Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a big deal at the time. Buck just leaves his wallet at Tommy’s place, that’s all. Out of all the stupid ways Buck has lost his wallet it wouldn’t even make top ten, leaving it at his–well, at Tommy’s house.

Buck doesn’t even notice until the next morning, when he goes to pay for his macchiato before work at the place across the street and he comes up empty, and he has to go get Chimney to spot him, which Buck is never going to hear the end of. And normally of course he’d get Eddie to spot him, except Eddie is doing that thing where he sits in the corner staring at his phone looking haunted, which he does a lot lately, and Buck doesn’t feel like now is a good time to ask him for $9. So he texts Tommy to bring him his wallet, makes Chimney buy him two macchiatos (c’mon, Chim, you’re married to my sister– no, Buck, I just happen to work with my wife’s brother–) and goes back to the locker room to waft one of them under Eddie’s nose. Eddie snaps away from his phone and, after a beat, grins.

"Oh, thanks man," Eddie says, takes it with a nod.

"I asked for a pumpkin spice peppermint vanilla chai mocha, but they wouldn’t make it for me," Buck says, and Eddie laughs. It’s less convincing than Eddie thinks it is, and Buck’s stomach does something unpleasant.

"Yeah, well, maybe next time," Eddie says.

"Whatcha looking at?" Buck says, gesturing at Eddie’s phone, which Eddie pockets.

"Nothing," Eddie says. "Just news."

Which might be true, except that Buck is pretty sure that that website header read El Paso Herald.

"Has he–" Buck says. "Did he–"

"We’d better get started on those floors," Eddie says. "Don’t want that third write up."

And, like he’s been summoned, there’s the very distinctive clomp-clomp of boots coming down the stairs, a sound everyone at the 118 has rapidly Pavlov-ed to. Buck is forced to hustle out to grab the mop, because it’s been three weeks, and Buck is already at two write-ups, and at three he becomes eligible for a probationary pay decrease, and he never thought he’d be mourning the fact that the 118 didn’t have a dedicated on-site HR department, but here he is, and suffice to say Buck is—Buck is possibly not enjoying the new circumstances of his employment very much.

After a shellfish allergy, a child accidentally stuck in the trunk of a car, a broken ankle, and a late lunch, Tommy stops by with Buck’s wallet. Buck meets him in the parking lot and kisses him hard, and Tommy makes kind of a startled noise.

"Sorry," Buck says. "Sorry. Just kind of–pent up."

Tommy raises an eyebrow.

"I mean, I have a back seat," he says, leaning against his car. Buck snorts.

"I do not have time," Buck says. "I just–god, Eddie’s being so weird right now, and I mopped twice today already, and who cares how shiny the engines are, it’s not like we’re gonna roll up to a fire and they’ll be like oh never mind your engines aren’t shiny enough, and last week I got written up because my boots were tied incorrectly, not that they weren’t tied, just that they were tied wrong, and..."

Tommy’s eyes are getting a little glassy and Buck trails off.

"Sorry," Buck says again.

"Don’t let it get to you," Tommy says. "We still on for Tuesday?"

"Yeah, of course," Buck says absently. Tommy reels him in by the waist and kisses him again.

"You’re cute when you’re feisty," he informs Buck, who goes a little pink.

Back in the station Eddie is polishing one of the engines.

"Was that Tommy outside?" he says.

"Oh, yeah," Buck says. "Left my wallet at his place, he dropped it off."

"Oh, cool," Eddie says. And then out of nowhere: "Seems like he treats you right."

Buck blinks at him.

"Yeah, I guess," Buck says, and Eddie musters up a smile.

"That’s great, man," Eddie says. "Really happy for you."

The line of his shoulders is slumped all loose and casual. Eddie stays grinning.

Buck doesn’t buy it for a second.

-

Buck blames global warming for the fact that there’s a goddamn rainstorm in goddamn June, which means a slew of calls about slip-and-falls and cars skidding, because if there’s one thing Angelinos can’t do it’s drive when it’s wet. Which is the excuse dispatch gives them when they’re directed to the eighth car accident of the weekend, a car knocking down a telephone pole and tumbling into an arroyo just in time for a flash flood. The scene is looking pretty grim, car pinned by the downed pole, downed pole caught by tangled wires, so everyone huddles together to try and figure out what the options are other than watching a woman slowly drown in her vehicle.

"If we can cut the pole loose, the current should push it downstream, and we can use the jaws on the car," Hen says.

Eddie is sitting off to the side, elbows on his knees, looking at the river in silence. Bobby shakes his head, frowning.

"I’m not sending someone into that," he says, gesturing at the rushing water.

"I’ll go," Eddie says.

And Buck isn’t–He doesn’t–The words just spill out of him before he can think.

"No fucking way," he blurts out. And then everyone is staring at him. Everyone except Eddie.

"I mean–" Buck says. "I’ll go. I just updated my dive certification. More recent training."

"Absolutely not, both of you," Bobby says.

"With all due respect," Eddie says. "It’s not really your call anymore, is it."

And then everyone is staring at Eddie.

"Eddie–" Buck says.

"We don’t have time for this," Eddie says. "I’m suiting up."

And then Buck is on the riverbank, pacing back and forth, boots squelching through mud, except nope, Buck can’t be thinking about mud right now, and his gaze is locked out onto the river, where the wetsuit-clad figure of Eddie is being lowered into the water, and they’ve got Chimneyon the anchor line. Buck isn’t even allowed to do that; Hen puts her hand on Buck’s shoulder.

"Breathe, Buck," she tells him.

"I am breathing," he says through clenched teeth.

"It’s gonna be fine," she says. "Both of you could do this in your sleep."

"This is such bullshit," Buck grits out, and Hen sighs.

"It’s an adjustment period," she says, even though Hen doesn’t know the half of it, because Hen doesn’t know that Eddie isn’t–that Chris is–she just thinks that Chris is off having a fun summer with his grandparents like everyone else, she doesn’t know–

"Well, I’m not adjusting," Buck snaps, and it’s only then that he catches how her mouth is clamped tight.

"Yeah," she says. "You know, me neither."

And it is fine. It is. There’s a loud groan and a lurch as the pole finally snaps free, and then Eddie is being winched back up, hair plastered to his head, red lines pressed into his face from the rebreather, he looks grey and washed out. He looks exhausted. But Buck doesn’t really have time to think about it, can’t really think too hard about the bruise-purple rings under Eddie’s eyes, because finally he gets to go down with the jaws, finally he has a purpose, somewhere to put all that useless frantic energy. And then there’s an injured woman wrapped in a shock blanket clutching him, and it all becomes very urgent very quickly.

But it sticks to Buck. Like he’s gotten something on his hands that he can’t wipe off. It clings to him that night when he’s dicing onions for the pilaf, and Tommy is drinking a gin and tonic on the sofa, and Buck is ranting, calling it all bullshit, and Tommy is watching with one eyebrow raised. Until he finally says, "Evan, can you put the knife down," and Buck looks to where the blade is, and where his fingers are on the cutting board, and puts the knife down.

"Right," he says. "Sorry. I just. He won’t talk to me. How am I supposed to help him if he won’t talk to me?"

"Well, I’m sure he’ll talk when he’s ready," Tommy says, and Buck just frowns down at his onions and says, "Maybe." Because–no, Eddie absolutely will not. Eddie will isolate further and further until he’s barely a dot on the horizon, until he’s a grenade with a loose pin, and then... then it’s Chris. Chris who calls, Chris who texts. Chris who says, "Dad is acting weird." And that’s Buck’s cue. That’s how he wedges himself in there, because the magic words, "Chris says," are the key that gets Eddie to unlock–the secret pass code that opens the bunker.

And now Buck is stuck staring at the locked door, pounding and pounding on it, and there’s–there’s no way inthat he can see. At work, Eddie is all fist bumps and slaps on the back, hustling Garcia at pool, teasing Chimney for humming the Bluey theme under his breath because Jee’s obsessed. It sets Buck’s teeth on edge, makes him want to grab Eddie and shake him, try to rattle something loose.

Because Buck remembers, okay. Buck remembers Eddie’s face when Eddie opened the door and saw his parents standing there, saw how Eddie shrank down to eight years old in an instant. The way his spine locked tight, and... there is no way. There is no way Eddie is just fine right now, not in his empty house, eating at an empty table where he used to eat with his dead wife, where he used to eat with his estranged son–but Buck actually can’t do that one right now, has actually been trying very hard not to think about Christopher, because if he thinks too hard about Chris he’s going to think about how Chris has sent Buck three text messages since arriving in El Paso, each under five words long, and how–

How Buck has fucked everything up.

Because Buck loves Chris, he does, so fucking much. He loves him more than his own heart, loves Chris as his own curious, compassionate little person, not so little any more. And Buck also loves him as part of Eddie, the Diaz boys, the self-contained unit. Buck’s guys. That house, that couch, Carla’s cooking, Eddie’s weird post-it system for scheduling. It all blends together into something resembling a life, which had, for no reason at all, opened itself up to Buck, enveloped him in it, granted him entry for the low, low price of a role to play where he repaired the leaks and patched the holes.

Buck is the one who tells Eddie to go to therapy. Buck is the one who tells Eddie to get some sleep. Buck is the one who fixes it. And he didn’t see it until it was too late. He didn’t catch the cracks until the ice was spiderwebbed under them all, and he should have been looking harder.  He should have been looking harder.

But Buck hadn’t been. Because he’d been too busy with what, self discovery? A hot new boyfriend? Except even that makes Buck feel shitty, because Tommy is great, Buck doesn’t need to drag Tommy into this. Except that, well...

Buck had a job to do. And Buck didn’t do it.

And now Chris isn’t here, and Eddie barely is. And when Eddie is off doing some solo task in the firehouse, something where he thinks nobody is watching, that plastic grin slides off his face and it doesn’t leave anything behind it in its place. Just Eddie, quiet and methodical, doing whatever he is supposed to be doing.

