Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A firefighter and an ex-priest walk into a bar. The bartender asks what they’re drinking, and the priest asks for holy water. The firefighter asks for a beer. Except the firefighter ends up with the holy water burning his throat as he drinks, and the ex-priest frowns at his beer. When the firefighter bursts into flames, it turns out the bar isn’t up to code and doesn’t even have a fire extinguisher, so the ex-priest just says a prayer for him.

A firefighter walks into a bar. Specifically, a gay bar. Eddie isn’t sure why he’s here. It’s the first place he found on Google Maps, driving over before he lost the courage. Eddie doesn’t know if he is, but the idea is stuck in his mind like the needle on a scratched record, just digging the groove deeper and deeper. He could’ve talked to people—Buck, Hen and Karen—but that feels too much like cracking himself open. Eddie can barely think about it, much less try and talk about it. At least at a bar—everyone knows why he’s there.

The bar is filled with yuppies. That’s one of his dad’s words. Always complaining about the young people in El Paso, his voice thick with jealousy. When Sophia says it, complaining about Austin, it’s funny. When Eddie thinks it, he’s just invoking the righteous image of his father, angry and sour.

The bar is filled with yuppies and Eddie feels out of place among them. There are guys his age but Eddie tries his best to avoid eye contact as he makes his way to the bar. He’s underdressed for this—overdressed, maybe, because it’s summer and this bar is warm and everyone else is in a tank top or a tight shirt. It’s the type of things Buck wears—

Eddie forces his brain through a hard reboot. He smiles, gets the bartender’s attention. “Can I get a beer?” he asks, closing out his tab in the same transaction. There are tables lining the wall, plenty of empty ones. He’ll sit, drink his beer, and go home. His courage is already fading. He knows Buck goes to gay bars, Hen too. Eddie should’ve asked to go with them, to dip his toes into this whole thing.

God, who is he kidding? Eddie—he isn’t like everyone here. They’re comfortable in their skin. They know who they are. Eddie is a widower, a should-have-been-divorcee. He isn’t like them.

The bar isn’t a club, but it’s not really like the bars he goes to with the 118. There’s music, songs he can’t recognize for the life of him, everyone washed in colored lights, clumped together as they talk. Eddie looks over the crowd. His eyes catch on tall guys with broad shoulders, toned arms. He takes a sip of his beer and trains his eyes on the table.

Except, he’s at a gay bar and Eddie has it on good authority that he’s hot. A pair of muscled thighs and too-short shorts step into view, a drawled, “Hey,” and Eddie knows what’s expected.

He looks up. “Hi,” he says back. The guy in front of him is in his twenties, maybe. He’s handsome, slim like a normal person—that is to say, not a firefighter—and smiling at Eddie. He smiles back reflexively. Good manners.

“I haven’t seen you before,” the guy continues.

“First time,” Eddie says, wincing as the words process. It gets the guy to laugh. “Sorry, I—I really don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“Sitting and looking pretty,” the guy says, “and doing a good job of it.”

He leans in, propping one arm against the table. Eddie’s legs spread without a second thought; the pose is familiar in a way. Whenever Eddie sits on the stools in the firehouse like this, Buck always comes sidling up to him. Too close. But Buck never presses closer like this, Eddie’s knees bracketing this guy’s hips. He’s wearing a tight white shirt, thin enough that Eddie can see the dark spots of his nipples, the outlines of a tattoo over his collarbones.

“I’m Jonas.”

Eddie says his name back—it’s just manners. Jonas grins at him. He reaches out with his other hand, a brief touch on Eddie’s arm as he rests it on the chair. Eddie’s effectively pinned in by Jonas. He doesn’t hate it. It’s not something any of the women he’s been with had done. Not like this. Not with a flirty smile and all the confidence in the world.

“If it’s your first time, I could show you the ropes,” Jonas says.

It’s just that easy. Eddie’s first time at a gay bar and some guy is already trying to pick him up. He knows he’s hot; too many people hit on him during calls for that to be in question. But Eddie had this fear: that it would show. Guys would look at him and just know he has too many issues, a certified basketcase, that he’ll just drag them down with him.

Jonas doesn’t take Eddie’s pause for a no. His fingers trail up, over Eddie’s shoulder, catching on the chain on his necklace. He tugs on it, just slightly, and the medallion tumbles over the neck of Eddie’s shirt.

“Oh, you’re one of those,” Jonas says, but he sounds more amused than anything else.

“One of what?” Eddie asks.

He reaches up to tuck his necklace away, but Jonas grabs his hand before he can. Eddie is holding hands with a guy. And it’s—fine. Jonas’ hand is smaller than his own, his fingers cold. No one is looking at them weirdly. There are guys a few tables down in the middle of a rigorous makeout session; handholding is chaste in comparison. It still makes Eddie’s stomach churn.

“Catholic,” Jonas says with a grin like it’s a joke. Eddie’s heart stutters in his chest. “Don’t worry, I know how it goes.

Eddie wants to ask what that means. How many Catholics have walked through this bar? Eddie is not Catholic, he’s washed his hands of it even though Abuela says she prays for him and his parents are probably carting Christopher to Mass every Sunday. Eddie wants to ask if every other possibly-gay Catholic has this same heavy feeling in their chest, like someone’s weighing them down with stones. He wants to ask if he’s going to live like this forever.

“So why don’t we—”

“Jonas,” a third voice cuts in. Eddie looks to the side and thinks it’s Buck for a second. Tall, blonde, broad shoulders. But then his eyes adjust to the lighting and it’s not Buck. The guy has an exasperated look on his face, but his voice betrays his familiarity with Jonas. “Are you scaring the newbies?”

“I’m not ‘scaring’ him, Patty,” Jonas protests. He looks back at Eddie. “Right, Eddie?”

“Right,” he agrees. He’s not scared but… Jonas is awfully forward. The way he’s bracketing Eddie in feels more like a cage now instead of flirting.

“Jonas,” the other man—Patty?—says again.

It makes Jonas pout but he backs up. “Sorry, Eddie,” he says though a smile. He doesn’t sound very sorry. “If you wanna take me up on my offer, though, I’ll be around.”

He winks, easy and smooth, dipping back into the crowd. It takes Eddie a moment to realize he can move again.

“Sorry about him,” the other guy says. “Jonas can be pretty forward. But if that’s what you were looking for…”

“I wasn’t,” Eddie says quickly, a little too defensive. Now that Jonas is gone, Eddie doesn’t have someone’s lead to follow. “Thanks.”

He reaches up to tuck his St. Christopher medallion away. He feels too exposed with it in view. The guy tracks his movements.

“St. Christopher?” he asks.

“Yeah, actually. You know your saints?”

“I would hope so,” the guy says, “or I would be putting my seminary school to shame.”

Eddie pauses. The guy doesn’t look like a priest. Given Eddie’s experiences with priests was the graying and bearded Father Ramirez at Our Lady of Sorrows down in El Paso, he knows he doesn’t have a standard to go by. The guy is maybe Eddie’s age and he looks like a yuppie. Fluffy blonde hair, a stubbly beard, a collared shirt. He’s in a gay bar; of course he’s not wearing a cassock. He only said seminary—it’s not like he was a priest.

“So you’re one of those Catholics that Jonas has dealt with?” Eddie asks.

It makes the guy laugh. “Unfortunately. And it was fun, don’t get me wrong, but I needed a little bit more than a hot guy fucking me to get my head on right about it.”

“So what are you offering?” Eddie realizes, distantly, that he’s flirting. He waits for the twisting feeling in his gut to reappear, but it doesn’t. The guy is hot, and smiling at Eddie, and he might even get it.

“Conversation,” the guy says. “I’m Patrick, by the way.”

Patty. Patrick. Eddie wants to crack a joke about him being so obviously Irish Catholic, but that doesn’t come out. Instead, Eddie asks, “What if I want a hot guy to fuck me?”

Patrick’s eyes are blue, almost black in the dim light of the bar. “I can do that.”

Eddie doesn’t let himself think about it. He only had the one beer, so Eddie drives them to Patrick’s place. They didn’t talk; Eddie lets the music fill the silence. He didn’t want to talk, because talking would disrupt it. If he says it, gives voice to it, everything will come tumbling down around him.

Anticipation sits heavy in his gut during the drive, when Patrick directs him to guest parking, when they stand in the elevator until it opens on the seventh floor. Patrick opens the door to a cozy little apartment, but Eddie only gets a glimpse of it before Patrick is pressing him against the wall and kissing him.

It’s not explosions or fireworks, but Eddie thinks something settles into place anyways. Kissing is kissing, and Patrick doesn’t waste time keeping it chaste. It’s nothing like kissing Marisol, because Eddie’s hands are on Patrick’s sizable shoulders, slipping down on his chest. Patrick has one hand on the back of Eddie’s neck, the other on his belt like a promise for the rest of the night. Eddie drags his mouth down Patrick’s jaw to his neck, his hands moving down to grab at Patrick’s waistband.

“Bedroom,” Patrick says, pushing Eddie in the general direction.

Eddie goes, letting Patrick’s hands guide him. Now that he can touch, he doesn't want to stop. It’s like a new world has opened up for him, and Eddie wants to explore every inch of it. He wants to know what it feels like to have a man on top of him, under him, to be connected in a way Eddie has never been before. He thought he had good sex with women—felt good, made them feel good, and thought he loved them—but just touching Patrick is making Eddie’s brain fire in ways it never has before.

They stumble their way through the apartment, until Eddie’s legs hit the edge of the bed and Patrick pushes him down. Eddie’s stunned for a moment, looking up at Patrick as he yanks his shirt off, exposing tanned skin and surprisingly toned abs. Eddie hurries to follow, yanking his shirt over his head, and for a moment he casts his gaze around the room. His eyes catch on something on a side table.

It’s just a loop of white plastic and linen. Eddie wouldn’t think anything of it, but Patrick said he was in seminary. Eddie had a half-formed through of Patrick in a cassock already, but at the sight of it—

He imagines Patrick in a black shirt, a circle of white around his throat. Patrick’s standing over him; Eddie looking up. He thinks about sinking to his knees, bowing his head, Patrick’s voice murmuring: Take this, all of you.

Patrick puts a hand on Eddie’s face. “Okay?” he asks.

Eddie’s mouth is dry. He could ask but—he doesn’t want to know. If Patrick admits it, then Eddie might freak out the same way he did with Marisol. Except he isn’t freaking out now at the thought. Marisol being a novice was an excuse, he knows; Eddie’s brain filling in images so he wouldn’t have to admit why he didn’t want to date her, fuck her, marry her. It’s different for Patrick.

“I’m fine,” Eddie says. It’s mostly the truth. He doesn’t want to stop. His dick is painfully hard in his jeans, and Patrick is looming over him in a way that makes his chest ache. It’s not how he felt with Marisol or Shannon. Eddie’s thinks about the collar, about Patrick and seminary, but he won’t let his brain connect the dots. He can’t.

Patrick takes his word for it. He uses his hand on Eddie’s face to angle it upward so he can kiss him, and it turns messy within seconds. Eddie melts into it, letting Patrick set the pace. When Patrick bites at his lower lip, Eddie lets out a whine he’d be embarrassed by if he wasn’t so lost in his thoughts.

“What do you want?” Patrick asks against his mouth. He breaks away, breathing heavily as he stares down at Eddie. It’s a conscientious question; Eddie doesn’t want conscientious.

“Whatever you want,” Eddie says, and means it. He can see the way Patrick’s expression flickers, like he’s going to suggest they take it slow—or worse, that they stop. Eddie doesn’t want to stop. Eddie doesn’t know enough about this to suggest where to take it. He tilts his head back and hopes Patrick takes it as the invitation it is. His eyes darken and Eddie knows he has him.

Patrick pushes him down, Eddie’s back hitting the mattress, and he can’t find it in himself to be offended when Patrick reaches for his jeans, tearing them off with his boxers at the same time. Eddie spends a second feeling too vulnerable, naked, but then Patrick is pushing down his own pants. His cock is big, hard, and Patrick strokes himself slowly. Eddie’s mouth floods at the sight. He wants to get his mouth on it, but Patrick has other plans.

He pushes Eddie further up the bed, climbing on top of him and blanketing him with his own weight. Eddie sinks into the mattress under him, yielding easily to biting kisses, tipping his head back as Patrick mouths down his neck, his collar. Eddie’s moaning, little breathy sighs, swept along with the new sensations, new pleasures. It’s so easy to give into it, his mind committing to memory the weight of a man on top of him. Patrick is hard against him, their dicks rubbing together, and Eddie can’t help but grind up for relief.

Patrick, agonizingly, adjusts so Eddie rolls his hips up into nothing. He whines, huffing out a breath, but there’s a smirk on Patrick’s face. “I didn’t say you could do that,” he says and it’s teasing—but Eddie swallows an embarrassing noise anyways.

Of course not. Heat floods his face, like the shame of being chastised by a—

“Please?” Eddie asks. Somehow, it comes out coy. He didn’t think he had that tone in him, meek and compliant.

His mind is fuzzy, coherent thought slipping away from him. He doesn’t want to push Patrick, even though Eddie’s dizzy with desire and thinks he might die if he doesn’t get a hand on his cock, anything, soon. But Patrick said—Eddie wants to be good. For Patrick. If he’s good, then he gets what he wants. And Eddie wants, desperately, something deep inside he’s never known what to name before this.

But Patrick is looking at him with a curl to his lip, and Eddie—he hasn’t been good. Patrick can tell, because everyone can tell it when they look at him. Eddie has never been good, but he wants to be. God, he wants to be so bad and if he’s good for Patrick—maybe that’ll make up for it.

“Okay, okay,” Patrick says soothingly. He reaches down between them and gets a hand on Eddie’s dick. He whines, bucking his hips at the touch. It’s not a new experience, a hand on his dick, but Eddie’s never felt it like this before, the sudden pleasure causing an ache in his chest. “Like this?”

It’s dry, and Patrick’s hand is too tight, but he bites the meat of Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie is an easy fucking touch, because it’s an embarrassingly short time until Eddie’s spilling over his hand. His stomach clenches, his orgasm racing through him, turning his limbs heavy.

Patrick laughs into Eddie’s neck. “I’ve never gotten someone off that quickly,” he says.

“Sorry,” Eddie mumbles. He blinks up at the ceiling. He feels Patrick shifting away from him, and Eddie quickly grabs onto his arm. He doesn’t want to lose the weight of him, not yet.

“I was getting a—” Patrick starts, but Eddie never figures out what because he kisses him.

Eddie’s still fuzzy around the edges, but he has enough coherence to get his hand on Patrick’s cock. He moans into Eddie’s mouth, dropping his head so his temple is pressed to Eddie’s shoulder. With the way he’s holding himself up, his arm planted against the bed, he curves over Eddie’s body. It lets Eddie watch as he jerks off a man.

The mechanics of it aren’t new. Eddie’s doing what he does to himself, just in inverse. It doesn’t take long to learn the nuances of Patrick’s moans, his little noises, the way he fucks into the tight circle of Eddie’s hand. Eddie watches precum spurt out of the tip and wonders what it would taste like. He scoops it up with two fingers, bring them to his mouth. It’s salty, a little weird, but he likes it.

“You’re a fucking tease,” Patrick says. Eddie can’t decipher the emotion behind it; he feels himself shrink. Patrick doesn’t seem to notice. “I have to do everything myself, huh?”

Eddie doesn’t have time to ask what that means, because Patrick shifts off Eddie and flips him onto his stomach. He’s dazed by the change in position, lets Patrick pull him up by his hips until his ass is in the air, his knees underneath him. Eddie buries his face in a pillow, feeling the way his back arches.

Patrick slides a hand down his spine. “Is this okay?” he asks, and he barely gets the question out before Eddie is going: please please please.

The thought has been sitting with him since Patrick said it at the bar: since a hot guy fucked it into me. Eddie knows what it means, he understands the mechanics. He’s thought of it far too much when Buck would mention a late night with Tommy. And he wants. Eddie doesn’t want things, not like this, like he’s going to lose his mind if he doesn’t get it. A want so basic he doesn’t know how he’s lived without it.

And maybe—he shouldn’t have it. Eddie shouldn’t get to have this, sex with another man, because he wants it too bad. He doesn’t deserve it. Eddie doesn’t deserve the way he feels out of his mind; he doesn’t deserve to feel good, because he isn’t. It’s a reward for something he hasn’t done. He’d feel better if it hurt—replace the pleasure with pain.

He doesn’t know how to ask for that. His voice is stuck in his throat, and Eddie can’t ask for that because Patrick—he’s nice. Eddie can’t ruin this, too.

There’s a shuffle as Patrick leans over to dig in his nightstand, and then the sound of a bottle of lube opening. Eddie is dimly aware of it all, all his senses shrunk down to the places Patrick is touching him: one hand on his hip, his knees between Eddie’s calves, his cock bumping against Eddie’s balls as he moves.

Eddie’s cock is out of the game, but it gives a valiant twitch as Patrick’s hands moves down, spreading his cheeks so two slick fingers can press against his entrance. Eddie curses, muffled by the pillow, as Patrick circles his rim with just a finger. He exhales as Patrick presses in, Eddie’s body giving in so easily. His brain wars with the feeling. It’s new, and weird, but Patrick is steady as he fucks his finger into Eddie. His body accommodates the stretch, the burn of it, the way no one has ever touched him like this before. Eddie sinks into the feeling. Patrick adds another finger, a slow drag in and out until he presses in and Eddie sees stars.

The moan feels punched out of him, drawn out as Patrick keeps pressing on his prostate. Fire licks up Eddie’s spine, little trembles shaking through his limbs. “Jesus Christ,” Eddie breathes out. He thinks about apologizing for blaspheming, but Patrick does it again, and the thought slips away.

Patrick adds a third finger, and the hurt is just the right amount—Eddie presses back into it, begging for more. He wants more pain, more pleasure, his body aching for more, more, more. He whines as Patrick rubs hard at his prostate, almost cries when Patrick’s fingers slip out of him entirely. “Please,” Eddie moans, and his voice cracks on the word.

“Yeah?” Patrick’s wet fingers move over Eddie’s taint, his balls, curling around his half-hard dick. He’s too sensitive, jerking away from the touch, but Patrick doesn’t let him move away. This is good, Patrick keeping him in place, forcing him to feel even when Eddie wants to float away from it. His body moves without his permission, fucking into Patrick’s hand, presenting his ass like he’s in heat. “Are you going to ask nicely?”

“Please,” Eddie says, because he can be so nice. He can be good. “Fuck me, please, I need you to.” He babbles some more, his voice on a disconnect from his brain, only thinking about how empty he feels. The ache grows. He’s being good—right? He can have this. He’ll keep being good. He promises.

Eddie’s mouth keeps going: “Please, Father, fuck me, please.”

He feels Patrick stutter to a stop, and his heart turns to ice in his chest. All of Eddie freezes, reality crashing down on him. What a fucking Fruedian slip, ending the best sex of his life. The ache on his chest grows heavy, pressing down on his lungs and make it impossible to breathe. Eddie opens his mouth to apologize, only a few seconds passed, but then Patrick’s hand tighten on his hip.

“Figured that out, huh?” he mutters. He doesn’t sound cut up by it; he sounds wrecked. Eddie wishes he could see Patrick’s face, just for a moment, gauge his reaction, but all he sees is the pillow and the sheets, his body tense for whatever happens next.

He doesn’t expect the crinkle of a condom wrapper. He doesn’t expect Patrick’s cock to nudge against his entrance. He doesn’t expect Patrick to grab onto his hips tightly, hold Eddie in place as he slides in. He presses in slowly, short, rolling thrusts as he fucks in inch by inch. Eddie feels full in a way he never has before, the ice in his chest thawing as Patrick bottoms out. Anticipation flares out, lightning up his spine, when Patrick pauses for just a moment.

Patrick starts moving, and Eddie thinks he sees stars. He moans with the way Patrick’s cock brushes against his prostate, little gasps forced out of him with each slow roll of his hips. His mouth starts moving again; a series of please, please, harder you can go harder, Father, I can take it I promise. One of Patrick’s hands abandon his hip, and Eddie thinks there’s going to be relief for his aching cock—hard again—but Patrick’s hand lands in his hair and he tugs Eddie back just like that.

Starbursts go off behind Eddie’s eyes and his back curves, his weight falling to his knees as Patrick pulls him backwards. The new angle lets him go in impossibly deeper, his thrusts hard and quick, railing into Eddie and he can’t catch his breath. It’s driving Eddie insane, stuck between the sting on his scalp and the dull ache that’s starting somewhere in his core; his heart is thumping in his ears, pleasure arcing through his nerves. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, and it’d be so easy to start jacking himself off but—but Patrick said—

Eddie lets his arms dangle by his side, higher thought sliding away from him. He lets Patrick use him. This is—Eddie is good at this. He takes what’s given to him, the pleasure and the pain, Patrick’s hand still tight in his hair, his other hand leaving bruises on his hip. Eddie wants more, insatiable, like a goddam blackhole, wants to burn out and take everything he can get.

He cums again, just from the drag of Patrick’s cock against his prostate. It splatters against the sheet, his orgasm wringing through him. Eddie is lost in it, his mind floating somewhere outside of his body, as he lets himself feel it. He doesn't think about it, doesn’t have to. Patrick is in charge; Patrick gives Eddie what he needs, what he deserves. Eddie doesn’t have to wonder if he’s doing enough, if he’s doing it right, if he’s feeling way he’s supposed to. He takes and takes.

Patrick releases his grip on Eddie’s hair just to plant his palm between Eddie’s shoulderblades and press down. Eddie goes, his body folding, his chest and face landing in the puddle of his own come. It’s nasty, it’s obscene, the wet sound of Patrick fucking into him, their moans filling the room. Patrick’s hand is like iron on Eddie’s back, a two-ton weight holding him in place. His thrusts become slower, jerky, until he spills inside him. That’s a weird feeling too—the warmth of it—but Eddie’s mind is so crossed with pleasure he doesn’t let it linger.

When Patrick slips out of him, Eddie makes a punched-out noise, already missing being filled. He doesn’t feel like his can move his limbs, like they’re too heavy. He can only tip over, still cocooned in pleasure. Patrick shifts, moving away, and Eddie’s mind drifts. He’s aware of hands on him, a wet washcloth cleaning the cum off his face and chest, only dimly aware when Patrick settles on the bed next to Eddie.

His mind drifts. He settles in the feeling—he did good. He was good. Patrick curls around him, throwing an arm over his chest. Eddie wants to stay with this feeling forever, loosely happy, unfettered.

It feels like stepping into an ice bath when Patrick asks, “Are we going to talk about it?”

Eddie doesn’t have to ask what. “No,” he manages, clawing his way back to consciousness. The sated feeling, the way he was probably about to fall asleep, it disappears.

“I think we should,” Patrick says.

Eddie rolls out of the bed, Patrick’s hand dragging over his side. He fishes for his clothes, feeling like he did when he was seventeen and having to race to get dressed before his parents opened the door on him and Shannon.

“I was a priest,” Patrick says suddenly. Eddie stutters to a stop. “Maybe I’m weird, too, for thinking it was hot.”

“I really don’t want to talk about this,” Eddie manages, zipping up his pants.

“I know how hard it is,” Patrick continues, unbothered by how Eddie’s trying to get out of this apartment as fast as he can. “Realizing you’re gay, that the Church doesn’t have a place for you. I don’t think I’ll manage to let go of that. But I’ll listen, if you need someone too.”

Eddie doesn’t. What he needed—it’s gone now. Disappeared. There’s just a sinking feeling in his chest, one he’s too familiar with. It was nice, getting away from it for a while.

“I don’t,” he says shortly. “I’m not—It’s been years. I don’t care about that shit.”

Patrick moves then, pressing against the medallion on Eddie’s chest. Eddie thinks he’s going to break in two.

“I just know what it feels like to hide yourself,” Patrick says, and Eddie isn’t—he can’t do this right now. He knocks Patrick’s hand away, pulls his shirt on. “I couldn’t live like that anymore.

“I’m not hiding,” Eddie insists. He finds his shoes, shoving them on and probably breaking the heel. He can’t bring himself to care.

If it’s a lie—it’s a lie Eddie lived for so long, he doesn't know how to do anything else. Eddie got his girlfriend pregnant, of course he had to marry her. He tried to be a good husband. He tried to be a good father. He tries so goddamn hard to be good. Eddie isn’t hiding—no one is looking.

“Sorry,” Patrick says. “Hey, Eddie, hey, stop.”

Eddie does. Like some sort of killswitch, Patrick’s words bring him to a halt. He reaches out and grabs Eddie by the wrist.

“I’m saying this because I needed someone to say it to me,” Patrick says carefully. “And I want you to know that even when you feel your worst, you’re doing the right thing by yourself.”

Eddie does not say that he’s already been selfish enough. He just nods, a short jerk of his head, and finishes getting dressed. Patrick’s a nice guy, but Eddie can’t stay in this apartment anymore. Not when he feels this heavy weight on his chest. He’ll probably dream about the mud tonight, or the street, or sand and gunfire. He’s never had a one night stand before, but he thinks it’s bad etiquette to have a nightmare in their bed.

