Archive of Our Own ^beta

Buck walked into Bobby’s office without knocking, throwing himself into one of the chairs across from Bobby, earning a raised eyebrow and slightly annoyed frown.

“I want to leave,” Buck said before Bobby could say anything.

Bobby’s expression shifted rapid fire through several responses including still annoyed, concerned, and what Buck was pretty sure was alarm. Which was fair. Buck probably should’ve opened with something else. Without context, it certainly sounded like the absolute last thing Buck would ever ask for. He’d fought tooth and nail to stay part of the 118, after all, even if that had been years ago.

“Not leave, leave,” Buck added quickly. “Just….” He groaned, running a hand back through his hair. Coming in here to ask for this had been a split second decision after coming on shift this morning and watching Eddie going about the morning station chores like everything was normal. Like he wasn’t about to move away. Not that anyone else knew that yet. Only Buck. Which trapped him in his own head, picking and pulling at the thought of Eddie being gone until his whole mind was just a frayed mess.

It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since Eddie had told him, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it, about how much it would change things, how much it would hurt. Buck would never ask Eddie not to go. Not when he was doing it for Chris. Chris needed his dad, and Eddie needed his son. If Eddie moving back to Texas was the way that had to happen, so be it. Buck could manage. He always managed. And it wasn’t like he’d be losing Eddie entirely. Probably. Hopefully. But none of that made it any easier to deal with.

“What’s going on, Buck?” Bobby asked, more in his “I’m your dad but we’ve never really talked about that” tone than his captain tone.

Buck took a deep breath, trying to get his brain to slow down enough for him to explain. “I’ve honestly just been kind of having a shit time lately. Breaking up with Tommy and…some other stuff. When I was younger and I used to feel like this, I’d just leave. Dump my job, hop in my Jeep, and just end up somewhere to start over. I haven’t felt like that in a long time, but I do right now. But I don’t want to leave, Bobby.”

“Okay, so do you want to take some time off, then?” Bobby asked. “You’ve got plenty saved up.”

Buck shook his head. “I don’t think time off would help. I’d just go be miserable in my apartment or a hotel, pace around and keep spiraling out. No, I was hoping you’d let me go available for a wildfire assignment. I know there’s that big fire up in Montana right right now that they’re having trouble staffing due to it being off season, but I’ll go anywhere. My wildland quals are all up to date, and I think a couple weeks being somewhere else, doing something else, would help me kind of…reset. Get over the need to run off without actually doing it. Then I can come back and actually handle everything with a clearer head.”

That’s what he was hoping, anyway. It would mean losing some of the precious little time he had left with Eddie—though Eddie had given no solid date on when he was planning to move—but Buck didn’t know what else to do. He knew he was in a bad headspace right now, and it would only get worse if he stayed. He might even do something foolish and selfish, like telling Eddie he thought he might be in love with him. Which wasn’t true. At least not like that. He loved Eddie as a friend. That was it. He was just panicking about Eddie leaving, and dealing with the lingering hurt of Tommy breaking up with him, and it was all making him feel things out of desperation. That was it. A kneejerk reaction to Eddie telling him he was moving.

Bobby smiled softly. “Firstly, I’m sorry you’re having a bad time. Secondly, I am damn proud of you right now. You’ve grown a hell of a lot in the time we’ve known one another, Buck, and you being willing to step in here and ask this shows that more than just about anything else I’ve seen you do. Thirdly, yes, you can go available. I’ll make a few calls too, make sure you get something, Montana or otherwise.”

Buck relaxed back into the chair, some of the tension he’d been feeling lifting away at Bobby’s praise. “Thanks.”

——

Their first shift back to work after Eddie had told Buck he was moving hadn’t been any different than normal, which surprised Eddie. He hadn’t been expecting Buck to take this so well. It was why he hadn’t told him yet, right up until Buck caught him looking at houses. The last thing he ever wanted to do was hurt Buck, which was why he’d planned to break the news gently, and once it was more solidly news, rather than a half-baked plan.

But Buck had caught him. After a flicker of confusion, he’d even jumped right in to helping Eddie with looking at houses. Between that, and their first shift being fine, Eddie had thought they were okay. They could be adults about this, keep their friendship strong even with Eddie hundreds of miles away. They weren’t kids, after all. They could easily call and visit one another, no questions asked. Buck clearly knew that too, which was why he was okay with it.

All of that rationalizing fell apart, however, when Buck didn’t show up for their next shift.

“Where’s Buck?” Eddie asked before Bobby started the morning briefing.

Bobby tilted his head, looking confused. “He didn’t tell you? He took a two week wildfire assignment up in Montana on the Reed Mountain Fire.”

Eddie blinked, trying not to feel like he’d just been punched in the gut, as well as to ignore the fact that everyone was looking at him like they knew it. Since when did Buck not tell him things? Since when did Buck take wildfire assignments? Sure, there’d been that one time they all gone down to Texas, but that had been the 118 as a unit. Not Buck running off solo.

Eddie shrugged, acting like it was nothing, but couldn’t make himself say so out loud. Bobby stared at him a second longer, then looked away and dove into the briefing. As soon as he was done, Eddie stepped outside and dialed Buck’s number. It went straight to voicemail, like the phone was off. Or maybe just out of service range, if Buck was in Montana. That had to be it. Buck wouldn’t ignore him, right?

“Hey,” Eddie said lamely. He didn’t know what he was actually trying to accomplish with this call, let alone now that it had turned into a voicemail. “Just…wanted to check in. You don’t usually take wildfire assignments…so…um…yeah.” He almost added, “and you didn’t tell me about it,” but managed not to. Buck didn’t have to tell him anything if he didn’t want to. Just because they were close didn’t mean they had to be joined at the hip. In the end he just hung up after a long silence, no idea what else to say.

But it ate at him. All through the rest of the day it gnawed at his mind. It turned out Chimney knew, because Maddie knew. And Hen knew because Buck had asked her to come over and water his plants while he was gone. Buck had told everyone but Eddie.

“You keep scrubbing that hard, you’re going to go through the plastic,” Hen said, perching on the bumper next to where he’d set a bucket of soapy water that he’d been using to clean the headlights of the ladder truck.

Eddie rolled his shoulders and eased up a little, but didn’t say anything.

“Wanna talk about it?” Hen asked.

“Talk about what?” Eddie muttered.

Hen lightly kicked his ankle. “Check the attitude. You know what I mean. Did you and Buck have a fight or something?”

“No,” Eddie said. At least, he didn’t think they had. But maybe…maybe he should’ve paid a little more attention to that flicker of confusion that had gone across Buck’s face when he’d caught Eddie looking at houses. Because the thing was, he could read Buck like a book. And he knew it wasn’t confusion, had known it immediately. He’d just told himself that it was because it was easier, easier than admitting he’d just hurt his best friend, flayed him right down to the bone by doing the one thing that would hurt more than anything else: leaving. Or planning to leave, anyway.

Hen just sat there, watching him scrub at the headlight that had already been clean for awhile now.

“I might’ve upset him, though,” Eddie muttered eventually.

“Gonna tell me how?” Hen asked, voice gentle.

Eddie shook his head.

She sighed. “Alright. Well. Look, we know where he is, what he’s doing. Hopefully a couple weeks will give you both time to breathe, and you can sort out whatever it is when he gets home.”

Eddie hummed noncommittally.

——

Buck had to admit, he’d missed Montana. He loved the convenience of living in a big city, having everything he could want at his fingertips. But the quiet, open sprawl of the country just felt…settling. Or maybe that was just the distance from his problems back home.

Bobby had gotten him a crew swap assignment, taking over work on a Cal Fire Engine, along with a couple other guys, for a crew that had timed out and had to head home. The two other guys with him, Seth Winters and Nicholas Betancourt, were from San Francisco and Redding, respectively, both wildland firefighters rather than structure guys like Buck with Seth being full time and Nicholas being seasonal. That was the fun thing about wildfire work; it was easy to move around, go different places, work with different people. Sometimes Buck wondered what his life would’ve been like if he’d gone into the wildland side of things, rather than structural. Traveling the country, even the world, to fight fires instead of settling down in one place. Different people all the time. Working himself to the bone with sixteen hour or longer days for two weeks straight, sometimes more.

Honestly, he probably would’ve run himself into the ground, literally. An early grave brought on by a dumb injury of some sort because he pushed too hard and hadn’t learned not to. He was mature enough now to realize he did better with at least some level of stability in his life. A relatively regular schedule, a solid home base, steady friends. Which also explained why he was crashing out so hard about Eddie leaving.

Buck had written out three text messages to Eddie about taking the assignment, but in the end deleted each one without sending them. He just didn’t know how to explain the mess in his head without making it sound like he expected Eddie to put him ahead of Chris. Usually Eddie was the one who helped Buck sort out messy thoughts, but as he wasn’t an option this time, Buck had found himself out here in Montana, ready to fight a massive 80,000 acre wildfire that had been burning for three weeks with no sign of stopping, and he hadn’t said a single word to Eddie about it.

“So, Buck, how long you been in the game?” Nicholas asked from the front passenger seat where he was sprawled out among a nest of snacks from the last gas station stop. They’d picked up the engine at the airport and were now headed out to the actual fire, a four hour drive away.

It took Buck a second to get out of his own head enough to answer. “Going on eight years in structural. You?”

“First season,” Nicholas said. “Worked as a lineman right out of High School and for the last ten years since, but it just wasn’t doin’ it for me anymore. Needed a change.”

“I know what you mean. I did a lot of odd jobs before I ended up in fire,” Buck offered. “Ranching, construction, bartending in other countries. I was kind of all over the place.”

“Twenty years for me,” Seth joined in. “Never done anything else. My family’s been in wildland since Roosevelt made it a thing.”

Nicholas whistled. “Nice.”

And on they drove, listening to garbled country music over the radio and trading stories about fires they’d worked.

——

Eddie stood in the middle of his livingroom and just stared at it. The simple dark blue couch. The TV sort of awkwardly shoved in the corner because there wasn’t a better place to put it. The rather generic Texas poster on the wall that his mother had hung up on her first visit so he “wouldn’t forget home.” The pictures on the mantle, the only things that really felt like his. There was shockingly little of himself in his own home, actually. Strict parents and the military and taken his ability to own a lot of stuff and zapped it right out of him. Everything he cared about that didn’t belong to Chris could fit in one box, and a small one at that.