-

-

He really thought the car in the river was the worst of it. Thought that was as bad as it was going to get, Eddie disappearing into the frothing water without looking back.

He was wrong.

He’s worked house fires, he’s worked dockyard fires, he’s worked a goddamn radioactive tunnel explosion, but the fact remains that the one place you never want to get a call to is a chemical plant. Not that the universe listens to Evan Buckley.

It’s not a fire. He would have preferred a fire, actually, instead of a fuck up of catastrophic proportions. Buck doesn’t understand it beyond the fact that there’s been an explosion and an industrial area the size of a city block is flooded with mustard gas. So they’re all out there in full hazmat gear, gas masks like it’s World War I all over again, searching for anyone unlucky enough to still be alive in there. And it’s not–it doesn’t seem that bad at first, aside from the circumstances. Eddie is still being all quiet and calm, and that’s not a bad thing; Buck knows what it looks like when Eddie panics and this isn’t that. So that’s good. That’s exactly what’s necessary in a situation like this, where they’re dragging people bleeding from the eyes out of some dank cement building. 

Buck and Eddie, Chim and Hen, and Bobby and Ravi are inside, and Gerrard is running ops from outside, as if he’d ever risk anything coming into a place like this. Spiral search grid, typical, starting on C side of the building, and they find a man, Hen and Chim are out, dragging his semi-conscious form. On to D side, then A, then there’s a woman, and Bobby and Ravi are out, and Eddie and Buck are left, and it’s–fine. Good, even, or well, not good, but it’s functional, it’s seamless, they have this part down, clearing meter by meter, and if Buck looks over through the fogged and smudged front of the gas mask, Eddie is there, barely recognizable in the gear but Buck knows him, Buck knows how he moves.

And then Buck’s O2 meter starts beeping.

They’re supposed to have ten minutes on the clock. Buck’s is reading five.

Like any reasonable person, he smacks it. It doesn’t help.

"Eddie," he says on the closed channel. "Eddie, I think I’ve got an O2 leak."

Eddie pauses, comes over. Looks at the clock.

"Alright, let’s get you out of here," he says.

"Us," Buck says. "Let’s get us out of here, then we’ll come back in."

"Yeah, that’s what I said," Eddie says, and on the open channel, "Firefighter Buckley’s sprung an O2 leak, we’re heading out now."

And Buck just–fine, okay, whatever, they’re getting out, closest exit on the B side, feeling their way through the grey-yellow haze meter by meter, and Buck is not thinking about the clock ticking down, not thinking about the haze around him that isn’t air, keeping his breathing steady and even so he doesn’t burn through whatever is left, how fast is the leak anyways, clock is down to two minutes, and a red light on the meter has come on. One minute, and there is the door, twenty yards out.

There is the door, and there, twenty meters in the other direction, almost lost in the swirling haze that coats everything, is a pair of legs. Attached to the rest of a body, too far away to see anything else, half-hidden behind a gas tank, and Eddie’s O2 meter is at five but Buck’s is flashing red now, yelling zero, zero, zero, and Buck is gasping, there’s nothing there, air that isn’t air, and he says, "Eddie."

And Eddie says, "I see it, I see it."

And Buck is stumbling now, his limbs aren’t quite listening to him, and Eddie’s got his arm draped over his shoulders, and the world is–swimming, funny black spots everywhere, and Buck tries to say Eddie, except nothing is coming out of his mouth, and the world is–so strange, all lopsided and topsy-turvy, like he’s stepped inside a funhouse mirror, his limbs are far away and too long, he wants to laugh because Eddie is dragging him towards the door, and the door opens and it’s so bright out there, bright like the light they always tell you not to go towards, and Eddie is ripping off Buck’s mask and Buck is giggling, and Chim is there, Chim is grabbing Buck’s half-conscious floppy body, and then it’s–there’s noise, people are shouting, Chim is shouting, Hen is shouting, he’s never seen Hen mad like that before, and Eddie is–where is Eddie? Eddie should be right behind him, Eddie needs to be right behind him, Eddie is–Buck is flailing, looking, and Chim and Hen are dragging him towards the med tent, and Buck is trying to get out, get away, he has to get to Eddie, except his limbs still won’t listen, the black spots on his vision have been replaced by pain, staggering pain, shooting through his eyes and down into the center of his brain, little lasers right into his central cortex, and then Buck is on a cot, O2 mask on his face, and the world is loud and bright and it hurts, and there are voices on the radio, Gerrard’s voice barking at Diaz to get outside, this is not the wild west, protocol is protocol for a reason and he’s risking suspension, and Eddie’s voice is there, scratchy and distant, and he says, "Negative sir, someone is still in there," and then it’s silence. And Buck is struggling against the tubes, but there’s Hen there, Hen who says, "Do not make me ketamine you Buck, do not test me right now," and–there’s something in the IV now isn’t there?–his movements are getting sluggish, and he can’t catch his breath enough to talk, but he knows he’s mouthing it, "Eddie," and the last thing he sees is Hen’s face floating over him, her eyes gentle and firm behind her glasses, her mouth all pursed, and then it’s just something that drags him down, drags him under, into all that soft, smothering dark.

-

He wakes up and Bobby is there. Someday this will not be a familiar sight: hospital gown, Bobby in the chair, Buck gasping, "Eddie."

Bobby says, "He’s fine Buck, he’s fine, he got out, he got the victim out, he’s back at the station."

And Buck takes a deep breath, a deep shuddery breath, he loves air, he never wants to forget about air ever again, and Bobby tells him he's gonna be fine, they’re just keeping him overnight for observation.

Buck says, "Uh-huh."

Bobby gives him a look, and says Maddie is coming to take over, and to please not do anything stupid Buck, please, one idiot firefighter per day is already exceeding quota.

Buck says, "Uh-huh."

Buck waits until Bobby is gone, Maddie on her way, and then he grabs his clothes and goes to discharge himself.

-

When Buck lets himself in, Eddie is lying on the couch watching some war movie rerun. He barely glances over at Buck before his eyes settle back on the television.

"Really?" Buck says. "You’re not going to get up or anything?"

Eddie shrugs, his eyes not leaving the screen.

"Jesus," Buck says. "Eddie, you scared the shit out of everyone today. You scared the shit out of me."

"Sorry," Eddie says, not sounding like he particularly is.

"No, seriously," Buck says. "There’s calculated risk and then there’s... whatever that was."

Eddie sighs.

"It’s the gig, Buck," he says. "You don’t like it, pretty sure McDonald’s is hiring."

Buck knows, knowsEddie is just trying to make him mad on purpose, because when Buck is mad Buck is not articulate, and when Buck is mad Buck says things everyone regrets. Things like:

"God, and you call me selfish."

Eddie twitches. And now Buck is taking payment in winces, all those echoes of adrenaline still hiding in his knuckles and turning his hands shaky, the scratchy flat affect of Eddie’s voice over the radio saying, "Negative, sir, someone’s still in there." There had been a minute in the staging area, gasping at fresh O2, the oxygen mask straps digging into the sides of Buck’s face, where he had thought, really thought, that that might be the last thing he would ever hear Eddie say. Which had been so fundamentally unacceptable, not just the idea of Eddie coughing up chunks of lung in some dilapidated old building, but that he might be doing it alone. Because if Eddie was dying, Buck was supposed to be there. Those were the rules.

"Do you think this is fooling anyone?" Buck snaps.

He’s sure that one will land–if there’s one thing Eddie is overly sensitive to, it is every single person on the planet’s perception of him. And he kind of needs Eddie to flinch right now, kind of needs him to get all pissy like he’s so very good at, anything other than staring at the TV with that nothing look like he’s only barely there and Buck is yelling at an empty room. It makes Buck feel very small, and very young, like he’s throwing a tantrum while his family pretends nobody is screaming, and Buck hates it, because he isn’t a child, and this isn’t a tantrum, Eddie almost died, Eddie almost died, and Buck–Buck feels like he’s losing his mind. Eddie just shrugs again.

"Shouldn’t you be going home to your boyfriend," he says, all quiet and flat, and Buck is the one who flinches.

"What does that mean?" Buck says. Because... yeah, Eddie had said nothing would change. He did. And he was right, of course they still hang out, and shoot the shit, and make dumb jokes only the two of them understand. But. Something had changed, okay, something that Buck couldn’t put into words or ever explain to another person without sounding totally crazy. It was different even before Chris left, Eddie’s weird sideways glances when he thought Buck wasn’t looking, like–Buck doesn’t know what like. He wants, more than anything right now, for Eddie to just fucking look at him, just turn his head and actually look.

The TV plays in the background, the tinny muted sound of gunfire, men yelling. Some guy onscreen takes a shell to the chest and turns into red mist. Eddie doesn’t move.

"It means you have a life," Eddie says. "And it isn’t me."

Buck stares at Eddie’s profile. Thinks about how well he knows that profile, how he’s seen it outlined against fire more times than he can count, seen it wreathed in smoke, barely visible in haze, covered in a gas mask, and still Buck always recognizes it. Always thinks: There he is, there’s Eddie.

"I’m always... you’re always going to be part of my life," Buck says. "I mean, you’re my best friend."

"Right," Eddie says quietly.

"Look. I know–" Buck says. "I know it’s not easy, okay, I miss him too–"

And there’s Eddie’s flinch, his whole face going dark, and he says, "Don’t," in a voice that’s sharp and hard. But Buck knows a soft spot when he sees one, and he jumps at the chance to exert pressure, because Buck wants to dig his nails in, because it’s the first new expression Eddie’s made all evening.

"You think Chris wants this?" Buck says "You doing–whatever this is, you think that’s going to help him? He’s lost enough, he doesn’t need–"

"I said don’t," Eddie says, and it comes out in such a snarl that it jams the words back down Buck’s throat. He’s never, everheard Eddie use that voice before, wouldn’t have even guessed Eddie had that voice in him. It’s not the rage that’s new, it’s the finality. Eddie has yelled before, Eddie has yelled at him plenty, but there’s always a crack, somewhere for Buck to wiggle in and keep prying. But now there’s–nothing.

