asks finally, letting his arms hang limp by his side. “I mean it. This isn’t sustainable.”

Buck keeps staring at the gravel. “I’m not trying to play the hero,” he says quietly.

“I never said you were,” Eddie replies. “Think of—Buck, what am I going to tell Christopher if something happens to you?”

Maybe it’s not the right thing to say. Buck is supposed to be staying alive for himself except he’s clearly not, and Eddie doesn’t trust that Buck won’t jump the next time Eddie gets injured on the job. Because if Eddie’s come to any sort of conclusion from therapy and the fire at dispatch, it’s that there probably will be a next time.

Buck shrugs and Eddie doesn’t mean to, but his hands tense into fists. It’s Christopher they’re talking about. Christopher who Eddie knows Buck loves like his own. And that should be enough for him. 

It always has been.

Eddie can’t breathe; the feeling’s becoming vaguely familiar. The bitingly frustrated look on Buck’s face is too. “Have you ever heard the story of Icarus falling out of the sky?” Eddie asks. 

Buck looks wary. He should. The edges of the parking lot are a few beats from crushing them both entirely. “Yeah.” He says, like Eddie knew he would, almost helplessly. “Are you saying I’m him?”

“No,” Eddie replies, trying to keep the squeezing feeling in his chest from baring its teeth. “I’m saying that loving you is like flying too close to the sun.”

He doesn’t clarify in which way—what type of love—because Buck doesn’t deserve…well, he’s still not sold on the idea that Buck deserves him at all but he certainly doesn’t deserve to be told here. Like this. In the station parking lot while they’re only a couple words out from shouting. He keeps his face steady, somehow, and Buck searches it and comes up empty. 

He doesn’t really know where to go from here; straight home, back to Buck’s apartment and stay there until Christopher’s done with school. Because the thing about Icarus is that even though he fell, no one else has ever flown higher.

So yeah, loving Buck feels comparable.

“Look,” Eddie starts, in the distance he can hear the rumbling of the ladder truck coming back. They should leave before Buck and Bobby see each other. “I don’t think you should be alone right now.”

Buck’s hackles come back up. Three steps forward, a couple back, hardly any of them in the right direction. “Well, it’s a good thing that’s not your decision to make.”

Eddie doesn’t know what Buck’s afraid of, but he puts his arms up in surrender and the ride back to the apartment is silent save for the radio. There’s a trick of the light as Buck opens the door to get out—almost like he wants Eddie to stay.

He doesn’t though, because Buck doesn’t ask him to. And he thinks, for the first time, that letting Buck walk away feels like something of an ending.

Eddie’s bathroom mirror makes him look different.

He gets home from dropping off Buck to an empty house. It feels like it should be nearly sunset, with everything that’s happened today, but the watch on his wrist tells him that it’s only 10. Christopher has an activity after school that he’s being bussed to. So Eddie has the place to himself until 4 in the afternoon.

The prospect lands him examining his reflection in his downstairs bath. Somehow.

He’s tempted to reach out and touch the glass, like he can understand it—how the mole under his right eye, or his left, actually is more similar to his skin tone than it was a few weeks ago. His hair is growing out behind his ears; he needs to get it cut if he wants it to remain like this, a bit jaded, sure, but also a bit imperfect around the edges. 

Not a bad thing.

He doesn’t know what comes over him then, staring at the curve of his lips or the way that his ears stick out more than usual. But he’s hit with a wave of emotion, lumping itself in his throat, just behind his Adam’s apple. He doesn’t know this person, the one looking back at him, but he thinks he wants to.

“My name is Eddie Diaz,” he says, hand on his chest, just below his collarbone. “And, you know what? I deserve to be happy.” He blinks, tears pooling at the corners of his eyes. “I’m a good father. I’m a good person. I’m queer,” he breathes out. “That’s not a bad thing.”

He pauses, lets the word sink into this space; settle into the foundations of the house. Christopher is at school and his uniform is hanging in his closet, ready for Monday. 

There’s still something missing though. He darts out of the bathroom to grab his keys. Doesn’t even check that all the lights are off. Barely remembers to lock the front door.

And I fight to come home to my family, Eddie reminds himself, gunning the engine. I always will.

The drive back to Buck’s apartment building is muscle memory. So is the weight of the red and blue house key in his hand. He thinks he’s spent so long anticipating this conversation, he can’t find it in him to feel nervous now. He raises his arm to undo the lock—

The door swings open before he can. Buck nearly runs into Eddie head first—would have if Eddie didn’t reach out and stop him, placing his hand on Buck’s shoulder. They pause. Buck blinks at him like he’s not quite sure that he’s real and Eddie opens his mouth to say something, but Buck beats him to the punch. “I booked an appointment with Dr. Copeland.”

Whatever’s built up in Eddie’s throat crumbles, lingering like pieces of dust, so much easier to swallow with the confession. “Yeah?” he asks.

Buck’s expression clears slightly. He coughs into his hand. The bags under his eyes look just as deep as they did this morning, but finally, they’re not the most stark thing about him. “Yeah,” he confirms, opening the door just a little bit wider. “Do you—do you want to come in?”

Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever been so glad to hear someone stutter. “Yeah, Buck,” he replies, and it’s the same word traded back and forth, but Eddie can’t really think of many other ones. “Of course.”

It feels a little bit treacherous still—Eddie doesn’t think that particular one will dissipate for a while—but they make their way to the balcony in a silent sort of agreement. Eddie’s going because he hates the emptiness of this apartment. Presumably, Buck is headed to the back doors for an entirely different reason. Always looking for something unsheltered if he can help it.

They settle across from each other. Eddie leans against the railing, too pumped-up with adrenaline, like a couple shots of espresso burning its way through his system, and Buck sits down, clearly exhausted. The other end of the spectrum.