He wandered down the hall to Chris’s room, pushing open the door and leaning against the frame as he stared inside. He didn’t come in here much, just to freshen up on occasion. He was always careful not to change anything, though. The book Chris had been reading was still on his nightstand, his gaming headphones still lying half on his keyboard, a Lego set he’d been working on scattered on a puzzle table on the floor. Unlike the livingroom, Chris’s room was bursting with pieces of him. Posters and art and knick-knacks and toys. Eddie hadn’t had a room like that since he was much younger than Chris.

A knock on the front door startled him, and he went to open it, finding Bobby on the other side. For half a second a wave of panic went through him. Had something happened to Buck? Bobby never just came over. But no. Bobby didn’t look worried, which he certainly would be if something was wrong with Buck.

“What’s up?” Eddie asked, stepping aside and waving Bobby in.

“Just wanted to check in,” Bobby said. “You seemed a little rattled by Buck being gone.”

Eddie shrugged, trying to play it off, which earned him an eye roll from Bobby.

“Look, I’m not here to dive into anyone’s business, but I care about both of you, both as your captain and as a friend, so what’s up?” Bobby said, thumbs hooked in his pockets. “Stays between us. I just want to help.”

Eddie sighed, scrubbing a hand back through his hair. “I’m…I’ve been trying to figure out how to fix things with Chris. I fucking hate how much of his life I’m missing, but every time I’ve tried to reconnect so far it’s just…fallen flat. And so I was kind of thinking about…about moving back to El Paso. Buck caught me looking at houses out there the other day, and I think it…bothered him. But Buck’s too damn good of a guy to say that, so he didn’t, and now he’s run off to Montana without fucking telling me.”

Bobby just stared at him for a long, silent stretch of time, head tilted slightly to one side. “Eddie, do you want to move to El Paso?”

Eddie frowned. “What?”

“Do you want to move to El Paso?”

“I want to fix things with my son, Bobby,” Eddie returned, a little annoyed.

“That’s not what I asked,” Bobby replied. “Of course you want to fix things with Chris. But do you want to move to El Paso? Do you want to uproot the entire life you’ve built here, that Chris has built here? Leave behind the people you know, the family you have here like your aunt and your grandmother and your sister and her kids? The friends you’ve made?”

Eddie swallowed and looked away, unable to hold Bobby’s gaze anymore. “I want to fix things with my son.”

Bobby sighed, taking a step forward and putting a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “Eddie, look. You are not a bad parent. You are a scared parent who has been dealt a pretty rough hand in a lot of ways. You made a mistake, whatever it was, and that made Chris run away to your parents. The only thing that would make you a bad parent now is if you give up on your son, which I know you’ll never do. Maybe moving to El Paso is the right answer, I don’t know. But don’t make the decision out of fear, make it because you’re sure it’s the right one.”

Eddie took a deep breath, trying not to shake at how damn well Bobby’s words hit home. Because Bobby was right. Eddie was scared. He’d been scared his whole damn life. Scared he wasn’t a good enough son to his parents, a good enough big brother to his sisters, a good enough boyfriend then husband to Shannon, a good enough soldier, a good enough parent to Chris, a good enough friend to Buck. His whole life felt like it had always been on fast forward, just careening from one bit of chaos to the next, never enough time to think in between. He loved Shannon, but her getting pregnant had been terrifying, for both of them. He wouldn’t change it for the world now, but sometimes he did still think about that day in the bathroom, staring at a positive pregnancy test with her and asking what she wanted to do. Before she could answer his mom had caught them, and then there had been only one thing to do: the right thing. The Christian thing. Very suddenly they’d been married and he’d been in the military and Chris had been born and something had been wrong with Chris that they didn’t understand and then they did understand and it was all just so damn fast.

“Sometimes,” Bobby said after another silent minute, his voice soft, “when people run away, it’s not because they want to leave, it’s because they want to know someone cares enough to come after them and bring them home.”

——

Nicholas flopped face first onto the cot in the tent he was sharing with Buck in fire camp. “I am sore in places I didn’t know existed. I thought this shit sucked in the summer, but doing it in the cold? Fuck this. There shouldn’t be massive wildfires when it’s cold.”

Buck chuckled and sat on his own cot, stripping off his nomex and sitting there in just his undershirt and boxers. The line for the shower trailer had looked way too long to bother with, honestly, even if he was caked in sweat and soot. After a moment of debate he surrendered to having a dirty sleeping bag and climbed inside.

“Climate change is a bitch. You did good today, though,” Buck told him.

Nicholas just groaned and gave him a thumbs up, not pulling his face out of his folded-up sweatshirt pillow as he did. Buck tossed a bottle of Asprin at him and left him to his suffering. Nothing to do but sleep it off as much as possible and head back out tomorrow. Falling back on his own bed, he pulled out his phone and turned it on. He’d been keeping it off to save the battery in case of an emergency, and every time he turned it back on he had to try very hard to ignore the fact that the only message he was hoping to see was from Eddie. Messages from everyone else were nice—he’d immediately showed off the new ultrasound pictures from Maddie, of course—but that didn’t change the fact that his eyes skimmed right over Hen texting him pictures of his plants, Chim rambling about plans for the nursery, and Bobby texting him updates on the new house and how he’d never realized how many damn decisions that would involve. And…nothing else. No messages from Eddie. Not since that voicemail he’d left.

“Who are you pining over?” Nicholas muttered.

Buck glanced over to see Nicholas had turned his head slightly to stare blearily at Buck across the dim space between them. His mouth got ahead of his brain and, not wanting to admit that the answer was Eddie, he blurted out, “My ex-boyfriend” just so he’d have something to say, even though he hadn’t thought about Tommy once since he’d left for this assignment.

He went still, wondering how Nicholas would react to this. They weren’t in LA now, after all.

Nicholas propped himself up on his elbows, clearly picking up on Buck’s discomfort. “As a fellow queer, it’s all good. Sorry about your breakup, though.”

Buck relaxed. “It’s alright. Honestly, now that I’ve got some distance from it…he was kind of a dick. I think I’m pining over relationships in general more than anything else. He was the first guy I ever dated, and before him I didn’t even realize I was…bi…I guess? Still kind of sorting it out, which is half the problem. Feels like the world’s different this time around, and I don’t really know what to do with it.”

Buck had no idea why he was pouring his heart out like this right now. Maybe it was because Nicholas was a stranger. Maybe it was because he was exhausted. Maybe it was just that good old sleepover vibe with a dark tent and sleeping bags and other voices murmuring in the distance, no different than parents upstairs.

Nicholas shimmied into his own sleeping bag and rolled over onto his back, staring up at the orange waterproof fabric above them. “Fun fact, I’m trans. And I get what you mean. Once you realize it, even if you don’t know exactly what it is yet, everything just kind of…flips. Some things make so much more sense, and some things that used to make sense don’t make sense at all.”

Buck hummed. “Trans like I should use different pronouns for you when it’s just us, or trans like you are passing very well at this point?”

Nicholas laughed. “Second one. Thanks.”

“Welcome. And…yeah. Making sense of any of it is hard. I really felt like I was starting to get a good grip on my life for the first time, and then he kissed me and then broke up with me and here we are, with everything upside-down all of a sudden. And there’s some…other stuff going on in my life too and it’s just…” Buck trailed off with a sigh. It honestly felt like everyone else was moving on with their lives while he just kept treading the same old waters. He didn’t begrudge any of them any of it, but he was tired.

They lapsed into silence until Nicholas finally broke it. “Best thing I did for myself after I realized I was trans was go to a queer sex club. Scrawny girl in a binder I still didn’t really know how to use, rolled up socks shoved down my pants for a packer, shitty fake beard I made using a makeup tutorial from a Thorin cosplayer, and I had the time of my life that night.”

Buck couldn’t help but burst out laughing. That had been the last thing he’d expected Nicholas to just up and say. “Please, as a guy who loves sex, explain.”

There was a grin in Nicholas’s voice as he responded. “It was just nice to be around other people who weren’t drowning in the nuance of it. You went in the damn door, put on some bracelets to indicate what you were down for, and just…did it. Nobody asking questions, nobody demanding you read off some laundry list of labels or sort yourself into a box. It made me relax. Stop taking it so seriously that I choked on it. I’m trans. I don’t care about the genders of whoever I date or just sleep with. That’s it, and I’m happy with it.”

That did seem nice. Simple. But Buck didn’t understand even that much about himself. Tommy had been so unexpected, both in how he started the relationship and how he ended it. It had all been so fast. Maybe too fast.

“We should get some sleep,” Buck said eventually.

Nicholas, it turned out, was already out cold.

——

Stepping into his parents house felt different every time Eddie did it these days. It hadn’t felt like his home in a long time, at least not in the sense of the place itself, and every time he came back now that became more and more apparent. But the warmth of being wrapped up in his own culture, that stayed strong. The smell of recently made tortillas, the sight of his mother’s canning supplies for making pickled jalapeños spread out on the table, Banda el Recodo playing on the old livingroom stereo at all hours, even if no one was home because, according to his mother, it was the cat’s favorite.

No one was home now. He’d just let himself in, planning to wait out the hour until Chris got off school and his dad got done with his volunteer work at the Habitat for Humanity store in town. His mom would get home later, still working full time at the bank. That was for the best right now. Eddie wanted to be able to talk to Chris without her around. His dad was less of a hurdle.

An hour was a long time to kill, though, especially if he had to spend it staring at so many reminders of things that were hard to think about. His parents’ house looked lived in. Far more than his did. It was cozy and loved. Personalized.

Also, the cat hated him, which was another good reason not to hang out in the house. It stared reproachfully from his dad’s armchair, ears already flattening out. It’s name was Walnut and it was some sort of Persian adjacent creature his mother had found in a bush outside her work five years earlier. It disliked everyone but her.

He headed out to the garage instead, grabbing the lawnmower and filling it up with gas before pushing it out onto the front lawn. Better to have something to do. Something to keep his mind and body occupied.