“You don’t have to leave,” Patrick says as he trails Eddie to his door.

“I need to,” Eddie insists. Awkwardly, he adds, “Thanks… for everything.”

For the sex. For being kind. He thinks Patrick gets it, because he doesn’t walk Eddie out. He just watches as Eddie makes his way to the elevator, doing his best to look at anything but Patrick.

When the doors close on him, he thinks he hears Patrick say, “Bye, Eddie.” And that’s it.

It hurts to sit. Eddie has to put the truck’s heater on full blast, shivering all over, even though it’s summer in Los Angeles and there’s only the coolest wind. The heat doesn’t work. Eddie thinks of the day after the well, how he could never quite stay warm.

Los Angeles traffic never sleeps, and by the time Eddie pulls up to his house, he’s tense all over. Even after a hot shower, Eddie’s shaking. He’s familiar with hypothermia, and it’s not like this—this feels worse.

In his empty house, Eddie curls up on a too big bed, and dreams about dying.

Eddie doesn’t tell anyone about it. He doesn’t tell anyone he had sex with another man, that he liked it, that he wants to do it again. Every time he thinks about saying something, to Buck, to Hen, to himself in the mirror, the words stick in his throat. It’s just another strike against him, in the grand scheme of things. Proof that he’s a fuck-up in every way that matters.

It—being gay—doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change how he acts at work, in his empty house, on the days Buck drags him out because he’s being too depressing. Eddie’s troubles aren’t important; it’s just Eddie. He only has to worry about himself, when everyone else he knows is struggling so much more.

Gerrard is on their asses every shift. Hen and Chimney are trying to figure out their co-parenting situation that ends up with the Wilsons and Hans spending all of their free time together. Buck is struggling with Gerrard at work, his worry over Bobby’s health, and trying to have a healthy relationship.

So Eddie doesn’t act differently, trying to keep that edge of normal for everyone else’s sake. Work is an awful lot like basic, in some ways. Gerrard goes out of his way to be a dickhead, but he’s only as annoying as Eddie’s worst drill sergeant. Eddie remembers how to fall into parade rest without prompting, takes the barked orders, accepts the grunt work he’s given without complain. He’s suffered bad situations. He can push through it, because he’s always done it and ended up relatively unscathed.

It’s Buck who doesn’t know how to deal with it. Gerrard doesn’t like him. (Though, honestly, the first time Gerrard had called him Buckwad Eddie had to force himself not to laugh.) He’s not used to a captain who doesn’t trust him, or the team, and it’s clear Buck doesn’t trust Gerrard back.

“This is just like Buck’s probie year,” Chimney had said one day.

“What, Buck 1.0?” Eddie asked.

“Well, yeah, but like… In the beginning, he and Bobby didn’t get along. Nothing like they are now. Buck never had an authority figure he trusted so he was, y’know, pushing the limits. Seeing what he could do.” Chimney pointed at Buck. “That is a bomb that’s going to go off. Hopefully he doesn’t steal the ladder truck when he does.”

“He’s not that bad,” Eddie had defended.

Except, Buck really is that bad. He does his best to hide it. But Buck’s always worn his emotions on his sleeve, and with every shift, he grows a little dimmer. He gets more annoyed. Gerrard keeps dismissing him on calls, and even when Eddie casts his voice behind Buck, it rarely seems to cheer him up.

During the day’s line-up, Gerrard stops in front of Buck and says, “Buckley, you’re man behind today.”

Eddie watches the way Buck seems to curl in on himself, even though his shoulders remain ramrod straight.

“Got it,” Buck says, with derision dripping off his tongue, “sir.”

It’s Gerrard’s favorite punishment for Buck. For any perceived slight, Buck gets to be man behind. When Bobby did it, after the lawsuit, Buck had gotten it. When Gerrard does it, it’s like sticking a dog in a crate for an entire day.

When he gets in front of Eddie, just one person over, Gerrard stops and gives him a onceover. Eddie does his best not to fidget.

“You almost got it, Diaz,” Gerrard says. He motions at his face, the matching almost-full mustache on Eddie’s upper lip. Just to be a dick, he adds, “If you don’t have anything waiting for you at home, B-Shift could use an extra man today.”

“That’s fine, sir,” Eddie says drolly.

Gerrard knows no one’s waiting for Eddie at home. He doesn’t know the specifics of it—no one knows the specifics of it, besides Buck—but Eddie’s forms clearly list that he has a son. A son he isn’t allowed to worry about this summer, 700 miles away in Texas.

Eddie tries. He does. He texts Christopher almost daily, even if he only gets a reply once a week. He calls every weekend, and Christopher can only stand to be on the phone with him for so long. Eddie apologizes, but Christopher never forgives him. That’s okay. Eddie doesn’t forgive himself either. So he takes the overtime shifts, takes the padding to his paycheck, and keeps asking Christopher to pick a vacation.

When they’re dismissed from line-up, Buck and Eddie end up in the gym. It’s the best place to talk in the entire station, because Gerrard never works out on shift, and he’s either in the office or on the veranda. The noise of equipment keeps their voices from traveling. When they want to have a conversation, they get on the treadmills and let the quiet hum of the track cover their voices.

“Sorry, Buck,” Eddie says quietly. “If you want to take the overtime, I know Morgan will let you go on calls.”

“I can’t,” Buck groans. He bumps up the speed on his treadmill. Eddie matches him. “Tommy wants to get dinner tonight, and I told Maddie I’d swing by to babysit Jee in the morning.”

“How’s that going? Tommy?” Eddie asks. There’s a twinge in his side, like he’s been running for too long, but he just ignores it. They just started.

Whenever Eddie asked about Tommy in the beginning, Buck would always get this look on his face. A fond smile, maybe he’d even flush, eyes bright in a way Eddie’s never seen him. That look has faded. It’s been a while since Eddie’s seen it—since the honeymoon phase Buck obviously had been feeling. But Buck still likes Tommy, is still dating him, and Eddie decides he doesn’t have any stones to throw about his methodology.

“It’s fine,” Buck says. It’s not the gushing words he had once upon a time. Even with Taylor, on the tail-end of that relationship, Buck had more to say. “He wants to take me to this, like, event in Vegas?”

His voice lilts up at the end. It’s obvious Buck doesn’t know what the event is, but Eddie knows. It was supposed to be a bout with McGregor and Michael Chandler, but the new headliners—Pereira and Procházka—make for a better bout. It’s the kind of thing Eddie cares about.

Not Buck.

“Oh, that’ll be cool,” Eddie says. “I didn’t think you liked the UFC.”

Buck looks at him. “I don’t,” he says. “Like, okay, I get wrestling. I like the kayfabe aspect of it, I like the storylines. There’s a reason for the fights, right? I don’t like just watching two guys beat each other up.”

His loss, Eddie doesn’t say. He already knew this about Buck. They’ve watched PPV matches together. He knows Buck likes CM Punk and Seth Rollins, knows he gets into the hero-villain thing but always likes the heel. Wrestling can be brutal, but there’s an artistry to it—so Buck says. Eddie doesn’t get it, but he also isn’t trying to drag Buck to UFC fights.

“At least you’re flying out there?” Eddie tries next.

“Don’t tell anyone this,” Buck says suddenly. As his best friend, Eddie is a secretkeeper that’s probably on kin to a priest, so of course he’s not going to tell anyone. Buck knows that. Eddie will take his secrets to the grave. “I hate flying.”

“Really?” Eddie starts laughing, which only puts a sour look on Buck’s face.

“It’s not funny!” Buck insists. “I had never been on a plane until I flew to Oklahoma a couple years ago.” Eddie remembers that. He had been chasing Taylor Kelly on Bobby’s advice. “And when we were rescuing Bobby and Athena, I was like, oh, this is a hurricane, I feel like this because we’re flying into a hurricane. But then he took me on, like, a joyride around the city? And I fucking hated it.”

“So tell him that,” Eddie says.

“I can’t,” Buck whines. “It’s his thing, right?”

“He’s your boyfriend,” Eddie says evenly. The stitch in his side is getting worse, but Buck is breathing steadily as ever. “If you have a fear of flying, or whatever, he should know so he stops taking you flying.”

Buck pouts at him, puppy dog eyes and all. “I hate when you give good advice,” he says.

“Don’t get used to it,” Eddie says with a smile. He hits the cooldown button on the treadmill. His side is aching; he must not have had enough water today.

So Eddie doesn’t tell anyone he’s gay, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t hyper aware of it.

Buck and Eddie are in the showers at the end of a shift, washing off the sweat and grime from the fire they spent the last three hours fighting. It’s nothing new. Eddie has perfected the art of not looking at others in the shower, eyes sliding away from naked bodies like oil on water, but Buck likes to peacock and Eddie took too long to get dressed.

Even with the towel draped over his shoulders, Buck’s chest is still wet from the shower. His hair is damp and plastered to his forehead. Eddie’s brain swaps in a picture of Buck, sweaty from exertion, his back pressed against a mattress. Eddie watches a water droplet slide over his collarbone, down his chest.

“Any plans tonight, Buckaroo?” Hen asks. She’s tying her boots on the bench, always eager to get out of the station as soon as possible these days.

“A very overdue appointment with my bed,” Buck says with a laugh. So he’s not going to see Tommy, Eddie’s brain fills in. “I’m so tired.”

“That’s what happens when you pull a hero maneuver,” Hen teases.

Out of everything Buck has done in Eddie’s tenure, this one was rather tame. It was an office fire, and Buck found an unconscious victim on the upper floors. From the way Buck told it, he MacGyvered a rescue board in a stairwell, but Eddie’s pretty sure he just carried her down all twelve stories, and then was put on hose duty for the rest of the evening.

Buck finally gets a shirt on, but there are wet patches from how he didn’t fully dry off his chest. He says something—bye to Hen, and Eddie’s mouth moves like he’s copying him—and it takes Eddie too long to realize Buck’s trying to talk to him.

“You wanna do something later?” Buck asks. “I have this gift card for Chili’s I got from some online survey and I really need a buddy because I don’t want to go solo at a Chili’s.” The way he says it is filled with his usual dramatics, the rise and fall of his voice, punctuated by a pleading look.

“Your boyfriend?” Eddie reminds him, even though the thought makes him scowl.

Buck waves the thought away. “There’s only one person I want to take out to a midrate restaurant.”

“I feel the love,” Eddie says drily, “but I’ll pass for tonight.”

He knows Buck is just trying to get him out of the house so Eddie doesn’t linger on Christopher’s absence for too long. It’s why they’ve been golfing so much—even though Buck hates it—or Buck keeps making him third wheel with him and Tommy. But Eddie’s looking forward to a quiet night in.

“Sure, we’ll save it for the anniversary,” Buck says easily. Eddie laughs, and Buck looks inordinately proud of himself.

“Have a good nap, Buck,” Eddie says as he leaves. And he doesn’t let himself think about Buck pressed into a mattress.

Ever since that night with Patrick, Eddie’s libido has picked itself back up to rates unheard since he was a teenager. He’s a lot more in control of himself two decades later, but most nights, he takes advantage of the empty house and jerks off. Most nights, it’s to Patrick. Except tonight, Eddie’s brain conjures up the image of Buck—and the thought doesn’t scare him.

They kind of have the same build, even though Buck is larger and heavier. Patrick is blonde with blue eyes, a kind face and big hands. Eddie’s brain switches out the details: Buck’s wide blue eyes, the birthmark over his brow, his wide shoulders and tattoos, his big hands on Eddie’s thighs.

Eddie’s hard immediately, one hand flying to his dick as he thinks about Buck. He’s seen Buck at the end of an adrenaline rush, his face red and flushed, panting slightly. Eddie wonders what Buck looks like when someone has a hand on his dick. Eddie wonders if Buck’s blush spreads all the way down his chest. Eddie closes his eyes and tries to pretend it’s Buck’s hand on his cock, reliving the way Patrick had gotten him off. Eddie thinks about Buck looming over him, Buck’s heavy weight on Eddie, Buck’s mouth on Eddie’s neck, and it doesn’t take much for Eddie to spill into his hand.

In the comedown, Eddie lets himself drift. He waits for it—the shame, the guilt, the panic over thinking about his best friend while he got himself off.

It comes, but not for the reasons he expects. Eddie melts into his mattress in the aftermath of his orgasm, and doesn’t stop thinking about it. He’s gay. He finds Buck hot. Buck is his best friend, his co-parent, his partner in just about everything. Buck likes men too. It’s a possibility, a real one. Eddie can see a future with Buck, and that’s when the panic hits him.

Eddie wasn’t a good husband. What he has with Buck right now, it’s not worth losing. Eddie is in love with his best friend, but he thought that about Shannon too—and look where that ended up.

It doesn’t change anything. Eddie can’t let it change anything. The realization isn’t world-altering; Eddie has been living with this love for years, even if he didn’t know. He can keep living with it, keeping it hidden, like all the messiest parts of him. Working with Buck is easy as always, even though Eddie might let his gaze linger for longer than before.

He knows Hen might have noticed. He could talk to her about it, or Karen. Eddie knows he should tell Buck, let Buck be there for him the way Eddie was there for Buck. Bobby has been his confidant on so much; Eddie knows he’d be willing to lend an ear.

He thinks about it while they’re having one of the big family meals. With Bobby out of the 118 and the Grant-Nashes relocated to a rather small two-bedroom apartment, the Hans or Wilsons host a weekly dinner for the entire group. This week, it’s at the Han’s with three kids underfoot. Despite Denny being several years older than Mara and Jee-yun, he’s more than willing to entertain them. It’s impossible for Eddie to not think about Christoper, to wonder if he’d be happy to play with the younger kids. These days, Christopher is sullen, filled with angst, and Eddie misses the bubbly kid from a few years ago.

Eddie misses his kid in general.

Bobby insists on cooking even though he’s not hosting, so Buck hovers next to him while they operate Chimney’s propane grill. Eddie is on potato duty, struggling with the peeler while Maddie and Karen drink white wine and heckle him.

“I see your midlife crisis isn’t over yet, since you still have that thing on your face,” Karen says.

“I can do without the peanut gallery,” Eddie says without any heat. He wishes he could be two glasses in like them, but he has to drive himself home. He doesn’t mind, not really. This is the deal he’s made with this family: to be viciously mocked. At least their words never mean to be cutting.

“Sorry, hon,” Karen says. “But I want you to know that—”

“You look fine,” Maddie cuts in. “A little 80s, maybe, but that’s back in style, right?” She looks at Karen for confirmation.

“God, don’t ask me that,” Karen says. “I was, like, a toddler. I can’t remember.” But then she squints at Eddie, tilts her head. “Y’know, it’s very 80s. Specifically—”

She gets cut off again by Hen this time. The kitchen is starting to get crowded, and he still has more potatoes to get through. “Are we bullying Eddie?”

“We are not,” Eddie says, pointing the peeler at her like it’s a serious threat.

He could do it now. He trusts the three of them, and Karen and Hen would get it. He knows the joke Karen was going to make. Eddie could finish it and say yeah, it’s just like that, Freddie Mercury and all the gay men with this exact style of mustache. But the idea of saying it—actually voicing the thought—blocks his throat. He has to clear it just to speak.

“The kitchen should be a no bullying zone,” he says instead. “Maddie, you need to put some signs up.”

“Three against one,” she says unsympathetically.

Considering Eddie’s entire childhood was two against one with his sisters, he’s not surprised.

By the time they’re settling down around the table, on a mix of dining chairs, the lawn chairs, and a fold-out chair Buck keeps in his Jeep, Eddie’s buzzed on his friends’ laughter. Buck persuaded him into a single beer, but Eddie thinks it’s more than just that. It’s summer, he thinks distantly. It’s the perfect time to be drinking beers on a patio, eating Bobby’s ribs, the yard lit up with string lights and a couple of citronella candles.

It hits him suddenly: Christopher isn’t here.

Eddie wonders what he’s doing, if they’re having dinner in Texas. He wonders if Christopher has closed himself up in his room—Eddie’s childhood room, because he recognized the scribbles on the wall in the few pictures Christopher sent him—or if he’s escaped outside like Eddie would do every night. That house was stifling. Eddie couldn’t stand to spend any more time there than he had to. He didn’t want to build a house that felt the same way.

A knee nudges his and Eddie looks up. Buck’s sitting next to him. He’s got a sad smile on his face, one Eddie is sure matches his own. Buck doesn’t say anything. It’s not like there’s anything he could say to make it better, and he knows Eddie’s not doing okay. But Eddie feels seen, and that—that’s enough.

He loves Buck. Eddie could see an entire future with him, and it’s even possible. But that comes with a risk Eddie just isn’t willing to take. He’ll be happy with whatever Buck can give him. Eddie sits with this love, a secret he might just take to his grave, and it’s fine.

Eddie lets Chimney draw him into a conversation, takes the familiar rib about the mustache, and Buck’s knee keeps pressing against his the entire night.

They break off slowly. Hen and Karen leave first with Denny, with a flurry of hugs and see you tomorrow that Mara insists on. Eddie clears the dishes and starts washing them, only for Athena to hip-check him out of the way as she joins Maddie at the sink. Chimney is trying to convince Jee-yun it’s bath time, and Eddie finds himself hiding just inside the patio doors while Buck and Bobby talk outside.

He’s eavesdropping. Eddie knows he is. He knows neither of them would mind, because Buck is easy to read and Bobby is honest about everything. But it feels too private, even if it’s nothing new.

Eddie hears Buck say, “—come back?” and he can fill in the blanks.

“I don’t know when that’s going to happen,” Bobby says reasonably. He always speaks in a measured tone, like he’s choosing his words carefully. “But whatever happens, you have a good head on your shoulder. You don’t need me telling you what to do.”

Eddie agrees with him. He knows Buck is cut out to be captain material. He knows that’s what Bobby has been angling for him, even though he kept making Hen the interim captain. It’s Buck who helps train the probies, it’s Buck who Bobby will ask for a second opinion, it’s Buck who lives and breathes by the job. He’ll be captain one day, Eddie’s certain of it.

But it’s not that fact that Bobby is gone that’s affecting Buck. It would have been a struggle with any other captain, but another captain would be more willing to listen to Buck. With Gerrard, all of Buck’s instincts and helpful suggestions are getting shaved off.

“I don’t want to do it without you,” Buck says miserably. “And Gerrard is just—I know I should just ignore him. Keep my head down and take it. But I can’t.”

“I know,” Bobby says. “I’m sorry to have put you in such a tough spot, kid.”

It’s quintessentially Bobby. Even though it’s widely agreed Bobby’s resignation was pushed through by a certain councilwoman, and Gerrard’s placement was also less of a coincidence than he pretends it to be, Bobby still blames himself for it. When it comes to Buck, Bobby will shoulder that blame and guilt without any prompting. Eddie thinks it’s part of the Catholicism—they’re practically made of guilt, really. But he knows it’s more than that. It’s the same reason Eddie blames himself for every fuck-up and mistake he’s made with Christopher. It’s something intrinsic in Eddie.

“You still have your team,” Bobby continues. “It won’t be for much longer. Think of it as training. How the 118 is right now, that’s how it was when I first got there. And look what we made it into.”

We, because turning the 118 into a family was Buck as much as it was anyone else. Buck’s big bleeding heart.

“I’d rather go through recertification,” Buck mumbles. He lets out a blustery sigh. “How was the last check-up?”

Bobby says, “The doctors are all saying I’m on track for recovering,” and that’s when Eddie backs up from the door.

Buck is Bobby’s, in just about every way—but Bobby is Buck’s, too. Eddie can’t forget the way Bobby looked sitting vigil at Buck’s beside, the way Buck looked sitting next to Bobby’s bed. It’s an awfully big thing, knowing that Buck has chosen you.

Eddie says his goodbyes without pulling anyone aside to talk. Everytime he leaves, he’s surprised by the way everyone hugs him goodbye. He should be used to it. This is what the Diazes did too—except sometimes, Abuela would cross him on his way out the door.

Bobby doesn’t need to be bothered by Eddie’s new revelations. He’s still recovering, he’s dealing with a new work environment, and the insurance and finance mess from the fire. Eddie doesn’t need to add another thing to his plate.

Same for Karen and Hen. They’re busy trying to get their foster license back and making sure Mara knows she’s loved. The school year is about to start, so they have to worry about getting Denny ready for that. And Hen has to deal with Gerrard at work.

Talking to Buck would be the easiest. Talking to Buck has always been easy. Eddie knows if he tells Buck he’s gay, Buck would be happy for him. Would offer to wingman, or go out to a gay bar with him, anything to make Eddie feel comfortable. But Eddie thinks if he tells Buck, the other thing might slip out.

He can’t let it. He doesn’t want to ruin Buck’s relationship. He doesn’t want to disrupt Buck’s life anymore than he already has. Eddie can’t give Buck what he needs, what he’s always wanted, so it makes more sense to never bring it up.

Eddie keeps quiet, hugs Buck goodbye, and goes home to an empty house.

A firefighter and an ex-priest walk into a bar. The ex-priest lights on fire the second he crosses the threshold, so the firefighter grabs the extinguisher from behind the bar and hoses him off.

The ex-priest says, “That could’ve gone better,” and the firefighter asks, “Wanna get out of here?”

When the firefighter catches on fire, the ex-priest just sighs.

Eddie goes back to the bar. He doesn’t think much of it, other than the fact it’s the one gay bar he’s been to, and he’d rather go to the same one than mingle with the airbrushed yuppies in WeHo. He doesn’t think about Patrick—it’s Los Angeles, there’s a billion people. There’s a chance, of course, but Eddie doesn’t think it’s going to happen again. Not with how that night ended.

He starts a tab. He still feels uncomfortable, like everyone’s looking at him. Some people are. He knows it’s the point of the place; he knows everyone will look at him and assume. Eddie has lived an entire life trying to hide it, though. It’s a struggle to just—let it be known. He’s never really been to a bar like this, either. He’s gone with the team after shifts, but that was always just friends hanging out, drinking. Eddie’s never been to a bar with the intent to pick-up, or even look. But Eddie wants, so deep inside, and even if it’s a bad idea, he lets himself look.

His type, he slowly realizes, is pretty narrow. Eddie’s gaze slips off skinny guys, dark-haired men with heavy eyes, the guys with bright pink hair and faux mohawks. But he lingers on the guys with broad shoulders. Guys who could probably pick Eddie up. Guys with bright smiles, and curly hair, and if he keeps looking at the guys with blue eyes and blonde hair—

A guy slips out of the crowd, heading straight for Eddie. It takes him a moment to place the guy: Jonas. He doesn’t fit the type, which is what Eddie needs, maybe. He’s a couple drinks in, and he lets that be the excuse as he smiles up at Jonas.

“If it isn’t the Catholic,” Jonas says, standing too close again. He’s practically a space heater the way warmth comes off him. “I would’ve thought Patty scared you off.”

“I don’t scare easy,” Eddie says. This time, he reaches out first, a hand on Jonas’ chest, sliding up to cup his shoulder.

“I can tell,” Jonas says, eyes dark.

He sways closer, and this is what Eddie wanted: Jonas kissing him, his hand falling to Eddie’s thigh, fingers tracing the inseam of his pants. It’s less of a hint, more suggestive than Eddie would’ve liked for a bar, but he can’t bring himself to mind. Maybe it’s the drinks, but Eddie only had two; it takes more to loosen him up completely. It’s just an excuse.

He sighs into the kiss, angling his head as it turns dirty. Jonas doesn’t have any qualms about making out in a bar, doesn’t care if anyone’s watching. The idea makes Eddie shift, his hand tightening on Jonas, but he doesn’t perceive it for what it is. Eddie tries to lose himself in the kiss, the weight of Jonas’ hand, but he can’t let his mind drift away like it had the other night.

Still, they keep kissing, Jonas keeps groping Eddie’s thighs, until they finally break apart. Jonas’ mouth is red and swollen, a cocky grin splitting his face. “Damn,” he says, punctuated with a little laugh. “I thought I’d have to do more work with you.”

It’s teasing. Eddie can get the joke: he’s Catholic, he’s repressed, this shouldn’t be so easy. But it is, Eddie’s legs falling open, his dick half-hard in his hands, his mind clouded with lust. But with the joke comes a familiar stab of cold. It’s too easy.

Eddie doesn’t deserve easy. With Jonas—it would be. Eddie can guess the type, going off his actions, the way Patrick talked about him. Jonas likes sex, like those old stories of Buck 1.0, and Eddie can’t blame him for that, but—

Something must show in his expression. The grin slips off Jonas’ face. “Shit, did I freak you out?”

Eddie pressed a hand to his face and hopes it isn’t shaking. “No,” he grits out, but it’s an obvious lie. “Christ, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, man.” It is, to Jonas. He must’ve dealt with this before, all too used to casual dating and hook-ups. Eddie isn’t. “Do you need, like, water, or anything?”

Eddie shakes his head. He’s about to call it for the night, when Jonas twists. “Hey, Patty!” he calls out, and Eddie’s stomach sinks below his knees.

“Jonas,” Patrick says. A pause. “Hey, Eddie.”

“Hi,” Eddie manages meekly.