Eddie’s gotten too tired of staring at each other and not saying anything all these months to chance this. The talk or argument or whatever’s about to happen here on this balcony in Buck’s pristine downtown apartment. “Why did you book it—”

“I don’t want to die,” Buck interrupts, voice cracking, all vacant expressions and bouncing knees. “I don’t—I know I’ve been…but I don’t want to die, Eddie.” He takes in a shuddering breath and it feels like all the air in Eddie’s lungs goes with it. “You have to know that.” 

He pauses, like he’s going to ask Eddie to confirm, but this is already so painful, cuts so deep into his chest, clearly, that Eddie yearns to make it easier for him. “I believe you,” he says; tries to make it forceful so Buck knows he can trust it. “I believe you, Buck.”

“I’m just—” Buck hardly seems like he’s processing any of it. But if he needs to get it all out first, then Eddie’s only happy to listen. It’s all he’s wanted for the last two months. “I know you told me I wasn’t…I wasn’t expendable or whatever—” Like that deserves a ‘whatever’ attached to it. “—but I mean, just look at me, Eddie.”

Eddie holds his gaze and doesn’t let it fall. “I’m looking,” he says evenly. “Am I supposed to change my mind?”

Buck bites his lip, like he wants to say yes. “When you got shot,” he starts, shakily, changing the subject. “When you got shot in May—”

“It’s hard to forget,” Eddie interrupts, because he can’t help himself. Buck doesn’t pay him any attention.

“When you got shot and I didn’t save you,” Eddie opens his mouth to refute that too but Buck holds up his hand and gestures for him to wait. His hand is trembling, like he doesn’t quite have the energy to keep it afloat. “Come on, Eds. Those are—those are the facts. You got shot, and I didn’t save you.”

“Yeah, well, agree to disagree,” he bites back. “Because you crawled underneath a firetruck—”

“Eddie—”

“Which I know you can’t get out of your head—”

“Oh, so now you know something about me?”

Eddie throws his hands up in the air. This conversation is deteriorating rapidly. On the chair, Buck steels himself like he’s preparing for a war. “What is that even supposed to mean?”

“After Taylor—”

Eddie refuses to feel bad about that. He refuses— “You can’t tell me you weren’t planning on breaking up with her, Buck!”

“Of course I was, Eddie,” Buck snaps back. “Of course I was. But it would’ve been nice for the first time in my life to have a safety net!”

“Right,” Eddie agrees dryly. “Because you’re so good at letting people help you. Buck, half of the time we were in the same room, you wouldn’t even look at me. All of us were too afraid that anything we said would just push you away even more!”

Buck’s face darkens. “All of you, huh?” he mutters. “Good to know.”

“Yeah, all of us,” Eddie repeats, not backing down. “Because we were worried about you, Buck. Because the people you surround yourself with love you unconditionally. And I don’t know what it’s going to take for you to begin to accept that.”

They’re not arguing. Not really. Their voices never reach above terse and they stay where they are, arms curled protectively around themselves even though neither of them are really attacking. Sometimes though, the truth hurts just as much.

Frank was right—as he usually is. Buck was always a sure thing. This, the appointment with Dr. Copeland, just go to prove it. Buck isn’t one to leave, not really, even if he thinks he is. And Eddie has hope that it’s because somewhere, deep below the surface, Buck knows that it would kill them if he did.

Eddie always comes back, is the thing. Eddie always forgives Buck—he always will—and that used to be terrifying, but he’s coming to terms with it. It’s Buck, after all. It’s not like it’s difficult, falling in love with him. So Eddie chooses Buck over and over again, and in return, Buck chose Eddie once, and never looked back.

Which goes to say, Eddie’s coming to the conclusion that his worst fear is Buck leaving, and Buck’s is of Eddie never coming back.

“My brain is so fucked up,” Buck says finally, looking up at Eddie—so desperately young and so irrevocably bruised. “You made me Christopher’s legal guardian and I keep waiting for you to take it back. Because you know, I mean, you have to know I’m not dependable, Eddie. Today proved that.”

Eddie can feel his eyebrows furrow. “What are you talking about?” he asks. “You’ve always been dependable, Buck.”

“My attorney said you could refuse.” 

“You know I wouldn't.”

“Nah,” as sure as he knows his own name. “I knew you wouldn’t.”

Buck inhales heavily. “Taylor told me I was.”

Eddie’s not an angry person, but he wants to strangle that woman with his bare hands. “Oh, well if Taylor said it.”

“She—”

“Taylor doesn’t know shit, Buck! She told you that she just wanted to be friends and then kissed you when I was in the hospital! Like you were in any state to make decisions that didn’t revolve around Christopher.” He looks Buck over again. Somehow, he’s only gotten smaller. “What else did she say to you?”

“Nothing important,” Buck mutters. “How’s therapy going?”

“Buck.”

Buck stares up at the sky. There are tears pricking at the corners of his eyes and Eddie still…doesn’t know how to help him. He wonders, as Buck continues not to say anything, if anyone’s just sat there and been there for him, a push waiting in reserve for when he needs it. He doubts it.

“Taylor said a lot of things,” Buck says, swallowing. “She freaked out when I told her about the will. She called me fucked up because I slept with my therapist. Or, she slept with me, I don’t know, I’m trying to figure it out.” He brushes at his face roughly, leaving a red mark. “This is stupid. I never even liked her this much.”

Maybe he should, but Eddie doesn’t have room in his body to think about Taylor after that. It’s like Buck’s theory—or what Eddie’s come to know as his—that your body will only process the sharpest pain. Buck sitting in front of him, shattered and digging his nails into his palm, overrides anything else.

“It’s not stupid,” he tells him, which seems obvious to Eddie but maybe not to Buck. “It’s absolutely not stupid. Stop intellectualizing it, Buck.”

Buck lets out a watery, bitter laugh. “That’s what Dr. Copeland said.”