"Don’t you dare try and tell me what my son needs," Eddie says, quiet and flat. 

And Buck... stops. Because he–but Eddie’s right, Buck isn’t–Because no matter what some piece of paper Eddie signed says, Buck is not–Buck is just some random person. He’s not Chris’s father. Not even his uncle or anything. And sure, Buck still thinks about Chris’s bird bone shoulders under his hands, or Chris’s dopey smile when Buck finally gives in to something he’s been pestering him about. But Buck fits into Chris’s life as an accessory to Eddie, the Buck and Eddie team. Even if Eddie–well, even if Eddie wasn’t around, even if–if the will ever did come into play, that still would be–Eddie would still be there, in a sense, right? He’d still be the one carving a space out in Chris’s life for Buck. He’d still be the one handing Buck a part to play.

Eddie is already watching TV again, like Buck isn’t even in the room.

"Eddie," he says helplessly. "Come on, man. Please."

"You need to go home," Eddie says.

"No, I–"

"Please, Buck," Eddie says, and he sounds so, so exhausted. "Please go home."

Buck stands there and he waits. The men on the screen die. And Eddie doesn’t move, Eddie doesn’t speak, Eddie doesn’t turn around. All he can see is the back of Eddie’s head outlined by the TV glow, all the light flickering around him and Eddie sitting so still.

"When, uh. During the well. I kind of... lost it a little. Tried to dig you out by hand. I don’t think–probably nobody ever told you that," Buck says. "What I’m saying is, I’m here. I’m not gonna go anywhere."

The lines of Eddie’s shoulders collapse, go from locked tight to fallen, and Buck thinks for a second, a precious second, that maybe, finally, that will do it. Eddie will turn around, will look him in the face and–cry or yell or whatever Eddie needs to do.

But Eddie doesn’t.

The words drift over from the back of his head, the slumped silhouette of him:

"Yeah?" Eddie says quietly. "How’d that work out for you?"

Buck tries to think what to say to that.

"Goodnight, Buck," Eddie says into the silence.

"See you tomorrow," Buck says, and he waits, stands in that doorway and refuses to go until Eddie says it back.

-

It’s nice to hang out with Tommy. It is, even if sometimes it gets a little quiet. But there’s nothing wrong with quiet, nothing wrong with sitting in the same room with not much really to say. That’s just part of relationships, has been a part of every relationship Buck has ever had, where Buck will be sitting on the couch or lying in bed or eating dinner and it will be kind of quiet, and Buck will think: Now. Say it now. Whatever the thing is that will crack it all open. The thing that Buck is sure exists, which will lay it all out, and then everyone will finally talk to each other. Except that’s a fantasy, Buck knows it’s a fantasy, has been in enough relationships to know that’s not how things really happen. Communication takes effort. That’s normal. That’s natural.

So Buck defaults. He talks about Maddie. Talks about his childhood. All the shortcuts to intimacy that Buck knows, and they work, they always work, and Tommy’s eyes get a little soft, and he starts talking about his family, and Buck watches him talk, the creases at the corners of his eyes, the few grey hairs starting to pepper his temples, and Buck thinks: You’re here with me, right? And I’m here with you? We’re sitting here together, at this dinner table. We’re having a normal conversation. This is nice. This is nice.

When Buck’s phone rings, he doesn’t feel relief. He doesn’t. He’s having a nice time.

It’s Garcia. Which is weird. Buck texts him sometimes about shift coverage, but that’s really the extent of their relationship, Garcia has definitely never called him. So Buck says, "Uh, sorry, can I just–" and picks up.

Garcia says, "You need to come get Diaz."

And Buck says, "What?"

"Diaz. He’s–Well. I’m at The Green Lady with some of the guys, and–Diaz didn’t come with us, he’s just here, I think he’s alone but. I don’t know, he’s pretty trashed. And I think he’s about to fight a guy?"

"He what?"

There’s a pause, and then a slight commotion on the other end.

"Two guys," Garcia says. "Make that two guys."

"Fuck, yeah, okay. I’m coming, I’m coming, just–can you try to get him to calm down until I get there?"

When he hangs up Tommy is looking at him, mouth all thin.

"Sorry," Buck says. "Really, I am. I just–I kind of have to–"

Buck is already looking for his wallet, his keys–

"I get it," Tommy says, but he doesn’t look happy. Buck kisses him.

"I’ll make it up to you," he says, halfway out the door. "Really, I will."

"I’ll hold you to that," Tommy calls after him.

Buck drives, and Buck calls Eddie, and Eddie doesn’t answer. Of course not. That would be too simple. God, Buck wishes Eddie’s patterns could be a little less–violent, at least. Wishes he could spiral out with gardening maybe, or journaling, but no, it’s always the great big bloody explosion. Always Eddie clawing his way out of the wreckage looking all grimly satisfied, like he’d proved something about his innate tendency towards destruction. Which Buck knows isn’t true, because if it was innate, Eddie wouldn’t have to try so hard at it.

Nobody even notices when Buck bursts through the door of the bar, all too focused on the group of men who are yelling. Okay, so it’s not two guys, it’s three guys now, with Eddie swaying slightly between them, Garcia tugging at his arm uselessly and Eddie swatting him away like a fly.

"No," one guy is saying. "I think you should say that again, I think I didn’t really hear you–"

"I think you heard me just fine–" Eddie says.

"Great, yeah, yup, thank you everyone," Buck says, stepping into the middle. Eddie blinks at him blearily and then frowns.

"What’re you doing here?" he says.

"Keeping your teeth in your head," Buck says, and Eddie glowers.

"My teeth–" he says, and one of the other guys laughs.

"Yeah, listen to your boyfriend–"

Eddie lunges at him. And it’s only because Buck knows Eddie well enough, knows the tiny tick of Eddie’s jaw that happens right before Eddie does something insane and regrettable, that Buck is ready, and Buck catches him with an arm around the chest.

"Okay, so we are leaving now," Buck tells him, and Eddie growls, and Buck has to physically drag him out of the bar with his arms locked around him. 

Outside, he manhandles Eddie into the Jeep, Eddie trying to bat him off until Buck says, "Eddie," in a hiss and Eddie slumps. So Buck drives, biting his tongue and breathing to a count of eight all the way back to Eddie’s, Eddie sulking in the passenger seat and giving him the cold shoulder, Eddie’s favorite, and Buck is notin the mood for Eddie’s regular bullshit. Eddie stumbles out of the car at his house, nearly falls before catching himself. Lurching inside, he collapses onto the couch in a heap.

"We gonna talk about it now?" Buck says, and Eddie grimaces, shuts his eyes.

"‘m fine," he says.

"Right, so totally fine," Buck says, and Eddie scowls at him. "What was that about, then?"

Eddie shrugs. He seems drunker now than he did inside the bar, adrenaline worn off, movements uncoordinated and blurry.

"Bumped into me," Eddie mumbles. "Spilled his drink. Wanted me to say sorry."

"So you tried to fight three men?"

"Wasn’t gonna," Eddie says. "Not ’til–he called you my boyf–was being homoph... homophobic, okay, I was... defending you."

"Defending me," Buck says. "Well first of all, I am more than capable of getting into my own bar fights, and second of all, did you not hear the three men part?"

Eddie’s throat works as he swallows.

"Doesn’t matter," he says.

"Eddie, they would have beat the shit out of you!"

"Doesn’t matter," Eddie says again, quietly this time, his head lolling against the couch back. Now that he’s home, he looks terrible, empty and washed out. He sighs, and his eyes flutter shut for a moment, and. And Buck can’t, he can’t. Buck says, "Eddie," and he doesn’t know what he’s going to say next. Just knows it’s Eddie, that’s all, sitting right there, looking faded and grey. And Buck’s throat hurts, and his voice is raw, and something lurches inside Buck, something tears, and he says–

"I’m gonna go get you a glass of water."

In the kitchen Buck takes a deep breath, his limbs all shuddery. He leans his forehead against the fridge, feels the cold metal press against his skin, tries to focus on just feeling his body, not wondering if Eddie still has that baseball bat, and if maybe Buck should be the one to start breaking things–

An open envelope pinned onto the fridge next to his face catches his attention. Because Buck knows Eddie’s fridge well, and that’s new. He pulls it down, and a birthday card and a $50 bill slide out into his hand. Right, it’s Chris’s birthday in two days. Buck already scribbled out and sent off a card of his own, his stomach dropping a little as he wrote El Paso, TX. It’s a little late to mail out a card though, if it’s supposed to get there in time. Buck flips the envelope over.

It’s already been mailed, cancelled stamp in the upper right.

Christopher’s blocky handwriting across the front spelling out: RETURN TO SENDER.

Oh.

Oh, Eddie.

Back in the living room, Eddie is sitting slumped with his arms wrapped tight around his torso. And Buck feels it in the center of his chest, the thing that twinges, the thing that softly curls around itself sometimes when Buck is around Eddie late at night, or early in the morning, or in the noon sun, or watching Eddie frown at a notification on his phone, or watching Eddie yawn, or watching Eddie–do anything, really, it seems to happen whenever Buck watches Eddie at all.

"Hey, Eds," he says. "Water."

He comes to kneel in front of Eddie, waving the water glass in the face. Eddie blinks at it fuzzily.

"‘m sorry," Eddie says. "Never said that."

Buck sighs.

"Yeah, I know. Don’t get me wrong, you’d probably have kicked their asses individually, but c’mon man, three against one?"

"Not that," Eddie says. "Never told him... should’ve told him."

"Oh," Buck says, and he feels his heart crack in half, hears the low hollow sound that makes.

"Shouldn’t have done it," Eddie says. "I... fucked it all up. Broke everything."

"You made a mistake," Buck says. "It happens."

Eddie laughs, and then hiccups, and then grimaces. There’s such a blind, empty look to him, like he’s seeing something nobody else can.