He finally takes the hand away from his face. Patrick is looking at him with concern, eyes darting between Eddie and Jonas. Eddie straightens up, tries to pull himself together as quickly as possible.

“Maybe next time?” Jonas says when the quiet as turned awkward. He smiles again, and this time it’s genuine, a little more real. “Third time’s the charm, right?”

Eddie nods, feels himself deflate as Jonas moves back towards the crowd of the bar. He’ll find someone else, someone better than Eddie by the end of the night.

“Are you okay?” Patrick asks.

“I’m fine,” Eddie says. He slides off the stool, because he really doesn’t want to have this conversation. Eddie should just go home, like he wanted to, like he should. There’s nothing—He shouldn’t be doing this. There isn’t a point, because Eddie knows what he can and can’t have. And he can’t have this.

But he stumbles as he gets up, and Patrick is there, strong arms holding him steady as Eddie regains his balance. They’re close, too close, and Eddie can catch a whiff of his aftershave.

“Okay, here we go,” Patrick says. He keeps his hands on Eddie, helps settle him in his seat. He stays close, still touching. “Y’know, I didn’t I expect to see you again.”

Eddie shrugs. “I’m full of surprises.”

“You are,” Patrick agrees, His gaze is appraising, like he’s picking out all of Eddie’s defects. He wonders if they teach that look at seminary, if it’s some power given by God. He feels too exposed, even though he’s still dressed too warm for the night. “Did you… Did you think about what I said, the other night?”

“Nope,” Eddie says easily. He’s annoyed, now. But Patrick is so close to him, his hands still on Eddie’s arms, and he doesn’t want to leave. It feels nice, knowing he’s wanted.

“I think you should,” Patrick says. “Talking about things help.” And then, wryly, “I would know—I was a priest.”

“You wanna take my confession?” Eddie says. He takes a sip of his beer, mouth pursed around the bottle, watching the way Patrick’s eyes darken. “Wanna give me penance?”

It’s a taunt. It’s bait. Patrick doesn’t rise to it.

“I want to tell you I know where you’ve been,” he says. His voice is barely audible in the bar, over the music and the chatter. “I spent years hiding myself, thinking my duty to God and the Church was more important than my duty to myself. But that just left me empty. And not even God could fill that hole.”

Eddie’s stomach twists. Duty. He’s too familiar with it, all the ways he’s torn himself into pieces to try to fulfill the various duties placed upon him. His duty to his parents, to be a good son. His duty to Shannon, to be a good husband. His duty to Christopher, to be a good father.

“I’m not—I don’t believe in God,” Eddie says flatly. “I don’t care about that crap, I never have.”

“Sure,” Patrick agrees easily. “Doesn't mean you didn’t internalize it. And you’re still holding on to it, in some ways. Just because you said you’ve given up doesn’t mean you have. It’s like saying you’re separated—not divorced.” Eddie snorts. “It’s still there, you just haven’t decided what to do about it.”

Eddie would like to ignore it for the rest of his life. It’s never mattered to him until now. It shouldn’t matter, because Eddie doesn’t believe in it. Even if he feels like there’s a boot on his neck, some deep-seated desire to be good—he’s going to ignore it.

“Are you gonna keep preaching to me,” Eddie says, tilting his head, “or do you want to get out of here?”

This time, Patrick takes the bait.

They go back to Patrick’s apartment. This time, Eddie had three beers and Patrick’s swaying on his feet, so they have to take an Uber. Eddie will hopefully remember to tip the driver extra in the morning, because he forgoes his seatbelt to basically crawl in Patrick’s lap as they make-out. He almost falls on his ass when they’re getting out of the car, but Eddie’s not really embarrassed.

It’s thrilling. They get inside Patrick’s apartment and there’s barely a second before Patrick’s kissing him, pressing him into the wall again. Eddie lets himself be manhandled, his body following every press and movement of Patrick. His dick is hard in his pants, and they’re already tight because Eddie figured he might as well wear the ones that make his ass look good if he’s going to a bar. Patrick’s own erection presses into Eddie’s hip, and he thinks about getting his hand around it, and then he thinks about getting his mouth on it.

They end up in the bedroom. Eddie gets Patrick on the bed first, pushing him down before he straddles the man’s lap. He doesn’t want to stop kissing him for long enough to get their shirts off, but Patrick insists. He runs his fingers up Eddie’s sides, tweaks his nipples, and swallows the little moans and whines Eddie keeps letting out. When Patrick’s hands go for their belts, Eddie reaches down to stop him.

“Wait, wait,” he says, gripping Patrick’s wrists. “Let me.”

Before Eddie can talk himself out of it, he slips off Patrick’s lap and onto the floor. Patrick stares down at him, his face red and flushed, as Eddie undoes his belt and tugs his pants off. His briefs go with it, freeing Patrick’s cock. Eddie doesn’t have much of a frame of reference, but it’s a nice dick. His mouth waters at the thought of sucking him off.

“Can I blow you?” Eddie asks. And then, because his brain and his mouth are on a disconnect he doesn’t know how to fix: “Please, Father?”

Patrick groans. He jacks his dick, tightening at the base. “Fuck, Eddie,” he says. “You shouldn’t—”

“I’m a lapsed Catholic, you’re a lapsed priest,” Eddie says. “It all sounds kosher to me, Father.”

“Yes, yes,” Patrick says, the words falling out of him. He reaches for the nightstand, digging around until he resurfaces with a condom.

The statistics about unsafe sex float through Eddie’s head but he asks, “Do we need it?”

He doesn’t want to do this through latex. Eddie wants to know what it feels like, what it tastes like. He wants the real thing.

“We should,” Patrick says, but he’s wavering.

Eddie lays his head on Patrick’s thigh, his hands wrapping around the back of them. Patrick’s abs twitch. He’s too fucking toned for an ex-priest. “I think we’re doing a lot of things we shouldn’t, Father.”

He categorizes Patrick’s reaction: the way his dick jumps, the quiet breath he lets out. He likes it, or likes it enough to let Eddie keep doing it. Eddie wants to keep doing it, finds some weird pleasure in it.

“Okay, okay,” Patrick says. He cards a hand through Eddie’s hair. “We don’t need it.”

Eddie feels a thrill roll down his spine. He straights up, still kneeling, and lays his hands palm up on Patrick’s thighs. Eddie is close enough that Patrick’s cock is just inches away from his face but he waits. He opens his mouth, tongue out, and waits.

Patrick curses—might even blaspheme—but he catches on quickly. He uses the hand on his cock to bring it to Eddie’s mouth, tapping it on Eddie’s tongue. There’s the salty taste of his precome and Eddie feels like he just touched a livewire. He waits until Patrick’s backed up to swallow.

“Amen,” Eddie murmurs, and then leans forward to take Patrick’s dick in his mouth.

He likes to think he makes up for his inexperience with enthusiasm. It’s been a long time since Eddie had received a blowjob—Marisol didn’t want to, and Eddie was more than happy to go down on her because that seemed easier—but he remembers the basics. Eddie sucks the head of Patrick’s cock into his mouth, feels it heavy on his tongue. It’s a mouthful but Eddie likes the stretch. He gets one hand around the part he can’t fit in his mouth as he starts bobbing his head.

Above him, Patrick is gasping and groaning. He still has one hand in Eddie’s hair, but he isn’t gripping tightly. Eddie wishes he would. Eddie pulls off reluctantly for a moment—he hasn’t quite figured out the breathing technique. He strokes Patrick’s cock and then dips his head, kissing down his shaft to his balls. Patrick smells musky, a hint of sweat from a long day, and Eddie’s obsessed with it.

He licks a broad stripe all the way back up, taking Patrick’s cock back in his mouth. He bobs his head a few times and then pauses, just tonguing at the head of Patrick’s cock. It takes him a few seconds to realize what Eddie wants, but then Patrick starts thrusting into Eddie’s mouth. He relaxes his jaw, tries to take as much of Patrick in as he can. Patrick is trying to be gentle, Eddie can tell, so he uses his grip on Patrick’s thighs to pull him closer, and that gets the message across.

Patrick starts fucking his mouth in earnest. Eddie’s body feels boneless, as Patrick uses the hand on his hair to hold him in place. His body isn’t his own; his body is just for this, for getting used. His own dick is still trapped in his jeans, but Eddie doesn’t even spare it a thought. He looks up at Patrick through his lashes, wondering how he looks with his mouth stretched around a dick, his eyes watering because Patrick keeps brushing against his gag reflex, with a fucking mustache that tells everyone what type of man he is.

Eddie whines around his mouthful, and Patrick’s hips jerk. It’s a feedback loop of Edding making noises and Patrick reacting, using Eddie’s mouth like that’s all he is.

Patrick’s voice is gravely from his groans and full of warning when he asks, “Where do you want it?”

Eddie’s head is so far away he barely registers the question. But something in him does, because he draws just off Patrick’s cock. His face is an inch, maybe two, away. He doesn’t have to ask for it, just opens his mouth, tongue out.

Patrick groans, and starts jacking himself off. It doesn’t take long; Eddie’s eyes stuck to Patrick’s dick as he works himself. Anticipation rolls in Eddie’s gut, and then Patrick’s motions stutter as he’s coming on Eddie’s tongue, his face, dripping down onto his jeans. Eddie just waits, receiving it in quiet genuflection. When Patrick finally finishes, he grabs Eddie’s hair and tilts his head up.

“You’re such a mess,” he says.

Eddie thinks he has cum in his eye, but it’s just the sting of tears. He licks his lips, swallowing the cum that landed on his tongue. “Clean me up?” he suggests hopefully.

Patrick does. He using his fingers to collect the globs of cum on Eddie’s cheeks and pushes it into his mouth. Eddie sucks on his fingers, tongue wrapping around them, before he lets Patrick take his hand back.

Patrick pulls Eddie up, off his weak knees, and kisses him fiercely. They tumble back on the bed. Eddie’s still in his jeans, and Patrick gets a hand between them to pull at his belt, cupping Eddie through the fabric. He whines into Patrick’s mouth, hips jerking against him. He can’t get enough higher brain function to think about progressing past this, Patrick’s tongue in his mouth and friction against his aching cock.

Eddie kicks his jeans off, finally, grinding messily against Patrick’s soft cock. Patrick keeps one hand in Eddie’s hair, his grip almost to the point of pain. It makes Eddie gasp, breathing hotly into the space between their mouths. His other hand creeps down Eddie’s back, palms the swell of his ass, and it’s a surprise when Patrick swats him.

“Shit!” Eddie cries, more from surprise than pain. He jolts forward with the impact, but presses back into Patrick’s hand. Heat builds in his center. He needs more. “Father, please,” Eddie whines, pressing his mouth to the side of Patrick’s cheek.

He gets what he wants: another two hard slaps on his ass, Patrick’s hand tight in his hair. Eddie ruts gracelessly against Patrick, his orgasm building up in his stomach. But it isn’t until Patrick presses an exploratory finger against his entrance, dipping down to his taint, that Eddie cums.

He gasps and moans into Patrick’s neck as he does, his hips moving through it all. He lays on top of Patrick for a couple more moments, too tired to move. Eventually, he slips off to the side, bracketing Patrick as they both try to catch their breath.

Eddie feels warm all over, feels sated in a way he hasn’t for a long time. His limbs feel heavy, a quiet satisfaction settling over him. Patrick is a long line of heat next to him.

“There’s a joke that the most repressed Catholics are the freakiest in bed,” Patrick says conversationally. Eddie huffs out a laugh. “So like—I get it.”

“I don’t,” Eddie mutters.

He’s doesn't… The sex he had with Shannon and Marisol, it was—basic. Vanilla. He and Shannon were fumbling teenagers that didn’t know how to use their bodies; when they fell into bed again, in Los Angeles, they were fumbling adults that didn’t know how to talk to each other. Eddie always did his best to make Marisol feel good, took her direction if it was given, but nothing like this.

Eddie says, “I want to be good,” and it feels like his chest cracks open. The warmth dissipates as he looks at the smooth skin of Patrick’s chest. No tattoos, no scars. “And this is like—If I’m good enough, I can be forgiven.”

He doesn’t want to detail what, exactly, he needs to be forgiven for. Eddie’s list of sins is a mile long. He knows he can never be forgiven for most of them. It’s not like Christopher is ever going to forgiven him. But Eddie just wants a taste of that forgiveness—proof that he’s good enough for it.

“Oh, man,” Patrick says. “This is, like, pretty intensive for a second night stand.” Eddie almost apologizes, but Patrick keeps talking. “I’m not trying to be mean, but you can’t carry that kind of baggage into sex. It’s not healthy for you. And if I was a worse guy—”

“Not an ex-priest,” Eddie mutters.

“—this could’ve gone really bad,” Patrick finishes. “You should figure it out. Talk to someone.”

The last thing Eddie wants to do is talk to anyone about this. He shakes his head. He’s already feeling the cold creep in, the shivers. He locks his jaw to keep it from trembling.

“Well,” Patrick says thoughtfully, “there’s always confession.”

“That’s even worse.”

“Priests hear everything, even the weird shit,” Patrick says goodnaturedly. And then, quieter: “I think it’d be good for you. You’re still attached to your faith, for whatever reason.”

“I’m not.”

“Separated, not divorced,” Patrick reminds him. “Just think about it.”

Eddie doesn’t respond and eventually, Patrick gets up to clean them off. It’s unfair, for Patrick to talk about it like it’s so simple. Eddie wants to ask how hard it was to tear himself away from his faith, his career so entwined with it, but he doesn’t want to know the answer. If it’s easy—then Eddie’s the idiot who can’t manage to pull himself free. If it’s hard, why bother?

He takes an Uber back to his empty house and sits on the couch because his bed is too much of a comfort than he deserves. Buck had texted him during the night, a series of links about camping activities outside of the city. He does this often, adding a maybe chris would like these? that only ever makes Eddie’s chest tight with pain. Eddie knows that if he asked, Buck would come running. It’s the promise they’ve made to each other.

But Eddie doesn’t deserve the easy way Buck would take care of him without a complaint. Eddie can’t give it back, all his failings staring him in the face in the living room, Christopher and Shannon staring down at him from framed photographs. He can have them like this: where he can’t touch them, can’t hurt them. Buck has cut himself on all the jagged pieces of Eddie already. He can’t let Buck keep doing it.

He curls up on the couch, still wearing his clothes, and tries to let the hum of the fridge convince him he’s not alone.

Chapter Text

A firefighter walks into a church. It’s on fire. Another firefighter walks into the burning church, except his black turnouts are just black robes. “I got this one,” he says with a Bible in hand. The church burns and burns and burns.

Eddie isn’t going to talk to a priest. There’s nothing to talk about. If there was anything, it doesn’t leak over into his professional life, so it’s not like Eddie really needs to talk to anyone.

Eddie’s basic strategy for working under Gerrard is to ignore him. It’s the same advice he tries to give Buck: You can’t let this guy get under your skin. Eddie falls back into the mindset he had during basic, the mindset he had when he was in high school and his dad found faults in almost everything he did. Eddie goes to work, does his job, and only pays enough attention to Gerrard to take orders.

They’re on a call when Eddie actually ignores him—and his orders.

It’s a pool party gone wrong. The pool water is tinged pink, because one teenager dropped a glass bottle and stepped on it before falling into the water. That had led to a lot of panic. One girl brained herself on the diving board and is suffering from water in the lungs. Another kid slipped while running and ended up with a broken wrist for his troubles. It’s all triage and medical treatment, and Eddie is bandaging up the sluggishly bleeding cut on the first teenager’s foot when he hears Gerrard yelling.

"—are you doing, Buckley?” Gerrard shouts. It’s never good when he voice gets that loud, and even worse when it’s directed at Buck. Eddie cranes his neck looking for him, but he can only see half of the yard from where he’s kneeling next to a bloodstained lounger.

“There’s someone down here!” Buck yells back. “I need to get down there with a rescue basket!”

The yard, like a lot of yards in the hills surrounding Los Angeles, has a steep drop off. There’s a fence but even in the dark, Eddie can tell it’s not very well maintained. The reflective stripes on Buck’s gear flash from where he leans over the side, dangerously far.

“Buckley,” Gerrard is still yelling, “everyone is accounted for! Stop dicking around!”

Eddie tapes the gauze into place, calls Ravi over, and starts jogging over to the truck. It doesn’t take much time at all the grab the winch and a harness, draping the rescue basket over his shoulder as he trudges across the yard. Hen and Chimney are staring at him as he walks, but he ignores them.

“Diaz.” Gerrard’s voice is low with an undercurrent of actual anger. “What the hell are you doing with that shit?”

“Buck says there’s someone down there,” Eddie says.

“If one of you goes down this hill—”

“Jesus Christ, if we’re wasting time, you can yell at us after. But if there’s some teenager that fell off this hill, I would love to hear you explain what happened to their parents.”

Next to them, Buck is hurriedly pulling the harness on. Eddie kneels down and starts anchoring the winch, ignoring the way Gerrard huffs angrily above him. It doesn’t take long at all to get Buck secured. Eddie keeps a careful eye on the ropes as Buck tips over the edge, the reflective lights catching before he disappears. Every time Buck does this, disappears from Eddie’s view, it always makes him his stomach drop.

Over their radios: “I got a teenage girl down here,” Buck says. “Unconscious, faint pulse. She’s bleeding from a head wound.”

Eddie looks up at Gerrard and sees the man’s face twist into a scowl. Eddie can’t help the way his mouth quirks at the feeling of getting one over him. Gerrard notices, though, and points at him. “We’re going to talk about this,” he says.

“Sure,” Eddie says with a shrug. He tosses down the rescue basket for Buck.

The girl, once Buck gets over the edge with her, is still unconscious. Hen kneels down next to her, running through triage with Chimney.

“Oh, my God,” someone says. It’s a girl, wrapped in a neon pink towel. “Stephanie?”

Eddie sees Gerrard approaching her out of the corner of his eye, and the part of him that puffed up whenever Sophia talked to boys puffs up again. He intersects them, blocks off her view at the same time. “Do you know if she has any health problems?” he asks.

“She’s, uhm, she probably hasn’t eaten in awhile,” the girl says, her eyes looking through Eddie, focused on Stephanie. Eddie glances behind and notices the way the girl’s bones are far too prominent. “She said I couldn’t tell anyone, but if she’s going to—”

“Hey, hey, she’s going to be fine,” Eddie says. Ravi finally gets back with the gurney, and it’s a practiced motion in which they get Stephanie loaded up. “Thank you for telling us.”

The girl nods. Eddie watches Gerrard is pulled away by the attending officers—not Athena, he thinks with a slight curl of disappointment—and starts helping finish up at the scene.

It isn’t until later, when they’re back at the 118, that Gerrard makes his displeasure known. Hen and Chimney are still with the bus at the hospital, so it’s just the trucks in the bay. It’s just Eddie and Buck. Before Eddie can slink off and try to hide, he hears: “Buckley! Diaz!”

It’s humiliating to get a dressing down in front of the rest of the firehouse. Even though Eddie can say he and Buck were in the right, it doesn’t keep the sour feeling from spreading in his gut. Next to him, Buck’s doing his best to stay straightfaced, but his jaw keeps flexing with how he has to keep swallowing down replies.

They should’ve waited for the order, they should’ve actually surveyed the area, they should not have ignored Gerrard. Buck shouldn’t have been looking over the yard instead of helping with triage. Eddie shouldn’t have abandoned his patient.

Eddie takes it, and the laundry duty Gerrard stacks him with. Buck gets to clean the engine and the bathrooms. For the rest of their shift, they’re separated by chores. Eddie doesn’t feel like good company anyways. When there’s another call, Gerrard leaves him as man behind. Eddie sullenly scrubs the grout in the showers for Buck and folds towels. The spark of satisfaction he felt on the last call has disappeared.

Their shift wraps up after breakfast. Buck cooks for them with his usual showmanship, but Eddie can’t muster up the energy to toss out anything more than a thanks. He knows Buck has been watching him with a calculating look in his eyes, like he’s trying to figure out what he needs to fix with Eddie this time.

Eddie would love it if he figured it out, screwed Eddie’s head on straight.

Buck corners him in the locker room and says, “I’m coming over.” It’s a statement, not a question. Eddie just shrugs. He’s used to Buck inviting himself over whenever he pleases.

“So what was that about?” Buck waits until he’s followed Eddie inside before asking. “You’ve never talked to Gerrard like that before.”

“He pissed me off,” Eddie mutters. He collapses onto the couch, legs tucked up to allow Buck to sit on the opposite corner. “What, did you corner the market on pissing him off?”

“No, but you’re the one who told me that I should ignore him,” Buck says. He reaches out and grabs Eddie’s legs, straightening them so they lay across Buck’s lap. His fingers tap a little drumbeat. “Thanks, though. For having my back.”

“Always,” Eddie says.

Buck’s hands are warm over his shins. Eddie’s not a small guy, but he thinks Buck’s hands could wrap around his ankles with ease. The thought progresses: Buck holding him down, Buck’s large hands holding Eddie in place, Buck filling up every sense.

Eddie shifts on the couch, reaching for the throw he keeps on the back of it. “Did you want to actually do something, or are we moping together?”

“I’m not moping,” Buck says with a scoff. He slouches in place, hands still warm on Eddie’s legs.

Eddie thinks they both spend most of their time in this house moping. Christopher has gotten quieter as he gets older—because instead of playing with legos and action figures, he’s now playing videogames in his room—but the house has never been this quiet. It’s suffocating at times. Eddie kinda hates being at home, but it’s not like he can keep inviting himself over to Buck’s loft. He did that once and ran into Tommy. It’s on the shortlist of most mortifying experiences Eddie’s gone through.

“Something’s up with you, though,” Buck continues. “It’s not just Gerrard.”

No one knows him as well as Buck does. Eddie crumples under his gaze, just a little. “I’ll tell you about it later?” Eddie tries.

It’s a moment before Buck nods. “I’ll hold you to that,” he says, and Eddie knows he will. Making promises with Buck is like deals with the devil: he never forgets. “Just— Try not to get yourself fired, yeah? I kinda need my partner.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Eddie says. He ignores the way Buck said my partner, and the way his stomach is filled with warmth.

Eddie calls his parents once a week. Usually, he calls when his dad should be able to answer because it’s easier for Eddie to guilt him into things. This time, his mom answers. Eddie has to hold back his groan.

“Eddie, hi!” she says. “This is a bad time—”

“Mom, seriously?” Eddie asks. “I always call at this time. You know that.”

“Yes, well, Christopher invited a couple of friends over,” she says. There’s chatter on her end of the line. Eddie stares down at the coffee table, the books stacked underneath it that Christopher and Buck picked out together. There’s a Calvin and Hobbes collection on the top, because Christopher went through a phase a few years ago. “I can call you back—”

“You’re the one that said he needed stability,” Eddie presses. “Routine. How can I make that happened if you won’t let me?”

There’s a pause. For a moment, Eddie thinks she hung up on him. Her voice comes in, a sharp, “Ramon!” before there’s more shuffling and the background chatter cuts out. “Eddie,” she says, her voice harsh and quiet, “this really isn’t a good time.”

“Well of course it’s not,” Eddie says. “You’re too busy playing mom.”

“I am not!” she replies. “For God’s sake, Eddie, you’re acting like I’m trying to ruin your life.”

She might as well be doing that, Eddie wants to say. She didn’t hesitate before taking Christopher away from him, didn’t even talk to him about it, and now Eddie has to make scheduled phone calls and hope, somehow, that Christopher can forgive him. Eddie wouldn’t really blame him if he never did, but he still wants his son back.

“I don’t want to fight,” Eddie says calmly. “Can I talk to my son, please?”

She sighs down the end of the phone. “I don’t know…” she hedges. “All his friends are here, Eddie, you really want me to interrupt them? He’s finally making friends down here, you know. It’ll be good for when he starts school.”

“School?” Eddie says, incredulous. “He’s not— Did you register him for school down there?”

“Well, I had to,” she says. “It’s almost August, Eddie, he can’t just skip a year.”

“He’s not going to school down there!”

“He needs the routine of it,” she continues calmly. “Routine and stability are good for him, and he’ll get more of than here than he ever did with you.”

Eddie presses the back of his hand to his mouth for a second, just to keep himself from yelling. That never goes well. He can’t get mad at his mom, or she’ll yell back, and they’ll keep going in circles.

“He had routine here,” Eddie says slowly.

His mom scoffs. “With that revolving door of women? You keep letting Christopher get attached to these girls and then throwing them away. That’s not healthy for him. You’re not giving him a good relationship to model.”

“Like you and Dad?” Eddie cuts in. “Yeah, what a great relationship.”

“Eddie.” Her voice is low again, steeped in anger. “I’m going to—”

“And really, you don’t have to worry about me bringing around women anymore,” Eddie says, “because I’m gay.”

He hangs up the phone and tosses it on the coffee table before leaning back into the couch, like his phone is a live grenade. He waits for it to light up again with another call, but the screen stays off.