“Well, she’s a smart woman.” Eddie picks at the hem of his shirt. He doesn’t really want to know the answer to this, but it’s not really a choice with Buck, even if Eddie himself thinks he’ll never recover from it. “The therapy thing, is that why—”

“I waited so long?” Buck asks, hands curling into fists. He’s not looking at Eddie anymore, but he’s not really looking at anything. “Yeah, I suppose.”

“You could’ve told me,” Eddie says, even though he knows nothing is that easy. “I would’ve—”

“You left, Eddie,” Buck interrupts, as if words like ‘would have’ and ‘could have’ are too painful. “You—”

“For Christopher.”

“Yeah,” Buck agrees, eyebrows furrowing together. “But you could’ve talked to me about it before you did.”

A honk blasts through the air. Behind them, the streets are filled with cars from the lunch rush. Eddie doesn’t feel particularly hungry. “Oh, like you did?” he demands.

“You left—”

“You tried to leave first, Buck!” They hadn’t spoken about it after the showdown in the station loft, but they hadn’t been speaking about anything else either. So they’re dredging up all the memories that they’ve collected—spare change in their pockets at this point. “Why doesn’t that matter?”

“You guys don’t need me,” Buck says, standing up as if to prove his point, like he’s about to walk right out the front door. “Not like—I mean the lawsuit proved that. Nothing changed when I was gone. You left, and Chimney left, and everything went to shit.” He sniffs. The tears haven’t stopped pooling. “Everything changed.”

“Everything changed because Maddie had post-partum,” Eddie replies, because that’s the stupidest fucking argument he’s ever head. Nothing changed. “Everything changed because I got shot by a fucking sniper, Buck!”

Buck’s eyes widen. He shakes his head furiously. “You don’t need me,” he insists. “I’m not—I’m not the type of person you need.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, that’s what love is,” Buck states. “To b-be loved is to be needed. So you can’t love me, Eddie. It just—you don’t need me.”

The aching in Eddie’s stomach is replaced with something cold. He understands Buck now, but he didn’t expect it to hurt this much, like he’s being stabbed over and over again. “So what?” he asks, shakily. “You’ve been killing yourself because you think I don’t love you?”

“No,” Buck replies, not meeting Eddie’s eyes. “That’s just what I’m used to.”

“Buck,” Eddie says, like it’s the only word he remembers. He crosses the backyard then, the invisible line, and Buck doesn’t flinch as he puts his hand in the crook of his shoulder, just there, thumb brushing against his jaw. “Buck.”

He glances up at him finally, or maybe it’s the fact that Eddie’s so close that Buck has nowhere left to turn. But Eddie thinks it's a deliberate thing, here, this afternoon on Buck’s balcony. With so much lost between them and hardly anything gained. The truth works like that sometimes. A zero-sum game. But it’s a step. No back peddling. And Eddie thinks, in the grand scheme of things, all he’s ever needed was Buck and Christopher anyway.

“No, Buck,” he says, pressing his forehead against his. “To be loved is to be wanted, and you are.” 

And when Buck finally falls apart, Eddie’s there to catch him.

Chapter Text

  I kneel into a dream where I 

               am good & loved. I am   

                    good. I am loved. My hands have made

some good mistakes. They can always 

                                                            make better ones. 

—Natalie Wee, “Least of All,” Our Bodies & Other Fine Machines

On average, it takes 66 days to form a habit.

Buck takes a little bit longer than that—he has days that are too difficult to do anything but stare at himself in the mirror, bags under his eyes because he couldn’t sleep. Days where doesn’t have the energy to do much except scrub at his face and trudge into the shower to get ready for work, even though that by itself feels entirely too much too.

Eddie always seems to know, on those days. He’ll make up an excuse; an explanation. Say something like, “I saw you favoring your good leg yesterday” or “I know that last call was rough and you didn’t come over after shift like you normally do” and shove a coffee into Buck’s hands. A vanilla oat milk latte. Just the way he knows Buck likes it.

Today, Buck wakes up just fine. He shoots Eddie a text: good morning :D and puts his socks on before heading to the bathroom. He still looks a little sleep rumbled, and there’s a crease on his face where the pillow dug in, but it’s going to be a good day. He can feel it.

His reflection stares back at him. “I’m Buck,” he says into the mirror; knows that no one will hear the words but himself and Dr. Copeland. “And there are people I love that want me here.”

His loft is empty, but he’s hardly here most of the time, so Buck doesn’t mind it as much. At any rate, his countertops are messy with Jee-Yun and Christopher’s partner art projects. They don’t really look like much, because Christopher always lets Jee-Yun take the lead, but Buck keeps every single one of them. Pictures of his friends and family line the wall. Pictures with Buck in them, because he belongs there, and that’s…

For now, that feels like it’s enough.

“You look chipper, Buck,” Hen comments as he walks into the station loft, coffee tray in hand. “Is that coffee for me?”

“Why do I feel like those two things are related?” he teases back. “You only compliment me when I have something for you, Henrietta.”

Hen digs her elbow into his side. “I never said it was a compliment,” she corrects, grabbing her oat milk latte. She looks at him affectionately though, shaking her head in fond amusement. “Golden retriever.”

Buck preens about it. Just a little bit. He sets the coffee cups on the counter, and scrolls through his phone, waiting for someone else to walk up the stairs.

Eddie came back to the 118 on Monday in March and Buck’s spent the last couple of months reconciling with that—this idea that maybe, the two of them deserve good things in this lifetime. Eddie gets better, and Buck follows, and no one thinks much about last year anymore at all.

“Is that coffee?” Ravi asks, appearing beside Eddie, who looks hardly awake, his hair mussed like it always is first thing in the morning, when Buck wakes up from his place on the couch and starts breakfast before either of the Diazes are fully lucid.