He was just finishing up, tucking the mower back in its spot, when his dad’s truck rounded the corner and pulled up the drive. His window was down as he rolled to a stop next to Eddie in the garage.

He smiled. “Mijo! What a nice surprise. Why didn’t you tell us you were coming for a visit?”

Eddie peered into the truck, relieved to see Chris in the passenger seat. He hadn’t been sure if Chris might have some after school thing today, like chess club, which stung. Not knowing his son’s schedule felt wrong. It also stung that he couldn’t read the expression on Chris’s face right now.

“Didn’t want to make any promises I couldn’t keep,” Eddie said. “Work’s a little crazy right now.”

His dad nodded and Eddie stepped back to make room for him to get out, trying not to stare as Chris got out the other side and came around. He wanted to hug him, but he didn’t know if that would be welcome.

“Cokes?” Ramon said.

“You’re not supposed to have caffeine anymore,” Chris chided with a grin.

Eddie’s dad put his finger to his lips. “Shhh. Just one bottle. It’ll be our secret. If your abuela didn’t want me to have it, she’d stop buying it.”

Eddie smiled indulgently, trying not to let it sting how close his dad and Chris were. Eddie’s own relationship with his dad had never been like that, fun and conspiratorial.

They all shuffled into the house, Eddie leaving his grass stained shoes in the laundry room, and headed for the kitchen. Ramon started muttering in a mix of Spanish and English about all the canning supplies and how Helena needed to stop taking them out before she intended to actually do any canning.

“We’re going to have enough pickled jalapeños to last until the apocalypse,” Chris observed, trying to nudge out a little space on the table.

“We already do!” Ramon huffed. “She did twice this much last year. Woman needs to learn to can and grow other things.”

Eddie didn’t miss the little twitch of annoyance that went across Chris’s face at Ramon’s tone, a twitch he was sure was mirrored on his own face. He always got the impression his parents were the sort that had gotten together because it was just the thing people did, because it was expected of them, and then figured out something resembling love later. They’d barely known one another three months before getting married, after all. His mom had grown up in Sweden after her dad, a military man born in Mexico and raised in Texas, had met and married Eddie’s maternal grandmother there, and that had made Helena homesick for a culture she’d never known. The second she’d had a chance to come to Texas, she’d taken it, jumping into her Hispanic heritage without looking back, Texan oil field husband and all.

Chris being annoyed by his grandparents somewhat strained relationship wasn’t something Eddie wanted to happen. Chris deserved better than growing up in a household centered around two people who spent a large portion of their time tolerating one another more than loving one another. He deserved better than what Eddie had got.

“No chess club today?” Eddie asked, realizing it was going far too long without him actually saying anything to Chris, but not having any idea what to say. Chess club seemed like a good, neutral topic.

Chris shook his head, accepting Eddie’s help in clearing away some jars. “Only on Wednesdays.”

“Ah.”

Ramon finally pulled out three Mexican Cokes, popping the tops and handing them out. They all sat, each with a little cubby of space among the jars.

“Is work good crazy or bad crazy?” Ramon asked.

“Depends on the day,” Eddie said. “We’re a few people down right now, so I’ve been picking up a lot of OT.”

His dad raised his bottle in a little toast. “Good for you. Keep grinding, your boss will appreciate that.”

Eddie smiled indulgently once again and changed the subject. “Can I have a minute with Chris, please?”

Ramon looked between them, then nodded. “I need a shower anyway. When your mother gets home, I didn’t have this.” He wiggled the bottle and then walked off with it.

“How have you been?” Eddie asked after Ramon was gone.

Chris shrugged, fiddling with the label on his bottle.

Eddie squared his shoulders, trying to convince himself not to be scared. “Chris, you have every right to be mad at me. What I did wasn’t okay on any level. But you are my son, and I love you, and want to fix this. I want you to come home, so what do I need to do to make that happen?”

Chris didn’t say anything, just kept fiddling with the label. Just as Eddie was about to try again, Chris said, “Why did you do it?”

Eddie took a long, slow breath, thinking through his answer carefully. They’d tried to have this conversation once, a couple weeks after Chris had left once he started actually answering some of Eddie’s calls, but Chris had hung up on him a few sentences in and neither had broached the topic since.

“I first saw Kim at the store where she worked. She looked like your mom, but not…entirely,” Eddie started. “Her hair was really different, and so was her style, her mannerisms. I have asked myself a million times why I went in to talk to her that day, let alone why I went back and did it again and, honestly, I’m still not sure. I don’t think I ever got over your mom, Chris. Our relationship…I loved her so much, but things were never easy, and then she died so suddenly…” Eddie trailed off with a shake of his head. “No, ‘got over’ isn’t the right way to put it. It’s not like we broke up. I guess it’s more that…there was so much left unfinished between us, good and bad, so much we never got to do, and so much we did do but did wrong, and all of that’s still tangled up in my head. There’s something I never told…Chris, she…she asked me for a divorce just before she died.”

Chris turned to him with wide eyes. “What?”

“I’m sorry I never told you,” Eddie said, voice soft. “I never told anyone other than Bobby, actually. Not even Buck. Your mom and I loved one another so much, and we both loved you and wanted you, challenges and all, but we were barely done being kids ourselves when we had you. I think…we had to figure out being parents before we figured out being partners, and the way things played out, we never actually figured out the partners part, and we barely figured out the parents part. By the time we reconnected, we’d both grown up a lot, but we’d done it in different directions, and whatever we’d had before, it just wasn’t working. Then the accident happened and any chance I had of coming to terms with that got ripped away by the grief of losing her.”

Chris tucked his feet up onto the chair and wrapped his arms around his knees. “Oh.”

Eddie nodded. “We can stop talking about all of this, if you want. I didn’t realize how this conversation was going to go. I know it’s a lot.”

Chris shook his head, chin rasping against his pants. “You didn’t answer my question yet.”

Eddie took another deep breath. “Okay. So, like I said, I met her at the store where she worked, and she only sort of looked like your mom. It dug at something inside me, some part of me that’s still trapped in the grief of what I lost with your mom, and I kept going back. I did cheat on Marisol with Kim, and there is no excuse for that. It isn’t okay in any way, shape, or form, no matter my own hangups. A few weeks in, Kim showed up at the station one night to bring me something she’d baked. I’d already left, but Buck had been helping Bobby with some stuff so he was still there, and he saw her. He had pretty much the same reaction you did, honestly. Shocked the hell out of him. He came straight to our house and snuck in the damn back door to confront me about it, because he wanted to know what was going on without worrying you or Marisol.

“He confronted me and he was…well, he was Buck. Didn’t throw me under the bus like I deserved, but made it damn clear that it wasn’t okay, that it wasn’t fair to you or Marisol or even Kim. So the next day I called Kim and had her come over in the morning, and I told her everything, showed her some pictures of your mom. I apologized for using her like that. She left and I thought that was the end of it, with her at least. I was going to talk to you and Marisol separately once you got home.”

Chris frowned in confusion. “But she was there when we got home?”

Eddie swallowed, feeling his whole body go tight at the memory. “Yes. She was. She showed up maybe five minutes before the two of you. And in just the few hours she was gone she’d had her hair cut and dyed to match your mom, and bought clothes like hers. I think she must’ve looked her up on Facebook or something, found videos of her, because she…she sounded like her too.” The whole event made his skin crawl now. “She came in there acting like she was Shannon. Saying all this stuff about how I still loved her, loved Shannon, and it…it scared the shit out of me, Chris.”

There, he’d said it. Admitted something that made his skin crawl in a different way, because everything about how he’d been raised was screaming at him that admitting this at all, let alone to his son, was weakness. That he was a man and he had to be strong, had to be unaffected.

“I didn’t know what to do, Chris,” Eddie continued. “I know that doesn’t excuse it, but I’ve never felt that disoriented in my life. Then suddenly we were kissing and you and Marisol were walking in, and it all just blew up.”

Chris was silent for awhile, and Eddie let the silence hang, let Chris process all of the information that had just been dumped on him.

“That…is really fucked up,” Chris finally said.

Eddie blinked. “What?”

Chris finally looked at him directly, without immediately looking away. “I’m still mad at you for cheating on Marisol, but I didn’t realize Kim did all that. It’s creepy, honestly.”

“I…” Eddie hadn’t thought about it that way. He’d been so caught up in the consequences of the event that the actual event had sort of slipped out of his mind until now. “Yeah, yeah it is.”

A beat of silence passed.

“You swear you were going to talk to me and Marisol?” Chris asked.

Eddie nodded. “I swear. And I knew you might be mad at me over it, so I asked Buck if he’d be okay with you staying with him for a little bit, if you wanted to, and he said yes.”

A small smile quirked Chris’s lips. “I didn’t go to Buck’s apartment because I knew he’d make us actually talk about it, and I didn’t want to talk about it.”

Eddie managed a small laugh. “Yeah, yeah he would have.”

Chris sighed, putting his feet back on the floor and going back to fiddling with the label on his bottle. “I do miss home.”

“How do we make this work then?” Eddie asked.

Chris didn’t answer for awhile, finally saying, “Whenever you start another relationship, I want to know right away. And I want to see a picture of her.”

“I can do that,” Eddie said. “But, for the record, I have zero interest in dating right now. I need to take time to actually figure myself out before I ever try that again.”

“Okay. And…I’m allowed to go spend nights at Buck’s if I’m mad at you,” Chris added, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Mmmm…if you’re doing it because you’re mad at me, the rules are one night and we have to talk about why you were mad the next day,” Eddie countered.

“That’s fair,” Chris agreed.

“Anything else?” Eddie asked.

Chris shook his head.

“Okay, here’s my condition: we’re getting therapy. Both of us together, and separately.” Eddie’s experiences with therapy so far had been generally not great. Not terrible, but not particularity helpful either. But he was willing to try again if it meant fixing his relationship with Chris.

Chris nodded his agreement to this as well, and Eddie finally felt his shoulders unknot. Mostly. Chris was coming home. Chris was coming home. Things weren’t fixed, weren’t perfect, but the pieces were coming back together.