"Had a... name for those in the army," he says. "Called those... called those casualties."

Buck’s chest constricts abruptly and anything cruel he was holding onto in there is gone in a rush that hurts, like something being ripped out of him, empty space left behind. Because Eddie, he put that card on the fridge right where he has to see it every day. Eddie made sure he’d always be looking at it. Eddie did that to himself and he didn’t even think anyone would notice. Buck puts a hand on Eddie’s shoulder and Eddie makes a very quiet noise in the back of his throat.

"You just messed up, Eddie," Buck says. "You’re a human being."

"Didn’t mean to," Eddie says. "I didn... didn’t..."

His head is hunched forward, and he’s staring down and not blinking, his throat working as he swallows and swallows.

"I know," Buck says.

Eddie vomits onto his knees.

"Whoa, yeah, yup, okay," Buck says. "We’re gonna get you to the bathroom bud, because this next part is going to suck."

Buck was a frat boy for years even before he was a firefighter, and this part, this part Buck is good at. He gets Eddie into the bathroom, helps Eddie strip off his disgusting vomit clothes and tosses them in the wash, makes Eddie shower sitting down, checks on him twice to make sure he hasn’t passed out in there.

And maybe Buck has been a little worried it’s going to get weird, post-Tommy-revelations. Maybe Buck has spent the post-coming-out period being extra respectful in the locker room, staring extra hard off into the distance when Eddie changes. But it’s not actually weird at all, and Buck suddenly feels kind of stupid for ever worrying it would be. He’s seen Eddie naked plenty of times over plenty of years. He knows what Eddie looks like, the curve of his biceps, the dark hair sprinkled across his chest, the movement of his shoulder blades under his skin, the mole under his right pectoral. It’s all familiar. It’s nothing new. It’s just Eddie.

Buck sets him up in his bed with water and Aspirin on the bedside table, makes sure he’s lying on his left side with the trash can within reach, and Buck settles onto the floor with a blanket and a pillow. He tells himself he just wants to keep watch for asphyxiation, and that’s the reason he stays close. That’s the reason he lies there in the dark and he catalogs every sound.

-

Buck jerks awake at some point in the early morning, right before dawn when it’s that weird blue color all around. Eddie is making a very quiet noise, and at first Buck panics and thinks he’s choking, but he’s not. He’s rolled over with his back to Buck, and the covers across his shoulders are shaking almost silently as Eddie cries.

Buck doesn’t even know if he’s awake. If Eddie even knows that Buck is in the room. But Buck is pretty sure the only worse thing than lying here in silence would be getting up and leaving. So he just stays, looks at the ceiling, lets the sound wash over him, and doesn’t move. Because Eddie hates when people are gentle with him, seems to take it as a personal affront every time, so he and Buck grab each other’s shoulders, and fist bump, and give each other back-slapping hugs, and Buck has to wonder if anyone ever touches Eddie in a way that isn’t just fleeting. Tries to picture it, Eddie letting a woman play with his hair, or putting his head in her lap, and he finds that he can’t.

Buck is tired, mostly asleep even, so he lets himself think it. Putting his hand on Eddie’s side, feeling the span of his ribcage as it shakes. Imagines Eddie’s hand reaching up to catch Buck’s fingers and press them there, splayed out across Eddie’s chest, held against Eddie’s breathing.

-

Buck wakes up again at an almost normal hour to Eddie retching into the bedside trash can.

"I," Eddie says. "Am never drinking again."

"Probably a good call," Buck mumbles, half awake. "Drink your water."

"I did," Eddie snaps, and then retches again.

Despite himself, despite how Buck’s head is aching and his eyes are burning from lack of sleep, the familiar bitchy tone to Eddie’s voice makes Buck bite back a grin.

"Well drink more," Buck says, and gets up off the floor with a groan to head to the kitchen and start puttering.

Eddie’s fridge is not well stocked. Every time Buck has been over before it’s been full of fruits and vegetables, stuff for Carla or Buck to cook with, string cheese, snack packs, carefully labeled Tupperware full of Chris’s lunches. Now it’s... empty. A rotting container of takeout. An old lime.

Buck adds ‘grocery shopping’ to his mental to-do list.

Ten minutes later, he comes back into the bedroom carefully carrying his concoction. He holds it out and Eddie eyes it warily. The bags under Eddie’s eyes are hanging like purple shadows, his hair is greasy and sticking up at odd angles, but he’s awake. And something in the middle of Buck–unclenches. Settles down like an old dog in front of a fireplace.

"Drink this," Buck says.

"Absolutely not," Eddie says. Buck sighs and sits at the edge of the bed, shoving the glass in front of Eddie’s face.

Eddie takes it with a frown.

"What is it?"

"Tomato juice, hot sauce, lime, fish sauce, soy sauce, pickle juice, you didn’t have any eggs–"

"No way," Eddie says, turning even greyer.

"I’m sorry, which of us was in Sigma Tau Gamma for a full four months before getting expelled for underage drinking?" Buck says. "Because I don’t think it was you, Edmundo. Now drink it."

Eddie glares. Buck sighs.

"C’mon, Eddie," Buck says.

Eddie drinks it.

Then he gags. Then he groans, the back of his hand pressed against his mouth. Then he grimaces and shudders head to toe. He does not, however, throw up.

"Yeah, see," Buck says. "It works every time."

Eddie slumps back down onto the pillows, ashen and sweaty, looking like death warmed over.

"Ugh," he says.

Buck eyes him critically.

"You should probably call out of work today," he says. "I don’t know if you’re really in emergency preparedness condition."

"Yeah, no shit," Eddie says. He shifts and wriggles until he’s on the other, presumably cooler side of the bed, and then sighs, one arm flung across his face.

Buck is not a brave person. He’s not. He knows it’s in the description, firefighter and all that, but there’s nothing he hates more than being called a hero. All he’s doing is his job. And yeah, his job happens to be running into burning buildings, but that’s hardly indicative of his moral character. He could run into burning buildings and still be a terrible person and a coward–he’s known plenty. And it’s not like–it’s not like any of it has ever actually scared him.

Ever since he was a kid, he had these fantasies where he’d die saving someone’s life in some heroic way. And it’s not like he wanted to die, he didn’t. He just liked to imagine the look on everyone’s faces, like a movie scene, the music swelling, and finally an opportunity for Buck to be useful, finally a real moment to prove what his life was worth. And then he got better. He did, he really did, he found people, he talked about his feelings, and now he–well even if he still runs into danger head-on, now he does it with a backwards glance. Mostly to look at the people standing behind him, and he’ll call that growth.

But when Buck thinks about the things he’s done that he thinks have been brave, actually brave, Buck can count them on one hand.

Yelling at his parents that one time, maybe.

Confronting Abby on that park bench, maybe.

And finding Eddie in the wreckage of Los Angeles, Chris’s glasses around Buck’s neck like proof of every inherent failure of Buck’s existence, and still Buck had–said it. Because he knew, knew Eddie wasn’t going to survive this. And Buck couldn’t do that, Buck could not do that. There were lines and there were limits, there were things Buck could lose and things he couldn’t, and he knew where Eddie and Chris lay on that spectrum. But then he’d done it anyway. Opened his mouth and said, "Chris is gone." Watched Eddie’s face... shatter. It was like the water at the pier, drawing out and out, a sign of what was coming, and there was nothing anybody could do to stop it now, nobody could fight it, nobody could change it.

And now–God, the house is so quiet. Chris has such a loud laugh, whooping, the kind you can hear from another room. Buck knows it’s not–Chris is just in El Paso with his loving family members, it’s fine, Chris is fine. Relatively speaking.

Except Chris is still gone.

Eddie isn’t looking at Buck, has his arm over his face, so Buck can’t see him. But he’s close enough to touch. Not just in some split-second back-slapping way. Buck has had Eddie’s blood on his hands, under his nails, in his eyes and ears and nose and mouth. And he’s seen Eddie sleep on the couch, and curse at LA traffic, and pick his son up and spin him around when his son was still small enough to let him.

And Buck misses him. Misses him so, so much. Doesn’t even know which "him" he means.

Buck settles down on the bed next to Eddie. Not that close, still a good foot of space between them, and he waits for Eddie to say, "Hey, personal space maybe?" or, "Dude what are you doing." But Eddie doesn’t say a word. He just kind of–stiffens for a second. And Buck is about to get up and make some stupid joking excuse about spending the night on the floor, and how his spine is killing him, something that will let them both laugh awkwardly and never mention it again, even if Buck would spend the rest of his goddamn life thinking about it.

But Eddie takes in this one shaky inhale, his face still covered–Buck still can’t see him–and on his exhale, the tension loosens from his body, until he’s breathing deep and even.

So Buck lies there, lets the sound wash over him. Lets it drown out all the rest until it’s the loudest thing that he hears.

-

And it’s... well, better is not the right word. Eddie is a total nightmare at work, snapping at everyone, his face a constant storm cloud. But that’s a good thing, actually, from where Buck is sitting.

Because, sure, Eddie is currently miserable. Eddie spends a lot of time staring off into space, Eddie barely smiles at Buck’s jokes, Eddie is definitely not sleeping. But at least–at least Eddie is miserable right next to him. At least he’s miserable up close.

-

-

He knows it’s going to be a bad day. Bad for him, sure, because Chris is 14 and in goddamn Texas, but if it’s bad for him, then for Eddie–for Eddie–

At least he’s not... doing that thing he does. The one where he’s off somewhere, looking at everything with glazed eyes. No, Eddie is just silent all day, but the right kind of silent. Buck is an expert on his silences by now, and this one is Eddie with his shoulders hunched, this one is Eddie taking deep ragged breaths when he thinks nobody will notice, even if Buck notices.