There was a period of time that Buck didn’t know what to do with this familiarity except break it. Now, Eddie’s arm brushes against his as he grabs for his latte, and something settles in Buck’s stomach. Something like forever, if he thinks about it, and since he’s loved Eddie for going on four years now, he thinks about it more often than not.

“No,” Buck drawls at Ravi sarcastically. “It’s vodka shots in a Starbucks cup. What do you think—”

“You’re literally not funny,” Ravi tells him, grabbing his iced caramel macchiato that contains so much sugar it’s a wonder he’s not bouncing off the walls. He narrows his eyes as he sips it anyway, like he thinks Buck might be serious. “You’re so—you’re like the opposite of funny.”

“Very witty of you,” Buck replies, sticking his tongue out. Eddie takes a sip of his drink and sighs, coming to sit beside Buck as Ravi stalks off to join Hen, thick paramedic prep book in his hand.

“We’ve got tomorrow off,” Eddie says blearily, still only half-here. “Do you want to do something after shift?”

Buck frowns. “I always come over,” he says. “You don’t have to invite me. I have a key.” He bumps Eddie’s shoulder. “You’re going to have to try harder to get rid of me.”

Eddie blinks at him. He looks distinctly softer like this, without the bite or the sarcasm; the hard edges. The smile he shoots Buck is so…Buck thinks he could sink down and live in it. He doesn’t want to make anything more dramatic than it is, but it really, really feels like a forever sort of thing.

“I don’t want to get rid of you,” Eddie reminds him. “I was just thinking that maybe we could do something instead of sitting around sipping beer like we’re in our fifties.”

“What’s wrong with being in your 50s?” Bobby demands, joining them with a stack of paperwork in his hands. Chimney appears right behind him. “Are you calling me old?”

Ravi whistles and shares a look with Hen. They’ve become even closer since Ravi decided he was going to take the paramedic exam but Buck thinks he’s still a bit nervous about the prospect of working with Chimney. It doesn’t help that Chim keeps talking about how much he hates TikTok whenever he gets the chance—which is one of Ravi’s core personality traits.

“Yesterday you were complaining about the Shamrock Shake,” Chim points out. “One of life’s greatest inventions.”

“It’s green!”

“It’s also disgusting,” Eddie adds helpfully, because he’s a weird person who thinks mint-flavored things should remain in boxes of Trident gum or Lifesaver mints. “So I don’t think that’s about being old, Chim. I just think that’s about crimes against humanity.”

Buck and Chim share a glance. “Right,” Buck agrees, fist-bumping his brother-in-law. “Which is a complaint that only an old person would make.”

“Okay Mr. ‘respect your elders’,” Eddie shoots back, but he’s grinning into his coffee, so warm that all Buck wants to do is stay there in the loft forever. “Anyway, aren’t you guys supposed to be picking on Bobby? Leave me out of this.”

“Thanks for your support, Eddie,” Bobby says dryly. “Buck, help me with breakfast?”

Eddie squeezes his arm as he stands, murmuring something about restocking the ambulance. It’s May again, nearing June, and Eddie’s hair is the same, grown out around the edges a little bit, coming out of what Buck’s dubbed his ‘goth phase’ and Christopher calls Dad ‘finding himself’ with the air quotes and the sarcasm. 

But there’s a weight lifted off his shoulders—you can see it with every step he takes—like Eddie’s finally comfortable in his own body. And Buck adores it about him. There’s something about watching the person you’ve been in love with for the last three years finally be happy and these feelings in your chest remaining just as steady as they always were.

There was a part of Buck, a while ago, that thought maybe he always chased after what he couldn’t have. Punishing himself for something even though he never knew what. They’ve talked around this—the idea of them—in circles. Buck doesn’t expect Eddie to wait for him, but he hasn’t wavered, and so Buck is coming to the conclusion that Eddie, and everything else he wants, is just within reach.

“Sure thing, Cap.” He gets to his feet. Chimney wanders off to the couches to torture Ravi as Hen and Eddie head down to the ambulance. “What are we making?”

“If we don’t…” Bobby trails off, glancing at the alarms. Buck still doesn’t know whether or not Bobby’s superstitious, but maybe he’s like…Buck’s pretty sure he’s at least a little stitious. “You know, we could make breakfast muffins.”

Buck grimaces. He still hasn’t recovered from the gummy Ana muffins, as he’s taken to calling them. “Or…?” he prompts, fluttering his eyelashes and trying to look a little more golden retriever like. “We could make something else. Because I’m totally your favorite firefighter.”

Bobby scoffs, but he gets out the eggs from the refrigerator. 

“Think of it this way,” Buck continues, as if he hasn’t already won. “You won’t remind Eddie of his ex-girlfriend, or, you know, anyone of Eddie’s ex-girlfriend. Man, those muffins were terrible.”

Cap nods, and there’s a look in his eye that Buck can’t parse. He hands Buck some tomatoes and onions to start chopping. “Right.”

“Because there’s totally no bias there,” Chimney comments from the couch, peering at them with narrowed eyes. “I’m sure the muffins weren’t that bad, Buck.”

“No, they were,” Ravi and Cap say in tandem, wrinkling their noses as if they’d all been victimized by the muffins personally. Buck wouldn’t put it past them to grow legs and start attacking. They really were terrible muffins.

“But,” Buck says, getting out the knives. “No bias. Obviously.”

Bobby fixes Buck with another unreadable glance. In front of them, Chimney turns on the TV. “For what it’s worth,” Cap tells him, spraying the muffin tins with non-cook. “I’m really proud of you, kid.”

They’ve been working towards this, the talking. Buck has no problem confiding in nearly everyone except Bobby. Dr. Copeland says it’s because Buck views him as a father figure; always wants to make him proud even if it’s to his detriment. 