“Minor, temporary caveat, though,” Eddie said. “Buck’s out of town for about eleven more days. He took a wildfire assignment up in Montana, and he’s probably gonna be pretty dead to the world from exhaustion for a day or two once he gets home.”

“Buck took a wildfire assignment?” Chris asked, head tilted in confusion. “Why?”

Eddie shrugged, not wanting to admit that he didn’t know the real answer. “Just wanted the experience.”

He’d fixed the problems with Chris, or at least started them in the direction of getting fixed. Now he needed to figure out how to do the same with Buck.

——

Of the places Buck had expected to end up working at on this fire, somehow it never occurred to him that the ranch he used to work on was a possibility. And yet, here he was. Rolling the engine up through the familiar gates that he’d passed under so many times all those summers ago. The main house looked the same as always; weather worn and loved, even surrounded by a haze of yellow smoke. The barns had their doors thrown wide, cowboys dashing too and fro on horseback and on foot, trying to get all the cattle out into a pasture that had been scrapped down to bare earth to keep them as safe as possible. It was the only thing that could be done. There wasn’t a way to move them anywhere else quick enough. The fire was ten miles off, but being pushed by twenty-mile-per-hour winds in almost exactly their direction.

Buck and his little three man crew weren’t here to help the animals, though. They were here to try and protect the structures. He was relieved to see the main house had gotten a new, metal roof since he’d last seen it, but there was still a lot to do. He parked the engine and before he could even get the door open a familiar face was looking up at him through the window from under the wide, curled brim of a black cowboy hat.

“Boy are we fucking glad to see y’all,” Jake said, yanking the filthy red bandanna down off his face to reveal a several day old beard and deep bags under his eyes. “When she took that turn last night, we didn’t know what the fuck we were going to do.”

Jake stepped back from the door, making room for Buck to climb out, and once they were finally on level with one another, Jake’s eyes went wide.

“Holy shit, Evan?”

Buck grinned. “It’s ‘Buck’ these days. I’d say it’s good to see you, but under the circumstances, kinda wish we’d found a better way to catch up.”

Jake laughed, pulling him into a back slapping hug that Buck happily returned. “No kidding. We’ll get a beer when it’s all said and done. You running this rig?”

Buck shook his head, gesturing to Seth who had come around from the other side with Nicholas. “Seth is. I’m just a structure guy down in LA out on a wildfire assignment for a change of pace.”

Jake shook Seth’s hand. “Jake Smith, head wrangler. What’s the plan?”

“Take it you’re not evacing?” Seth asked, nodding towards all the chaos going on around them.

Jake shook his head. “We can’t beyond what we’ve already done. Sent the pregnant cattle off on our two transport trailers, and sent all non-essential staff home. Everyone still here is prepared to ride it out. We’d like to save the house and the barns if we can, but the animals are our priority. Don’t worry about the bunkhouses, everyone’s cleared their personal stuff out. Just don’t tell our insurance company we said that.”

“Where’s Dave and Miranda?” Buck asked. They were the ones who owned the ranch.

Jake grimaced. “Dave’s got cancer. He’s…not doing great. Been in the hospital down in Denver for a month now. Miranda and the kids are with him.”

“Okay, we’ll start with the house,” Seth said. “Nicholas, start unpacking house-wrap. Buck, sweep the perimeter of the house and see what we’re working with. You know the place best. I’m going to walk the other buildings real quick just to have them in mind if we have time.”

“If you need more guys or equipment, gimme a shout,” Jake said. “Or just take what you need. Buck knows where everything’s at.”

Everyone nodded, heading towards their designated tasks. Circling the house, Buck couldn’t help but be worried. It had a huge wraparound porch with open eves, the whole setup a giant mouth ready to swallow embers whole and let them smolder until the house was alight. They did not have anywhere near enough house-wrap to close the whole thing off. At least the porch had been cleared of all its usual chairs and swings and plants and other decor. He had an idea, though, and he jogged across the road to the old supply barn.

Inside was a hundred years worth of collected chaos, made even more chaotic by the fact he was clearly not the first person to come in here and rip through it in search of something to help with the approaching fire. He whistled at a scared looking woman who couldn’t be more than twenty, who was just standing amongst the mess looking lost.

“Chicken wire and a staple gun?” He asked.

The woman glanced around, then pointed to a corner filled with rolls of wire. “I think there’s staple guns in the tool shed.”

“Get them,” Buck said. “Meet me at the porch of the house. Couple ladders too.”

The woman nodded and dashed off. Buck managed to scoop up four rolls of the wire before he couldn’t fit anymore in his arms, and he hauled it out to the porch. He’d read a few accounts of chicken wire being able to act as an ember catcher of sorts. Couldn’t hurt to try. It wouldn’t get everything, but maybe it would get enough. He handed the wire rolls off to a couple more of Jake’s guys, telling them to staple it up over the open areas of the porch, starting on the side the fire was coming from.

Seth nodded his approval, telling Buck to grab a rouge hoe and start scrapping back the ground covering around the house. A rouge hoe seemed like a damn slow way to do it, though, so he took custody of the little old skidsteer from another person he vaguely recognized from his days here, but whose name he couldn’t place right now. Scraping away all of Miranda’s carefully tended gardening stung, but if the house survived they could plant it all again.

In just under an hour they’d made some damn respectable progress. The whole base of the house was wrapped, the porch was decently wired in, and there was bare earth around the house and the largest barn. And Buck felt good. The steady, heavy work itched that part of his brain that had been flipping out and he felt really, truly calm for the first time in ages. Coming out here had been the right decision.

He took the bottle of Gatorade Jake offered him, slugging back half of it in one go as they stared at the trees that bordered this part of the ranch. There was just the faintest orange glow coming through them, embers dancing above their crowns. The fire was here.

Glancing over at Jake, he found him with his bandanna down again, square jaw held high and wide shoulders held back. His deep brown eyes were rimmed in red, but it didn’t take away from how handsome he looked. More shocking, however, was the realization that Buck finding him handsome was nothing new. They’d both just been regular ranch hands back when Buck had worked here, and they’d spent many nights together shooting the shit as they rode the property on wolf patrol or calf watch. Buck had loved those nights when it was just the two of them. He’d loved the job as a whole, actually. It was easily his favorite job that he’d had other than firefighting. They hadn’t been able to keep him on over the winter, but they’d promised him another position the next summer, and he’d been so sure he was going to come back. But he hadn’t.

Why hadn’t he?

A bunch of old, flat excuses flitted through his brain. He’d found something better. (He hadn’t, his job after that one was another shitty construction job.) He hadn’t actually liked it that much. (He did, he’d loved it.) It didn’t pay enough. (It didn’t, but what did when you were a rambler without a college degree and no solid job history to speak of?)

The actual answer was standing next to him now, staring out at an approaching wildfire and looking like he wanted to punch it in the face.

Buck hadn’t come back because he’d been a little in love with Jake, and he’d had no fucking clue what to do about that.

Well fuck.

That was not a revelation he’d been prepared to deal with today.

Before he could think about it too much, though, Seth was herding them back towards the engine and wishing Jake and the others luck. Seth, Nicholas, and Buck had to pick up more supplies and move on to another ranch down the road. Jake gave him another hug, slipped a scrap of paper with his number into Buck’s pocket, and told him to call about that beer once things calmed down. Buck promised he would.

——

“You good? You’ve been kinda quiet since your buddy’s ranch,” Nicholas observed as they stood in line for the showers that evening.

Buck shrugged. The rest of the day had been too busy to really think about his revelation about Jake, which was probably a good thing. It seemed less shocking now, with a little distance.

“It was just a bit weird, getting dropped back into my past like that,” Buck admitted.

“You were looking at Jake like you wanted to jump his bones right before we left,” Nicholas observed.

“You really just say anything, huh?” Buck said with a laugh.

Nicholas grinned innocently. “Only to kindered spirits, dear, only to kindered spirits.”

Buck shook his head, still smiling. He honestly appreciated how forthright Nicholas was, raunchy overtones included. Hen could be like that, with a couple beers or some wine in her, but aside from that Buck didn’t really have any friends who just laid out their feelings on sex without a second thought. He liked it. Liked not making a big deal about something that he loved doing but other people had varying degrees of issues with. Just because he didn’t sleep around as much as he did in his twenties didn’t mean he’d stopped appreciating having a good time.

“I didn’t exactly want to jump Jake today,” Buck said. “I just realized I probably wanted to jump him before, but I was way too deep in the closet to realize it, but not deep enough to not panic about it and leave before I had to deal with it.”

“Ahhhhh,” Nicholas said.

“Also. I think I have a type. With men anyways,” Buck added.

“Oh? Cowboys? Because if so, same.”

“Strong jawed former soldiers with dark eyes and broad shoulders,” Buck replied, his brain screeching to a halt the second the words left his mouth. Because, yeah, that described Tommy, and Jake, who was a former Marine. But it didn’t just describe them.

It described Eddie.

Fuck.

God fucking dammit. Buck had come all the way out here specifically to avoid thinking he was falling for Eddie. Because he was not falling for Eddie. He could not be falling for Eddie.

“I can’t read minds,” Nicholas said. “But based on your face right now, I feel like whatever hamsters run around in your brain just had a heart attack and died for some reason.”

“It’s complicated,” Buck muttered, still reeling.

Nicholas looked at him, head tilted slightly. “Wanna fuck about it? Because I’ve still got plenty of pent up energy from the day.”

Buck scanned his eyes up and down Nicholas’s form. He was slight but well muscled, about five-ten, short cropped blond hair and blue eyes, several day old darker blond beard. Not his apparent type.

“Yeah, actually, I kind of do,” Buck said. If he kept moving, kept going fast enough, his thoughts wouldn’t be able to catch up to him.

“Good. Meet me in the last stall once you wash off. That’s the one everyone’s been using to hook up,” Nicholas said it like this was just well known information. At Buck’s confused look, he continued with a feral grin. “Welcome to fire camp, we’re a bunch of very in shape people crammed together in the woods for weeks on end, getting high on adrenaline and lethal levels of caffeine the whole time. You and I are hardly the only ones with a lot of pent up energy looking for an outlet when our superiors look the other way.”