He does his best to make sure Eddie isn’t alone, not once, following Eddie around to chatter endlessly about omega-3 supplements and the commercial fishing supply chain, and Eddie’s face stays dark, but he keeps working, hands steady and sure resetting a dislocated shoulder, picking asphalt out of an unlucky motorcyclist’s leg, and Eddie is just. Quiet, the lines of him stiff and jerky, and all day it’s like. Like the silence builds, and grows, like it has its own mind, its own agency, this huge thing pressing at Eddie, his teeth grinding, eyes bright and glassy, and Buck doesn’t even ask to come over, just trails home behind Eddie and orders takeout. They eat in that silence, and it’s like nothing Buck says can make a dent in it, like he’s talking and the words are coming out but still it’s somehow silent in that house.

Eddie says, "He’s probably asleep by now."

Says it all quiet, all creaky, and Buck looks down at his phone, does the time zone math, and says, "yeah, probably."

And Eddie exhales.

"Okay," he says, and he goes to the bedroom, the door clicking shut behind him.

And it’s not like Buck is trying to eavesdrop, okay, he’s not. It’s more like–like his ears in general just happen to be specifically attuned to Eddie’s voice. Because the TV is on and blaring, but somehow it doesn’t block out sound from the bedroom, the shuffling of Eddie pacing, the creak of him sitting on the bed as he says, "Hey, Mom."

And the timbre of his voice is the one that Buck hates, Eddie’s everything-is-fine voice, his I-am-a-picture-of-mental-stability voice.

"Yeah. No, sorry to call so late, I just."

So maybe Buck–okay, maybe Buck turns the TV down a little. Because he has this rule, see, about leaving Eddie alone with things, and how Buck does not do that.

"So did you–" Eddie says.

A pause.

"That’s good."

A pause.

"Uh-huh, were they–did he have fun?" he says.

Eddie snorts.

"Yeah. I remember," he says.

A longer pause.

"He didn’t–Did he tell you? About..."

And then Eddie says in this quiet choked voice:

"The card."

Another long, long pause.

"Did he say anything else?" he says.

A pause.

Eddie clears his throat.

"Okay," Eddie says.

Eddie is back up and pacing again, Buck can hear it.

"Well would you tell him..."

The creak of the floorboards as Eddie pivots sharply.

"Look. Just tell him that I miss him and I love him. Can you do that? Can you do that for me?"

A long exhale.

"I’m not–" he snaps.

Silence, and then:

"I know," he says quietly.

More silence.

"I said I know," Eddie says, and the last word gets hissed. "Don’t you think I know that?"

Buck can’t see him, but he’s sure Eddie is rubbing his hand over his face the way he does.

"Don’t bring her into this," Eddie says.

A long, tense silence, and then he scoffs.

"No, you’re the one who–"

He cuts off abruptly. There aren’t any more floorboard noises from inside, and Buck is pretty sure that means Eddie has gone still and rigid, breathing through his teeth.

"Okay," Eddie says finally, tersely.

A pause.

"Okay."

A pause.

"Yeah," he says.

A pause.

"You too," he says. "Bye."

And then a sigh. A long shaky inhale, and Buck knows Eddie is scrubbing his hands through his hair, knows exactly what expression he is making, can practically see through the wall with X-ray goggles at the way Eddie’s mouth gets all tight at the corner and his eyes get all glassy.

The bedroom door opens. Buck has long since given up on pretending to watch TV.

Eddie barely glances at him before stalking over to the kitchen and grabbing a beer out of the fridge. He’s full of that heady, rigid rage he gets sometimes, like a trap about to snap.

"So it went great, huh," Buck says, and Eddie just grunts at him. He storms back over to the couch and collapses onto it next to Buck, clutching his unopened beer bottle and looking out at nothing. All that waiting energy to him, like a spring coiling tighter and tighter.

"Eddie," Buck says, and Eddie says nothing, does nothing, is shaking slightly. So Buck says it again, says, "Eddie," and Eddie flinches. And he turns to look at Buck, his eyes wide, his nostrils flaring, and still his hands are shaking, so Buck grabs them.

"Okay," Buck says. "Okay, breathe–"

Eddie’s hands under his are dry, and warmer than they should be, hotter than normal, and Eddie makes sort of a creaky sound, like he’s an old building, like a wind is blowing through him. And that’s it, that’s all the warning Buck gets before Eddie leans, and Eddie kisses him.

Eddie kisses him.

Eddie is kissing him, and Buck’s brain just sort of... short-circuits, sparks flying out of his ears, not one single coherent thought. Because this isn’t–Eddie is his–this is clearly–Eddie is not doing well, and whatever–but he–it’s Eddie. Eddie, whose mouth is on top of Buck’s at that exact moment, hot and wet and present, whose hand is on the side of Buck’s neck, thumb digging into the place where Buck’s ear meets his jaw, and he is so close, he is closer than he’s ever been, and it’s not enough, Buck still wants–

Buck still somehow wants him closer, wants to hold much of Eddie inside himself as he possibly can, Buck’s hand is on Eddie’s face keeping him there so that he stops going places, he is tired of Eddie getting farther and farther away like Buck is watching something drift out to sea, he’ll carve new holes into himself if he has to to fit him all inside, he doesn’t care. Eddie is kissing hard, kissing rough, like he’s trying to breathe, like it’s mouth to mouth, Eddie is biting at his lip and Buck makes something between a gasp and a moan, whatever it is it’s embarrassing, and the sound breaks something. Some spell that had been cast with lips and teeth and tongue, and suddenly. Suddenly Buck is aware again. Of the fact that he is sitting on Eddie’s couch. Kissing Eddie.

Kissing Eddie.

And that does it like another 100 million volts, zaps right through him and Buck jerks away, straight up falls off the couch onto his ass on the floor.

And then he’s staring at Eddie, and Eddie’s staring at him.

And there is a second of sheer confusion that bounces back and forth between them, reverberates, swelling into fear, and then it’s–it’s–it’s Buck talking, all that terror bubbling out, bubbling over, he’s saying "I–I can’t I–We–I–"

Something happens on Eddie’s face, something Buck cannot even begin to interpret, and Eddie’s expression goes blank. Completely still. And Eddie just turns back to the TV.

And Buck’s mouth tastes like–

Buck’s mouth tastes like–

And he is scrambling back and away to the door, saying, "I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry," and Eddie isn’t reacting, Eddie isn’t looking at him at all.

-

So, okay.

That was possibly not the most mature and productive way to handle the situation.

See, the thing is.

Of course Buck has thought about it.

After Tommy–Well, yeah, it had occurred to him. More as a thought experiment than anything else, a haha-what-if where first he mentally went through all the men he’d ever known and tried to decide if he’d fuck them or not. And he’d landed on half nos and half yeses, and then he’d realized he hadn’t even thought about Eddie. Which made sense, because Eddie was his best friend, so thinking about him would be weird.

Except then Buck was thinking about Eddie. For just a second. He was thinking about whether he’d be loud or quiet, what kind of noises Eddie might make, and unbidden, out of nowhere, Buck thought of that one sharp soft exhale Eddie made when the bullet tore through him, a noise of bodily surprise. The blood spray across Buck’s face had been warm, nothing like water, and he could taste it the whole time he was begging Eddie to hold on, and that was already too much.

But even more than that there was a moment when Buck hit the asphalt, gaze locked on Eddie, who was looking back at him, whose hands twitched, and Eddie went so still. And Buck’s eyes stung with salt, and the world was tinged slightly pink. And Buck realized that that was Eddie’s blood in his eyes. That he was looking at the world through Eddie, even while he was watching him die.

At that point in the mental exercise, Buck had to get up and go splash water on his face and try to figure out what his body was doing and if he was going to throw up or what. It turned out no, so he went for a run then ate a microwaved burrito and he was fine, but he learned a valuable lesson, which was that it was probably better not to think about Eddie.

Except now. Now Buck is trying to think about it without thinking about it, and it’s kind of making his brain explode. Because Eddie just–and he–but people do all kinds of crazy things when they’re having breakdowns, right? People shave their heads and buy houseboats and start selling essential oils. So in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that surprising.

Except it was.

Very surprising.

And more surprising than that, except not surprising at all, and the fact that it doesn’t actually feel surprising even though it should kind of makes Buck want to run head first into a brick wall, is that Buck actually can’t stop... wondering. Kind of wants to know what would have happened if he hadn’t pushed Eddie away. Wants to know what kind of noises he could tear out of him, wants to know if he could get Eddie to say Buck’s name in a low hungry voice, wants to know if he could pry Eddie open like cracking a rib cage so that Buck is the only thing Eddie is looking at or thinking about, so that Buck makes up his whole field of vision, his whole horizon–

So.

Maybe Buck is having kind of a crisis.

And the crisis is only compounded by it being date night, and Tommy is coming over in two hours. So Buck is pacing his apartment like a neurotic search and rescue dog, and God, this is just like Taylor all over again, except with the Lucy debacle, Buck had never been so goddamn insane about it, she was really hot and really cool but she wasn’t–but no, Buck definitely needs to tell Tommy, even if he’s not exactly sure what he needs to tell Tommy–that Eddie kissed him (Eddie kissed him) and Buck stopped it?

Except then he’ll have to explain about Eddie and his–whatever this is, crisis breakdown thing. But to do that he’ll have to tell Tommy about Chris, which means telling Tommy about Kim, and it’s not really Buck’s place to drag all that mess out, is it? Also, he can’t exactly tell Tommy that Eddie kissed him (Eddiekissed him) because then Tommy will make... assumptions about Eddie, even though Eddie isn’t–even though he’s just... going through something or whatever, so Buck is not going to broadcast the fact that Eddie Diaz, who is not known for kissing men, has now kissed at least one man, who happens to be Buck, because Eddie kissed him.

So instead Buck is going to get stuck saying "Hey, someone kissed me, and no, I can’t tell you who, and yes, I did stop it," although Buck didn’t–well, Buck didn’t actually stop it because of Tommy. Tommy had not crossed his mind in the moment, and at some point maybe Buck is going to have to examine that one a little more closely.