But Bobby’s been going to therapy too, and they’re both cut from the same cloth anyway, so they’re working up to it—over cooking lessons and MasterChef. He and Bobby want to help each other without doing any harm in the process, and it’s a huge thing to wrap their heads around when all they did before was wait to talk until they reached their breaking point, but they’re getting there.

Buck taps his knife against the board. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You got help,” Bobby replies easily. “That feels like a pretty big thing to me.”

Another thing settles then, a puzzle piece fitting into place. Buck still doesn’t cry easily; fundamentally, he remains unchanged, nothing like what Eddie went through, but it always puts a lump in his throat to know he has people in his corner.

“Thanks, Bobby,” he says, more than a little choked up. And everything about it feels right.

Shift ends the same way it began, with Buck and Ravi bickering with each other like children.

“I got you coffee,” Buck gestures emphatically. Everyone else brushes past him, rolling their eyes fondly. “You can babysit a few kids for a few hours!”

“What if I had plans?” Ravi refutes, except he says ‘had’ so Buck knows he’s already got him. Next to the ladder truck, he sees Hen pull out her phone, presumably to text Karen. “I could be studying!”

“You’re always studying!”

“I texted your boyfriend,” Eddie comments, coming up behind Buck and brushing his arm against his hand. “He says you don’t have plans.”

Ravi gapes at him. “You—”

“We’ll tip extra big,” Chimney assures him, patting Ravi on the shoulder. “And Jee-Yun isn’t even staying over!”

“This is—I’m being ostracized!” Ravi tells Cap, who’s doing his best to walk by under the radar. “This is a discriminatory work environment.”

Cap nods and heads into his office to do his paperwork. Ravi’s shoulders slump down. “I bet Albert is invited.”

Buck’s aware that they’re squabbling like children, but he thinks he deserves this. Eddie bumps his shoulder and shoots him a quicksilver grin before walking towards the locker room and Buck stares after him. 

He’s coming to terms with the fact that he’ll always be a little sad. Dr. Copeland says it’s hard, growing up in a house like that, aching from the moment you were born. It’s hard to mend what was always broken. But these moments seal the cracks a little, so Buck will take them.

Hen looks at them as Ravi stalks off. “We’re not, like, actually doing anything together, right?”

Chim scoffs. “Maddie and I are watching all of the Lord of the Rings movies,” he says. “So no way.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“I’m going to take a nap before Christopher gets home,” Eddie declares, on his way out. Christopher is riding the bus now, and Buck knows it puts Eddie on edge, but he’s a stubborn kid. “Are you and Maddie still going to lunch?”

Buck nods in response. “She’s bringing Jee,” he informs Eddie, stupid-wide smile on his face. “We’re expanding her palette.”

A soft grin appears on Eddie’s face, making the corners of his eyes crinkle. “Yeah?”

“We’re doing that Indian place off Sunset,” he says. “And then I have therapy at 5.”

It doesn’t hurt as much anymore, but something still flickers in Eddie’s eyes whenever Buck says the word. He sees Frank once or twice a month, and Buck sees Dr. Copeland every week. Nothing about it feels competitive, but Buck feels the need to speed up the process anyway.

“Healing doesn’t happen in tandem,” Eddie had told him, back in March, fingers running through the hair on the nape of his neck as Buck shuddered against him. “And that’s okay.”

“Come over afterwards,” Eddie responds, as if Buck wasn’t already planning on it. “We can drop Christopher off at the sleepover thing and then we can make a night out of it.”

“I might not be very good company,” Buck warns him.

“That’s okay.” Eddie slings his duffle higher over his shoulder and looks Buck in the eye. “I want you there.”

It’s not new, this version of Eddie that tells Buck things like this whenever he gets half a chance—Buck would call it Eddie 2.0 but it hardly matters; there’s not a version of him where they don’t end up here—but it’s still surprising. Buck can reckon with Eddie asking him to come over or touching him even when he doesn’t have to. 

He doesn’t know how to wrap his head around being wanted though.

“I’ll come over,” Buck promises. B-shift is playing pool up in the loft. They should probably be on their way but he always finds himself lingering when it’s Eddie. “We can watch a movie or something.”

“Okay,” Eddie agrees, except he can’t seem to move towards the parking lot either until Maddie buzzes Buck’s phone, asking where on earth he is.

Buck doesn’t really know how to be wanted, but he thinks the point is that Eddie does in spite of that.

“Jee-Yun started walking by herself, right?” Maddie’s saying before Buck even sits down. “So tell me why on earth I go to grab something from my bedroom and I come back to the blender going.”

“Was the blender on the floor?” Buck asks, letting Jee-Yun take his finger and using the other hand to scan through the menu. 

“No!” Maddie exclaims, glancing over at Jee and smiling. Buck’s watched Maddie try and be strict with her; it never really sticks. 

“Well, clearly she takes after her favorite uncle,” he bends down, voice going all high pitched. “Are you going to become a chef one day, Jee?”

“Buh,” Jee-Yun responds coherently. 

They order and make small talk for a bit. Maddie reliably has Fridays off and whenever the A-shift schedule aligns to match, they meet up for lunch separate from Buck coming over on Saturdays. 

She looks better, just like Eddie, with the black slowly but surely creeping into brown again; tells him she’s thinking of just redyeing it black, that she likes the color, and just like last year, whatever Maddie wants, Buck is all for.

“So how is therapy going?” What everyone wants to know these days. Honestly, Buck doesn’t know why people keep asking. Certainly, there are more important things to worry about. Which, yeah he’s working on the idea that he deserves help, but it’s still difficult to swallow.

“Oh, you know,” he says noncommittally, paying more attention to Jee-Yun than Maddie’s questioning gaze. “It’s going.”

Maddie shrugs and narrows her eyes at him. “If you want,” she tries, amused. “We could talk about you and Eddie instead.”