Fair enough. Buck did as told, scrubbing off in the third stall down, then exiting and slipping into the last one. Each stall had a small front room for changing, with a shower behind it. And it was an actual room with a real door, not some bathroom stall door that you could see around all the edges of. Nicholas was already in there, a towel wrapped around his waist and water still glinting on his skin. He didn’t hesitate to pull Buck down for a kiss, echoing Buck’s soft moan as they tucked their bodies together.

Nicholas pulled away after a minute. “Just a heads up, what I’ve got downstairs, probably not what you’ve dealt with before, but I promise it’s fun. Also I’m clean. Got tested just before this assignment.”

“Me too, after I broke up with my ex,” Buck said. “And I’m a fast learner, I’ll figure it out.”

Nicholas grinned and Buck mirrored the expression, hands secure on Nicholas’s hips as he knelt down and pulled Nicholas’s towel away.

——

It was decided that Chris would come home after finals, which Eddie was a little leery of. He knew his mom wasn’t happy about him convincing Chris to come home, and he worried about her talking Chris out of it. But he also knew things would be a lot easier on Chris if he got his finals done before switching back to his old school. Eddie had resolved to just be in constant communication with Chris over the following few weeks, to negate his mother’s influence. Hopefully it would be enough.

He should’ve just flown straight home after it was all sorted out. Flown home, gone back to work, and called Buck to tell him the good news. But he didn’t just want to talk to Buck on the phone about this. He wanted to talk to him in person, see his face when Eddie told him. And, honestly…he wanted to know why Buck hadn’t talked to him once since he’d left for Montana. He hadn’t even responded to Eddie’s voicemail. Was Buck really that upset with him? He had to find out, and if so, he had to fix it. Buck deserved so much more than getting hurt again, especially by his best friend.

So he changed his return ticket from LA to Bozeman—which involved a stop in Denver—and started looking up the location of the fire camp Buck would be based out of. Getting in might be a little tricky, since he wasn’t working the fire, but he’d figure it out.

——

This damn fire wouldn’t let up. Storms kept rolling in, sending it sprawling in all different directions, but never dropping any actual moisture that would stop it or even slow it down. They were literally fighting a hydra. Cut off one head of the fire, two more took its place in entirely new spots.

Buck had a routine now, though, and he was having a damn good time with it. Especially how much it kept him from thinking. Fight the fire during the day, slip into the last shower stall before bed, and have a good time with whoever was in there. That had been Nicholas twice, a woman named Heather, a guy whose name he didn’t know, and a guy who gave his name as Sparks. Buck hadn’t had this much random, no strings attached sex since before he’d dated Abby. And even then he was on the verge of breaking some personal records. It was, in a strange way, relaxing. He could just give in to what his body wanted, what his body enjoyed, without getting hung up on it. Nicholas had been right on that: overthinking never fixed anything.

Before, when Buck had been sleeping around, it was usually because he couldn’t find what he wanted, something he only realized now with hindsight. Sex had been wrapped up in the relationships he could never seem to hold onto. It was fun, but there was always a larger goal of finding someone that would stay, that would want to stay. Here and now, though, it was finally just fun. Mostly. Maybe he did crawl into his sleeping bag after, wondering where Eddie was and what he was doing, fighting the urge to just call him.

He didn’t know why he didn’t just call him.

He should just call him.

It wasn’t like he could avoid Eddie forever. He didn’t want to avoid Eddie forever. Eddie was his best friend.

A little voice in the back of his head that sounded a lot like his therapist kept whispering that he needed to stop thinking around the edges of the issue and just confront it. So that night, after another round with a different woman who didn’t tell him her name, Buck crawled into his sleeping bag, pulled it up over his head, and let himself actually think it.

He was in love with Eddie.

He was in love with his best friend.

His straight best friend.

Eddie would never feel the same way, and that was okay. These were Buck’s feelings and that meant they were his to handle. He could get over it. Stay friends with Eddie. Maybe it would be a good thing that Eddie was leaving for El Paso, or so Buck tried to convince himself. It would let him actually move past this without ruining their friendship.

——

Eddie made it to Montana, but he ended up in a hotel room rather than heading for the fire camp, and he honestly didn’t know why. He just…stalled out there. Called Bobby to ask for a few more days off without saying why, then sat in his hotel room not calling Buck, and not going to the fire camp.

Why? Why the hell was he stuck here, staring at the somewhat splotchy ceiling? Was it because he thought Buck was mad at him? Upset with him? They’d been mad at one another before, upset with one another before, but they’d always worked it out. Why did this time feel so different?

Eddie tried to lay out what he knew for sure.

One, Buck had caught him looking at houses in El Paso.

Two, Buck had glaringly obvious—and completely understandable—abandonment issues.

Three, Buck could be selfless to a fault, and he would not let his abandonment issues be anyone else’s problem.

Which…yeah, that was probably why he’d run off to Montana without telling Eddie about it, wasn’t it? He’d felt betrayed and hurt and didn’t want Eddie to know about it, so he’d figured out a way to go deal with it on his own. Maybe…maybe Eddie should leave. Let Buck have his space and then hash this out back in LA.

Eddie didn’t want to leave.

He wanted to see Buck, to know that Buck was okay. He honestly didn’t like the idea of Buck out fighting fires, let alone a massive wildfire, without the 118 at his back. Without Eddie at his back. What if something happened? Eddie couldn’t keep him safe if Buck was off on his own.

There was a suspicious ache in his chest as he laid on the bed trying to sort it all out. He kept telling himself it was just exhaustion and stress over everything that was going on. His conversation with Chris about everything to do with Shannon and what happened with Kim had left him feeling painfully raw, and then he’d run straight into another situation that he had even less idea how to deal with. Of course the stress was leaving him a little achy.

Bobby’s words several days earlier kept coming back to him, though. Being scared. Making decisions too fast without thinking things through.

“What am I scared of right now, though?” Eddie muttered to himself.

…One, losing his best friend.

Two, going back to LA, and things being different despite Chris finally being home, because he’d broken Buck’s trust and hurt him without meaning to.

Three…

Three…that his chest ached the same way it did when Shannon had left him.

Eddie had lost friends before. Good friends. In war, sure, but also just in life. People he’d grown apart from, people who’d moved away. But none chewed away at him like Shannon had, and like Buck was right now.

Fuck.

He sat up, elbows on his knees and the heels of his hands pressed tight against his eyes. Was he really thinking that? Comparing what he’d had with Shannon to what he had with Buck? It didn’t upset him, it just…he just didn’t know what to do with that.

Was he in love with his best friend for a second time?

He tried to think back to the moment he’d realized he was in love with Shannon, that he might think of her as more than a friend, but he couldn’t pin it down. It had just happened, slowly and one little bit at a time. An arm thrown over her shoulders at a party that, by the next party, wrapped around her waist instead. Study sessions that shifted from sitting on opposite sides of the table to the same side, pressed up closer than they needed to be but not talking about it. Never talking about it.

They’d sucked at talking. It was probably their biggest flaw, the core thing that had torn them apart. And Eddie had never had a chance to fix it.

He wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

He needed to talk to Buck.

——

“Where we at today, boss?” Buck asked Seth as they piled into the engine to head out.

“Up river,” Seth replied. “There’s some old historic structures up there that they’re worried about. We’ll be wrapping the bases and setting up sprinklers, since they’re right on the river.”

“Oh good. Pump math. My favorite,” Nicholas grumbled, climbing into the driver’s seat.

Buck chuckled. “You’ll get an instinct for it eventually, give it a few more seasons.”

It turned out, though, that they really didn’t need to do that much pump math after all. It was a simple setup, no slopes to calculate, only a few branches on their hose lines. Within an hour the three old cabins were as safe as they were going to get, the sprinklers ticking back and forth, spritzing everything down for as long as their gas lasted.

Seth took the driver’s seat this time as they headed out to their next work spot. The second they pulled out of the little valley they were in, though, they got slammed hard by a wind that had picked up while they’d been sheltered by the ridges on either side of the valley. It was coming from the direction of the fire, and pushing hard enough Seth was white knuckling the wheel.

“Buck, call dispatch, see what they say,” Seth requested.

Buck reached for the radio handset, but paused halfway when a golf ball sized ember, still glowing red hot, splattered across the hood of the engine and rolled off the other side. He and Nicholas, who was in the back passenger seat, shared a significant look in the rear view mirror, Seth glancing up into it for half a second as well.

“West Montana Dispatch, CF Engine 602 on Whitaker,” Buck called out.

“CF Engine 602, West Montana.” The response that came back was crackly, but from the maps Buck had gone over, Whitaker was the only real option for a radio repeater in this spot. He’d have to just fight through and hope to understand.

“We’re on County Road Fourteen headed north, just turned off County Road Nine, we’re getting some serious winds, sustained at around fifty, gusts up to maybe seventy. It’s carrying some good sized embers.”

“Understood. A storm system is developing just west of the fire and pushing in faster than the weather service expected. If you need to make the call to pull out, let us know,” the dispatcher replied.

“She’s going to run again,” Seth said. “Spotting, and slopover on any lines out here.”

Buck repeated him into the handset.

“Understood. Duty officer is ordering you to pull out now,” dispatch told him.

“We copy. Do you have a recommended direction of travel?” Buck knew these roads pretty well, they were still vaguely in the area of the ranch, but dispatch would know more about the current movement of the fire, about which way would be safest.

There was a long pause, then dispatch replied, “Keep going north.”

“Understood. CF 602 clear.”

“Radio us when you reach the highway. Dispatch clear.”

Almost the second Buck hung up the handset things went from bad to worse, a finger of flame bursting out of the trees to their left and lashing out over the road. Seth didn’t even have time to slow down, but thankfully his instincts were good enough to keep them on the road. It wasn’t much of a road, though, which the problem. Thin and winding, the pavement only a suggestion, trees towering up on both sides, brush right up to the shoulder.

“Boys, pull your shelters, keep them firmly in hand on your lap,” Seth ordered, voice calm. “We stay in the engine as long as possible. If we get out and shelter up, bring a radio or a walkie and water if you can, get away from the engine in case it explodes, put your feet towards the flames.”