Eddie waits for the panic to set in, but it never does. He’s just—relieved. This thing he’s been carrying around his entire life, weighing him down, just disappears. And to hell with what his parents think. His mom already thinks he’s the worst father in the world, and his dad hasn’t cared to share his opinion. They’ve always thought he was a disappointment, from when he was a kid to now. That’s buried its way into Eddie’s bones, the need to make them proud because Eddie’s always tried to please them, but he’s never going to.

He’s gay. He’s never going to have another wife, another mother for Christopher. His parents are just going to have to deal with the disappointment that makes him.

He wants to tell Christopher. Eddie doesn’t know how—doesn’t know how to keep Christopher on the phone long enough to say it. He doesn’t know how Christopher would respond but Eddie needs to say it. Christopher is the most important person in his life. Eddie can’t keep hiding things from him.

Eddie shows up at the Wilsons’ with two bottles of wine and a bag of take-out. Karen is the one who opens the door, suspicion coloring her face as she takes in Eddie’s gifts. “Babe,” she calls over her shoulder, “do you know why Eddie is here?”

“What?” Hen appears from the back of the house. “Eddie? What’s up?”

“I have food,” he says, raising the items. “And I really need to talk to some gay people.”

Karen’s eyebrows raise and Hen leans her body back in apprehension.

“I’m gay,” he adds. It’s easier now. Telling his mom broke the seal; Eddie can just say it.

“Oh, Eddie,” Karen says. She wraps him in a hug, shaking him from side to side. He does his best to keep the take-out from getting crushed until Hen takes pity and grabs the bag from him. “Well, first, thank you for trusting us with this. And second, how did you figure out?”

He’s finally allowed past the threshold. Eddie toes off his boots while Karen grabs the bottles of wine from him. “I went to a gay bar.”

“Oh?” Hen says. “And you didn’t invite us?”

“It wasn’t—I didn’t want people to know,” Eddie says lamely. He can tell Hen gets it by the way her expression softens. She gets what he’s trying to say: I want to tell people now.

They settle in the living room with their food and wine, Karen and Hen cuddled up together on the couch. It makes Eddie’s chest ache, the way it’s so easy for them to be so open with each other. Eddie wants that, some bone-deep desire he’s been carrying with him. He wishes it were that easy for him.

“I don’t know how to tell Christopher,” is what he opens with, “because of… everything.” He waves a hand, indicating Shannon, his girlfriends, the fact that being gay and having a wife is an oxymoron.

Hen and Karen share a look over their wine glasses. After a long sip, Hen says, “Well, I reckon you can just say, ‘Christopher, I’m gay.’”

Karen starts giggling, kicking at Hen’s thigh. Hen ends up smiling anyways, and so does Eddie.

“Yeah, yeah, I got that much,” he says. “But it’s… How do I explain it to him? About Shannon, having him, and then everyone else? He’s already turning into a little player because I can’t keep a girlfriend around, apparently.”

“Oh, God, really?” Karen asks.

Eddie nods solemnly. “He’s two-timing middle schoolers.”

It sets the three of them off again. Karen almost spills her glass before they settle back into their seats. “Okay, okay,” she says. “Just answer any questions he has, right? And he might, like, be rude about it, but…”

But that’s kids.

“Denny grew up with gay moms,” Hen adds, “so we never really had to talk him about this. When he was younger, he asked us why everyone else doesn’t have two moms, so our version of this talk was a lot different. Christopher is a teenager. With a phone. I bet he knows more about this than we did when we were his age.”

When Eddie was Christopher’s age, the most he knew were slurs from the other kids and a general understanding it was wrong. He hopes Christopher knows better. It’s not like he started judging Buck after he started dating Tommy. But it’s Eddie. If Christopher was going to have an issue with anyone—it’d be him. Eddie wouldn’t fault him for that.

“He’ll understand,” Karen says. “But can we go back to the gay bar part?”

Hen grins again, turning back to Eddie. “Please. Which one did you go to? Was it a WeHo one, Silverlake, what?”

Eddie mumbles out the name of the bar, his face heating up as they both gasp. “You were cruising,” Karen accuses.

“I wasn't!” Eddie says. He pauses. “Not at first.”

“Details! Details!” Karen chants.

But Hen can tell he’s uncomfortable with it. It’s not easy for him—admitting these things. He’s not Buck. Eddie has opened up to the 118 over the years, as they’ve gone from coworkers to friends to family, but this feels like too much. Eddie feels too exposed, just at the thought.

“Maybe when we’ve had more to drink,” Hen says. She tilts her head. “Honestly, I would’ve—”

She cuts herself off by taking a hasty sip from her glass. Then she downs it.

“Have you told Buck?” Karen asks.

He shakes his head. Eddie knows what they both are thinking. He knows Hen knows, because she’s too perceptive and Eddie isn’t all that subtle. But being in love with Buck—that can’t go anywhere. Buck is with Tommy, and Eddie isn’t good enough. Not for Buck, not for anyone. There’s something wrong with him, something he’ll never be able to fix. It’s a waste to even try.

“Eddie,” Hen says softly, “you have to know, right?”

He squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head again. He knows, but saying it makes it true. Eddie wants to hide in the ambiguity for just a moment longer.

“I just… I can’t get into it with Buck. Not right now.”

Karen knows him, but not as well as Hen does. She squints at him, cuts through the way Hen tried to carefully broach the subject with her usual bluntness. “If you don’t think Buck would dump Tommy the second he knows you’re an option, you’re a fool.”

“That’s not the issue,” Eddie says, setting his jaw. He knows. God, he knows that. They’ve already had most of a relationship for the entire time they’ve known each other, complete with breaking up and making up. Buck is too important to risk; the only relationship Eddie has he knows he can’t ruin. “I can’t do that to him. He’s figuring himself out. And I’m…”

Barely out of the closet. Can barely have a one night stand without freaking out. Can barely handle the way his life has changed, how he can’t go back anymore.

Hen makes a judging mhm. “You need to give him some more credit. And you also need to put me out of my misery, Eddie. You’re my only hope. Buck would jump off a bridge if you told him to, much less—”

“Why’s Buck jumping off a bridge?” Chimney pops his head into the room and Eddie almost jumps out of his skin. “Oh, Eddie, you’re here.”

A second later, Denny rushes past to his room, calling out a quick hey moms! as he goes.

“I could’ve kept him for longer if I knew you were having a little gossip party,” Chimney continues. “But Buck and bridges, please continue.”

“I’m trying to convince Eddie to tell Buck he should break up with Tommy,” Hen says.

“Please,” Chimney says, turning to Eddie. He grabs an abandoned plate of spring rolls. “I liked knowing I could call on him if I needed a favor. I don’t really need or want him as a friend.”

“I didn’t realize y’all disliked him so much,” Eddie says.

“Y’all,” Karen mutters.

“It’s just… Sure, he changed,” Hen says. “Doesn’t mean I have to like him all that much.”

Chimney also steals Eddie’s glass of wine. “Why are we trying to get them to break-up, anyways?”

“Because Eddie—” Karen cuts herself off with her own wine.

He pauses for a moment, before shrugging to himself. “Because I’m gay,” Eddie says.

“Oh.” Chimney’s eyes get impossibly wide, bugging out of his head. “Oh.”

“If you could find it in yourself to keep that a secret for, like, 24 hours, I’d really appreciate it,” he adds.

“You haven’t told Buck?” Chimney asks.

On the other couch, Karen snorts. Hen slaps her on the thigh, which only turns into a tussle.

“Not yet,” Eddie says. “But I’ll probably have to by our shift in two days.”

“Sorry, Eddie,” Karen says.

He shrugs. It’s fine. It’s probably better like this, where his options are telling everyone himself or let Chimney’s fat mouth take care of the problem for him. The only person he has to tell is Buck. Maybe he should just let Chimney take care of that for him too… Except then Eddie thinks about the kicked puppy look Buck would give him. Not an option.

“Okay, 24 hours,” Chimney says. “I can totally do that.”

When Eddie asks if Buck has any plans for the next afternoon, Buck mentions Chili’s. He still has the gift card, and he’s still insistent Eddie is the person who has to come with him. They’ve gone out to restaurants before—actual restaurants with good food and without the general air of melancholy that settles over a Chili’s—but this time feels different. Eddie, stupidly, thinks to himself like a date which makes his head grow fuzzy.

In the booth, Buck’s legs knock against his under the table like they’re teenagers playing footsie. He’s pointing at the menu, mentioning the drinks, debating it because he’s the driver, and Eddie is staring at the tablet in front of the sauce container, its display rotating through specials and games.

“I’m gay.”

Buck says, “What?” his voice too loud, and it feels like the entire restaurant is staring at Eddie.

It feels worse, like this. Eddie doesn’t know why he’s freaking out over it. He’s been to a gay bar, he’s had a guy’s dick in his mouth, he’s told his mom, and yet sitting in this Chili’s across from Buck—Eddie is freaking out.

“Oh, fuck,” he hears Buck mumble. Eddie’s not really looking at him. He’s not really looking at anything. There’s a bright spot in his vision from the tablet and he’s glad for the fact that he can’t see. “Jello, Eddie,” Buck starts saying. He keeps talking and Eddie latches on to the sound of his voice.

When his brain has calmed down, Eddie is deeply thankful for the fact that Chili’s has terrible service. He knows Buck is going to tip their server too much anyways, so the long wait between being seated and getting their drinks isn’t a problem. Eddie settles back into his body slowly, the weight of Buck’s shoes pressing down on his boots, his hands just an inch away from Eddie’s like he had to stop himself from touching.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Eddie says. His vision is last: Buck’s face crinkled with concern and worry. But when Eddie talks, it all washes away. “I didn’t—”

“It’s fine,” Buck says breezily, waving a hand. “We all can’t be good at coming out like I am.”

“You’re such a jackass,” Eddie says, but it comes out way too fond. The joke is stupid—but it works. “It wasn’t this bad when I said it to Hen.”

“You told Hen first?” It’s most joking, but there’s an undercurrent of actual hurt under it all. Buck is the person Eddie goes to for everything. Everyone knows Buck is the person to talk to when it comes to Eddie, even though Buck safeguards his secrets than Eddie does himself. Eddie doesn’t share himself with others. He’s working on it.

“Actually, I told my mom first,” Eddie says wryly. He doesn’t think going to a gay bar really counts as coming out. Not to the people who matter. “I went to Hen and Karen because… I want to tell Christopher.”

Buck relaxes. He gets it, because Buck had also freaked out over telling Christopher. It was different for him, though. Buck’s girlfriends were never introduced to Christopher like how Eddie did it. Now Eddie has to tell him Surprise! Actually, I’m gay! So all those women that I introduced as my girlfriend—I didn’t even like them! And I might not have even liked your mom.

“Oh, wait, I’m supposed to, like, congratulate you,” Buck says.

“Please don’t.”

Buck is deeply and earnestly sincere when he says, “I’m happy for you. I know that it must’ve been hard, but I’m glad you’re figuring it out. Thank you for trusting me with this.”

“Of course I trust you with it,” Eddie says. His head is spinning with the way Buck is looking at him.

Eddie is saved from saying something pathetic by their server finally arriving to get their drink orders. Buck looks at him and then the menu, before ordering the margaritas of the month.

“They’re going to be so weak,” he says when Eddie protests. “And we’ll just Uber, if we need to.”

It’s how they end up day drinking at a Chili’s on a Thursday afternoon. It’s not even happy hour when they start, so the majority of Buck’s gift card is going to the drinks. They get appetizers and full meals, and by the third round of drinks, their server starts bringing glasses of water with the actual drinks.

“How’d you figure it out?” Buck asks, somewhere around drink four. “‘Cause, like, I had Tommy and that whole,” he waves his hands and almost knocks a full glass of water over, “thing that made me realize. What was your Tommy?”

He shrugs. “It wasn’t anyone in particular. But it’s… I think I always knew. But I couldn’t be.” Not if he was going to be a good son, a good husband because he couldn’t have a baby without a wife, a good father because he couldn’t raise a son without a mother. And so the thirty-plus years of repression.

“I went to a gay bar,” he says instead of spilling his guts. “That, uh, yeah, that settled it.”

“You went to a gay bar?” Buck’s voice is raised, a little strangled. “Without me?”

“I wasn’t like I was excluding you,” Eddie mumbles. His face feels hot. Probably the alcohol. “I just wanted to, y’know, confirm. And I did.”

Buck squints at him. “Did you…”

Eddie is certain his face is bright red now. “I did.”

“Oh!” Buck pauses. He drains the rest of his drink, all two-thirds of it. “Was it—good?”

“It was the best sex of my life,” Eddie says. “Not really a high bar to clear but. Yeah.”

“That’s good,” Buck says with a nod. “Are you gonna see him again?”

Eddie shakes his head. It’s the truth. Sex with Patrick is good—but that’s all it was. But Patrick saw through him, in a way Eddie can’t stand from anyone except Buck. “It was just a guy,” Eddie settles on.

“Did he like…” Buck fumbles over his words. “Do I know him?”

“God, I hope not,” Eddie mumbles.

For a moment, Buck looks offended. He frowns over his glass of water. “What does that mean?”

“It’s just…” Eddie shrugs. “It’s embarrassing. And it’s not—I’m trying not to be ashamed. I know I shouldn’t have double standards for myself and others, but I just… I thought I would’ve had it figured out by now.”

“What do you mean?” Buck’s punching in an order for more drinks, ordering two even though Eddie’s is still mostly full.

“My life,” Eddie says sardonically. “A wife, the white picket fence, everything I was told I was supposed to have by now.”

“You know that’s bullshit,” Buck says earnestly. “Everyone goes through life at their own pace. And you got— There’s a lot you do have. And I don’t think you should, you know, miss the trees for the forest.”

Eddie smiles despite myself. “I think you got that one mixed up, bud. Maybe you should take up a side gig as a motivational speaker, though.”

Buck waves a hand. “Kinda already did that when I was a bartender. And also when I was a yoga instructor for a few months.”

That job is new to Eddie. His brain reboots, the idea of Buck folding his long limbs into impossible poses.

“What I’m saying is,” Buck continues, “you don’t have to have your life together by some arbitrary deadline, right? We’re just—living. And trying to do right by ourselves, by others. And you… I think you’re doing it right, Eddie.”

“Even though I fucked up bad enough my son decided to spend his summer out of state?” Eddie asks, the alcohol making his mouth move faster than his brain.

Buck smiles at him, a familiar sadness in his eyes. He feels Christopher’s absence as much as Eddie does. “He’s going to forgive you,” he says with a certainty Eddie wants to believe so damn badly. “He’ll come home.”

Eddie’s saved from having to respond, maybe on the verge of tears, when Buck’s newest drink order comes in. Eddie focuses on their food again. They’ve eaten most of it, just carbs to soak up the drinks. Eddie argued against Buck ordering a dessert.

“You want to take any of this to-go?” he asks.

“Nah, it never keeps,” Buck says. He scrapes his fork over the plate. “Do you want to start? Dating, I mean.”

“I don’t think I’m really cut out for it,” Eddie says. He waves a hand, like that indicates Ana and Marisol. He can’t tell Buck the truth—that he’s in love with Buck, that he doesn’t know how to be good enough to be someone’s partner. Buck would get that kicked puppy look and frown as he earnestly insists Eddie is great, but he doesn’t want to hear it. “And with Christopher… I think it’s best if I just slow down.”

“What, you’re going to take a vow of chastity until he’s in college?” Buck asks.

“Who said anything about chastity?”

Buck jerks his head up. His fork clangs as it falls against the plate. The sound isn’t that loud, not really, but it echoes in Eddie’s head. He’s just looking at Eddie and—

Eddie has been on the receiving end of a lot of looks from Buck. He recognizes when Buck’s considering something, like a question he doesn’t quite want to ask, but it’s hungry too. Buck’s thinking about Eddie like he’s thinking about breaking any vows of chastity.

Eddie would let him, without question. He would sink to his knees in the middle of this Chili’s. It’s not like anyone is working.

He downs the rest of his drink, just to give himself something to look at besides Buck.

Buck clears his throat. “Well, you should— I don’t think you should write yourself off just yet.”

Eddie shrugs. He doesn’t want to get into it. It’s not worth the trouble he always causes whenever he starts dating someone. It’s for Christopher’s sake. Eddie would take a vow of asceticism if Christopher asked him to.

“We should probably,” Eddie starts, falters.

Buck nods and grabs the tablet. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll just… I’ll pay, you get the Uber?”

Eddie nods, already pulling out his phone. He glances at the tablet while Buck fiddles with his cards. He tips their server thirty dollars. It’s the amount of the damn gift card.

Eddie doesn’t think Buck is acting weird around him, but—Buck is acting weird around him. The thing is, Buck is always weird, and usually it just amuses Eddie because Buck’s weirdness is usually related to his Wikipedia spirals or unfortunate habit of putting his foot in his mouth most conversations. Buck’s weirdness is familiar to Eddie—he got his ankle sprained because of it, after all—so he feels comfortable saying Buck is being weird. About him.

So it has to be the gay thing. Eddie had been scared of this: that coming out would change how people viewed him. It changed how Eddie views himself. Even though he’s accepted it, that he likes men, has told his mom and his best friend and most of the people closest to him, Eddie still feels like he’s doing something wrong. It’s not being gay, because Eddie doesn’t think it’s wrong, doesn’t think Hen or Karen or Buck are wrong for being queer, but it’s Eddie. It’s different when it comes to him.

He would like to talk to Buck about it, except Buck has stuck his face in the list of chores Gerrard gave him and is doing his best to ignore Eddie.

Eddie has his own list of chores, but he could be doing them with Buck, so he just frowns as he starts sharpening the axes. It’s a relief when the alarm goes off, an even bigger relief when Gerrard doesn’t designate either one of them man behind. Eddie climbs into the engine with Buck, knocking their legs together as they settle in their seats. Buck smiles at him, but it’s tight—it’s not the usual smile he gives Eddie.

Dispatch gives them the full details on their ride over the Griffith Park. Two hikers had fallen down from a ridge. The caller is uninjured, but the other—the caller’s son, dispatch informs them—has a broken leg. Park rangers are on the scene, but no one wants to move the hiker without EMTs present. It takes time to get the engine through the park, Hen and Chimney beating them by several minutes in the bus, but they can’t reach either hiker from the road.

The two hikers are seventy feet over a ridge, and Eddie joins the cluster of park rangers and first responders standing in a semicircle on the edge of the trail. The rangers concede to them, especially once Gerrard calls for Buck and Eddie to get the ropes. It’s not the most dangerous rope rescue they’ve done, but Eddie still holds out his arm for Buck. After a moment, Buck bumps their forearms together, and they start moving towards the injured duo.

“Thank God, you’re finally here,” one of them—the dad, Eddie presumes—says once they get in earshot. “We’ve been waiting forever!”

“Dad, shut up,” the guy on the ground hisses. He has an arm thrown over his face, shielding his eyes from the hot sun. His other hand is being clutched tightly by his dad.

His leg is, to put it bluntly, broken. It’s an open fracture, the bone peeking out from the front of his shin. Eddie shares a look with Buck: wide-eyed, a head tilt. Buck nods back, reaching for his radio to inform Hen of the patient’s status.

“Sorry about that,” Eddie says, getting closer. “How we doing?”

The guy with the broken leg looks familiar. He moves his arm, blinking up at Eddie in the bright sunlight—

“Jonas?” Eddie asks, before he can really think about it.

“Oh, my God,” Jonas says with a hint of despair. “Can I get someone else?”

“Sorry, man,” Eddie says. He kneels down next to Jonas’ leg, swapping out his utility gloves for medical ones. “What happened?”

Eddie rustles through his bag for gauze and tape, eyes cutting across to where Buck is still lagging. He paused by the dad, but he looks uninjured. He wouldn’t be surprised if the guy is and just hasn’t noticed, but Jonas and his open fracture is their main concern. Eddie meets Buck’s gaze, raising his eyebrows: What are you doing? Buck gives a jerky shrug but he drops down on Jonas’s other side, his own sterile gloves on.

“Fell down a hill,” Jonas mutters. “Seriously, I never woulda let Patty get you if I knew you were a firefighter. That uniform is very hot.”

“Thanks,” Eddie says with a little laugh. He starts packing the wound, and Jonas grunts in pain. “This your dad?”

Jonas turns his head towards the man. “I don’t know, are you?” he asks haughtily. To Eddie and Buck, he says, “He disowned me back in high school. Can’t have a gay son.”

Eddie’s stomach drops, his movements falter.

“I said I was sorry,” the dad says tightly. He glances at Eddie and Buck. “Can we not have this conversation here?”

“You started the argument, might as well finish it,” Jonas says waspishly. Gone is his charm from the night at the bar, replaced with pain and irritation. “Sorry,” he adds, directed at Eddie.

“It’s okay,” he says carefully. “I’m going to splint and pack the fracture,” he explains quietly. Jonas’ eyes are trained on him, his face tight.

Jonas sighs. “This is not how I thought you getting acquainted with my bodily fluids was going to go.”

His dad makes a strangled noise.

“What.” Buck says it flatly, a little too loud. And then he focuses on helping Eddie pack the wound, ignoring Eddie’s eyes.

“I think we got pretty well-acquainted the other night,” Eddie says goodnaturedly as he starts wrapping Jonas’ leg. Buck drops the packet of gauze he was handing over, and twists to dig for another one.

“Fucking Patty,” Jonas mutters.

It doesn’t take long to finish packing the wound, and ease his leg into a splint. Despite the argument, Jonas kept a tight grip on his dad’s hand, probably crushing it.

“Okay, that’s all we need to do down here,” Eddie says. “We’ll get you topside and they’ll be able to get you some pain relief.”

“Thank fuck,” Jonas deadpans. “Sorry, Eddie, but you really can’t compete with that.”

Eddie laughs. “I’ll try my best to get over it,” he promises.

They carefully get him in the rescue basket, and then Buck and Jonas start moving up the cliff together. It leaves Eddie with the dad, who he gives a careful onceover. He doesn’t look injured, but there’s blood on his shirt.

“Is that yours?” he asks.

The dad looks down. “No, it’s—It’s Jonas—Is he going to be okay?”

“He’ll be fine,” Eddie assures. “He’s in good hands. But how about we get you up there, so you can ride to the hospital with him.”

“I don’t know if he wants me to,” he says despondently. “I mean, Christ, you heard us. We can’t go a couple of minutes without arguing. We were arguing when he fell.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Eddie says patiently. He tracks Buck’s movements up the ridge, a careful hand on the rescue basket as the rope pulley moves Jonas up. “I think he’d like a familiar face.”

The man laughs. It’s a bitter noise. “I don’t think I’m familiar. I kicked him out when he came out to me. And it’s only recently that I’m trying to make it up him.”

Buck is almost near the crest of the ridge. Eddie knows he needs to start moving, before Gerrard notices that he’s just standing down here with the other victim. The ambulance is going to leave in a couple of minutes, and unless they start moving now, they’re going to miss it.

“You’re doing the work now,” Eddie says. “That’s got to count for something, right?”

“I’m trying,” the man despairs, “but he’s not the kid I knew. And I don’t know how to get that kid back, my son back. If he even wants that.”

Eddie feels like he’s been plunged into an ice bath. He picks up the extra harness, handing it over to the man. He’s used to this on calls; near death experiences always bring out the regret, a sudden resolution to do better. Eddie has gotten the rundown on marriage problems, cheating boyfriends, high school drama, and custody issues while working on calls before. There’s a joke about bartenders being the best therapists, but Eddie thinks the same joke can be made about first responders.

“You just have to keep trying,” Eddie says. He doesn’t say he’s barely having any luck with his own son, but he’s still trying. Eddie doesn’t know how to do anything else.

“He’s never going to forgive me for this,” the man says mournfully as they start making their way up the ridge.

Eddie wants to say that’s not on Jonas—but keeps his mouth shut.

Jonas and his dad get dropped off at the hospital. Eddie knows it’s nothing to be worried about. The blood loss is the most concerning thing, but Jonas had still been lucid and talking when the ER staff accepted him. Still, Eddie makes a note to try and check up on him, just to be sure.

In the drive back to the firehouse, Buck is still being weird.

He’s not looking at Eddie, his gaze always out the window. Eddie stares at him the entire ride back, but Buck seems to know, doing his best to avoid Eddie’s gaze. When they get back, Buck runs through the truck check with extreme efficiency before disappearing into the showers. He manages to slip away from Gerrard’s notice, but not Eddie.

By the time Eddie is free of his sudden dressing down, his list of chores shoved back in his hand, Buck is—he’s still acting weird, but he’s at least being weird in Eddie’s vicinity. He finishes sharpening the axes while Buck checks all the halligans in the truck, and then Eddie feels a sort of restless energy from the call, so he asks, “Wanna spot me?”

Buck drops a halligan, and it clatters loudly onto the floor. “Uh, what? Now?”

“Yeah?” Eddie stares, as Buck resolutely tucks the halligan back into the compartment and does not turn to look at Eddie. “We’re offline for an hour, might as well get our workout in.”

Another pause. Buck’s shoulders slump, almost imperceptibly but Eddie’s attuned to every change in Buck’s body. It’s like when the neurons fire in Buck’s brain, they mirror in Eddie’s brain.