Heat rises to his cheeks even though he doesn’t know why. It’s not like it isn’t obvious, but Eddie seems to bring out that reaction in him regardless. “W-what about me and Eddie?” he stutters. “Nothing’s changed since the last time we spoke, you know.”

“Well,” Maddie leans forward, elbow nearly falling into her garlic naan. She doesn’t notice—a bird focused on her prey. “Chim says he invited you over tonight.”

“I always go over.”

“He bought you a new house key.”

“The old one was bent.”

“Oh, come on, the guy’s been in love with you for ages, Buck!”

“I know,” Buck replies, staring down at his own plate. “He almost told me he did in March.”

Maddie’s eyes grow so wide that she looks like the lemur from the Madagascar movie. “He did what?” she demands. “He did—in March?”

Pieces of the conversation they had on the balcony stay stagnant in Buck’s head—always there, like a rock to an undercurrent. “So what, you’ve been killing yourself because you think I don’t love you?” isn’t really an admittance, but there’s only so many places for it to go. 

So Buck thinks Eddie is probably in love with him, for some reason. But he’s also terrified to bring it up. Honestly, he doesn’t know how much healing is enough, whether there’s a benchmark lying in wait somewhere that Buck needs to clear before he can have this. He thinks, mostly, he’s just been waiting for Eddie, which isn’t fair, but isn’t new either.

“Yeah, in March,” Buck replies, picking at his food. Well, at least he’ll have something to talk about with Dr. Copeland in an hour. “We haven’t really spoken about it much since then but—”

“What are you waiting for?”

“Him!” Buck says, tapping at his jeans. He didn’t think it bothered him this much, but clearly he was wrong. “I’m waiting on him, Maddie.”

Maddie levels him with a look that only an older sister could get away with— I love you so much but God are you stupid sometimes. “Buck,” she tells him, already holding her hands semi-raised in surrender. “Have you ever noticed that waiting never seems to go well for either one of you?”

Buck blinks. “Well, when you put it like that.”

“I just want to see you happy,” she says, giving him a small, watery smile, and if Maddie starts crying in this Indian restaurant about Buck’s happiness then he doesn’t know how he’ll survive it. Jee-Yun starts babbling to herself about her favorite stuffed animal. “You really do deserve it, you know.”

“You sound like Dr. Copeland,” Buck mumbles, but there’s an ache to him still. “Do you ever think about our parents—”

“I try not to.”

“Maddie.”

“Do I what? Do I think our parents deserve to be happy?” Maddie asks, that uncanny sibling ability to read each other’s minds. “Sure I do. But I don’t think it should’ve come at our expense.”

“But Daniel—”

“Wasn’t your fault,” Maddie reminds him. It’s not the first time she has, probably won’t be the last, and Buck hates asking for reassurance like this when he hardly ever trusts it anyway. “Even if you weren’t a baby, it still wouldn’t.” She places a hand on his arm. “I know it sucks when people tell you not to make everything about yourself, but take it as a good thing this time. Not everything in the world can be your fault, Buck.”

He bites his lip, neither accepts the comment or refutes it even though one is obviously more tempting than the other. “Yours either,” he says instead. “Whatever—our parents, you can’t be there for me all the time, Maddie, and that’s okay too. You always came back.”

“And I always will,” Maddie replies, a bit distant. He thinks they’re both working on believing things that they can’t see; always found their basis in empiricism. And it’ll take time, but they’ve got each other for now, might as well bank on it.

Jee-Yun eats a piece of her naan and babbles. Clearly, she’s got enough belief for the both of them.

“How are you feeling today, Buck?” Dr. Copeland asks when Buck joins the Zoom call.

He takes his therapy appointments in his bedroom still, with photos of Christopher and Jee hovering in the background, trinkets that his friends have bought for him scattered around the top of his dresser. The point of these sessions is to dig up his deepest irrationalities, but it’s still nice to have a reminder when things get a little too desolate.

“I’m okay,” he says, tapping his fingers on his thigh, just above his knee. “I had lunch with Maddie today, and I’m going over to Eddie’s after this.”

“That sounds nice,” she agrees. “And how is your morning routine going?”

“70 days straight,” he replies. I’m Buck, and there are people I love that want me here. “I think I’m finally wrapping my head around it. I told Eddie today that I was going to show up to his place regardless of whether or not he invited me.” He shrugs. “I mean I was half-joking, but still, that counts for something, right?”

“Absolutely.” She looks at him patiently through the screen. “Would you say—this feeling that Eddie wants you there—would you say that applies to most of the people you spend your time with?”

The answer doesn’t come as easily as it should. He can see Dr. Copeland clocking it immediately. “I wouldn’t say that it doesn’t apply,” he answers, in a roundabout way. “I mean, sometimes, like Maddie said something today. I just—it doesn’t make sense why people would ask, you know?” He picks at his jeans. “It doesn’t really make sense to me that there are people who actively want me to get better.”

She nods on the I-Pad. “Do you feel like you deserve to get better?”

And that’s…well that’s a difficult question. Buck doesn’t really know what he deserves; it’s a hard concept to wrap his head around. Good people deserve good things and bad people deserve bad things, and for Buck to know which one applies to him, he’d have to figure out where he falls between them.

“Eddie says I do,” he replies. “I think—hopefully I’m not like, breaking HIPPA—but I’m pretty sure that’s what Frank told him, so he’s been parroting it to me whenever I have a bad day but—” He shrugs. “That might be one of those things people just say.”

“Does Eddie typically say things he doesn’t mean?” she asks him.

“Well, no.” Buck feels like he’s been backed into some sort of corner. He inhales, holds his breath for four counts, and then lets go. Dr. Copeland waits. “But it’s like, Maddie says he loves me. So he’s probably biased, right?”

Dr. Copeland jots something down on her clipboard. “Would Eddie loving you be a bad thing?”