Except he can’t examine anything more closely right now. Because his brain is leaking out of his ears. And absolutely nothing is left in its place but a desire to deep clean his fridge, yet again.

-

Two hours later, Buck has reorganized his sock drawer, de-scaled his shower head, and read his washing machine manual cover to cover, during which he learned the distinction between casual spin cycle and light spin cycle. What he has not done is think about it, a feat Buck is very proud of.

So when Tommy turns up with Thai food and Dirty Dancing on Blu-ray, because Buck once mentioned he’d never seen it, Buck breathes a sigh of relief and lets him just take the wheel. Which Tommy is always only too happy to do, and Buck is too happy to let him, because Buck likes knowing he’s doing a good job. Feeling useful is probably Buck’s favorite thing in the entire world actually, and no, he doesn’t think that requires any further consideration.

And it’s been weird lately, conversation has been a little more stilted, so it’s good to have a movie and a script, a role to play when Tommy has Buck pressed down along the length of the sofa and Patrick Swayze is strutting around on screen in a black tank top, and Buck doesn’t have to do anything other than moan.

Except. Eddie has an undershirt just like that. It’s what he wears beneath his uniform, what he wears to work out in, the back and underarms getting darker patches from sweat soaking through. Buck would never tell him this, because it’s just a normal part of working out with other dudes, but sometimes when Eddie is lifting and Buck is spotting him, sometimes Buck can smell him. And Buck likes it, Buck thinks he smells good. And Eddie makes this one specific face at almost the top of a rep with his mouth cracked open and his brow a little tense and his eyes a little out of focus and Buck kind of wonders if it’s anything like his face when he–

Except Tommy. Tommy is doing very talented things to Buck’s mouth because Tommy is a very good kisser, even if Tommy isn’t kissing like he’s trying to breathe, which is fine, that’s not how people even normally kiss, Tommy is still very good at it, this is something they have always been good at, Buck and Tommy, an area where they work so seamlessly.

He’s also very good with his other hand down Buck’s pants, teasing across Buck’s underwear, and Buck is making the greediest noises, and Tommy’s thumb catches in the damp spot on the front Buck’s briefs, dragging the friction along the underside of the head of Buck’s cock. And Eddie had this hangnail on his thumb, always biting at his nails when he’s nervous, and when he kissed Buck his thumb had dug into the thin skin behind Buck’s jaw. And his hangnail had scratched, the faintest scrape, and Buck wonders, wants to know what that would feel like on him. If it was Eddie here, Eddie who had one hand down Buck’s pants and was working at the shape of him, Eddie who had him pinned, Eddie all around him, and the second, the literal second Tommy slides his hand in the opening in the front of Buck’s briefs, the second he gets his hand on him skin to skin, Buck thinks what if Eddie–

And Buck comes. And he makes the stupidest sound when he does, a long whiny exhale that is so fucking desperate.

Tommy removes his hand and kind of–blinks at it.

"Wow, okay," he says. "Someone really likes Patrick Swayze. Should I be jealous?"

"No," Buck says, way too fast and high pitched. "Shut up."

Tommy blinks at him.

"I. Uh. Sorry," Buck says. "Guess that’s just kind of. Embarrassing."

Tommy laughs. And then bites at Buck’s neck hard, hard enough to make his eyes water.

"Oh, I don’t think you’re sorry yet," Tommy says. "But you will be."

And yeah. Yeah, Buck has a feeling that one way or another, that’s probably going to be true.

Chapter Text

Buck means to talk about it. He’s going to. He’s going to talk about it with Eddie, and it’s going to be fine. It’s not a big deal, it doesn’t have to be a big deal, it’s just–stupid stuff happens sometimes, lines get blurry, it doesn’t mean–And he’s also going to talk to Tommy. He’s going to talk to Eddie and tell him it’s not a big deal and they’ll be mature adults and do their shoulder-clapping hug thing. And he’s going to talk to Tommy and tell him–well, tell him that Buck has had a frankly awful past month, because Tommy is Buck’s... something, and in a relationship people tell each other these things, even if Buck is kind of dreading the pinched, surprised look on Tommy’s face.

But ultimately, and Buck feels bad for even thinking this, Tommy is not the urgent situation. So maybe Buck does not prioritize the Tommy conversation, because Tommy has a comfortable not-horrifically-empty apartment, and Tommy has a job he likes, and Tommy presumably has friends and a support network and all that, which–Buck is just now realizing he’s never asked about Tommy’s friends. Another thing to add to the future guilt pile, emphasis on future, because presently, Buck doesn’t even feel that bad when he dodges Tommy’s texts for the next week, because vitally, Eddie is being weird.

Because Eddie is not talking to him. Or, not not talking to him; he’s actually talking to him a lot. Mostly about baseball, which Buck really has no opinion on. Every free twenty minutes, Buck will wander over, fighting the urge to hold his hands in front of him like he’s approaching an injured raccoon, and Eddie will grin at him and ask if he caught whatever inning of whatever, when Eddie knows damn well Buck did not.

At one point Buck catches a barf bag that Chimney tosses him to hold in front of someone right before they upchuck, and Eddie laughs and says, “Nice one, Buckley.”

He calls him Buckley. And nobody else even notices. And Buck almost screams. Buck is losing his goddamn mind. Buck feels like his skin is made of spiders. Buck thinks he might be about to start seizing.

Because he’s seen Eddie lose it before. He’s seen the explosions, he’s seen the violence, the panic attacks, the sobbing, and it’s all–well, it’s terrible. But it’s also to be expected. It’s part of Eddie’s broader patterns, where he pushes things down and down and down until he cracks under all that pressure, comes dramatically apart, and it’s left to Buck to get him right again. And that’s not a positive thing, per se, but there is a rhythm to it, and it–it works. It does. Buck has found something he can do, something he is functional at, something he is good at, a concrete impact he can have on the world, in the form of reassembling one Eddie Diaz.

That’s not this.

Buck has never seen Eddie do this.

Eddie smiles. Eddie teases. Eddie plays basketball. Eddie makes sick kids laugh. 

Buck doesn’t even know where to begin, who to talk to, what he would even say, because on the surface, Eddie is doing great.

Nobody else seems to see that Eddie is just–just–a bright and shiny reflection, and whatever is happening in there is so far below the surface that Buck is pretty sure that nobody, not even Eddie himself, can reach it. Instead, Eddie is just muffled under all these layers of weird smiles and giving bandaids to children and sitting around the bunk room reading about golf in Sports Illustrated like Eddie gives a single shit about golf in Sports Illustrated.

And Buck knows how to get to Eddie. Buck knows how to keep his eyes soft, keep his hands held where Eddie can see them. Given enough time, Buck is confident in himself and his ability to get Eddie talking. Because it’s Buck. Because it’s Eddie. Because he knows how to get Eddie out of his shell, rappel down and hoist him out. He can always pull Eddie out.

Except now, Buck has given up on being worried. Buck has long since progressed past worried, Buck is now just scared.

Because now, the thing is.

Buck is not sure that Eddie is in there.

-

So it turns out that Buck’s life without Eddie being Eddie kind of sucks. It’s not like Eddie isn’t around. He is. It’s just that, for the first time in Buck’s life, Buck’s avoiding him. And it’s not–not completely intentional. It’s more like.

Eddie asks him, after about a week of whatever the fuck this is, if Buck wants to come over and watch a movie. And Buck almost starts crying, and it feels like eight million tons of lead were just lifted off his chest, and he texts back fast enough that ‘yes absolutely’ gets so badly mangled that even autocorrect can’t save it.

And then they’re at Eddie’s house. And Eddie is perfectly at ease, like the last time they were in that house, they didn’t–he didn’t–

And then Eddie puts on a Tarantino movie. And Eddie hates Tarantino. He always says he doesn’t, always says it’s fine, but he also always spends the whole movie flinching and looking kind of sick, so years ago they reached an unspoken understanding to never watch him. And now Eddie is just munching on popcorn while some truly unspeakable things happen on screen, and Buck says:

“Hey, are you… good?” 

Which is such an understatement, but what else can Buck say? And Eddie says, “Huh? Yeah man, why wouldn’t I be?”

And Buck takes a deep breath and pushes on the sore spot, and says, “Well, it’s gotta be rough without Chris.”

And Eddie gives kind of a chagrined chuckle.

“Yeah,” he says. “I miss the kid. When he gets back, we’ll have to all go out for pizza or something.”

Buck stares at him. Buck’s mouth goes dry.

And he begins to wonder if for the first time.

If for the first time Eddie has gone somewhere that Buck can’t reach him.

So Buck doesn’t–Buck doesn’t hang out with Eddie one-on-one after that. It’s just too creepy. Makes Buck feel like he’s choking on his own blood again, like nobody can hear a single sound that he makes. So they don’t hang out like normal, and Eddie doesn’t seem bothered by that, doesn’t even seem to notice, and in any other situation Buck would be losing his mind over that, except right now, that’s not Eddie.

But Buck, Buck can hardly leave him alone like this either. What if he–well, Buck has no idea, this new version of Eddie is so incomprehensible, so unprecedented, that Buck cannot begin to even imagine what he might do. And Eddie is more social than ever now, going out for drinks with the guys. Buck is constantly tagging along to sit in the corner like some ghost of Christmas future, clutching a beer and watching Eddie the whole time, looking for a sign of– something. And it’s during one of these excursions, when Eddie is playing darts with one of the probies, when Eddie lets a woman at the bar put her number into his phone like that’s–like Eddie has ever, would ever, could ever, is capable of ever doing something like that–that Buck gets a text from Tommy that just says, 'running late?'

Which is never, ever a good text to get.

Particularly because when Buck looks at his phone, he sees that it is, in fact, Thursday at 8pm.

Thursday at 8pm, when he’d made plans with Tommy to try that new place downtown at 7:30.

Buck takes back what he’d thought before about him not being brave. Buck is in fact brave, because he calls Tommy, which is an objectively brave thing to do.

Tommy picks up, and says, “Traffic get ya?”