“Yeah, sure,” Buck agrees. He turns around, and his face has been set into some facsimile of normal but Eddie knows better.

It has to be the gay thing. Eddie shouldn’t have told him. He knew this would happen, that it would upset their dynamic. Eddie had meant it when he said it to Buck: This won’t change a thing between us. He didn’t expect Buck to hold himself to that same standard.

Fifteen minutes later, Eddie almost drops the barbell on his chest when Buck suddenly asks, “Was that the guy?”

“What?” Eddie grunts, huffing out a breath as he moves back into starting position. Buck’s hands hover underneath the bar as Eddie starts another rep.

“Jonas, on the call,” Buck says. “Was that the guy you—?”

Jesus Christ. Eddie pushes the bar up, lets Buck take it from him. He doesn’t seem bothered by the weight of the bar, Eddie thinks viciously. Buck has always edged ahead of him in lifting. Eddie sits up, swings around so he can actually look at Buck.

“He wasn’t the guy, but I did meet him at the bar,” Eddie says. “What’s your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem!” Buck says quickly. His eyes are wide, guileless. It’s probably the truth; Buck rarely knows why he acts like a dog whose tail got stepped on until someone informs him of the fact.

“Okay,” Eddie says slowly, dragging the word out.

“I just didn’t think that’d be your type,” Buck continues.

Eddie stares at him. Really—Jonas isn’t his type. Not that it matters, when it comes down to it. But Buck’s chewing at his lip, hangdog expression, and he’s been acting weird all shift.

“What to you think my type is, then?” Eddie asks.

Buck flushes, his face red even though he hasn’t done anything more except stand behind the bench press. “I don’t know,” he says quickly. “That’s why I’m asking!”

“Uh-huh,” Eddie says tonelessly. “Maybe you can figure it out for me.”

Before Buck can start asking questions, like he’s an issue of J-14 and trying to determine Eddie’s celebrity crush, he clasps Buck on the shoulder and disappears into the shower. It wasn’t much of a workout, but Eddie’s doing the both of them a favor.

Except in the shower, all he can think of is Jonas’ dad: He’s never going to forgive me for this.

Eddie avoids looking at himself in the mirror when he gets out.

A firefighter and an alcoholic walk into a bar. It’s on fire. The firefighter says, “What a fucking waste.” The alcoholic asks, “Can you do your job?”

Eddie always feels embarrassed when he goes to Bobby for advice. He doesn’t do it often; he knows Bobby is who Buck goes to for just about everything, even when Eddie’s an option. Talking to Bobby about his relationship problems, his issues with Christopher, his issues with himself—Eddie hates looking weak in front of others. He blames his dad for that.

Bobby is nothing like his father, but they’re in this mess of a family together, and he’s the only Catholic Eddie knows.

Even though Eddie’s the one on 24-hour shifts between the two of them, Bobby spends too much of his days on the Hot Shots set, so it takes some time before Eddie can finally catch Bobby alone. After the, frankly, embarrassing conversation at a Chili’s, Eddie would rather have this conversation in private. Bobby invites him over for dinner, says Athena is on shift, and Eddie shows up with his stomach tied in knots.

“Eddie, hey,” Bobby says when he opens the door. “Perfect timing. I hope you’re hungry.”

Buck, when he was on his kick about love languages, said Bobby showed his through cooking. Big family meals at the firehouse, small desserts when it’s someone’s birthday, always an invite out to a diner after a rough shift. The meals Bobby makes for them, all of them sat around a table, are nothing like the heavy, tense quiet of family dinners in the Diaz household in El Paso. Eddie wonders if that’s gotten different—if his parents are still stifling Christopher, the way they stifled Eddie, or if they let him talk.

“I could eat,” Eddie says, following Bobby into the apartment.

They have idle chatter over dinner. Bobby and Athena are narrowing down options for their new house. Eddie tells him about some of their recent calls, stressing how much he wishes Bobby was with them. He learns about Hot Shots, things certainly covered under whatever NDAs Bobby had to sign, but he doesn’t care all too much for this placement.

Finally, Bobby sets his cutlery on his plate and asks, “So, what did you really want to talk about?”

Eddie sighs, moving to mirror him with his plate. “Catholicism. Again.”

“Oh?” Bobby raises an eyebrow. “But you and Marisol—”

“We did,” Eddie says. “But I—I’m gay.” Bobby’s face relaxes into understanding. Eddie wonders if he already had this conversation with Buck. “And I don’t think I’m damned or whatever. Not for this. But it keeps coming up. And I don’t know how to deal with it.”

“With being an ex-Catholic?” Bobby asks. “I don’t know if I’m the one to ask, since I’m still practicing.”

“No, not that,” Eddie says. He keeps his eyes trained on his plate. “Forgiveness. I don’t… I don’t know how to ask for it.”

Bobby understands that more. No one mentions it, but Christopher went to Texas for a reason. Buck is the only one who knows the truth of it, Kim and Shannon and the mess Eddie’s been twisted in ever since that accident five years ago. Buck wouldn’t tell anyone, but he’s good at talking around the truth. Bobby’s good at reading in between the lines.

“It’s the hardest thing in the world,” Bobby says slowly, “to feel like you deserve it.”

Eddie nods. The Church taught him that, if he prayed the right way, if he didn’t do it again, if he felt that regret deep in his soul, then he’d be forgiven. He told Buck once he’d failed Christopher more times than he could count, but he kept trying. Eddie has never forgiven himself for all his failures. He’s never needed Christopher to forgive him.

“My parents never took us to church,” Bobby says after a moment. “The big holidays, Christmas, Easter, Ash Wednesday, we’d go. But my dad was always working on weekends and my mom had better things to do than dress us up in fancy clothes and go to Mass.”

“Really? I thought you were always so…” Eddie flails, trying to end the sentence, “...religious.”

Bobby laughs quietly. “No, it wasn’t until I started going to AA meetings that I leaned so hard on my faith. Marcy was more religious than me. She’d take the kids to church and I would join them when my shifts would let me. But I never really had a reason to believe in a God. If there was one, I didn’t think He liked me all that much.”

“But you do now?”

“I do,” Bobby agrees. “It’s always going to be attached to my sobriety, though. And I still don’t think I was worthy of forgiveness—from anyone. Myself, or others. I didn’t think I would be allowed to be happy again. I still think I’ll be spending some decades in purgatory, but I’ve accepted that whether or not I deserve forgiveness, it’s been given to me. It would be disrespectful to those offering it to refuse it.”

“I don’t know if Christopher will forgive me,” Eddie says. “And it’s—I don’t need it. If he never forgives me, that’s fine. I can still be his father.” If he’s given the chance, he thinks. If his mom doesn’t keep Christopher in El Paso as her do-over.

“It’s not just Christopher.” Bobby can always see right through them. He’s worse than a therapist, Eddie thinks. “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself,” Bobby says, a non-sequitur. “I’m always going to carry that guilt and blame, no matter how many times I go to confession and say it again. God’s forgiven me, sure. Not myself. But the life I have now—I love it. And I don’t need to be forgiven to have that. I just have to be grateful for what I do have, and do everything I can to keep it.”

It’s where Eddie and Bobby meet, the middleground they never acknowledge: Both of them are responsible for their wives’ deaths. It’s not something they can get over so easily. Even five years later, Eddie feels the guilt kicking around like Shannon’s ghost is still haunting him. He knows everyone would say it’s not true; Shannon would’ve died anyways, even if Chimney intubated her immediately. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forgive himself, the same as Bobby.

But if she lived—Eddie doesn’t know where he’d be. He would’ve kept pretending, and maybe would’ve ruined his life in a different, more spectacular way.

Eddie doesn’t know how to be grateful for what he has, because he still doesn’t feel like he deserves it. He wants forgiveness desperately, wants to stop carrying the load. But he wasn’t lying; he would never ask to be forgiven by Christopher, for all the things he’s done. Eddie’s just sick of feeling this way, the shame and guilt that sneaks up on him every night.

“Remember when I was freaking out about Marisol,” Eddie says suddenly, “and you said I should go to confession?”

Bobby nods, one brow raised.

“I never did. Obviously. But I had talked to this guy. He’s an ex-priest. But he, uh, he said that I was separated from being Catholic, but not divorced.”

“And do you want to be divorced?” Bobby asks. He doesn’t even question the metaphor.

“I guess? But like—I know, technically, I can get excommunicated. But it’s not that. I just… I want to stop being so guilty. And I don’t know how.”

“What do you believe in, Eddie?” Bobby asks.

“What do you mean?”

Bobby shrugs. “I believe in my family,” and it’s pointed, so Eddie knows he means the 118 and its spiderweb of family ties. “I believe in God. I believe I can be a good man, and so I try hard every day to be that good man. But because of the faith I have in others, the faith they have in me, that’s what keeps me going.”

Eddie believes—

“I don’t really believe in anything,” Eddie mutters.

“Really? There’s nothing that you believe in, that you trust will always be there?”

Eddie thinks of Buck. He cringes away from the idea; it’s unfair, to put that on Buck. But Eddie doesn’t have anything else, he knows. His family—the Diazes, the one he shares blood and memories with—seem to exist on a different plane of existence than him, just over in Texas. Eddie’s faith in God was nonexistent by the time he was in the Army, even though it won’t let him go. Eddie knows he has the family he made in Los Angeles, but with Christopher in Texas—it doesn’t seem like he has anything.

Besides Buck.

“You’re not alone, Eddie, even if you feel like you are,” Bobby says. “And you probably don’t want to hear it, but maybe you should go to confession.”

“Is that your go-to advice?” Eddie asks, because it’s easier to tease Bobby than examine the feelings in his chest.

“It works for me,” Bobby says with a laugh. “You might not find that forgiveness there, but maybe you’ll find something else.”

It goes to shit a few days later, because the entire universe is conspiring against Eddie. He still doesn’t believe in karma or jinxes, but a few more days like today, and he might believe he actually is cursed.

Eddie is on Gerrard’s bad side still, both him and Buck, and Gerrard spends the shift alternating between berating one of them. Buck is vibrating in his skin, because he’s never been able to ignore it. It’s the type of anger Eddie rarely sees from him. Buck does his best not to get mad; he hides it all under a mask and some of it will leak through, but not all. Buck tries not to be angry in the same way Eddie tries not to be vulnerable.

Gerrard has been needling him all shift. He keeps going behind Buck as he works, making comments. It has the effect of making every muscle in Buck’s body get tenser and tenser. He missed a spot while mopping. He didn’t roll the hose just right. He wasted time calming down the victim instead of letting Hen stick her with a needle. Fucking keep up, Buckley!

Eddie thinks he’s going to punch Gerrard. It’s a conditioned response. Eddie isn’t violent. He was a runner before he ever was a fighter, but this is Buck. Eddie would fight for him.

He keeps it contained through the shift. When they’re called out to an apartment fire, Eddie’s almost glad for the distraction.

The 118 is the second house on site, so Gerrard has to play by the IC’s orders. He suits up to go into the building with them, pairing Eddie with Ravi—and Buck with Gerrard. Eddie’s stomach drops as he watches the two of them stand side by side. Buck looks over, catching his eye. It doesn’t take anything at all to cross the distance so they can bump their forearms together.

“Stay safe,” Eddie says, and his voice is tighter than he expected.

Buck nods solemnly. “You too.”

Eddie doesn’t want to go back to Ravi’s side, but it’s what he has to do.

The two of them sweep the first two floors. From what the IC said, it was an electrical fire. It’s nighttime so most of its renters were home. A mass of them are milling in the parking lot, but with the panic and fear, it’s hard to know if anyone is still left inside. The other house, the 38, are working the hoses. Eddie and Ravi go from the ground up; Buck and Gerrard move from the bottom down.

“Hear anyone?” Eddie asks as they hit the third floor. It’s not a particularly tall building for Los Angeles—only seven floors, courtyard-style with balconies overlooking the yard or street. But it has long corridors with too many apartments to check. Eddie and Ravi move down the hall, calling out for anyone stuck inside. The heat from the fire has only gotten stronger as they’ve kept moving.

“Nothing,” Ravi confirms. He opens the door to the next apartment.

The fire started on the fifth floor. The building is old, and under the veneer of modern renovations, it’s not up to code. The flames are eating through the apartments on the west side, but the fire is quickly spreading. The threat of the upper floors collapsing isn’t an idle one. But Eddie can’t let himself think about Buck up there—with Gerrard.

“Got someone!” Ravi calls out.

Eddie pushes Buck to the back of his mind—never out of it—and hurries to help. There’s three kids in the apartment, all of them cowering in the bathtub. They’re scared of the turnouts, and the loud noises, and the fact that they’re alone.

“Hey, guys,” Eddie says, crouching down in the bathroom. Ravi lets him take the lead, still off-kilter when it comes to kids on calls. None of the kids are older than ten, if Eddie had to guess. “We’re going to get you out of here, okay?”

“Mom?” says the oldest. He’s got a vice grip on his sisters sitting on either side of him. There’s a look on his face, like he’s daring Eddie to take them away from him.

“Was she home?” Eddie asks. The boy nods. Eddie looks over his shoulder, and Ravi nods before he runs off to check. “Are you guys hurt?”

They aren’t. The building creaks ominously around them as its weight is shifted by the fire eating through it. Eddie manages to get the brother to trust him enough to relinquish his grip on his sisters. Ravi reenters the doorway.

“There’s no one else in here,” he says.

“She is!” the boy says. Something flickers in his face.

“She must’ve stepped out,” Eddie says placatingly. “But we have to get you guys out of here, okay?”

It’s a struggle, because the boy deadweights. Ravi gets both of the girls easily, and Eddie has to use both arms to get the boy up and out of the tub.

The fire has reached the nearest stairwell by the time they’re getting the kids out of the apartment. Eddie keeps his body curled over the boy as they rush down it. The heat from the fire—it’s bigger now. The fire is going to eat through this building. It’s all they can do to contain it.

They get the kids to the triage area. Smoke inhalation is their worse concern, thankfully. Eddie ducks down as he sets the boy on his feet, his sisters already pressing themselves against his side. It’s familiar. Even though Eddie was much older by the time Adriana was this age, it’s familiar.

“You did a good job,” Eddie says, because he knows that’s what he needed to hear. “You’re taking good care of them.”

The boy nods, looking older than he is, and Eddie’s heart breaks.

Eddie moves to stand next to Ravi, looking at the building. All of its upper floors are in flames. The guys on the roof trying to vent the fire have been called back down. Structural failure. Eddie scans the crowd milling around the parking lot. He sees Hen and Chimney by the ambulance, the firefighters from other stations, and a turnout that reads GERRARD at the IC tent.

He doesn’t see Buck.

A call goes out on his radio: “We need to evacuate the building right now.”

Eddie sees Gerrard, but he doesn’t see Buck, and the last time he did, Buck was with Gerrard. But he’s not. Eddie marches up to his captain and asks, “Where’s Buck?”

“Diaz, how’d it go in there?” Gerrard asks, ignoring the question.

“Where’s Buckley?” Eddie repeats.

There’s a pause. There’s the sound of firefighters rushing out of the building, glass breaking, the fire raging on. Eddie looks Gerrard dead in the eyes—and he just knows.

“You left him in there,” he says, incredulous. A laugh almost bubbles out of him, but he swallows it down. “Where were you?”

“I didn’t leave him,” Gerrard hisses back. He pulls himself to his full height, which is a couple inches taller than Eddie. “I’d recommend you watch your mouth, Firefighter Diaz.”

It’s a warning. Eddie ignores it. “Where did you last see him?” he repeats. “You left a firefighter behind, Captain. Tell me where he is.”

The IC is watching them intently. Eddie wants to call out on his radio, but Buck’s been silent the entire time. Eddie can’t help but fear the worst—and then the building collapses.

Eddie whirls around, watching as it falls. Like a house of cards, the top falls onto itself, the debris sliding towards the interior hole of the courtyard. Glass breaks as the building groans, the concrete and drywall toppling over. There’s a burst of light as the fire starts eating its new fuel, entirely exposed to the open air.

A few stragglers burst out of the front doors as the debris falls. Eddie keeps watching, waiting for a miracle—but none of them are Buck.

He paws for his radio, pressing down on the button hard enough he thinks he’ll crack the plastic. “Firefighter Buckley,” he says, swallowing back bile, the panic, the fear, “report.”

It’s silent. Eddie keeps staring at the building, only dimly aware when Hen and Chim stand next to him. He tries again: “Buck, are you there? Answer me.”

When he doesn’t get an answer, Eddie turns back to Gerrard. “Where was he?”

“The sixth floor,” Gerrard says quietly. “He was still sweeping.” He doesn’t explain why he left without Buck. Eddie wouldn’t listen to the explanation anyways.

“Eddie, you can’t,” Hen says, catching his arm. “It’s not safe.”

“I know,” Eddie says. Of course he knows. But Buck is in there—Buck, who has no one watching his back; Buck, who is Eddie’s best friend; Buck, the last person Eddie has left. He can’t let Buck slip through his fingers like everything else. “I have to.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Chimney says, already reaching for his turnouts and gear.

Eddie nods and them—and breaks off towards the building. The IC calls out behind him, but Eddie lets it bounce off his back. Gerrard yells too, but Eddie is done listening to that man.

The main stairwell is blocked by fire and debris. There’s one in the each corner, though, and Eddie makes for the left on instinct. The building shudders and groans around him, the fire crackling in his ears. He makes quick laps of each floor, from one stairwell to the other across the length of the building, calling out Buck? Buck? as he goes.

He finds Buck on the fourth floor, the hallway barely navigable between chunks of concrete and flooring. Eddie sees the helmet first, the fire reflecting off the shiny material. It’s right on the edge—where an entire apartment unit has crumbled down into the the courtyard. Eddie shuffles closer to the edge, testing his weight before moving another step, and then he sees the turnouts.

“Buck!” Eddie shouts, falling to his knees on the ledge.

The unit fell away—an actual gap between where the hallway butts up against the door. Pieces of debris keep falling onto the courtyard, chunks of concrete and flaming furniture. Buck’s in what remains of the unit, holding onto a piece of rebar. It’s the only thing keeping him from falling the fifteen, twenty feet onto a pile of debris and fire.

“Jesus Christ, Buck, are you okay?”

He can see the way Buck is straining. His face is red, his oxygen mask knocked off somewhere, and his arms straining to keep himself and the weight of his kit up. Eddie scrambles for a radio, calling for rope and harness, their location, but his eyes never stray from Buck.

“No,” Buck grunts out, like the effort of speaking is too much to handle.

“Okay, okay, I’m gonna get you up.”

Not without a rope, a harness, anything to anchor himself to what remains of the building. He could jump, land with his feet under him, but he’s more likely to break Buck’s hold on the rebar. Eddie doesn’t want to find out what his weight would do, if Buck would lose his grip, if this whole thing would come falling apart.

“Don’t,” Buck manages. Even with the slight ventilation of a crumbling building, it’s thick and smokey up here; it must be agony to try and speak.

“I can’t just stand and watch!” Eddie snaps.

But that’s what he has to do. He has to wait on Chimney and the harness, he has to wait so someone can anchor him, he has to wait and watch as Buck’s grip slowly starts slipping. Eddie gets as close to the edge as he can manage, but the gap between them is insurmountable.

“Just hold on,” Eddie says. “Just a little longer, Buck. You can do it.”

Eddie has never trusted a thing he couldn’t see or feel. He doesn’t believe in ghost, or jinxes, or that wishes will come true. But he watches Buck dangle over a chasm and he knows—he believes in Buck. He’s believed in Buck for years, an unshaken faith that has kept him on steady feet, that has kept him afloat through these last few terrible months.

Eddie believes in Buck—but still, he looks up. He can maybe see the night sky through the broken interior, through the fire and rubble. Eddie thinks: Please. Just do this one solid for me. I promise I’ll make it right.

Buck falls anyways.

Two firefighters walk into a burning building. Only one walks out.

Chapter Text

Two firefighters walk into a burning building. Only one walks out.

The way Chimney will tell it, months or years down the line when the wound isn’t quite so fresh, he arrived in the hallway to see Eddie dangling over a pit, reaching out for Buck. The fire was still raging around them as Chimney set up the winch, as Eddie strapped himself into the harness with single-minded focus, as Eddie dropped down. The way Chimney will tell it makes it sound like one of their usual close calls.

Chimney won’t know about the way blood dripped from the corners of Buck’s mouth, how he ragdolled, how Eddie asked for a miracle and God decided to spite him specifically.

Eddie sits in the back of the ambulance while Hen and Chimney work on Buck. Smoke inhalation, head trauma, cuts on his arms, bruises already black and purple. Hen worries about broken ribs, if they’ve punctured his lungs. Buck doesn’t wake up, and Eddie grips his hand, pressing his forehead to it, and tries again. Please, let him wake up, Eddie begs. He wonders if it’s the same thing Bobby does whenever Buck is in this situation, praying for God to bar the door just this one time. And the next, and the next. I need him.

The waiting room fills up. Eddie slumps in a chair, still stained with soot and sweat, his hands clasped tight in his lap. If he shakes them out, he knows he’d end up with a bowed head, palms pressed together, Virgin of Guadalupe. Maddie comes first, then Athena and Bobby, a few stragglers from the 118 when shift change strikes. There isn’t news for hours, and Eddie would take to pacing if it weren’t for how every muscle in his body is screaming at him.

Distantly, he thinks about how he needs to call Christopher. He’s just a kid—a teenager, nearing fourteen, nearing high school and then college, moving out, his own family—but he’s be angrier if he knew Eddie withheld this from him. It’s Buck. Eddie can’t take Buck away from him, too.

“Evan Buckley?” A nurse steps out from behind the swinging doors leading into the ICU. Like usual, most of them stand up. Maddie and Bobby are the only ones who get to see him, but the nurse takes a moment to say Buck’s fine. Broken ribs, a severe concussion, some trauma to his lungs—but he’ll live.

Eddie feels like a doll with all his strings cut, slumping into his chair. His hands stay clasped. Chimney, next to him, looks the same.

“Another one of those nine lives, huh?” he mutters.

“Let’s not put an upper limit on it,” Eddie bites back. He stares at the doors leading into the bowels of the hospital. Even though he knows Buck won’t be walking through them, he keeps waiting for it.

“He’ll be okay,” Chimney says. “You got him out, Eddie.”

Eddie doesn’t have a response. It’s late, and everyone’s tired, and no one expects him to.

Maddie finally comes back out. Her eyes are red-rimmed and watery. “He’s sleeping it off,” she says. “They’re going to keep him overnight but tomorrow or the next day, they’ll release him.”

“Can I see him?” Eddie asks suddenly.

“Of course,” Maddie says. She manages a small smile. “Bobby’s still back there.”

Like there is anywhere else Bobby would be.

Buck hasn’t been in the hospital since the coma. Not seriously. Not for an overnight admittance. It’s different, now. He doesn’t need a ventilator or put on ECMO. There’s an IV feeding him fluids, monitors on his hands, but he’s just sleeping. Someone cleaned the blood off his face. It’s just Buck, asleep.

Eddie collapses into a chair at his bedside. Bobby is sitting opposite him. There’s the quiet beeping of the monitors, the quiet clack as Bobby runs his fingers over his rosary. They lock eyes for a moment, Bobby nodding at him, before his gaze falls back to Buck. Eddie reaches out to grab Buck’s hand, holding on tightly.

It’s warm. In the ambulance, Buck’s hand was so cold. Eddie presses their palms together, wonders if this counts as a prayer. Wonders if God did anything at all.

The strain of his shift catches up to him eventually. Eddie’s still in his uniform, his muscles sore from dragging Buck’s unconscious body up and out of the building. He has bruises from the way his harness dug into him. Usually, when one of their team is in the hospital, someone brings a go bag. Buck usually has one packed; sometimes Carla will swing by with a fresh change of clothes and Christopher. But with Christopher in Texas, Carla isn’t around. He texts her about it anyways, gets a response within a couple of minutes with well wishes. She’ll visit when she can.

Bobby finally notices the way Eddie is lagging, shifting in his seat, and sends him home. He lingers for as long as he can, Bobby begrudgingly amused, until he finally gets himself out of the hospital doors. Everyone else cleared out, going home to their families. Chimney and Maddie had to get Jee-yun home before they had a fussy toddler, but Eddie knows Maddie will be back as soon as possible. Everyone has someone to go home to.

Eddie just has his empty house.

He gets an Uber to the station, waves a hand to B-shift as he grabs his stuff from his locker. Everyone’s glad to hear that Buck’s alright. Eddie isn’t in the mood for conversation, though, and everyone can tell. He’s back in his truck before he can snap at anyone, eyes caught on Buck’s jeep where it’s parked right next to Eddie. Buck likes parking next to him. We’re a whale pod! he says every time, a joke Eddie thinks came from Christopher but turned into Buck’s. The jeep is going to be parked there for who knows how long, until Eddie or Bobby remember to move it. All alone.

He drives on autopilot. Eddie barely has to think about it—except he sees a church he’s passed by on every drive to and from the station. He’s never been to this church. It has stucco walls and careful landscaping. It looks just like the ones down in El Paso. Eddie half expects to see his old neighbors making their way through the heavy wood doors as he passes.