Buck and Nicholas did as Seth said, Nicholas passing up Seth’s shelter and shoving it between Seth’s leg and the center console. Fire was all around them now, and turning around wasn’t an option. It would take too much time with how narrow the road was, and there was no guarantee south would be any better. Except the river was back in that direction. Before Buck could point that out, everything went orange, metal shrieked, glass broke, and heat washed over him.

Only a second ago he’d been in the cab of the engine. Now he was still in the cab of the engine, but he was surrounded by smoldering pine branches shoved in through the windshield, though there was no more windshield.

“Buck! Seth!” Someone grabbed at his shoulder.

Nicholas.

“I’m okay,” Buck coughed, pawing at the branches and feeling out his own body. He didn’t seem to be hurt at all, but the branches had him completely penned in.

“Seth isn’t,” Nicholas said, voice short.

Buck turned to see Seth slumped forward, unmoving, a branch about an inch thick sticking into his right side, just about at the bottom of his ribcage. A thin trickle of blood was dribbling out of his mouth.

“He’s got a pulse,” Nicholas said, stuffing his hand back into the glove he’d removed to check.

“Get handsaws,” Buck said.

They had to get out of here. The tree was still on fire, and so was fucking everything else. As Nicholas went for the saws, Buck grabbed onto the smoldering branches around him with his gloved hands, trying to keep any of them from turning into full on flames. Nicholas wrenched open Buck’s door and passed up a saw, then vanished and came around to Seth’s side, climbing up and starting to saw at the branches around Seth.

“Leave the one impaling him until I can help,” Buck said, madly sawing at his own confinement.

A glance at the radio showed there was no point using it to call in for help, the thing was smashed. Seth had the handheld on his belt, or he had when they’d gotten in. Buck couldn’t see it now, and there wasn’t time to look. He sliced through the last branch holding him in and got to his knees on the seat, facing Seth.

“You got EMT quals?” Buck asked Nicholas.

Nicholas gave a tight shake of his head, still sawing away at the non-impaling branches.

“Alright, follow my lead,” Buck said. “We need to be as careful with him as we can, and not remove the part that’s impaling him. We’ll cut it off, then I’ll come around and help you slide him out. If we can, we’ll get the med kit and try to stabilize the branch. Do you have your shelter?”

Nicholas nodded.

Good. Buck had his too, and he could see Seth’s down by his feet. The handheld radio was there as well, Buck was relieved to see.

Ignoring the sweat pouring down his body, the embers dancing in his face, Buck slid a hand down Seth’s back, trying to see if the branch went all the way through. Unfortunately, it seemed that it did. They’d have to saw it off on both sides.

“Hold him still,” Buck ordered, starting with the back.

Buck made quick work of it, relieved when Seth started to groan in pain. He didn’t fully wake up, but it was something. Getting out to come around and help Nicholas pull him out, though, felt like stepping straight into hell. There was nothing around them that wasn’t burning. Even the roadway was shimmering with dangerous heat. A glance back revealed the part of the tree not in the cab of the truck was fully alight now.

There’d be no grabbing the med kit and stabilizing the branch. They had to get out and into their shelters. Buck, with his height advantage, took on the brunt of getting Seth out of the high seat, letting Nicholas help get his legs untangled and out of the truck without just flopping to the ground.

“Grab his shelter and the radio!” Buck shouted. It was the only way to be heard over the roar.

Buck dragged Seth, hands hooked under his armpits, about thirty feet away from the engine that now had thick black smoke trickling out from under the crumpled hood. He put Seth off to the side of the road somewhat, in case the back bumper gave way and shot towards them, but kept him on the road surface. As hot as it was, it wasn’t burning like everything else.

Nicholas tossed him Seth’s shelter, and Buck yanked it out of the plastic case, flapping it open and keeping a deathgrip on it in the wind. The big silver thing looked like a human sized burrito wrapper, and it was hard to believe it would be any help at all. But at least it wasn’t like the old days where they would’ve had to dig a pit in the ground and cover themselves up with wet canvas. Together he and Nicholas managed to get Seth inside, the edges tucked in around him, his arms wrapped up in the inner straps. Hopefully it would stay on without him being awake to hold it in place. Nicholas gave Buck one last fearful look, then climbed into his own shelter, lining it up with Seth’s. Buck did the same, taking the radio in with him.

“West Montana Dispatch, CF Engine 602.” He didn’t pause for them to acknowledge, unsure if there was time. “A tree struck the engine. Fully disabled. Still on County Road Fourteen. Unsure of exact mile marker. One firefighter with serious injuries. Impalement. All three crew members are out and sheltering up in the road.”

And now there was nothing to do but wait. Wait as the fire roared around them, as the sides of his shelter battered against his body in the wind, as the air got thin.

——

What Buck didn’t expect to hear was honking. But that was exactly what he was hearing. Or at least he thought he was. It was rather hard to tell for sure over the noise of the fire. Was it coming from the engine? A malfunction as it burned up? No. There was a rhythm to it.

Chancing it, he lifted the edge of his shelter, astonished to see a battered old Ford Ranger trundling towards them through the smoke. He knew that truck. That was Jake’s truck.

He ripped off his shelter, making sure it didn’t fly away. “What the fuck are you doing?!” He shouted at Jake as he jumped out of the cab, along with another guy from the passenger seat.

“We have radios too, dumbass!” Jake shouted back. “Heard your call. Get him in the bed, let’s go.”

Buck didn’t need to be told twice. Nicholas was out now too, and together with the help of Jake and his friend, they picked Seth up and slid him into the empty bed. Jake didn’t have a topper, unfortunately, so Buck immediately wrapped Seth back up in his shelter, making Nicholas get back in his as well and lie down next to Seth. There wasn’t room for all three of them to lie down, though, especially without jostling the stick still going through Seth’s side.

Jake spun the truck around as Buck hung onto the edge of the bed, hunkering down awkwardly by Seth’s head, his shelter half pulled over him as the truck raced through the flames.

“Dispatch, CF Engine 602, we’ve been picked up by a couple ranchers who heard our last radio call. Heading south on Fourteen now. Injured firefighter still in critical condition.”

Someone answered, but their voice was stolen by static and the wind.

——

Eddie finally gave in and got a rental car to drive up to the fire camp. Not much came through on the radio, and the bluetooth didn’t seem to work, so he ended up on some country station for awhile. It was the obnoxious, overly patriotic kind of country, but it was better than silence, at least. He was relieved when it finally shifted over to some sort of local talk show, though.

“Everyone, we understand that there’s a lot of amateur radio folks around here who have been able to tune in on our first responders, and lots more who have managed to tune in online,” the radio host said. “But please be cautious about what information you share and discuss. You’re missing a lot of context, and you don’t want to be making the situation worse.”

Truer words had never been spoken. Eddie knew people meant well, but it was so easy for them to end up in the way.

“Our next caller is Susan from Helena. How are you today, Susan?” the host continued.

“Cut the BS, Mike,” Susan said. “That fire blew up again, didn’t it? Why aren’t they telling us about it? What are they hiding?”

Eddie glanced down at the radio with a frown. Had it blown up again? When? He wanted to pull over and use his phone to check, but he didn’t have data service here, and only a bar of cell service.

“Now hang on, Susan, no one is hiding anything. If it has blown up again, they’re probably just busy, and their job isn’t to talk to us, it’s to fight the fire—”

“Not twenty minutes ago an engine got crushed by a tree and one of the firefighters got impaled!” Susan snapped. “We deserve to know what’s going on!”

Eddie involuntarily sucked in a sharp breath, hands tightening on the wheel. It wasn’t Buck. There was no reason to think it was Buck. There were hundreds of firefighters out on this fire. And there was no guarantee that Susan was even right.

“Susan, if that is indeed the case, again, their job is not to talk to you—”

“They said it was CF Engine 60—”

“Alright,” the host cut her off. “Sorry Susan, had to let you go. Let’s take our next—”

Eddie jabbed the mute button and snatched up his phone, calling Buck. It went straight to voicemail.

“Call me, Buck. Please fucking call me. Tell me you’re okay. Or text me. Just tell me you’re okay.” He hung up and dialed Bobby. Bobby didn’t answer, so he dialed again.

“Eddie, we’re on a sce—”

“What engine is Buck on in Montana?” Eddie demanded.

“What?” There was a slight note of concern in Bobby’s tone.

“There was just another blow up, an engine got hit by a tree and a firefighter was impaled. What engine is Buck on?”

“Hang on, I’ll pull up his order.” Noise around Bobby filtered in, like he’d pulled the phone away from his face. “Cal Fire Engine 602.”

Eddie didn’t swear, didn’t make a single sound, but his whole body went tight. God damn that radio host for cutting Susan off a second too soon.

“Bobby, I only heard part of the engine number, but its…I think it might be Buck’s engine.”

——

Buck managed to pry open the back window once they were out of the flames, leaning in to yell into the cab. “I need a med kit! Scraps of cloth, something!”

“We’re two minutes from the ranch!” Jake shouted back. “The house survived, we’ll get him there!”

Buck nodded, relaying the address to dispatch and requesting an advanced life support unit to meet them there immediately, better yet a helicopter evac. He doubted they’d get the helicopter, though. Not with these winds. Pulling back Seth’s fire shelter, Buck checked that he still had a pulse. He did, but in the rattly old truck it was damn hard to tell anything more than the fact that the pulse was there. Nicholas had emerged as well, stuffing his shelter down under his knees.

They rolled to a stop right in front of the stairs up to the porch, and Buck shouted for the people milling around to get something that could be used as a stretcher. Someone appeared with an old door, and they all got Seth onto it, carrying him into the house and setting him on the huge dining room table. Buck had had so many meals here. David and Miranda were big on treating their ranch hands like family.

“Nicholas, coordinate with dispatch,” Buck said, handing the radio off to Nicholas. Nicholas, who did look a little shaken, managed to nod and put whatever he was feeling aside to do as Buck asked.

“What do you need?” Jake asked.

“Water, bandages or long strips of cloth, gauze, scissors,” Buck listed off.