And Buck says, “Uh.”

And Tommy says, teasing hiding a thread of annoyance, “Don’t tell me you haven’t even left yet.”

“No, I–” Buck says, trying to do the math. Even if he left now, that’s 20 minutes in the car, another 10 at least for parking, what time does the restaurant even close–

Across the bar, Eddie is talking to the woman. The woman who put her number in Eddie’s phone.

And Buck doesn’t know how to say, actually, sorry Tommy, there is a crisis. There is an absolute catastrophe of nuclear proportions: Eddie is talking to a woman. And yes, that sounds like a normal human activity to undertake, and yes, it is causing concern that Eddie will next attempt to run into traffic.

So Buck says, “Look, I–something came up. An emergency. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, I–it’s complicated, can we–I’m not going to be able to make it tonight.”

Tommy is quiet for a minute.

“Well,” he says finally, sounding forced-casual. “An emergency is an emergency, hope everything’s okay–”

In the background, a server takes the opportunity to accidentally drop and shatter a pitcher of beer. A nearby rowdy group of men begin whooping and clapping. Buck winces. Tommy stops talking.

“Evan,” Tommy says after a moment. “Where are you?”

“I,” Buck says. “Uh.”

“Are you–are you in a fucking bar right now?”

Buck opens his mouth, but Buck can’t see a way out of this one, so Buck doesn’t say anything at all.

“Are you serious?” Tommy says.

“I...” Buck says.

“For the love of fucking God, Evan–” Tommy snaps, and then cuts himself off.

“Just tell me,” Tommy says, and his voice is dangerously quiet. “Tell me you’re not with who I think you’re with right now.”

“Okay,” Buck says. “Okay, look. I wasn’t lying, it genuinely is an emergency–”

Tommy hangs up the phone. Which is fair. Buck deserved that. Buck deserved a lot more than that, actually. He sends Tommy one quick, feeble, ‘I’m sorry’ text, and then groans and puts his head on the kind of sticky tabletop.

But not for long. Because Buck has to be watching.

-

-

So it turns out that Buck’s life without Eddie being Eddie and without Tommy talking to him more than kind of sucks. Buck goes to work, hides from Gerrard, and watches Eddie be terrifying. After work, Buck goes out with Eddie and whoever else, hides in the corner while everyone else plays pool, and watches Eddie be terrifying. Then Buck goes home, and calls Maddie and complains about Tommy not talking to him, except he can’t tell her why Tommy isn’t talking to him, and he complains about Eddie being weird, but Maddie says, “Weird how?” and Buck brushes right along, because it turns out he doesn’t want to talk about it, much less think about it, it turns out if he thinks about it for longer than three seconds his throat starts burning like he’s about to hyperventilate, and yeah, no thanks on that one. So Buck says, “Whatever,” and makes Maddie tell him all about Jee’s preschool class drama instead.

And the whole time, from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to sleep, Buck kind of feels like–kind of feels like he wants to scream. Kind of feels like he is screaming, actually, like he’s already screaming and nobody is doing anything about it. Like being pinned under the ladder truck. Scream all you want, it doesn’t help.

The only reason that Buck keeps getting out of bed in the morning is the knowledge that if he’s not watching Eddie, nobody’s watching Eddie. And someone needs to be. Because he thinks, he hopes, he prays, actually it’s just prayer, he is past thinking and hoping, that something eventually has to give. It has to.

Buck would have preferred it if that something had not been a suspension bridge.

-

When they get there, two other houses are already there, and that means it’s bad. S&R is out with the dogs, but it’s not finding people that’s the problem so much as what to do with them after the fact. The bridge was covering a gorge, and when it and the six cars and two dozen pedestrians went crashing downwards in a hail of concrete and rusted steel cables, the lucky few wound up clinging to the pylons–everyone else wound up in the ravine below.

They have to winch themselves down one by one, loading victims onto backboards to be medevaced, and it’s–surreal down there, honestly. No matter how many times Buck goes through it, it never gets any more normal to see bodies and body parts wherever he looks. He and Eddie wind up with some guy from the 133, and it takes all of two seconds before they follow the sound of screaming to find a woman with two broken femurs, dire but not fatal, they load her onto the backboard and up she goes. Then Eddie pauses as the noise of the chopper fades, and says, “Do you hear that?”

And Buck does, a low whining like an injured dog.

Buck always hates that sound.

They find them half-pinned under a chunk of concrete the size of a minivan. Eddie radios it in. One man DOA, one man with his lower half caught under the debris, one teenage girl pinned by just her arm. The 133 guy goes to the DOA guy, like there’s anything that could possibly be done there, it’s pretty obvious. Eddie goes to the pinned man, and Buck goes to the girl, the one making the noises.

“Hey, my name is Buck, I’m a firefighter,” he says. “You’re going to be okay, we’re going to get you out of here–”

The girl whines and shrieks when he starts tourniquetting, and claws at him with her free arm. Black hair, brown eyes, a wrist full of friendship bracelets. She can’t be more than sixteen.

“My dad,” she gasps. “My dad, is he–”

“I’m sure he’s fine, we’ve pulled a lot of people out already.”

“No,” she gasps, gesturing at the pinned man five feet away from her. “That’s my dad, oh god, oh god, is he–”

“Okay, breathe, I need you to breathe, can you tell me your name?”

“Gemma, I–”

“Okay, and can you tell me how old you are Gemma?”

“Fifteen, what’s–”

“Okay great, do you know what year it is Gemma?”

“Why does that matter,” she howls at him. “That’s my dad, he’s–oh god, my mom is gonna kill us–Just tell me he’s not dead, please, please–”

“Gemma, I need you to look at me,” he says. “You need to stop moving. If you move you risk damaging one of your brachial arteries. You could bleed out. You need to stop moving.”

“I can’t,” she sobs. “I can’t, I have to get to him, I have to–”

“Okay, okay, talk to me about him,” Buck says.

“He only has partial custody, it’s not even his week,” Gemma says. Her face is pale and sweaty, tears streaked through concrete dust–Buck estimates minutes, not hours before she starts crashing. “He’s 57? No, 58. He’s, uh, he has some kind of a heart problem I think, he takes pills for it–”

“You getting all that, Eddie?” Buck calls.

“Yes,” Eddie says, quiet. He’s hyper-focused, assessing. The man’s face is so pale it’s tinged blue, lips purple. “I think we’ve got–at least one crushed lung, the other may be punctured, everything below that is obstructed, breathing is labored and shallow, pulse is thready, pupillary response absent–”

“What’s he saying?” Gemma says. “What does that mean, what’s he saying–”

“Buck,” Eddie says, suddenly urgent. “Buck, he’s not breathing, starting compressions, get over here–”

And Buck goes, and he mostly just–mostly just tries to stabilize the guy’s head while Eddie works. Buck has seen miracles, but he knows. He knows, just based on the sounds of Eddie working on the guy, how his hands crunch into his chest, it’s–

“Eddie, you need to call it,” he says quietly, and Eddie ignores him. Behind him Gemma is sobbing, and the 133 guy finally makes his way over to lend a helping fucking hand. Buck says, “Eddie,” again. 

Eddie looks up at him, his face caught in a snarl, and he says, “Just twenty more seconds, I swear to God Buck, just–almost–”

“Eddie.”

Eddie’s hands still on the man’s chest. A single shudder passes through him.

He gets up, grabs his med kit and starts making his way over to Gemma.

“What?” Gemma says. “No, what are you doing, keep working.”

“Alright, Gemma,” Eddie says, even and quiet. “I’m going to give you something for the pain, and it’ll probably make you sleepy–”

“No,” Gemma says. “No, keep helping him, I’m–I’m fine, it’s–go back over there, go back to him, please, please, go back to him, go back–”

“Okay, can you open your mouth for me,” Eddie is saying, all calm and gentle, and Gemma’s free arm is grabbing at him, twisting in the front of his uniform, as she says, “No, no, go back, you have to, you have to, no, please,” Eddie breaks the morphine ampule into her mouth. And she says no a couple of more times, each a little more slurred, until she’s just staring off into space, her eyes open, her mouth trembling. Eddie’s already barking into the radio, “We need the the field surgeon over here, victim is female, age fifteen, crushing wound to left forearm, no other significant trauma, two DOA with her–”

And, well, Buck doesn’t really like to think about the rest. At least he gets to go, he and the guy from the 133 following the dogs towards more people yelling. At least Buck gets to heave chunks of rock around and focus on lifting heavy objects and cutting people out of smashed cars. Eddie doesn’t get to go do that.

By hour 16 they’ve found all the living they’re going to. By hour 23 they’ve found all the dead.

-

In the station shower Buck closes his eyes in the water, lets it rinse grey rock dust and other people’s dried blood off him.

When it starts it just looks like a regular panic attack. Eddie’s quiet in the locker room changing back into his civvies, and Buck looks over and his hands are shaking, and then Eddie starts gasping. Buck grabs him by the shoulder and says, “Okay, breathe with me, breathe with me–”

Except that doesn’t work. Eddie keeps gasping these huge juddering inhales, and he’s still shaking, and Buck says, “Um, what about the Jello thing, your feet are made of Jello or whatever, you got this–”

Eddie’s hand locks onto Buck’s shoulder, fists in the fabric there. His eyes are rolling in his head like a spooked animal. Buck says, “Okay, okay, we’re gonna get you out of here, I’m gonna get you home, you’re okay, you’re okay–”

Buck drives and Eddie shakes. It doesn’t–it doesn’t seem like it’s getting worse, per se, but it’s not getting any better, not all the way across town as Eddie gasps for breath, his fingers digging into his knees. Buck keeps up a steady litany of, “You’re okay you’re okay you’re okay,” just babbling out that it’s all fine and nothing is a big deal, which would be untrue on any average day they watched a man die, but feels like an especially big lie currently.