Except he turns into the parking lot sharp enough that his wheels squeal, and someone blares the horn behind him in response.

It’s a Saturday morning. Eddie remembers Saturday mornings, his mom stuffing him into pressed khakis, a tiny blazer. Eddie remembers having to enter the confessional with Father Ramirez on the other side of the screen and explain every bad thing he had done that week. Saturday is for Confession—waiting in line, spilling his guts, and spending the rest of the day with some vague sense of nausea from his supposed absolution.

He hated that feeling. It wasn’t why he stopped going to church. But he never felt good, after.

The parking lot isn’t filled. There are cars, people walking in and out of the church doors, stopping to chat. Eddie parks a few spaces away from the nearest car. When he takes his hands off the wheel, they’re trembling.

He takes a deep breath and catalogs. It’s not panic. Not a familiar panic. His panic attacks start in his chest and spread outward. His hands are shaking and his stomach is tying itself into knots, but it’s not panic. If Eddie had to name it—he’d say it’s fear.

And isn’t that stupid. Eddie doesn’t believe in this. Eddie turned his back on the Church, on God, because it never fit him. He didn’t believe, and he didn’t think it was worth empty platitudes.

Out of muscle memory, Eddie crosses himself as he enters, fingers dipping into the bowl of holy water. He hasn’t done this in years. The closest he’s got is letting Abuela cross him back when she lived in Los Angeles and they would see each other often. Eddie’s never felt the urge before.

There’s a wait. Eddie remembers this part, too. He tries not to look, tries not to make guesses on what’s bringing them to Confession. As a first responder, Eddie’s learned to squash down the instinct to judge others. His career was a hell of a lot better at teaching him that than the catechism. No on else is waiting on their phone, so Eddie keeps his in his pockets. His hands feel empty. They’ve stopped shaking, thankfully, but he wants to do something. He wishes he had a rosary, just for a moment. It would give his fingers something to do.

When it’s Eddie’s turn, he pauses for just a moment. Stepping into the confessional—it’s daunting. The door looms ahead of him, heavy wood. When he was a kid, his dad would have to open it for him. It closes behind him the same way the door of a mausoleum would.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

Even a decade later, the words are familiar in Eddie’s mouth. It’s not just his recent blaspheming with them, either. There’s a piece of paper on the wall, a guide to confession. It has prayers written out. Eddie doesn’t have to look at it. A Manchurian Catholic—it was just waiting in the back of his head this entire time.

“It’s been…” Eddie pauses, having to count the years, “fourteen years since my last confession.”

The last time Eddie went to confession was before he was shipped off. His mom had demanded it, and Abuela, all the way in Los Angeles, had agreed. Eddie went overseas absolved of sins and married with a son on the way. There had been priests and chaplains at his stations, and Eddie could have gone to any of them. He could have given confession, could have taken communion, let his mortal soul be saved—but Eddie left his wife and his son behind, and he had blood on his hands, and he figured his soul might as well stay damned.

“I’ve… I’ve done a lot since then,” Eddie says. He stares at the wood grain on the door. “I was in the Army. I killed people. I abandoned my wife, my son. And I… I let her die. I’ve resented my parents. And I’ve… I’ve done so much, Father. I can’t remember it all.”

He didn’t think he had this much to say, anyways. Eddie went to confession because—he doesn’t really know. Bobby told him to. Patrick told him to. Because he’s tired of walking around with this guilt in his chest for simply being alive.

“You have a heavy soul,” the priest replies. He sounds—older. Like Father Ramirez. Eddie wonders what it would be like if it were Patrick on the other side of the screen. “It must have been difficult for you to come today, but it shows you’re seeking change.”

“I don’t…” Eddie scrubs at his face. His shoulders feel heavy, after only a few minutes in this booth. “My best friend almost died at work today. And I—I asked God for a miracle, but he didn’t give me one. And I keeping thinking that it’s because of me. That I’m the problem. That if I—if I were better, He wouldn’t keep punishing me like this.”

“God doesn’t punish us,” the priest says mildly. He doesn’t have a name; he’s just the priest—Father, like Eddie’s brain is telling him. “He disciplines us to put us on the right path. It is not a condemnation by God, but a lesson.”

Easy for him to say. Eddie can’t forget the way Buck looked when he landed in the rubble. It’s everything Eddie had been scared of on this job: failing Buck. Eddie said he had Buck’s back—but not when it really mattered.

“I don’t know what he wants to teach me,” Eddie says hollowly. “My son, he went to go live with my parents. And I can’t even talk to him, to say I’m sorry. And it’s—should I not be a dad? Everything I’ve done, I’ve tried to do for him. But it’s not enough. I’m not enough.”

“You are enough,” the priest affirms. It sounds like an empty platitude, coming from him. He doesn’t know anything about Eddie Diaz—failure of a son, of a father, of a husband. He’s never been enough for anyone. “You do not have to be ‘good enough’ for God, because His grace is all we need.”

“I don’t—” Eddie cuts himself off, frustrated. “I know I can be better,” he insists. “I’ve done so much. I’ve hurt so many people. And I don’t know how to fix it.”

“The people you’ve hurt, are you going to keep hurting them?” the priest asks calmly. “You mentioned you were a soldier. I assume not anymore?”

“No.” Eddie swallows. “I’m a first responder, now. I save—try to save lives now. But that can’t make up for it. I can’t—it’s not a ledger, one life for another.”

The priest hums. “It’s not. There are three parts to reconciliation: lament, penance, and reparation. Have you lamented what you’ve done?”

Eddie thinks about the Silver Star tucked away in a drawer. He’s never been proud of it, except that one day after the well. Christopher had been so excited—and Eddie let himself get swept up with that. But it doesn’t matter. Everyone from that convoy, they’re dead. Except Eddie. He’s told it to everyone, he knows. He regrets joining the Army. He regrets leaving Shannon and Christopher, missing out on those first few years. He regrets the blood on his hands he can never wash out, the fact that he was marked to live while everyone else died.

“I have,” he says quietly. I do. His eyes are burning and he presses his fingers to them, like he can stop the tears from spilling over.

“Next is penance,” the priest continues. “St. Basil once recommended soldiers refrain from communion for three years. There’s fasting and prayer, but I believe you’ve done the penance St. Basil recommended?”

It’s been fourteen years since Eddie’s last confession, fourteen years since he ate one of those crackers with a mouthful of wine. “I have.”

“What’s left is reparation.” The priest voice is a steady calm, and Eddie latches onto it. “You’re right in that you can’t trade a life for a life, but your job allows you to help others. You can do more than that, of course, but giving back to the community, to the world… You give yourself for what you took.”

“That can’t be it,” Eddie insists.

He has to—It needs to be tangible. The blood of Christ, and all that. Eddie will bleed himself dry, if Christopher asked it of him. He can’t just keep doing what he’s doing, and pretend that evens out the scales. Eddie isn’t worth all that much.

“That’s all there is,” the priest says. “You can’t cling to your regret. You can’t repent and move forward.”

“I don’t know how,” Eddie says. His voice is barely more than a whisper, because if he speaks any louder, he might choke on a sob. “I can’t—I think I’m going to be stuck like this. Forever.”

“You won’t.” It’s authoritative—Eddie wants to believe it. “We’re constantly changing as humans. We do the wrong things, we do the right things, and God’s grace fills in the rest. You have to place your faith in Him, and these trials, these rough spots, they’ll all smooth over.”

Eddie knows that the Him is God. He can hear that capital letter. But he thinks of Bobby: What do you believe in?

Eddie believes in Buck. He doesn’t believe in God, not really. But Buck—he’s stuck around. He’s seen Eddie at his worst, crying on his bedroom floor, crying in his kitchen after Christopher left for El Paso. Eddie can’t manage to hide any of himself from Buck. He doesn’t want to.

He was taught, when he was a kid, that God knows everything. Eddie always hated that idea, that he couldn’t have anything to himself. But with Buck, there’s nothing Eddie wants to keep to himself. He wants Buck to know all of it, all of him, his big, ugly, beating heart. And Buck has seen it—and he hasn’t left.

When Eddie doesn’t respond, the priest finishes confession. “Are you going to sin again?” he asks.

Eddie was a bad son, a bad husband, a bad father. He doesn’t want to be. He wants to be good.

“I won’t,” he whispers.

The priest keeps talking—prayers and penance. Eddie’s mouth forms words he’s said a hundred times before, but his brain doesn’t hear them. He’s thinking of half his heart all the way down in Texas. He’s thinking of the other half of his heart in a hospital room.

It’s a beautiful, sunny day outside. It could be like stepping outside of the church down in El Paso, because both cities share the dry heat. But Eddie isn’t nineteen and trying to sand off his rough edges. He’s in Los Angeles. It’s home.

It feels like a weight off his shoulders as he leaves the church. It’s nothing like the nausea he felt as a teenager. Eddie still doesn’t know if there is a god, if he even likes Eddie—but he does know what he believes. He wants to be better for them.

Buck has woken up several times before Eddie makes his way back to the hospital, getting more lucid with each period of consciousness. The nurses confirmed his concussion: grade three, and with his history of them, the nurses dim the lights and refuse to let him turn the TV on. He’s bored, which he tells Eddie with great affront when Eddie gets to his room in the afternoon.

“Get used to it,” Maddie tells him. She’s bent into a chair at his bedside, holding a Kindle in her lap. She smiles up at Eddie, a familiar relief in her eyes. “You look better.”

It’s a lie, Eddie is sure. He caught a quick nap at some point, but spent more than an hour in the shower trying to relax his sore muscles. He looks better than Buck, but Buck is laid up in a hospital bed with a crease to his forehead from the pain.

“Thanks,” Eddie says anyways. He frowns at Buck. “How’s the patient?”

“Bored,” Buck reminds him. He shifts in place on the bed and winces.

“Pain management?” Eddie asks, half to Maddie as he picks up Buck’s chart. He flips through it idly; he can’t make heads or tails of most of it, but it gives him something to do besides look at Buck.

“He can probably have another dose,” Maddie replies. She looks at her phone, frowning. “Are you good to stay, Eddie? I have a shift and Jee-yun is—”

“I got it,” Eddie interrupts her.

Maddie lingers. Eddie can’t blame her; no matter how many times Buck ends up in a hospital bed, it never gets any easier to deal with. He knows Buck was injured a lot as a kid, a teenager—and most times, he was alone in the hospital until his dad checked him out. Maddie doesn’t want to leave him alone. Eddie never does either.

When she finally leaves, with a kiss on Buck’s cheek and leaving her Kindle on her seat if Eddie is willing to read to Buck, Eddie sits down on the side of the hospital bed. Buck’s body tilts towards him and he gives Eddie a wan smile.

“Sorry I won’t be at work,” he says, because that’s always going to be where Buck’s first thought goes. No matter how many times Eddie tells him he has a life outside of work—a family in himself and Christopher—Buck’s never going to think of himself beyond what he does as a firefighter.

“I’ll survive somehow,” Eddie says. He tries to keep his voice light, but it cracks right down the middle. Buck’s expression crumbles and Eddie is sure his own mirrors him. He’s still on edge after this morning, still too fragile. He scrubs at his face roughly, unsurprised when his hand comes away wet. “Shit, sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Eddie, hey.” Buck’s voice is soft. He reaches out to grab Eddie’s hand, and Eddie positions his fingers so they lay over Buck’s pulse point. The machine in the corner is already reading it out for him, but Eddie needs to feel it for himself. “It’s okay,” Buck continues. “I’m okay. You got me out.”

The terrible side of Eddie, a side he hates about himself right now, knows that he shouldn’t have. The building was unstable; it could’ve crumbled over his head and buried the both of them in rubble. This fire could’ve taken them both out and leave no one for Christopher. But Eddie knew, when he altered his will, the lengths he would go to for Buck. He wasn’t thinking about Christopher last night; he was only thinking about Buck.

He can’t say that, though. Buck will take it as an admonishment—that he shouldn’t be Christopher’s godfather, that he was too reckless last night, that Eddie can’t trust him. It’s the furthest thing from the truth.

“Bobby says there’s going to be an investigation into Gerrard’s actions,” Eddie says instead. “He shouldn’t have left you behind. He didn’t radio.”

Buck looks guilty about that. “I didn’t… He just disappeared,” he says quietly. “I thought he found someone, that he told me he was escorting them out and I just missed it. I kept checking the apartments.”

Until the floor fell out beneath him. Eddie squeezes Buck’s hand, feels his pulse steady under two fingers.

“He might not be captain of the 118 for much longer,” Eddie says. It doesn’t feel like a victory, if it took Buck almost dying for everything to sort itself out. “I think Bobby’s going to petition like hell to be reinstated.”

Buck laughs, but the movement jostles his ribs and he winces. Eddie nods towards the PCA pump sitting on his bed. There’s a minor stand-off until Buck hits the button, relaxing back into his pillows as the drugs enter his system.

“Better?” Eddie asks. He slips off the bed, taking Maddie’s abandoned seat. He doesn’t let go of Buck’s hand.

“Some,” Buck says. “Are you okay?” He’s earnest, blue eyes wide, like the prospect of Eddie not being okay is more important than his own health. Eddie’s pretty sure that’s Buck’s understanding of it.

He shrugs. “Just… long day.”

Buck’s face shutters, the way it does when he blames himself for something.

“Don’t make that face,” Eddie tells him. “It’s… I just realized some more things today, that’s all. So what entertainment options are allowed?”

It’s obvious Buck wants to press him on it. If he asked, Eddie would probably spill everything: confession, the details of that conversation, the three words that have been lodged in the back of his throat for weeks now. But he lets Eddie get away with the deflection, and asks if he’ll read the novel Maddie left open on her Kindle.

Eddie’s more than happy to read for a couple of minutes, until Buck drifts off to sleep.

Hours later, after Buck has his hospital dinner and jello cup—after making Bobby promise to bring real food when he comes by later that night—Eddie checks his phone and frowns at the time. Buck clocks it.

“What?” he asks.

“I have to call Christopher,” Eddie says. It’s that time of week: his standing phonecall that only happens half the time, usually because his mom intervenes. “I’m going to tell him you’re hurt.”

“I don’t want to worry him,” Buck protests immediately.

“And I don’t want to hide it from him,” Eddie counters. He sees the way Buck slumps into his pillows, a quiet surrender. “Do you mind if I..?”

Buck waves a hand. “Go ahead.”

Eddie hopes, prays even, that Christopher will answer. All that build up for nothing. But the phone rings through once, twice, until Christopher’s disgruntled voice comes through: “Dad?”

“Hey, Christopher,” Eddie says quietly. “Do you have a couple of minutes?”

He doesn’t put it on speaker, even though Buck’s staring at him intently. He’s probably going to guess what Christopher says anyways.

Christopher pauses before saying, “I guess.”

“I just wanted to let you know that Buck got hurt at work last night,” Eddie says calmly. “He’s fine, just a little banged up.”

“What happened?” Christopher demands. “Is he—He’s awake?”

“He is,” Eddie confirms. He holds the phone up to Buck. “Say hi.”

“Hi, Christopher.” Buck’s voice is rough. He clears his throat. “Sorry, I have a concussion so I’m not allowed to use my phone.”

He doesn’t mentioned the broken ribs or the punctured lung. Eddie won’t bring them up either. Chris says something, tinny and illegible to Eddie. Buck’s eyes dart up to Eddie for a second before he replies, “I promise, I’m fine. But I think your dad wants to talk to you about something.”

Eddie nods. Christopher says something—goodbye, maybe, judging by the way Buck’s mouth lifts in a small smile. He motions for Eddie to take his phone back, and Eddie holds it up to his ear. Christopher doesn’t say anything.

“Can I apologize?” Eddie asks. Buck sucks in a deep breath. Christopher doesn’t reply; it’s not a yes, but it’s not a no, so Eddie keeps talking anyways. “I’m sorry for what I did, Christopher. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry that I keep messing this up.

“I loved your mom. Even though we had our problems, I did love her. I wanted a family with her, with you. And that’s not—it’s not a justification for what I did. But losing Shannon… I lost what I thought was my only chance at a normal family.”

In the hospital bed, Buck seems to curl in on himself. Eddie grabs onto his hand again, squeezing tight.

“I’m gay,” Eddie says. Better tear the bandage off quickly. “But I loved your mom. And it was—and a lot of it was the fact that I could pretend to be normal with her, that she would let me. I didn’t want to admit it to anyone that I was gay. I was so desperate to hold onto her, to the idea that I could have a wife again, and I hurt you while doing that.

“I’m sorry.” Lament. “I never want to hurt you, and I did, and I’m so sorry for it. I’m sorry it took me this long, to make so many mistakes, before I could tell you the truth. I’m gonna… I want to be better. For you. Me.”

Eddie moves a hand to wipe at his face, but ends up just tugging Buck’s hand towards him. Buck seems to get the message anyways, reaching up and wiping at Eddie’s cheeks. His throat is tight; he’s surprised he could get any words out at all.

“I love you,” he says. “I miss you.”

Christopher doesn’t respond for a long moment. Eddie thinks he’s not going to, that he hung up, and he can’t really be mad about it. But then he says, “Okay.”

Just that. Okay. Eddie tilts forward, relief hitting him like a brick wall. Christopher could’ve said more, maybe—but just this simple acceptance is enough. Eddie doesn’t dare ask for more.

“Can I… Can I talk to Buck?” he asks.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

Before Eddie lifts the phone away from his ear, Christopher adds, “Dad, wait.”

“Yeah?”

Heart in his throat. There’s another pause before Christopher sighs a little.

“I want to come home.”

There’s no way Buck didn’t hear it or guess what Christopher said by the way Eddie’s expression crumbles.

“Okay,” Eddie says, trying to keep himself from crying down the phone. He didn’t know how much he wanted to hear it; Eddie spent this entire summer waiting for Christopher to come home. He can’t believe it. “I’ll work out the details with your grandmother.”

He passes the phone over to Buck, almost dropping it on his chest before Buck can grab it. Eddie drops his head to their clasped hands—and he cries. It’s out of relief. He tries to stay quiet so Christopher can’t hear him, pressing his face into the uncomfortable foam of the mattress. He can hear Buck’s voice, a familiar rumble, but he doesn’t pick out the words. Eddie lets it wash over him, wash out of him, until he presses his cheek to Buck’s hands and just looks.

They’re talking about—video games, Eddie thinks. He knows they text throughout the week. With Buck’s concussion, he won’t be doing any texting for several days. He’s doing most of the talking, and Eddie knows it’s probably not light thinking activity, but he doesn’t have the heart to shut him up.

Buck’s eyes fall down to Eddie’s and he smiles, bright despite the concussion and pain. He’s just as excited as Eddie.

Two days later, Eddie gets to bring Buck home from the hospital. There was the usual round of arguing over who gets the honor, but with Bobby and Athena in a one-bedroom apartment and the Hans with their two kids, Eddie easily wins the argument. He doesn’t want to mention how Buck came to his house after his coma, a trump card that would cause more pain anyways, but everyone agrees easily.

Buck gets installed in his bedroom while Eddie hurriedly tries to clean up the piles of clothes he’s been neglecting. Without a kid, he doesn’t really need to do as much laundry.

“I called Carla,” Eddie tells him as he pulls down the blackout curtains. Buck’s concussion is better, but he’s pretty sensitive to lights still. The doctor recommend minimal screen time, so Buck’s left with a pile of books and his boredom. “She can hang out during the evening while I’m at work.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Buck says mulishly.

“You’re not allowed to cook your own dinner,” Eddie says. “She missed us—think of it as a favor for her, okay?”

Buck pouts, but doesn’t argue the point. He lets Eddie check him over again, even though the nurses thoroughly examined him before he was discharged. There’s still the broken ribs but all the pillows Eddie has piled against the headboard lets him sit comfortably.

“When’s Chris getting here?” he asks.

“Three days,” Eddie says with a quiet thread of anxiety.

He’s flying in. Eddie wanted to drive down to El Paso to get him, but that would’ve taken four days if he did it properly. He didn’t want to leave Buck alone for that long. He offered to let Christoper fly instead, and he jumped at the chance. Eddie was willing to let him fly as an unaccompanied minor, but his mom insisted on escorting him. Eddie didn’t offer to pay for her tickets, but she said she was coming—and that was final.

“I can’t wait.” Buck’s been trying to find things they can do in the last few weeks of summer vacation, even though he’s not allowed to move much. Christopher is probably just going to hang out with his school friends after missing them all summer, but Eddie hopes he’ll want to spend some time with his old man and Buck. “Has he said anything else?”

“I don’t think it’s a conversation he wants to have on the phone,” Eddie hedges. “He wants to come home. I’m not really looking for anything else.”

Buck’s expression shows he doesn’t believe Eddie, but he doesn’t argue the point. Eddie isn’t lying. He said what he needed to. Lament, penance, reparation. If Christopher wants to give him the cold shoulder, Eddie will take it. But Christopher coming home is progress. Eddie knows things will fall back together, some day.

Eddie gets Buck settled in his house before he heads in for his shift. Gerrard is on suspended leave, after the incident. It’s the culmination of weeks of complaints and the IC’s report of how Gerrard acted at the scene. Captains from nearby stations have been filling in the gap, but Eddie is certain Bobby’s going to coming back to them soon.

It’s a calm shift. Eddie spends most of his time waiting for messages that won’t come—since Buck can’t text—until Chimney gets tired of his pity party and forces him to play a couple rounds of pool. With the few calls they do have, mostly medical ones, Eddie’s mind wanders.

Buck is in his house, in his bed. Carla had sent a picture around dinner, the two of them eating on his bed. Eddie had swallowed back his complaint about crumbs, mainly glad that she managed to get Buck to eat something. When Eddie gets home, Buck will still be in his bed. It’s not for the first time—but it’s different now.

When Tommy hadn’t shown up in the hospital, Eddie asked Buck about it. They broke up a few days before the accident. Buck didn’t want to get into it, and Eddie didn’t want to ask why he didn’t say anything. Buck’s not broken up about it in the same way he had been about his girlfriends. Eddie tries his best not to read into the fact that Buck broke up with Tommy after Eddie came out to him. Karen had said it: Buck would dump Tommy the second he knows you’re an option. It keeps playing in his head.

The problem with being in love with his best friend, with said best friend probably returning those feelings, is that the risk is much higher. It’s a leap of faith. Eddie has only recently just found he has faith.

He’s not waiting for some moment. Eddie just—he’s still paying penance, even if no one’s holding him to it. He wants to do it right this time around. He needs some time for it to sink in: he’s not a bad father. He’s not a bad husband. He wants to do better by the people he loves, who love him.

Eddie gets home in the early afternoon, tired from their last call which had a rope rescue. He missed Buck at his back, but also because Buck would’ve been the one who would have rappelled down the building instead of him. Eddie’s alright with heights, knows he and Buck are A-shift’s go-to guys for rope rescues, but he’s usually happy to leave the Spider-Man stunts to Buck.

He stumbles through the house all the way to his bedroom, intent on collapsing on his bed after he wrestles out of his clothes. It isn’t until he opens the door that he remembers his bed already has an occupant.

Buck has been awake for awhile, Eddie can tell. He’s surprised he’s still in bed instead of puttering around the house, but his ribs must be bothering him that much. He smiles at Eddie, the brightest thing in the dark room.

“Hey. Good shift?”

“Boring without you,” Eddie mumbles. He eyes the empty space on the bed. The couch is still made up from last night, but it’s a pain on his back. He doesn’t get why Buck insists on sleeping on it so much.

“C’mon, take a nap,” Buck says, already knowing what Eddie’s thinking. He pulls at the covers, inviting Eddie into his own bed.

He thinks about protesting, going back to the couch, but he’s sore all over. Eddie just changes out of his clothes, into fresh sweatpants, and climbs into bed. Buck graciously allows him one of his pillows. Eddie curls up like a lazy parenthesis, his head brushing against Buck’s hip.

“Did you know,” Buck starts quietly, “that there’s a water stain that looks like Brazil in the corner?”

Eddie huffs out a laugh, pressing his forehead into Buck’s hip. “Let me guess, you found your next project?”

Buck likes fixing things up around the house. Eddie’s never found a point to complain, except when he came home from an overtime shift to find Buck halfway through updating the backsplash in the kitchen. He can’t admit he prefers the green tiles Buck picked out, because that would mean conceding. He’s pretty sure Buck already knows anyways.

“Or I’ll start adding in more countries around it,” Buck says. His voice is steady, quiet. He likes talking. Eddie likes listening. But like this, with Buck’s voice such an easy thing to latch onto, with Buck’s hand carding through his hair, it’s easy to fall asleep.

One hour before Eddie needs to be at LAX to pick up Christopher and his mom, he’s standing in his en suite shaving off his mustache. Buck has been upgraded to lightly ambling around the house, so he’s leaning against the bathroom door frame, watching Eddie do it.

“You never really said why you grew it out,” Buck remarks after a moment.

Eddie shrugs. He watches his movements in the mirror: carefully scraping the blade over his upper lip, shaving scream falling off with his movements. It’s weird, having his face be revealed for the first time in months. Eddie hadn’t thought of it like he was hiding—but it’s not him.