Jake vanished to get it, and Buck set about assessing Seth. He did indeed still have a pulse, but it was weak and thready. He also had a sizable swelling on the left side of his forehead, down over his eye, and across the top of his cheek. Facial fracture, maybe. His breathing was labored and wheezy. Maybe bruised lungs, but it didn’t sound like either had collapsed at this point.

The stick was the biggest obvious worry right now, still hanging about one inch out of his back and three inches out his front. It was angled higher at the front than at the back. There was a good chance it had gone through his liver, maybe a kidney based on the location and angle. If that was the case and the stick got jostled wrong, Seth could bleed out in minutes. Right now, at least, there was only a small trickle of blood coming out around the edges on either side, and Seth’s abdomen wasn’t ridged.

Buck couldn’t fix any of it, but he could do his best to stabilize things. He took the scissors Jake had provided and cut away Seth’s nomex top layer and his white undershirt, tossing them aside. Once he’d cleaned the area around the entry and exit wound a bit, he talked Jake through helping him pack gauze around each end of the stick. With Jake holding the gauze in place, Buck started using the long strips of cloth—all various patterns, he guessed from Miranda’s sewing room—and started winding them around Seth’s stomach and the stick in the way Eddie had taught him. Buck had learned a different way to do it back when he was getting his EMT certification, but he trusted Eddie far more than a textbook.

“ALS is twenty minutes out,” Nicholas said. “What can I do?”

“Be prepared to hold him still,” Buck said. “I’m going to give him a sternal rub, try and wake him up.”

Nicholas nodded and got a firm grip on Seth’s knee and hip, while Jake held his shoulders. Buck curled his knuckles and dragged them hard up and down Seth’s sternum. It was intentionally supposed to hurt like hell, and Buck knew that from experience. He’d had it done to him once during training when he was fully conscious, so he’d know what it was like. Sternal rubs were meant to shock the body into waking up so a patient could be properly assessed and treated.

Seth only groaned, though, his eye that wasn’t swollen shut fluttering open for half a second before closing again. Damn. Not a good sign. Prolonged unconsciousness after a head injury never was.

Buck couldn’t help but feel somewhat useless. He wasn’t a paramedic, or a military medic. He knew the basics and the odds and ends he’d picked up from the rest of the 118 over the years. But none of them were with him right now to give him advice or, better yet, just take over. His hand jolted towards his pocket where his phone usually was, intending to call them for help, but he realized it wasn’t there. Where it had gone he’d probably never know, and his mind was racing too fast to remember anyone’s numbers by heart.

“What do we do now?” Nicholas asked.

Buck swallowed heavily. “We wait.”

——

Bobby had hung up on him, but he called back about fifteen minutes later. “It was engine 602, but they don’t have information on who was injured yet, or what’s happening. They only confirmed the engine number since I’m Buck’s boss.”

Eddie grit his teeth, trying not to let his speed crawl any higher than it already had. He was about an hour outside of the fire camp right now, but that meant nothing without knowing where Buck was. The fire itself was sprawling, going miles in various directions.

Buck had to be okay.

He had to be.

“What hospitals are in the area?” Eddie tried. “Where are they taking whoever’s injured?”

“There aren’t any big ones,” Bobby said. “Some local ERs. If they can get lifeflight in there, they’ll probably fly whoever it is to a trauma center, but if they can’t, my guess is they’ll head for the closest ER to stabilize and then transfer to a trauma center from there.”

Eddie already knew all of that and he didn’t fucking care.

“We’ll find him, Eddie,” Bobby assured. “Just get on a flight to Bozeman and I’ll keep—”

“I’m already in Montana, I’m an hour outside of the fire camp,” Eddie ground out. He wasn’t mad at Bobby. He was scared. Fucking terrified.

Buck had to be okay.

“Okay,” Bobby said, not questioning it right now. “Let me make some more calls.”

The line went dead and Eddie chucked his phone back in the cup holder.

——

Ahead of him through the haze, Eddie saw a familiar pattern of red and white lights, followed a second later by the piercing sound of a siren. The ambulance was heading towards him from the other direction, and he pulled off to the shoulder of the two lane highway to give it room. It went by in a flash, a little red truck following on its bumper. It happened so quick Eddie barely saw it, but he swore he saw a flash of familiar wildland yellow in the passenger seat.

Not taking the time to think about it, he spun the rental car around, chasing after the ambulance. When he caught up to the truck, he could see the guy in the passenger seat was indeed wearing a wildland shirt, but he was blond and slight. Whoever it was turned around and gave him a confused look, but quickly looked away again.

Eddie stayed right on their tail for another five minutes until they turned off into a small town and rolled up to the doors of an ER. He parked haphazardly in the lot, never taking his eyes off the ambulance as the back doors swung open. A member of the ambulance crew got out, pulling a stretcher with them. Feet under a blanket. A stick through a bandaged abdomen. And…an unfamiliar face.

Eddie almost collapsed against the car as Buck climbed out with another member of the ambulance crew, looking sooty but unscathed. Buck didn’t notice him, just helped wheel the stretcher inside, telling the nurses that came to meet them exactly what had happened, what treatment he’d provided.

Eddie shot off a text to Bobby that Buck was okay, then headed inside after him. The ER on the other side of the door was tiny, only two bays and one private room. The guy who’d been impaled was being worked over by what looked like every available staff member, and Buck was corralling the blond guy from the truck towards the other bed.

Eddie went straight towards Buck, unable to stop himself from reaching out and gripping Buck’s shoulder, just to be sure he was real. Buck jumped, looking at Eddie with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth.

“Don’t you dare fucking scare me like that ever again,” Eddie said, more relief in his tone than anger. “I can’t watch your damn back if you run off without telling me.”

“O—okay,” Buck said, shoulders dropping and a look of relief on his face. “What are you doing here?”

“We’ll worry about it in a bit, sit down. Are you hurt? Who’s this?” Eddie asked, slipping into medic mode.

“Nicholas,” the other guy offered, waving exhaustedly.

No one stopped Eddie as he found a pulse-ox to put on both of them, and got them both on oxygen. Neither seemed all that aware of if they were hurt, too much adrenaline still in their systems. Eddie’s attempts to further examine Buck were pushed away with a demand to take care of Nicholas first, and Eddie knew better than to argue with Buck when he was being like this. He’d get to Buck a lot quicker if he just gave in and took care of the other guy.

A head to toe exam revealed that Nicholas was pretty much okay. Some bruises, minor dehydration, very slight rasp in his lungs. Eddie set him up with some water and Gatorade to alternate, and told him to keep the oxygen mask on and just relax. Buck, thankfully, was the same. He did have a small, quarter sized second-degree burn on his left shoulder, though, probably from an ember from the looks of it.

By now the impaled guy, Seth, had been stabilized and packed back into the ambulance to be driven to a place to meet a lifeflight helicopter out of the wind. The nurses shifted to taking care of Nicholas and Buck instead, getting them both on IVs and treating Buck’s burn. They put Buck in the bed Seth had vacated. Buck was clearly starting to sag, struggling to keep his eyes open.

“Buck, rest,” Eddie urged, hand on Buck’s arm.

“Need to call Maddie,” Buck mumbled. “Don’t know where my phone went. Gimmie yours.”

“I’ll call her, Buck,” Eddie assured. “She’ll understand. You need to rest.”

Buck hummed, but passed out before he could try to argue more.

“You a friend of Buck’s?”

Eddie turned around to see a man in a cowboy hat and dark blue flannel, a sooty bandanna hanging around his neck. There was a clear stripe across his face where the bandanna had been covering the bottom half, leaving the top half darker now. The guy’s posture said former military, of some sort.

“Yeah,” Eddie said.

The guy held out a hand and Eddie took it, shaking once. “Jake Smith. Buck and I worked on a ranch near here about a decade ago. He and his crew helped us save that same ranch. We’d been listening on our own radios ever since, in case the fire doubled back in the wind shifts, and we heard the call about what happened. Went and picked them up off the road and brought them back to the ranch to wait for help.”

“Thank you,” Eddie said earnestly. “What did happen?”

Jake explained, and it made Eddie’s stomach drop. Buck could’ve been easily killed a dozen different ways by that. It was fucking horrifying to think about, him trapped in a crushed engine as it burned, him burning up on the road, him being the one to have been impaled by the tree. Eddie could’ve lost him before having the chance to fix things, just like he’d lost Shannon. And Buck would’ve died thinking he’d been abandoned once again by someone he cared about.

Jake gave Eddie his number, saying he had to get back to the ranch, but asking that Eddie let him know how Buck was doing. Eddie promised he would, then pulled up a chair next to Buck’s bed and called Maddie.

——

The problem with Eddie miraculously showing up all of a sudden was that Buck knew Eddie could handle the situation, which was apparently enough to trigger Buck’s own brain to just shut down. This was slightly obnoxious, given Buck really wanted to make sure Nicholas and Seth were okay, but he couldn’t deny that he felt like a walking blob of very sore, very exhausted jello, which became unignorably problematic at the sight of Eddie. In the end, he’d passed out in the hospital bed, despite his best attempts to fight it.

He woke up to the sound of Eddie’s voice pitched low and soft, realizing after a minute that he was talking on the phone.

“Yeah, he’s doing okay. His stats are all good, and he somehow doesn’t have any serious injuries. I think the tree must’ve slowed the engine, but not brought it to a dead stop, which probably saved them.” A pause. “Yeah, the guy I talked to who helped them, Jake, said from what he could see it wasn’t a huge tree. Big enough, obviously, but not massive.”

Eddie was holding his hand, Buck realized. He managed to give it a soft squeeze as he pried his very gummy eyes open.

“Hey, he’s awake, let me call you back.” Eddie hung up the phone and leaned forward with a smile. “How you feeling, cowboy?”

Buck snorted. “I’ve had worse.”

“Don’t remind me,” Eddie said. “Seriously, how are you feeling?”

Buck sighed, wiggling a bit to feel out his body. “Sore as fuck. But nothing hurts. How long have I been out?”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Stubborn asshole. About an hour. Should be longer, you need the rest.”

“I’m fine,” Buck shot back, sitting up and looking around. Nicholas was in the next bed, curled up on his side and out cold.