“Obviously.” And Buck does a double-take. He doesn’t know where that came from, but it doesn’t entirely feel like a lie. He tries to rationalize it, and then catches Dr. Copeland’s gaze, and rambles instead. “I mean, Eddie deserves better than me. Obviously it would be…ideal, for him to find someone better. Why would you love the broken thing when there are plenty of other options?”

“Did Eddie tell you he has other options?”

Buck laughs. “It’s Eddie,” he says. “There are hundreds of people that would date him in a heartbeat.”

“But if he doesn’t love any of them, then would that be enough?” she asks. “Buck, have you considered that it’s you he wants because you make him happy?”

To be loved is to be wanted, Eddie’s voice echoes. And you are. 

He has to catch his breath again. “I make Eddie happy,” he repeats. And Dr. Copeland nods. “Eddie deserves to be happy.” So maybe, Eddie deserves me. “Christ.”

She gives him what might be an amused look on the other end of the line. “There’s that quote,” she says. “We accept the love we think we deserve. For the next 70 days, or however many times you feel is necessary, I want you to remind yourself not just that people love you and want you here, but also that you deserve it.”

“I deserve to be loved,” Buck breathes out, thinking about the will, something about dependability. It feels like an insane concept. “Okay.”

And when their hour is up, Buck finds himself rushing to Eddie’s house to tell him all about it.

Christopher is drumming his fingers in wait on the kitchen table when Buck opens the door, and he gets the distinct feeling that the last few hours at the Diaz house have been significantly more chaotic than anyone was expecting.

“Dad got a call from abuela,” Chris informs Buck as he steps through the threshold. “And then he said the f-word and told me he’d be back in, like, 30 minutes but it’s been nearly 40. I’ve been watching.”

This kid, Buck thinks immediately, shaking his head. Worry for Eddie pricks at his stomach, but sound carries enough at the Diaz house that Buck can tell Eddie isn’t shouting. Which isn’t nearly enough to know anything since Eddie rarely shouts anyway, but it’s a start, at least.

“I’ll check on your dad,” he promises. “Have you packed to go to the sleepover?”

“I was waiting for you,” Chris replies, getting to his feet. He frowns, and it pulls at his glasses. “Dad looked pretty upset. He’s not going to quit again, is he?”

Buck still doesn’t know what Eddie’s told Christopher about the last few months. Doesn’t know where the will hangs in the balance of things either. Chris is still pretty young, and Buck doesn’t really know that it would make much of a difference if they told him, but it might.

“He’s not going to quit again,” Buck replies firmly. “Definitely not. But I’ll go check on him right now, okay? Don’t forget to pack your phone charger!”

Christopher rolls his eyes. “You’re such a dad,” he tells him, dashing down the hallway, caught up in the excitement of having a sleepover.

Buck doesn’t know what to do with that. It isn’t the first time Christopher’s said it, but if Buck thinks about it too hard he’s pretty sure it’d end in some sort of mental breakdown. He walks down the hallway. There’s no sound except for the playlist Christopher has on.

He knocks at the door. Waits less than two seconds for Eddie to open it, lips pursed and eyebrows furrowed, but not like he’s coming down from a panic attack, thank God.

“So,” Eddie says, after a moment, waving his phone in the air like some sort of pointer. “I just told my parents about the will.”

He doesn’t sound upset—not like he’s somehow been persuaded to take Buck out of it—but more resigned, which is how he usually talks when they’re over at abuela’s house and she brings up Helena or Ramón. Buck isn’t good with words, but he puts his hand on the crook of Eddie’s elbow and hopes that it helps a little bit.

“I’m assuming they hated it,” Buck mutters, that little pocket of anger that lives in him permanently, always lying in wait no matter how small, rearing its head. “Like they know what’s best for Christopher all the way in freaking Texas.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “They have a point sometimes.” He doesn’t move Buck’s hand. “I mean, not about this obviously, but—”

“Nope,” Buck replies. “No, they don’t. Because you know what? I got home to see Christopher waiting for you because he was worried about the look on your face when you left. You’ve raised the kindest, most compassionate kid on the planet, Eds. They don’t know shit.”

Eddie still doesn’t look like he believes it, but his shoulders relax slightly. “We should get ready,” he says, scratching at his face. “We’ve got to drop off Christopher.”

“I already asked Hen if she could pick him up on her way,” Buck reassures him. “Take a minute.”

And the look Eddie fixes him with is so—there’s no crinkles around his eyes this time but something else entirely. Buck doesn’t know how he knows, but warmth reaches all the way to the tips of his feet; his heart feels like it’s going to burst in his chest, and there’s a lump in his throat of something so overwhelming, Buck doesn’t know how to swallow it for fear that it’ll break. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he thinks this is what Eddie in love looks like. 

Buck watches as Eddie chews at his lip. He glances over to Christopher’s room. The door is shut but they can hear Christopher humming along to his music. Clearly, Eddie’s deliberating something. Buck waits. “I think we should tell him.”

“About the will?”

Eddie nods; looks Buck over and sighs. “I just—after the last time…If you want to,” he clarifies. “I know you just got done with therapy and you’re probably exhausted, but—”

“No, I was just surprised,” Buck interrupts, because honestly he hadn’t even noticed how tired he was until Eddie pointed it out. Something about an Eddie in trouble overdrive. “I was thinking the same thing just now actually.”

Eddie doesn’t get a chance to reply. Christopher’s door opens—he’s got his backpack but open and turns around so that Eddie and Buck can inspect the contents. His phone charger is sitting right on top, like it was a last minute edition. 

“I’m packed!” He announces, staring at Eddie suspiciously. “When are we leaving?”

“Hen is going to pick you up in a few minutes, mijo,” Eddie replies, shooting Buck a glance and elbowing for good measure. Buck hits him back and tries to make it seem like they’re not having a slap fight in front of a 12-year-old. “We wanted to talk to you about something first.”