When Eddie first learned he could grow a beard, he was laid-up in the base hospital in with three fresh bullet holes in him. He had always followed regulations, always clean-shaven, his appearance always neat and tidy. The last time he had tried to grow facial hair was in high school, and it grew in wispy and patchy. Sophia had mocked him relentlessly for it. In the base hospital, Eddie learned he could grow a thick beard. He used a shitty plastic razor to shave it off before flying home.

He never let his facial hair get thicker than a 5 o’clock shadow, even when he was working three jobs, even when he had a new bullet hole and one working arm. It was a ritual: Eddie shaves, Christopher brushes his teeth, and their day starts.

“I just didn’t think about it,” he says honestly. Christopher went to Texas and Eddie lost that morning ritual. “I just… wanted something I could control, even if I didn’t do anything, y’know?”

He meets Buck’s gaze through the mirror. Buck’s got a contemplative look, which never bodes well for Eddie. He looks away first, focusing on cleaning up the rest of his face. Buck had tried to buy him one of those fancy foil shavers for Christmas once, but Eddie never got the hang of using it. Buck could extol all the benefits of it, weigh the pros and cons of the electric razor versus Eddie’s trusty double-edge razor, but Eddie never switched them out.

He likes the weight of the razor in his hand. His abuelo used a straight razor, carefully running the blade over his face in the mornings. He had promised to teach Eddie when he got older, but he died when Eddie was ten. It was his dad who taught him instead, with shitty Bic razors because it worked just as well for him.

“I get it,” Buck says. He probably does. “Smart that you’re shaving before Chris gets here, though. Don’t want to freak him out.”

“He’s seen it,” Eddie protests, but he laughs anyways.

“It’s way different in person,” Buck argues.

Eddie rolls his eyes, but finishes up with aftershave. It doesn’t sting. Buck’s ambled back into the living room by the time Eddie changes into actual clothes. He’s spent the day after his shift cleaning the house; he changed the sheets on Christopher’s bed, made sure the kitchen was spotless, and even vacuumed under the couch. His mom got a hotel for the night, because Eddie won’t host her even though the couch is free, but she’ll visit for the evening. Eddie doesn’t want to give her any opportunities to nitpick.

They haven’t talked since Eddie came out to her. Arranging for Christopher’s flight home meant using him as a go-between, which Eddie has never wanted to do to him. But his mom never called or texted on her own, and Eddie doesn’t want to be the one who reaches out first. He’s gotten the message by now.

“You sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Buck asks.

Eddie checks his pockets. Wallet, phone, keys. “You’re just gonna rattle those ribs,” he says. “We’ll be back soon.”

He never voices the idea of Buck going back to his apartment. Eddie doesn’t want him to. He’s grateful Buck is here, knows he’d be here even if he wasn’t laid up with broken ribs.

“Okay,” Buck says quietly. He’s just as excited for Christopher to come home—just as apprehensive. “Grab dinner on your way home?”

Home. He says it so easily. Eddie’s spent years trying to convince Buck he has a home here, in this house. He doesn’t think it’s set in, still. It’s just easier to say home instead of the house. Eddie lets himself believe Buck means it.

“I think In-n-Out was on Christopher’s list of demands,” Eddie says. No doubt his mom will have something to say about that, too. “Don’t start stress cleaning, okay? We’ll be back in a bit.”

“Drive safe,” Buck calls as Eddie swings the door open.

He doesn’t bother locking it behind him. Buck’s home.

The drive to LAX only winds Eddie up. Los Angeles traffic is terrible, and he gets stuck in a gridlock. His phone buzzes with a message from Christopher: they’ve landed, but have yet to deplane. Eddie watches as his car’s clock ticks up and up, as he gets closer to being late.

By the time he makes it to arrivals, Christopher and his mom are already standing outside the airport, waiting. Eddie’s stomach is churning with nerves as he pulls up to the curve, hazards on, as he trips over himself getting out of the car.

“Christopher!” he calls, and his son’s head swivels towards him.

Eddie doesn't know what he expected. Some grand Hollywood reunion, Christopher racing into his arms. He doesn’t get that. Instead, Christopher gets Helena’s attention by pointing, and starts walking over. Eddie hurries to meet them, reaching out to take Christopher’s suitcase from his mom.

“I have it,” she says curtly.

“Mom, please.” Eddie holds out his hand. She considers him for a moment before finally letting go of it. “Good flight?”

“It was alright,” Christopher says. He’s only flown twice before, down to El Paso and back when Adriana got married a few years ago.

“I don’t know how you expected him to fly alone,” Helena says. “It’s a good thing I came with, because security was given him problems over his crutches. They would’ve broken them if I wasn’t there, and then what?”

“Christopher is plenty mobile,” Eddie says tiredly. He was expecting the arguments; he just didn’t think it would start this early. “Thank you, for coming with him.”

He nudges Christopher. It’s the first time they’ve touched since that morning months ago. Eddie doesn’t want to force Christopher into a hug, even though all of him just wants to grab onto Christopher and never let go.

Christopher sighs. “Thanks, Grandma.”

She’s appeased by the gratitude. She climbs into the passenger seat and starts fiddling with the radio before Eddie even manages to pull away from the curb.

“Mom, please,” he says, when she finds the NPR station. Eddie barely even uses the radio, always connecting his phone and playing his own music. When Buck’s driving, or he’s driving with Buck, the conversation is always the loudest.

“What?”

“Am I allowed to talk, or do we have to listen to the radio?”

When Eddie was a kid, his mom would always put on the radio. NPR. Talk shows. Their droning voices would bore Eddie to sleep. On the rare afternoons she would pick him up from school, if Eddie was bubbling with a fact or anecdote to tell her, she’d always tell him to be quiet so she could listen to the radio. By the time they got home, Eddie always forgot what he wanted to say.

“What’s there to talk about?” she says. It’s pointed.

“Christopher’s summer,” Eddie starts, “or what he wants for dinner, or if he has any plans for the next two weeks before school starts. I like to let my kid talk, if he wants to.”

Helena leans back in her seat with a huff. Eddie turns the volume down, muting the noise of the radio. He tries to catch Christopher’s eyes in the rear view mirror, but he’s too busy looking at his phone.

“Buck wants us to pick up dinner on our way back,” he tries.

That gets his attention. “Buck’s home?” Christopher asks. It’s the first hint of excitement since Eddie picked him up.

“He is,” Eddie says. “Still got those busted ribs, but he’s doing a lot better. Any idea on what you want for dinner?”

Eddie isn’t surprised when Chris immediately suggests In-n-Out. It’s a special treat, but Eddie thinks he deserves it today of all days. Helena isn’t enthused by the choice, pursing her lips when Eddie drives up to the brightly lit building. No matter the time of day, there’s always a rush. It’s a torturously long wait until Eddie can order for them. He gets the simplest burger for his mom, knowing she’ll complain about it anyways.

It’s a relief to pull into the driveway and see Buck already pulling the door open. There’s a scramble from the backseat and Christopher launches out of the truck, beelining for Buck as he makes his way down the pathway.

“Buck!” Christopher shouts. Eddie grins to himself as they hug—gingerly, with Christopher more than aware of how Buck’s injured. “You’re okay?”

“Never been better, thanks to your dad,” Buck promises. He probably means it, too. “Did you guys get dinner?”

“Dad let us get burgers,” Christopher says. He leans in to whisper something and Buck laughs, his bright eyes meeting Eddie’s across the yard.

Eddie grabs Christopher’s suitcase and the bag of greasy food. His mom hovers next the truck, suddenly unsure of herself. For a moment, Eddie feels vicious satisfaction.

“Alright, let’s eat,” Eddie says, ushering them all inside.

His mom doesn’t take off her shoes. They weren’t a shoes-off house growing up, mainly because of scorpions. Eddie doesn’t mention it. He just resigns himself to vacuuming again once she’s left.

They settle around the dining table, Christopher and Buck carrying most of the conversation. It’s always been like this; Buck is good with kids—good with Christopher—in a way that’s natural to him. Eddie still thinks he’s fumbling through it most days. Christopher, even with his teenaged angst, is a natural chatterbox. He and Buck are a perfect match.

Eddie does his best to avoid his mom’s gaze. He knows they’re going to have to talk before she leaves; Helena won’t leave without one proper conversation. Eddie wants to put it off for as long as possible, though. He doesn’t want Christopher to overhear it.

It happens in the kitchen. Christopher dragged Buck to his room to help him unpack, but Eddie’s pretty sure that suitcase is just going to live on his bedroom floor for a week or two. Eddie tosses the trash from their dinner, and isn’t surprised when his mom is waiting for him in the kitchen doorway.

“You’re living with a man, now?” she asks.

“He’s injured,” Eddie says tiredly. “We look after each other, that’s what we do.” If he wants Buck to move in with them—that’s none of her business. It would just be another thing for her to judge him over.

“I don’t understand, Eddie,” she says. “I don’t know how you convinced Christopher to come back—”

“I didn’t convince him, he asked to come back!” Eddie protests.

“So what? You told him that Buck was injured, of course he was going to come back.”

It’s like another sniper’s bullet, the way she so easily finds the place that hurts the most. It’s why Buck didn’t want to tell Christopher, didn’t want to take the choice out of his hands. Eddie had known, hadn’t he? If he told Christopher that Buck—one of the few adults he trusts, the few adults that has managed to stick around—was injured. Of course Christopher wanted to come back.

“It was his choice,” Eddie insists, because he has to believe that.

She makes a disbelieving noise. “Sure, of course,” she says, sarcastic and biting. “And everything else? You call me, tell me you’re—” her voice falters “—gay, and then don’t call again? What is going on with you? How is this a good environment for Christopher?”

“I am,” Eddie says. He knows that’s the point of this conversation. His parents are old-fashioned. They insisted on Eddie and Shannon getting married so their child wasn’t born outside of a marriage. They make faces at rainbow flags. His mom has made more than one comment about their neighbors; his dad just doesn’t talk about it at all. “I’m gay.”

“You don’t—you can’t be,” she insists. “Christopher—”

“Is the greatest thing I have ever done,” Eddie finishes for her. “And I wouldn’t change a thing, as long as I would still have my son. But I don’t—I don’t like women. I’m done dating them. I’m not going to find a new mother for Christopher like everyone thinks I should.”

“You’re going to get a husband instead?”

It’s supposed to be mocking, he knows. She wants to believe this is all just a big joke. Eddie is going to fold like he always does, do what she wants. It’s not like he has a great track record for standing up to himself. He had to move to Los Angeles to even start living his own life, on his own terms, away from his parents.

“I’ll start with a boyfriend,” he says. His eyes slip past her, down the hallway where Buck and Christopher are. She notices, of course. “But I’m not going to be the man you want me to be. I can’t.”

“Of course you can,” she insists. “You don’t—you don’t have to do this.”

Maybe in another life, Eddie would fold. He would agree and sweep all of this under the rug. He’d carve out the unsightly pieces and keep leaving, less of a full person. But he thinks of Patrick, how he couldn’t subsist on faith alone, always having to hide his true self. It’s not a life Eddie wants for himself. It’s not a life Eddie would want for his own son; it can’t be enough for him, either.

“I’m not going to pretend for your sake, mom. I’m sorry I could never be the son you wanted, that I can’t give you a daughter-in-law you actually like. I’m just—this is who I am. And it’s enough for me.”

Unspoken: Why can’t it be enough for you?

She doesn’t have anything to say. Whatever she has to say—Eddie doesn’t want to hear it.

“I think you should leave,” he suggests softly.

“I should,” she agrees stiffly. She doesn’t move yet, just staring at him. “When you get over… this, I’ll be waiting.”

Eddie stays in the kitchen as she goes to say goodbye to Christopher. He leans over the sink, thinking he might vomit for a good minute before the feeling subsidies. He hears their voices, all three of them, as Helena makes sure Christopher knows he can call her for anything, and as Buck slowly starts herding her out the door. Even without Eddie to pick up cues from, Buck knows what he needs.

Christopher goes back to his room and Buck finds him in the kitchen. It only takes one look, Buck’s concern coming off him in waves, before Eddie’s crumpling.

It’s quiet, the way he cries. Eddie used to cry loudly, he knows, until his dad took him aside and told him boys have to be strong. Even when Eddie broke his arm playing baseball, even when he was in and out of pain after three new bullet holes, Eddie’s tears were silent.

He’s not loud, not now, but the way his breath hitches is obvious in the quiet of the room. Buck crosses the distance between them, carefully folding Eddie in a hug without regard for his ribs. He doesn’t say anything, just lets Eddie press his face to Buck’s collarbone, hugging him tight enough like it’ll keep Eddie from shattering.

When Eddie finally, reluctantly, pulls away from Buck, he’s got red eyes like he’s been crying too. The Buckleys are sympathetic criers, Eddie knows. It’s kinda the worst, because when Buck is crying, it makes Eddie want to start too, a terrible feedback loop.

“I take it you had a good conversation with your mom?” Buck says quietly. The joke doesn’t really land well, but Eddie huffs out a laugh anyways.

“It could’ve gone worse,” he says. It could’ve gone better, but that would mean his mom actually liking him. Eddie’s pretty sure the time for that has long passed. “How’s Christopher?”

“Complaining about how dusty his PC is,” Buck says. “He’s already asking for rides to hang out with his friends, so I think we’ll have a busy week of chauffeuring him around ahead of us.”

It’s so normal. All Eddie wanted was this: Christopher back in the house, making demands, being the teenager Eddie is so happy he grew into. Buck is here, too. Eddie can’t ask for more.

“You’re still not cleared to drive,” Eddie replies. “We’ll figure it out.”

Buck’s looking at him like Eddie’s talking about something more than driving Christopher around. Maybe he is. “Yeah, we will,” he agrees.

Two firefighters sitting in a tree. There’s a cat up there too. One firefighter says to the other, “How are we going to get down?” because there’s no ladder, and the cat’s squirming, and the firefighters don’t know how they got into a tree anyway. It’s just a drop down, hoping there’s soft ground below them. The firefighter holding the cat, scratches on his arms, says simply: “Just jump.”

He does. The other firefighter stays in the tree, until the loneliness is too much, and he follows.

Within a week, Bobby is reinstated at the 118 as its captain. Buck tags along with Eddie for the beginning of their shift, because there’s a truly massive cake waiting. (It mostly looks like a film set; Eddie understands the sentiment.) Bobby is all smiles. He and Athena found a house, and are just waiting to close on it. Buck’s still got a few weeks to go before his ribs are fully healed, but he grabs Bobby into a tight hug that last for several minutes. No one has the heart to separate them.

Buck sticks around for the first couple of hours, taking great pleasure in being handed a clipboard and following behind Chimney as he cleans and restocks the ambo. He doesn’t bother with Hen, since she’s more likely to snap his clipboard in half. Eddie’s the only one who thinks Buck isn’t annoying when he’s holding a clipboard, so Buck actually doesn’t bother him that much.

When the first call comes in, Buck waves them all off as they load up and out. It’s a pile-up, five cars rammed into each other and off the road. There aren’t any fatalities, thankfully, but it takes them over an hour to get back to the firehouse. Buck’s gone, and in his place is a neatly prepared platter of sandwiches.

“I think we should hire an in-house cook,” Chimney remarks. “Why can’t this be Buck’s light duty?”

“He’d probably try to poison you eventually,” Eddie says. Chimney places his hand on his heart, feigning offense.

He checks his phone, and just finds a message from saying Buck that he made it home after ordering an Uber. He’s still on limited screen time thanks to his concussion, so Eddie doesn’t get to text him throughout his shift like he usually does when they’re on opposite schedules. The only time they get to talk is when they’re both home, and Eddie finds he misses Buck all the time.

They’ve been sharing the bed, too. With the wall of pillows Buck has to use to keep himself from moving overnight, there’s always a good amount of space between them. It never stops Eddie from reaching across and grabbing Buck’s wrist, feeling his heartbeat to settle his nerves.

It’s late at night, and Eddie can’t sleep because he misses Buck. Most everyone else is in the bunkroom, taking advantage of the time between calls to get some rest. Eddie’s on the couches, spinning his phone between his hands. He could call Buck—it doesn’t really count as screentime if Buck’s not looking at his phone—but it’s late, and Eddie doesn’t want to wake him up.

He knows Bobby is in his office, trying to catch up on the months of missed paperwork and making sense of the mess Gerrard made of it, but Eddie’s still surprised when Bobby settles on the armchair near the couches. He has a steaming mug in each hand, holding one out to Eddie. It’s tea, judging by the smell. Eddie’s not much of a tea drinker, unless it’s sweet tea, but he knows Buck and Bobby are. He takes it anyways.

“How’s it been, since Christopher’s gotten back?” Bobby asks quietly.

“Great,” Eddie says, which is true. Compared to most of the summer, which felt like being on rock bottom, just having Christopher in the same house makes everything that much better. “He’s still… He hasn’t talked to me about it. I don’t know if I should keep waiting him out, if he still needs more time, or if I should just talk to him first.”

“I’m not going to ask what happened,” Bobby says, “but he takes his cues from you. If you’re not going to talk, then he probably won’t either.”

“So I should talk to him first?” Eddie asks, just to cut through the cryptic advice Bobby always gives.

“You know your son more than anyone else,” he says, which might be true. Eddie doesn’t know who gets that honor, him or Buck. “You’re the only one who can answer that question.”

Eddie huffs out a quiet laugh. “Man, I thought you’d be done with the mysterious advice shtick by now. Didn't your time in Hollywood get you into those big, motivational speeches?”

“Not my style,” Bobby replies. “I’m never going to be able to watch an episode of that show.”

Eddie, bravely, does not tell him about the Hot Shots watch party Hen is planning for the entire firehouse.

“You’ve been… lighter,” Bobby continues.

“I’m trying to be,” Eddie says. “I, uh, I went to confession after we talked.” He can feel the way Bobby starts, surprised that Eddie took him up on that particular advice.

“Yeah? And it helped?”

Eddie nods. “It’s not—I think I’m finally, y’know, divorced from it. But it helped. You did, too, so. Thank you, Bobby.”

He accepts the thanks with his usual deflection. “And the other thing? Did you find your faith yet?”

Eddie thinks about Buck. He thinks about Buck, waiting for him back at home, because Eddie’s never told him to leave and he knows Buck never wants to leave. He thinks about the easy way Buck handled his mom, the way Buck takes care of Eddie in quiet ways. Eddie wants to return the favor; he wants to give Buck the same, quiet love that Buck’s been giving him for years.

“I have,” he says softly.

Bobby smiles at him knowingly. It must be obvious to everyone around them. Eddie doesn’t mind it that much.

When he gets home the next afternoon, Buck’s in the kitchen, cooking again. It’s just the two of them, because Christopher is at one of his friend’s houses for a sleepover. Summer is almost over, school starts in just a week, but Eddie’s more than happy to let him dictate these last few days. He knows he’s being a bit of a pushover—even Buck says so, and Buck’s the biggest pushover when it comes to Christopher—but Eddie thinks he deserves a bit of slack. Things are good right now. He wants to keep them that way.

“Hey!” Buck calls out, as Eddie sets his keys in the entryway, kicking his work bag into the laundry room as he moves deeper into the house. “Good shift?” he asks when Eddie makes it into the kitchen.

“Boring without you,” Eddie says. It’s his new joke; it’s the way he’s answered the question every time Buck has asked it. It’s the truth, but a reminder: he wants Buck with him, all the time. “You’re cooking?”

“It’s not like I can really do anything else,” Buck complains with a smile. “Can you grab a mixing bowl for me, please?”

Eddie follows the order, turning into Buck’s helper around the kitchen. He’s mainly called on for grabbing things out of the cabinets, since Buck shouldn’t be bending over or reaching up. Buck spent most of his day listening to the backlog of some podcast about national parks and struggling to crochet. He’s trying to make a hat for Jee-yun, but it just looks like a clump of yarn whenever Eddie spots the project.

Buck likes doing things for other people. He likes cooking, because Bobby taught him how and Buck hates cooking just to eat alone. He likes fixing things, like the holes in Eddie’s bedroom walls or a skateboard that Christopher can actually use. Buck had once said his love language was acts of service, which Eddie gets, but he thinks that’s bullshit. (The entire idea is bullshit, really.) Love just pours out of Buck. He never makes an attempt to stop it, giving it away freely. He wears his heart on his sleeve, he feels things so deeply, and his love is the only thing Eddie’s never had to earn—Buck just gives it to him.

It shouldn’t be this easy. It was so hard with Shannon, once Christopher was born. In high school, Eddie knew what to do. He followed Shannon’s lead, joked with the guys on varsity, and never had to doubt what he was doing. When Christopher was born, neither of them knew what to do, fumbling their way into marriage and parenthood without any guidelines. Buck didn’t have any guidelines either, but he just stepped into it with Eddie anyways, and fixed his life.

It’d be disrespectful to refuse it, Bobby said. Buck wants to help, would try to carry the entire world on his back if it made life easier for just one person. He’s been with Eddie this entire time, helping him with Christopher, his injuries, the bone-deep sadness that almost overwhelmed him a few years back.

Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever said thank you—but those words seem so small in comparison to everything Buck has done for him.

He stares at Buck’s back, his broad shoulders, the way he’s finally relaxed after a few weeks of pain and discomfort. He’s at home in the kitchen, because it’s his kitchen. The entire house is his. Eddie should put his name on the mortgage, tie them together in more ways than just the will, because he’s it for Eddie.

It’s so easy for Buck. It can be that easy for Eddie, too.

“Bobby and I were talking the other day,” Eddie says suddenly, “about faith. He had asked me what I had faith in, because he, y’know, believes in god and all that.”

“Yeah?” Buck pauses his movements, taking the pan off the burner.

“Mhm. And when you were—you were in the hospital, I went to confession. And the priest is talking to me about god, right, and I don’t really believe it. I don’t think I ever did. But Bobby had asked what I had faith in, something I knew would always be there for me. And it’s you.”

“Eddie…” Buck is barely louder than a whisper, breathless. He reaches out and Eddie meets him halfway, grabbing onto his free hand tightly.

“It’s you, Buck,” he repeats. “You’ve always been here for me, even when I don’t deserve it, and maybe I still don’t, but I want you here anyways.”

He’s trying to say the words, trying to force them out in the right order, but he doesn’t need to. Buck understands immediately.

“I love you, too,” he says, using their clasped hands to tug Eddie closer and kiss him.

This time, it is fireworks. Eddie feels warmth pool in his stomach, spreading through his limbs as Buck kisses him. There’s the scratch of his stubble on Eddie’s face, because he hasn’t shaved in a few days, and it’s a new sensation. He kisses Eddie like nothing else matters; the entire world shrunk down just to the two of them.

It feels like an eternity by the time they finally pull away from each other. Eddie’s mouth stings from the stubble, and he presses his fingers against his face to feel the way his lips are swollen.

“You need to shave,” he says.

Buck stares at him incredulously before breaking into laughter. “That’s—That’s the first thing you’re going to say?”

“I’m serious!” Eddie says, but he can’t help the way his face splits in a grin. “I shaved my mustache! You have to take care of that stubble.”

“I don’t know,” Buck hums. “I kinda miss it, now that you mention it.”

“Shut the fuck up, you do not.”

“We can revisit it later,” Buck declares.

He’s just so ridiculous—Eddie leans in to kiss him again. He could probably spend the rest of his life kissing Buck, and might’ve spent the rest of the night doing exactly that, but then the stovetop clicks.

“The food,” Eddie says, pulling back. “We should—dinner.”

Buck looks like he wants to protest. He looks like he wants to drag Eddie down the hallway to the bedroom, but with his ribs, the list of activities is greatly limited. He sighs, like it’s a great chore, and puts the pan back on the burner.

“Thank you for cooking,” Eddie says, just to see the way Buck’s face and neck reddens. Probably all the way down his chest, too. “I love you.”

Now that he’s said it, it’s like a weight falls off of him. Eddie had been walking around with something in his chest his entire life, burying himself under lie after lie, that to finally say the truth—it feels like freedom. Like swimming his way out of that well again, a sheer relief at being alive, affirmed in his choices.

“You can’t keep saying that if you want me to finish cooking,” Buck says without any heat.

Eddie makes up for it, staying within arm’s reach the entire time Buck cooks. The stir-fry is only a little burnt by the time they sit down to eat, but it’s a fair price to pay.

Talking to Christopher is easier said than done. Eddie is still being a pushover; Christopher is still being recalcitrant. As the weeks go on, Christopher talks to him more. Eddie doesn’t know if they can go back to how things were before, and Christopher is getting older now; being best friends with his dad and his dad’s best friend isn’t really cool. Eddie hesitates over it, and keeps hesitating.

There are days when he looks at Christopher and just sees Shannon. It’s where he got his fair hair from, his nose, the way he laughs at anything and everything. They’re so alike that it hurts, a physical pain in his chest. Christopher is the last piece of Shannon that exists in this world—and sometimes the grief sneaks up on Eddie. It feels like it’s choking him. He never got over her, not in the ways that matter. It’s unfair to let Christopher shoulder it alone.