“Seth made it to the trauma center,” Eddie said. “That’s all I know at this point.”

“Thanks,” Buck said, crossing his legs and leaning on them as he looked around. Not much was going on. There was a nurse behind a counter, playing on her phone, and some official looking people talking softly off in a corner, but that was it.

“Hospital liaisons from fire camp,” Eddie told him when he saw Buck looking at the officials. “Forest Service, I think, for Nicholas. And LAFD’s sending one out for you too.”

Buck groaned. He was far too familiar with the system of handling injured firefighters, and he knew it was all meant well, but it could get fucking obnoxious. He let his gaze slip to Eddie for a fleeting moment before looking down at the blanket over his own lap instead. He didn’t know how to look at Eddie right now, having realized his feelings and being too exhausted to hide them as well as he needed to.

“I’m sorry, Buck,” Eddie said, voice gentle and earnest.

Well that was unexpected. He looked up at Eddie with a frown. “What the hell for?”

“Scaring you enough that you felt like you had to run off to Montana to deal with it,” Eddie said.

Buck reeled back slightly. “Eddie, it’s fine, that’s not—it’s fine. I understand. You’ve got to go after Chris. He needs you and I get that, I would never put myself between you two, ever. This is my own issue. I’ll handle it. I just—”

“Buck, Buck, slow down,” Eddie interrupted, putting a steadying hand on Buck’s knee. The weight of it was far more grounding than Buck was willing to admit right now. “Look, there’s a lot we need to talk about here. But first and foremost, I am not moving anywhere, and Chris is coming home as soon as he’s done with finals.”

Buck blinked, staring at Eddie and trying to process that information. This was good, right? Yeah. Yeah. It was good. Eddie was staying. Chris was coming home. Buck would have to deal with getting over his feelings for Eddie differently now, but he could do that. This was good.

“That’s great,” he finally said.

Eddie searched Buck’s face, not saying anything. Buck was so afraid of what Eddie would see there, that he might see the truth of Buck’s feelings and hate him for it, that Buck looked away. Eddie lightly squeezed his knee, but Buck still didn’t look at him. He heard Eddie swallow, felt the weight of Eddie’s hand leave, seemingly pulling all the warmth in Buck’s body with it.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie said for a second time. “I know people leaving you behind is something that has happened way, way too often in your life. I know I hurt you, even if I didn’t mean to. I know I’ve got to earn your trust again.”

Buck shook his head. “No. Like I said, it’s fine. I’m glad Chris is coming home, stupidly glad. But you were only planning to move to be able to take care of him. It had nothing to do with me. My feelings are my problem. I’m fine.”

“Buck, don’t do that,” Eddie said, voice gentle. “Don’t isolate yourself. Yeah, I had to take care of my son, and for a minute there I thought moving might be the best option. But…I have to take care of you too. You’re my best friend, and your feelings matter. As far as I’m concerned…your feelings are the second most important to me, after Chris’s.”

Something trilled happily in Buck’s chest, and he did his best to smoother it. Eddie didn’t mean that the way Buck wanted him too. He was just being a good friend.

“Don’t forget yourself in that equation,” Buck muttered, no idea what else to say.

Eddie laughed. “That’s the thing, Buck, I am very much not forgetting myself in it, for once. Which is why I said it. I…” he sighed and, out of the corner of his eye, Buck saw him straighten up and roll his shoulders. “It’s been a long damn week, and I’ve had to confront a lot of shit about myself and how I live my life, then you go and scare the living hell out of me, again. I don’t want to lose you Buck, ever. And I don’t want to go back to the way things were before either. So, when we get home to LA, and you’re feeling better…get dinner with me?”

Buck snapped his head up to look at Eddie so quick it almost hurt. Eddie met his gaze steadily, shoulders still back.

“Dinner, as in…?” Buck stammered. This couldn’t be happening, right?

“As in a date. A romantically inclined date that will, I hope, lead to a hell of a lot more than just friendship,” Eddie said.

Buck really appreciated the level of clarity in the answer. Nothing to overthink about the meaning of that. Lots to overthink about the implications of it, though. A million thoughts flitted through Buck’s mind. That he wasn’t good enough for Eddie. That if this didn’t work out, it would break him beyond repair. That maybe he had in fact died back in the engine when the tree hit it.

“You don’t have to decide right now,” Eddie said, starting to look a little worried. “And it’s okay if the answer is no, but I had to ask.”

“It’s not no,” Buck managed to reply.

The joy on Eddie’s face at that brought back all the warmth that had seeped out of him when Eddie had pulled his hand away. Buck had done that. Made him look that happy just by saying he’d go out to dinner with him.

“Okay,” Eddie said. “We’ll figure it out the rest of the way later. Right now, you should get some more rest, or we can call Maddie if you want. Bobby would probably like to hear from you too.”

Buck wanted to talk to both of them, he did. But he also just…

He reached out for Eddie’s hand where it lay on the bed after abandoning his knee, and tugged on it lightly. Eddie turned it over and twined his fingers together with Buck’s, which was nice, but not what he’d been after. He tugged again and Eddie got up to sit on the edge of the bed, barely settled before Buck had slumped forward into him. Eddie immediately wrapped his arms around Buck, tucking Buck’s head under his chin and, yeah, that’s what he’d wanted. No overthinking it, just doing what felt good. Eddie’s arms around him were warm and solid, chasing away any lingering shakiness from the day’s earlier events.

Eddie was holding him. Eddie was holding him. Eddie was ubbing his back softly. Eddie had asked him out. Chris was coming home. Eddie wasn’t moving. Eddie had asked him out.

Buck felt his eyelids slipping closed again, and he didn’t fight it this time.

——

They were on a flight back to LA the next morning, Nicholas sprawled out in the third seat in their bulkhead row.

“Good lord, man,” Nicholas said as Buck folded himself into the aisle seat. “I knew you were a big guy, but seeing you in a little plane is kind of hilarious.”

Buck flipped him off with a smile.

Nicholas flipped him off right back. “Don’t ever do wildland full time. I worry you’ll get mistaken for bigfoot and get shot by some hunter.”

Buck reached across Eddie and smacked him on the leg.

“I feel like I’m caught between toddlers,” Eddie observed. Buck lightly smacked his leg too.

About an hour into the flight, Eddie got up to use the bathroom, telling them to behave while he was gone. Once he was locked in the stall, Nicholas turned to Buck with a grin.

“Is this the ex you were pining over?” He asked. “Because he clearly tics all your boxes.”

Buck laughed. “No. Eddie’s just a friend. A very, very good friend.”

Nicholas groaned dramatically, throwing his arms up. “Oh come on, I have never seen such a literal case of heart-eyes as when you look at him.”

Buck glanced at the bathroom to make sure Eddie wasn’t coming back yet. “He’s…a friend who asked me out back in the ER. And I said yes.”

“Ah ha! Perfection. Near death experience that brings two wayward lovers together. Adorable.”

Buck shook his head with a smile. “Nah. We’ve had near death experiences around one another before, ones that came much, much closer than this. That wasn’t what made us finally pull our heads out of our asses about our feelings. It was the culmination of a lot of other things.”

“Experiences?” Nicholas said, leaning hard on the plural.

Buck started to list them off on his fingers, finishing up just as Eddie came back.

Nicholas looked at Eddie, aghast. “Just to clarify, this idiot got struck by lightning and died for over three minutes and you still let him outside?”

Eddie snorted, the sound dissolving into a laugh. “Usually he’s fine.”

Nicholas shook his head. “Whatever’s in the water in LA, I don’t want it. You city structure guys are nuts. I will stick with my exploding forests, thank you very much.”

Buck just grinned, reaching out and twining his fingers into Eddie’s.

——

Buck fell asleep halfway into the flight, head on Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie couldn’t deny how good it felt. It wasn’t electric, wasn’t exhilarating, it was calm. Settled. It felt like the whole world had slowed down to wrap them up in a little bubble of stillness.

Even once they landed and Buck woke up, the feeling didn’t go away. It followed them through the airport where they said goodbye to Nicholas, Buck promising to stay in touch, onto the bus that took them to where Eddie had parked, and into Eddie’s truck.

“So. Dinner,” Buck said as Eddie started the truck up.

“Once you’re feeling better, Buck,” Eddie said. “I can tell you’re still exhausted.”

“I am,” Buck said. “I just want to explain something first, so we’re not getting off on the wrong foot.”

“Okay,” Eddie said, turning to look at Buck rather than pulling out of the parking spot.

“I slept with a lot of people at fire camp,” Buck said, not an ounce of shame on his face. Not that he should have any. Eddie was aware that was his own hangup thanks to the Catholicism. “Like, half a dozenish. Including Nicholas. It was all just casual.”

Eddie shrugged. “Okay. Ah…glad you had a…good…time?”

Buck grinned. “I did. I just didn’t want it to somehow come up later, especially when it comes to Nicholas, and have you think I was trying to hide anything.”

“I trust you, Buck,” Eddie replied. “Don’t care who you slept with before, how often, or how recently.”

Buck went soft at that, smiling at Eddie with something that looked a lot like relief. “Thanks.”

Eddie smiled back, reaching over and squeezing his knee before finally pulling them out of the spot and heading for the exit. As Eddie paid the parking fee, his phone dinged in its holder clipped to the vent. Buck grabbed it and scanned his eyes across the screen, head dropping into his hand as he started to shake.

“Buck?” Eddie said in alarm, almost pulling over.

“Seth’s going to be okay,” Buck said, voice cracking slightly. “They had to remove part of his liver and one of his kidneys, but he’s awake and talking and doing okay. They think he’ll make a full recovery.”

Eddie smiled, flipping up the center console over the middle seat and tugging Buck over for a hug. Buck came, drooping into his side, still shaking just a little. Eddie kept driving, one arm around Buck, thumb running softly up and down his shoulder. They’d planned to go straight to Maddie’s, but once it was clear Buck had passed out again, Eddie headed for Buck’s apartment instead. Maddie would understand. Buck needed a real shower—he’d only gotten a quick one at the ER before they’d left—fresh clothes, and his own bed. The rest could come later. He was home, and he was safe, and that was what mattered.