“Okayyyy,” Christopher draws out, setting his backpack on the ground. His glasses are askew on his face but Buck can see him narrow his eyes at them. “Like, in the hallway?”

Buck snorts and Eddie mock-glares at him, and the entire thing is so ridiculous that Buck huffs out a laugh. Christopher rolls his eyes like a total teenager and stalks off into the living room, Eddie and Buck trailing behind him and trying not to burst into giggles.

Except…“This is serious,” Buck whispers as Eddie bites his lower lip in an effort not to snicker. “This is—Christ, Eddie, this is your will.”

That gets Eddie to sober a little bit. Something about last May and December and March isn’t really worth joking about. They sit across from Chris who’s sitting on the couch and try not to make it look like some sort of intervention, failing spectacularly.

“Nothing’s happened,” Eddie starts. “So I don’t want you to get worried or anything. I’m fine. Buck is fine. Abuela and tía and everyone are fine, but we wanted to talk about what happens if something…for some reason isn’t, okay?”

Christopher squints at him. “Is something going to be not fine?” he asks.

Eddie takes a second to parse the question. “No?” he asks, trying to weave through 12-year-old logic. “But in case I get hurt on the job, I want to make sure you know that everything will be okay.”

That’s relative, Buck thinks. Everything will be as okay as it can be, under the circumstances. He’s tempted to clench his hands into fists, but doesn’t for Christopher’s sake. Distinctly, he gets the feeling that Eddie should’ve had this conversation a long time ago, but he was waiting on Buck.

“You mean if…” Christopher probably knows what they’re getting at, but he seems hesitant to put it into words. Buck knows the feeling. “Like where I would live and stuff?” Eddie nods and Christopher scowls at the floor. 

“Is that why you were on the phone with bisabuela?” he accuses, searching both Buck and Eddie’s faces for something. “Because I’d go back to Texas if something happens? I don’t want to go back to Texas, dad.”

Buck and Eddie share a look. Buck untenses, just a little bit. They’re talking about Eddie dying, so Buck can’t find it in him to feel steady, but he isn’t completely off balance, at least. 

“If something happened,” Buck picks up. “To your dad. You would live with me.” He pauses. “If that’s okay with you.”

Christopher inhales, and Buck waits with a sort of bated breath. “Good,” he says finally. “If it—I would want to live with you. That’s good.”

He seems decisive about it, like there’s nothing else to be said. When it’s clear that that’s the end of the conversation, he ventures back into the hallway to gather his things. Buck turns to face Eddie, right next to him, but he’s already looking back, that same soft smile tugging at his lips.

“Went better than I thought it would,” Buck confesses. 

Eddie shrugs. “Nah,” he says, standing up to wait for the door. “Like father, like son, right?” 

Buck doesn’t really know what that means, but he finds himself a bit speechless anyway.

They’re watching a movie when it happens.

To be fair, Buck is hardly paying attention, what with Eddie’s arm slung over the back of the couch, dangerously close to Buck’s shoulders, eyes dangerously close to fluttering shut. It’s one of the Marvel ones. That much he knows—one of the big ones with all the superheroes together—but he couldn’t tell you the plot if his life depended on it.

“You know Hen told me something interesting today,” Eddie murmurs, caught in the warm glow of the kitchen light so that half his face is illuminated. The words are so quiet, meant just for Buck to hear them, that they tug at his chest. “While we were working on the ambulance.”

“Yeah?” 

“She said that a couple of firefighters from B-shift have a bet on us.” On the screen, Iron Man shoots something at one of the other heroes. “You and me. As a couple.”

“That’s weird.”

“That’s what I said,” Eddie mumbles. “People shouldn’t be poking their noses in our business anyway. Anyway, Hen said no one from A-shift is in on it, thank goodness.” He shrugs. “And then I told her I’ve always been betting on us anyway.”

Buck can’t breathe. Not with the way his heart is thrumming in his chest every time Eddie shifts, shoulder brushing against Buck’s back. Not with the way he’s sinking down into the couch cushions, like he belongs here, in the Diaz house. Like he might forever.

Eddie doesn’t seem like he’s paying much attention to the movie either. Buck sits up a bit straighter. Have you ever noticed that waiting never seems to go well for either one of you? But he doesn’t know what to say. “Hey Eddie, I’m crazy in love with you,” doesn’t seem right, for some reason.

“Did you know that it takes 66 days on average to form a habit?”

Something fond plays in Eddie’s eyes. Despite the crazy day, they have each other, which they didn’t in March. And somehow, that makes all the difference in the world. 

“On average,” Eddie repeats. “What, do some people take longer than others?” He tilts his head. “Or shorter, I guess. If you’re lucky.” He looks at Buck. His arm draws closer to his shoulder, just hovering. “You trying to make one?”

Buck shrugs, he can feel Eddie’s fingers brush along the nape of his neck and it takes everything in him not to shiver. “Not really,” he replies. “I’m just saying that I’ve kinda been in love with you for three years now. And it must be a habit because I don’t think I can help it anymore.”

Eddie inhales so loud Buck can hear it. They’re just staring at each other then, all soft in the dim glow of the kitchen light and the movie on the television. This must be what love is. This has to be. Because Eddie blinks, just a flutter of his eyelashes, and Buck would do anything for him. Getting better hardly seems daunting when Eddie’s right there, after all.

They don’t talk about it, but that’s not new. They don’t need to talk about it, because Buck leans in and Eddie follows. He smells like the laundry detergent they both share and tastes a little bit like beer but Buck thinks he’s been walking drunk since the day he met him.

“I love you,” Eddie says, kissing from the bridge of his nose down. Nothing but pliant under Buck’s hands, like they were molded to fit together, just like this. “I love you so much I don’t know what to do with it sometimes, Buck. God.”

And Buck thinks, for the first time, that this is what it’s like to be happy.