He doesn’t know how to have the conversation. He doesn’t know how to have a lot of conversations; it’s why he goes to Bobby, or Hen, or even takes advice from a hook-up. Eddie grew up too fast, lived an entire life in just a couple of years, and is still trying to pull himself together.

“Just say you want to talk,” Buck says. “Christopher isn’t oblivious, he knows we’re sharing the bedroom.”

Because even though Buck’s ribs have mostly healed, and the concussion has healed, and he could probably go back to his apartment, neither of them want him to. Eddie spends his nights with Buck in his bed, curled together, one hand on Buck’s pulse point like a reminder. Christopher notices, because Buck hasn’t left and the couch never gets made into a bed.

“What if he—” Eddie starts, but doesn’t finish.

There’s a chance Christopher won’t like it, he knows. There’s a difference between your dad being gay, and your gay dad dating another man. Even if it’s someone Christopher knows. Eddie feels like his relationship with Christopher is a fragile piece of glass, and he’s constantly mishandling it.

“You won’t know until you talk to him,” Buck says softly. He’s right, of course. So is Bobby, because Buck probably went to him for advice anyways.

The first time Buck leaves in several weeks is to babysit Jee-yun while the Hans and Wilsons move Mara over to the Wilson house. She is, according to Buck, not happy about losing her sister. Eddie already knows she’s going to spend the next year or so asking for a little sibling; Christopher had gone through that phase when he was younger, too. Once they moved to Los Angeles, though, he stopped asking. Eddie hates knowing how lonely he was when they lived in El Paso.

It’s just him and Christopher for a couple of hours, and Eddie is hesitating in the kitchen. He looks to the fridge, the various pictures Buck stuck up there with magnets. Christopher’s wide smile is in every picture he’s in. Eddie hasn’t seen it in awhile. Not directed at him at least. Eddie thinks about grief, and loneliness, and figures it’s time to stop avoiding the conversation.

He knocks on Christopher’s door. He keeps it shut now. Eddie remembers when he started closing his door, trying to keep out his sisters and his mom. He never had anything to hide, because he always snuck out to see Shannon or drink on the baseball diamond, but he liked knowing he just had one place that was his. His parents never knocked, his sisters always ran on in. Eddie knocks, because he wished someone did when he was younger.

“Christopher?” he calls through the door. “Can we talk?”

There’s a long pause, a quiet murmur. He’s probably playing games online. Eddie should probably be worried about it, but Christopher is so active at school.

The door opens and Christopher blinks up at him. “What?” He says it shortly—not snapping, but like he doesn’t get why Eddie wants to talk.

“Why don’t you come into the living room?” Eddie suggests. Christopher sighs, but trails after Eddie anyways. He doesn’t need his crutches for the short distance, steadies himself with a hand on the wall. Eddie wonders how many times his parents forced Christopher into using them, not trusting that he knows his own limits.

“I want to talk about this summer,” Eddie starts. “I know we talked a little, over the phone, but I want to make sure that we’re okay. If there’s anything I can do for you to—to make up for it.”

Christopher shrugs. “I just… I don’t get it. You said it was about Mom, yeah, but you just—you never think about me. About how I feel.”

“Oh, Christopher… Everything I did, I had you in mind,” Eddie says. “I was doing what I was taught was best, what I thought I had to do. And for a while there, I thought that meant getting you a new mom.”

“I don’t want a new mom,” Christopher says quickly. “I never did, but there was Ms. Flores and Marisol, and you never really asked me how I felt. You just—You waited until I got familiar with them, and then you broke up with them.”

“I know,” Eddie says. “And I’m sorry for that. I didn’t… I couldn’t be who they wanted, right? Even when I didn’t know that I was gay,” he stutters over it, because it’s only the second time he’s said it to Christopher, “I still knew something was off. I thought it was something about me that was wrong, that I just wasn’t made for it.” He laughs. “I guess I wasn’t.”

Christopher isn’t really looking at him. His eyes are over Eddie’s shoulder, at the collection of photographs Buck hanged on the wall for them. He knows there are ones of Shannon, immortalized in that winter when they were a family again. Eddie had let Kim see those photos. She nailed the look, when she came knocking, but she didn’t know Shannon—Eddie doesn't think anyone did.

“Are you dating Buck?” he asks suddenly. He’s looking at Eddie now.

“I am,” Eddie says slowly. “We’re taking it slow.” Christopher snorts in obvious disbelief. “Hey, none of that. It’s Buck. What’s bad about it?”

“It’s Buck,” Christopher stresses. “You can’t—You can’t take him from me, too.”

“What?”

“He’s going to leave, because that’s what you do.” Christopher is working himself up. “You date people and they leave. Buck’s going to leave too. They always do!”

Eddie reaches out and grabs Christopher’s hand. He doesn’t pull away. Eddie squeezes lightly. “Buck’s not going anywhere. Buck loves you so fucking much, kid, I think he’d actually fight me for custody. It’s not gonna happen, though. We’re… Buck is it. For me. It’ll work this time.”

“It better,” Christopher demands.

Eddie should probably be insulted that his teenaged son thinks he’s bad at dating, but Eddie has already known that. Shannon was the one who did all the work; Eddie was always just following her lead. It’s always been like that. Buck is the first time that Eddie is the one going first. Eddie gave Buck his house key, Eddie wrote Buck into his will, Eddie fumbled his way into saying I love you.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I haven’t been a good dad. I’m sorry that I never know how to talk about things like this. I’m trying to be better. If there’s anything that I do that you don’t like, you can tell me.” He catches Christopher’s gaze. “Hey. I mean it. You’re my son, and there’s some things I have to do as your parent, but you’re a person too. Any feelings, thoughts, I want to hear them.”

Christopher scoffs. “The last time I said something, you quit your job.”

“That was an overreaction from me,” Eddie says with a wince. “I might’ve used you as an excuse, but that was me. I’m sorry for that, too.” He thinks he’ll spend the rest of his life apologizing to Christoper. Lament, lament, lament. At least he’s willing to say it; his dad was in his fifties by the time he said the words to Eddie.

“I like when you’re with Buck,” Christopher says. “Because when you’re with Buck, you’re happy. And when you’re not happy, you kinda take it out on me.”

Eddie’s heart breaks. “What do you mean?”

“I’m collateral damage,” Christopher mutters. “I really don’t want to be, anymore.”

“Oh, Christopher.”

Eddie reaches out for the first time since Christopher got home, and he doesn’t shy away. Eddie hugs him, holding him close and tight in a way Christopher hasn’t tolerated for awhile. He glasses are digging into Eddie’s neck and collarbone, but it’s the way Christopher’s breathing hitches on a sob that hurts the most.

“Why did you do it? Why was she here?”

“I didn’t ask her to do that,” Eddie says. It’s his one solace: Eddie didn’t ask Kim to do that. It’s not solely on him. “She thought she was giving me closure. And I needed it, but I should have never done it that way.”

“Why don’t you talk about Mom?” he asks next. “If you… I would talk about her. If you needed me to.”

“We should,” Eddie agrees, “but the stuff I need to talk about isn’t really what I want you to hear. She’s your mom. No matter… No matter what happened between me and her, I don’t want to change what she meant to you. She loved you so much, bud.”

Not enough to stay, Eddie thinks cruelly. But that’s something he could never voice to Christopher.

“If you date Buck, you can never break up with him,” Christopher says seriously. “I mean it. I’m not— Don’t make me choose between the two of you.”

Eddie’s heart breaks, at the idea that Christopher would. With that comes a fair amount of happiness. He’s glad it would be a struggle for Christopher. He’s glad Christopher loves Buck so much.

“You’re never going to have to,” Eddie says solemnly. He leans back. Christopher’s eyes are red, matching Eddie’s own, probably. “We’re going to keep him around forever.”

Eddie knows Buck, has his faith in the man, and knows it’s the truth. Eddie could fuck it all up tomorrow—and Buck would still keep coming around, love pouring out of him.

Christopher gets tired of hugging his old man eventually and escapes back to his room. Eddie sits on the couch until Buck gets home. And it is home, for all three of them. Buck doesn’t even have to ask to know Eddie talked to Christopher. He just smiles, and kisses Eddie, and Eddie knows he’s not perfect, that he can be better—but he lets himself have this.

When Buck finally is allowed on active duty, Eddie is excited. Not just because he has Buck by his side at work, something he’s desperately missed, but because Buck is finally cleared for strenuous duty. They can finally progress from handjobs and grinding like a couple of horny teenagers. Eddie is pretty sure he hides his desire to have sex with his boyfriend—a new thing for the two of them, and Buck grins a little stupidly every time he gets to say it—except Hen takes one look at him and groans.

“If this is what you look like unrepressed, I think you should go back into the closet,” she says. She punctuates it by prodding Eddie in the middle of his forehead, breaking the way he’s been watching Buck lean on a cue stick while he plays pool with Chim and a few others.

“I think they’re sweet,” Bobby says goodnaturedly. There hadn’t been actual paperwork, since the fraternization policy comes down to the captain’s judgment.

Bobby had given them a full lecture on appropriate workplace behavior, which Eddie was certainly going to stick to. He’s still weird with PDA; Eddie doesn’t mind when Buck holds his hand, but he never reaches out first. Buck understands how Eddie wants to keep as much separation as they can between work and their relationship. It’s impossibly to fully separate them, living and working in each other’s pockets, but when they walk into the firehouse—they’re firefighters.

“It’s not like I wasn’t doing this before,” Eddie says.

“But now you have that look,” Hen continues, waving a hand to indicate the expression his face must be making. “It’s nauseating.”

“Would it be better if I grew out the mustache again?” Eddie asks.

She throws a pillow at him.

Buck’s first shift back is a busy one. If Eddie were a superstitious man, like his boyfriend or Chimney, he’d accuse someone of saying the q-word. They jet between medical calls and small residential fires; car wrecks and a suspected gas leak in an office building. Eddie feels the exhaustion of a long shift creeping up on him every time they pile back into the engine, but Buck’s always bouncing in his seat. After weeks of being cooped up at Eddie’s house, only going to his own apartment a handful of times, he’s more than excited for being back at work. His excitement is a feedback loop that perks Eddie up, until both Hen and Chimney are complaining about their seemingly endless energy.

Eddie likes to think Buck just brings out the best in him, out of everyone. He sets the tone for the shift; if Buck’s feeling good, it’s going to be a good day. If Buck’s off, then it’s going to be a bad one. He’s good at pretending he’s good, even when he isn’t, but when he’s like this—excited, brimming with happiness—it’s hard to feel the strain of the long shift.

As the twenty-four hours is winding down, Hen gives the two of them a considering look. “You know,” she says with a grin, “I think Denny’s been wanting Christopher to come over.”

“Really?” Buck asks. “When will you guys be able to—”

“He’s already at a friend’s place tonight,” Eddie cuts in. “How about next weekend?”

Hen just cackles, but she agrees for a sleepover the following weekend. Eddie can feel Buck’s eyes on him and looks up, finding a frown on his face.

“Chris is at a friend’s?” he asks, worrying at his lip. “But I thought—”

“Buck, we’re going to go home to an empty house,” Eddie says pointedly. He’s glad Hen abandoned them for the moment, just the two of them sitting on the loft’s barstools. Eddie keeps his voice down anyways. “First, we’re going to take a nap, then I’m going to spend some time with my boyfriend, who just got medical clearance from his doctor.”

Buck’s face turns red. Tonight, Eddie’s going to find out if it creeps all the way down his chest.

“Bobby!” Chimney shouts, louder than the siren. “They’re being weird!”

“You’re such a tattletale!” Eddie calls back with a laugh. He grins at Buck, who’s still looking at him like he’s about to say fuck it to the final few hours of their shift and drag him home.

Eddie’s going to get his nap first, though.

They wake up in the evening, sleeping through dinner and still tired from their long shift. Eddie wakes up first, but he doesn’t care to move from where he’s laying, with Buck curled around him. His head is pressed to Eddie’s shoulder, an arm slung over his waist, but he doesn’t stir when Eddie adjust his arm so he can run a hand through Buck’s curls. It’s been nice, waking up like this. Eddie’s shared a bed with Buck before, back when they were quarantining in the loft, but Eddie didn’t let himself cuddle with Buck then.

Eddie doesn’t know how long he spends laying there in the quiet, Buck’s light snoring and the fan the only noise in the room, until Buck wakes up. He always wakes up violently, like he’s has to be alert as soon as he eyes open. Buck jerks awake, and Eddie keeps running his fingers through Buck’s hair, and the sudden tension slips out of him.

“That’s nice,” he mutters into the fabric of Eddie’s shirt.

“You can sleep more, if you want,” Eddie offers.

Buck yawns, his jaw cracking. “No, you have plans for tonight,” he says. He props himself up on one arm, leaning over Eddie. “I’ve been looking forward to them all day.”

Eddie grins up at him, his hand still tangled in Buck’s hair. He uses it to pull him down, to finally kiss him.

He thinks he could kiss Buck for eternity. The slow kisses, the heated ones, every single one lights Eddie up from the inside. He hums as Buck turns the kiss into a heated one, licking into Eddie’s mouth. It’s a strain on his neck, though, and Eddie deftly rolls them over so he’s on top of Eddie. One of his legs slots between Buck’s thighs, pressing down against his crotch. Buck sighs into the space between them, a dopey smile on his face.

“We should talk,” Buck says.

Eddie hums questioningly, pressing a kiss to the dip of Buck’s collarbones. He tries to move down, but Buck’s hands are on his shoulders and he holds Eddie still. It doesn’t take much effort, just a flex of his arms. Eddie goes boneless anyways. “About?” he asks breathlessly.

“Sex,” Buck replies simply. Eddie rolls his eyes. “Hey, no, we should!”

“Actions speak louder than words,” Eddie says. He adjusts his leg, pressing harder against Buck’s clothed dick. He can see the way Buck’s throat bobs, swallowing around a noise.

“Eddie,” Buck whines. It’s exasperated, but Eddie can tell he’s serious. He puls back, letting Buck talk. “I just… I don’t want to mess this up.”

“You couldn’t,” Eddie reassures him. It could be terrible sex, and Eddie would probably think it’s the best he’s ever had because it’s Buck.

He leans down to kiss him again, and Buck lets him. He kisses down Buck’s jaw, biting a bruise into the slope of his shoulder that will be hidden by their uniforms. Buck’s vocal, needy noises falling out of him as he grinds against Eddie’s thigh. It’s unbearably hot.

And he does flush down his chest, Eddie discovers with delight.

They fumble once they get their pants off, Buck hesitating with his hands on the waistband of his boxers. Eddie has kicked his off and feels too exposed, even though Buck’s eyeing him with obvious lust.

“What?”

“Just— How do you want to do this?” Buck asks. “Because I, um, really only ever bottomed with Tommy? Like, there were times that he let me top, which were great and all, but I got the vibe he didn’t really like it. And I want it to be good for so—”

Eddie shuts him up by kissing him. When they break apart, Buck has a dazed look on his face.

“I don’t really want to hear about Tommy,” Eddie says quietly. It’s not jealousy, not really; it’s bone-deep satisfaction knowing he’s the one who has Evan Buckley in his bed. Buck’s not going anywhere else. “I want you to fuck me.”

“Yeah?” His voice lilts up, hopeful. When Eddie nods, Buck just grins, moving up to kiss him again.

He finally gets his boxers off, and Eddie just admires the view. He understands the nickname firehose now, with the way Buck’s dick hangs heavy between his legs. He wants to get his mouth on it, and he does, sliding down the bed to swallow as much of Buck’s cock as he can.

“Jesus, fuck,” Buck babbles, hands flying down to Eddie’s hair, the back of his neck. “You don’t have to,” he starts, only for it to taper off into a moan.

He’s bigger than Patrick, that’s for sure. Eddie can only fit so much in his mouth, and Buck seems too gentle to force it, his hands petting at Eddie’s hair rather than tugging. He uses a free hand to stroke the part he can’t fit in his mouth. Precome leaks out of him, and Eddie could get addicted to this taste, the weight of Buck in his mouth. He wants Buck to fuck into his mouth, be more forceful with it, but Buck never quite takes the hint. When Eddie stops moving, thinking Buck will do what he wants, Buck tugs him off entirely.

Buck drags him into a dirty kiss. His hands skim down Eddie’s sides, closer to his neglected cock and then up again, and Eddie’s whining into his mouth. He wants, his head dizzy with it.

“I got you, I got you,” Buck says quietly, carefully arranging them so Eddie’s on his back. It pings a memory in the back of Eddie’s mind, of Buck taking care of him another time. Buck takes such good care of him.

Buck kisses down Eddie’s chest, his stomach, his stubble scratching against his skin in a way that sends sparks up Eddie’s spine. He twists against the sheets until Buck presses his forearm against Eddie’s waist, holding him down, and the frenetic energy slips away. When he finally gets a hand on Eddie’s dick, he almost sobs with relief, his hips jerking as Buck slowly strokes him.

It’s not enough, and Eddie wants more, thinks he might be delirious with a fever the way it’s so hard to think. “Please,” he begs, stretching the word out.

“Christ,” he hears Buck mutter. A hand smooths over his flank, and it settles Eddie. “What do you want?” he asks, his hand working Eddie agonizingly slowly. His stomach clenches.

“I don’t—” Eddie tries, trying to find words, any at all. He doesn’t have an answer, doesn’t think he can give an answer. He just wants to take what Buck gives him. “You, just you,” he babbles.

Buck kisses the inside of his thigh, and it’s achingly sweet. Eddie doesn’t think anyone has touched him there, like this, his broad hands so careful as he spreads Eddie’s legs, arranging himself between them. His cock hangs heavy between his thigh, and Eddie wants it in him desperately.

All his nerve endings feel like they’re on fire as Buck reaches for the bottle of lube on the nightstand. He smooths a hand over Eddie’s thigh as he does, hypnotically soothing, and Eddie sinks into the duvet. He watches as Buck pours lube over his hand, messy and dripping onto the bed, but he can’t find it in him to complain. Not when Buck pushes his leg up, exposing his entrance, and circling his rim.

Eddie sighs and all the tension leaks out of him. He’s boneless, letting Buck take care of him, letting Buck set the pace. Buck presses a finger in, and it feels right.

“Okay?” Buck checks in, dragging Eddie back up from where he’s been floating.

“Mhm,” he manages, blinking rapidly. He locks eyes with Buck and sees the crease on his forehead, the worry. “It’s great, Buck,” he tacks on. And it is, even if Eddie wants more. But that’s—later. Next time. If Eddie can make himself ask for it. But the reassurance makes Buck’s face smooth out.

He adds a second finger, and that’s when he really starts working Eddie open. Buck’s hands are big, his fingers long, already a delicious stretch with only two of them. He presses them all the way into Eddie, dragging them carefully against the walls until he presses against Eddie’s prostate and he shudders.

“There we go,” Buck mumbles, watching as Eddie throws his head back against the pillows. Fire licks up his spine, his dick aching, but Buck is content to just do this. Eddie lets him, even as he whines, a long noise drawn out of him.

A third finger, and Buck starts moving faster, fucking into him with intent. Little gasps and whines slip out of Eddie, barely cognizant of them, as Buck stretches him open. Eddie wants to ask him to fuck him already, but words are eluding him. It’s all sensations, just the feeling of Buck’s fingers in him, his other hand pressing Eddie’s leg up, the obscene squelch of the lube. Eddie’s senses are filled with pleasure, even though there’s something missing, he just doesn’t know what it is. It doesn’t matter.

It could be hours. Buck wants to take his time, and Eddie would let him. When Buck’s fingers slip out of him, he huffs.

Buck’s answering laugh is quiet. “Settle down,” he says, and Eddie does. He feels—chided, even if Buck didn’t mean it like that. Something heavy sits on Eddie’s chest again, but it gets knocked off when Buck leans over him to kiss him.

Eddie responds eagerly, opening up under Buck’s mouth. He likes kissing Buck. He likes knowing he has the rest of his life to do this, that Buck will let him. Buck’s hands move up his sides, cold lube drying on his skin, as he readjusts Eddie’s position. He presses both of Eddie’s legs up, his ass tilting up. Anticipation pools in his stomach, as Buck leans back just enough to look between their bodies.

He presses his cock against Eddie’s entrance, slowly guiding himself in. It’s agonizingly slow; Buck presses in millimeter by millimeter, pausing to let Eddie adjust, pausing to check in. There’s so goddamn much of him. Eddie feels filled, and then Buck keeps going. Eddie thinks he’ going out of his mind until Buck finally stops moving forward, his eyes screwed shut as he keeps himself steady.

Eddie doesn’t know how he’s lived without this. He adjusts to the stretch, the burn of Buck filling him up completely. They’re connected in a way they’ve never been before, and Eddie kinda wants to stay like this together, like they’re one organism. His body feels indistinguishable from Buck’s; the two of them turned into one. Eddie loves him.

“Okay?” Buck asks, panting out the word. He bends his head to kiss Eddie, missing his mouth and hitting him on the chin, the cheek, the corner of his mouth. “I’m gonna—Can I?”

“Please,” Eddie begs, rolling his hips. “Jesus, fuck, Buck, you gotta move.”

He does. It’s slow, an aching drag as he pulls out and pushes back in, a slow rhythm that drives Eddie insane. But then Buck picks up speed, rocking into him, jolting Eddie into the pillows with every thrust. His cock drags over his prostate, sparks flying up his spine, his dick heavy and aching.

Eddie whines, his breathing shallow, like he can’t get enough air. “Can I,” he starts, gasping out the words as Buck fucks into him, “can I touch myself, please?”

“Yeah,” Buck says with a deep groan. “Yeah, christ, you don’t even have to ask me.”

But Eddie wanted to. Eddie wanted permission, because he’s—because he’s being good. Buck said yes, so Eddie finally gets a hand on his own cock, relief after being ignored for so long. Eddie’s strokes are sloppy, uncoordinated, with only his precum to help with the friction. He whines; it’s not right. It’s not enough. Buck notices, because his big hand wraps around Eddie’s on his dick and they stroke him off together, Eddie gasping for air as Buck keeps fucking into him.

It’s too much, all of it, and Eddie feels his orgasm roll through him like thunder, his cum splattering onto his chest as Buck works him through his orgasm. He feels exhausted, wrung out, but Buck is still going, unending stamina as he keeps fucking into Eddie.

He whines, makes a motion with his hands, because Buck leans down and kisses him again. It’s little more than panting into each others’ mouths, teeth hitting. The new angle drives Buck’s cock right into his prostate and Eddie thinks he might cry, oversensitive and wrecked, pleasure just on the edge of pain. He could probably orgasm again. He probably does, because Eddie’s little aware of anything else except Buck, the connection of their bodies, the hot heat Buck lets off that Eddie wants all for himself.

When Buck comes, seconds or minutes or hours later, he buries his face in Eddie’s neck, driving into Eddie’s body a few more times before stuttering to a stop. The weight of him presses Eddie into the mattress and he sinks under it, his hand loosely gripping Buck’s. It’s all he can do to squeeze his hand, all his energy gone. Buck slips out of him, and Eddie makes a sad noise as he loses the feeling of Buck filling him up.

“It’s okay,” Buck says, pressing a kiss to his cheek, his temple. He leans up for just a moment, onto to toss the condom somewhere, before laying back down with Eddie.

He curls into Buck’s body, tucking his head under Buck’s chin. Buck laughs, but he wraps himself around Eddie anyways, a hand smoothing up and down his back. Eddie loses time, but he can’t bring himself to care. He floats, lost in the feeling, a quiet satisfaction he’s never felt before.

“You good?” Buck asks eventually, breaking the quiet.

Eddie hums, pressing a kiss to Buck’s collarbone. “I’m good,” he says. His voice sounds a little off, like he’s on the verge of falling asleep again. “You should move in.”

“Yeah?” Buck’s hand pauses on the small of Eddie’s back.

“Mhm,” Eddie agrees. “You don’t—I don’t want you to leave.”

“Me neither,” Buck confesses. His hand starts moving again. “You and Chris, you’re it for me.”

Eddie hides his smile in Buck’s chest, feels the way Buck drops a kiss against his temple. It’s still hard to believe, that he gets to have this—but Buck is the one who said it. Eddie might not have much faith in himself, in God, but he believes in Buck.

Eddie doesn’t pray. Not to God, at least. He thinks his prayers are when he checks Buck’s harness before a rescue, when they bump their arms together before running into a burning building, when he checks over Buck after every minor injury. It’s when he drives Christopher to school, the radio quiet, and listens to his son talk. Eddie doesn’t pray, because he doesn’t believe in anything he can’t touch, and when he’s doubting—Buck is always there, warm and solid under his hands.

Eddie never figures out how to accept forgiveness. Still, it’s given to him, in the way Christopher hugs him without prompting. It’s in the way Buck stays, even though he’s seen the ugliest parts of Eddie, the things he didn’t want to show to anyone.

It still feels like a leap of faith, jolting awake from a dream, worried he’s lost it all. But Buck is always there.

A firefighter and God meet at their divorce attorney’s office. God says, “I will always love you.” The firefighter says, “I’m going to marry someone else, so can we please finish up the paperwork?”