At his house Eddie bursts out of the car, stumbles through his front door to land in the hallway where he paces. And he’s saying, “I–I–” like he’s caught on a live wire. His breathing is coming in this awful rattling, and his hands are shaking, and Buck has no idea what to do, genuinely no idea, he should–call Maddie, maybe, Maddie was a nurse, Maddie might know–but Buck fumbles for his phone and Eddie clutches at his sleeve, clutches hard, and there’s already so much shame on his face, shame and fear at the same time, and Buck can’t–he can’t just–So he does the only thing he can possibly think to do, thinks about Eddie shitfaced and crying, and he and manhandles Eddie into the bathroom. Turns the shower on full blast, freezing cold, and shoves Eddie under it, clothes and all.

Eddie splutters, and coughs, and says, “What the fuck, Buck,” and claws his way out of the shower. To stand dripping on the bathmat, shoes squelching.

“I,” Buck says. “Sorry?”

Eddie glares at him, soggy cat style. But his breathing is slowing down now, almost back to normal, color coming back to his face now, maybe just from the cold but Buck will take it. Buck hands him a towel, goes to get him some clothes, goes to set up some shitty courtroom drama on the TV and preheat the oven for a frozen pizza.

When Eddie comes out he looks a little sheepish, a little ashamed. Leans against the kitchen counter, his arms wrapped tight around his torso.

“Thanks,” he says quietly. 

Buck wants to tell him not to thank him, it isn’t–it’s not–But Eddie’s not looking at him. Buck says, “Yeah, of course.”

Eddie sighs, drops his head back against the cabinets with a thunk.

“I tried to save him,” he says.

“I know.”

“I really did try,” Eddie says again.

“Eddie,” Buck says. “I know.”

“God,” Eddie says. “That girl, she just...”

“Yeah,” Buck says.

Eddie closes his eyes. His face is drawn, five-o’clock shadow darkening his jaw, and he looks so tired.

“She’s never gonna forget that,” he says. “For her whole life.”

“Yeah.” Buck says, knows it’s not enough.

And Eddie and him just stand there in silence for a minute, listening to the house settle.

“I should have done something different,” Eddie says. “I shouldn’t have–done what I did.”

And Buck is quiet for a second, because he’s not sure if they’re still talking about–

“People get hurt sometimes. It doesn’t mean it’s anyone’s fault.”

“Yeah, well. Pretty sure this one was,” Eddie says.

“Okay, but,” Buck says, and he takes the plunge. “You didn’t–you didn’t know he’d come back, you didn’t know he’d walk in, you weren’t trying to hurt him, and it’s not... He loves you. He loves you. He just...”

“Needs some time?” Eddie says, a hard twist to his mouth.

“I... I don’t know what he needs,” Buck says. “I’m not... I’m not his father.”

And Eddie hunches at that, draws his shoulders in and retreats further into that rigid shell of shame he’s always carrying.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Eddie says. “It wasn’t...”

“No, it’s fine, it was...”

“It’s not true,” Eddie says quietly. Buck looks up at him, but Eddie is just staring at the floor.

“I just,” Eddie says finally. “I keep thinking about Chris’s face. When he saw her.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“No, it wasn’t–” Eddie says. “You don’t understand, he didn’t look happy. He looked–he looked scared.”

“He knows she’s dead, Eddie, that’s... kind of scary.”

Eddie chews on his lip and shakes his head.

“That wasn’t it,” he says hoarsely.

And Buck can’t really–can’t really think of what to say to that. So he just puts an arm around Eddie’s shoulders and pulls him sideways into a one-armed hug. Eddie gives kind of a startled huff and then leans in.

“I’m such a fucking mess,” he says into Buck’s neck.

“Yeah, well. I like your mess,” Buck tells Eddie. He doesn’t mean to say it. It’s just that Eddie is right there, all warm up against the side of him, and Eddie seems so tired. And Buck just wants–He just wants–

And he feels Eddie freeze against him, feels him go all stiff, and Buck’s–his mouth tastes sour, and Eddie is going to pull away now. Eddie will pull away now, and Buck is going to let him, and Buck is going to replay those stupid words over and over again, and the worst part is he can’t even tell himself he didn’t mean it, that it’s not true. And of course Buck just had to go and pull this kind of thing, just had to take this and make it all about himself, insert himself in where he’s not necessary, like Eddie doesn’t have enough going on without Buck clinging to him like a goddamn koala, without Buck getting all his stupid emotions all over the place, just spewing them everywhere–

Eddie does pull back, he does, but. Only a little, and his face is still so close.

He makes this noise, this back-of-the-throat noise, and he’s staring up at Buck all wide-eyed, and then he–and Buck’s a little less surprised this time. Because Eddie is looking at him like–and his hand is flexing on Buck’s elbow, fingers clenching around him in a ring, Eddie’s skin is hot against him, hot and shower-damp, and Buck is. Maybe not that startled. Maybe almost expects it this time, maybe even leans halfway when Eddie moves in and presses their mouths together.

Because Buck has figured it out. He figures it out right in that exact second. Eddie shaking his way out of his skin, and Eddie–Eddie always comes to Buck. Whatever his needs are, Buck is the one he calls. Buck is the one he trusts. And so if–if that’s what Eddie needs, that’s easy. That’s simple, that’s something Buck is good at. Buck can give him that.

So when Eddie presses forward, this time Buck meets him. Lets their tongues tangle, the slick wet slide of it, lets their chests bump together, until he can feel Eddie shoved all the way up against him, Buck’s back pressed against the counter, until he can feel Eddie breathe, feel his chest hitch. Eddie’s hand on the side of Buck’s neck, his thumb pressed into Buck’s carotid artery, Buck’s pulse jumping under his fingers, and Buck gasps into his mouth, hands clamped onto Eddie’s waist.

Buck’s a little drunk on it, on how close they are together, feels like his body is humming on the inside, feels everything fizzle and narrow down to everywhere they’re touching, and everywhere they aren’t but should be, the world rapidly defined into Eddie and a lack of Eddie. The places where their skin presses together, the corners of their mouths, their noses nudging at each other, his fingers bunching up Eddie’s shirt to land on the strip of skin above his pants, all of it is buzzing. He kisses Eddie, and thinks that if lightning struck twice, took him out again for good this time, he’d be alright with that, so long as right now he gets this, Buck’s tongue in Eddie’s mouth so he can taste whatever Eddie tastes, Eddie’s hand on his hip holding Buck there like he wants Buck exactly where he is, like he wants whatever Buck is offering.

Eddie’s hand at his waist shifts forward to fumble at the front of Buck’s pants and he says, “I–I–” and Buck moans shamelessly, the way people like. Eddie’s breathing hard against his neck, and his hand on Buck’s cock is harsh and digging in, the metal of the zipper biting at Buck through his underwear, but Buck doesn’t mind, he likes it rough, he wants marks, he wants Eddie to take and take and take, wants to core himself out for Eddie, offer all his insides on a plate and say here, here–wants Eddie to glut himself on him. Everything is reduced to how much he wants that, tingling in the soles of his feet all the way up to the roof of his mouth. He shivers and rolls up against Eddie, wants Eddie closer, wants him sloppy and wet up against him, wants to not know whose spit is whose.

Buck says, “Please, can I please–” and snakes a hand down to undo Eddie’s jeans, Eddie fumbling to shove them down to mid-thigh without giving an inch of distance. And Buck can’t think, won’t think, knows he’s walking a tightrope that’ll snap if he looks down, and then Eddie’s cock is in Buck’s hand, the blood-hot weight of him, and Eddie exhales, eyes big and dark and hungry. Buck pumps his hand a few times, squeezes at the base, rubs his thumb up over the tip so that he can watch Eddie’s face change, watch his lips part just a little as he hisses a breath out, watches his brows tense and his eyes tighten. Eddie whines a little at the back of his throat, and Buck kisses him again, slower this time, still moving his hand between them, firm and methodical.

And then he can’t resist it any more, he wants it too bad, wants Eddie surrounding him in any way he can get. He drops down onto his knees on the linoleum, Eddie crowding him back against the counter. Eddie gives this one shaky exhale, eyes locked on, his hips jerking upwards just a little. And Buck knows what he looks like, knows he looks good on his knees with his mouth all pink and puffy and his eyes locked upwards, so he sticks his tongue out and laps at the tip of Eddie’s cock. 

Eddie groans, his head falling backwards, eyes out of reach now but Buck doesn’t care because Eddie is on his tongue, lets his other hand wander down to pop the button on his own jeans and work his hand over himself at the same time as he sucks at the head of Eddie’s cock, pulls it into his mouth and sucks at it like a lozenge, his lips working their way over the ridge, feeling the change in skin texture under his tongue where he flicks it right under the tip. Eddie is making these gasping panting noises, and he’s saying, “Yeah, that’s, yeah, fuck yes–” and Buck can’t talk anymore, but if he could he would say, “I know what you need, I know,” and so Buck grips him by the thighs, warm skin under his hands, feels Eddie’s thighs trembling. Buck holds him steady, Buck swallows him down.

Eddie lets out this low noise and he hisses, “Holy shit,” and he looks down, eyes all wild and dark, mouth open and gasping, and Buck grabs Eddie’s hand where it’s landed on his shoulder and guides it up to the back of his head, locks Eddie’s fingers into his hair until Eddie latches on, fingers twisting tight in the curls. Buck gets an arm up to grab at the meat of Eddie’s hip and pull him forward, Eddie’s cock nudging further back down his throat, huge and hot and filling him up, moving down his throat to his insides as Buck swallows, as he pulls Eddie forward more until Buck fights off a gag, his body shuddering, his throat getting tight, and Eddie says, “Jesus fucking–”

Buck pulls him back a little, cock slipping from the back of his throat to rest on the pad of his tongue, the ache in his jaw setting in, the stretch of his lips as he moves Eddie forward again, his hand coming up to overlap with Eddie’s on the back of his head and make Eddie fist his fingers in Buck’s hair hard. Eddie makes a gut-punched noise, Buck feels him jerk on his tongue, and Eddie’s panting, “Yes, yes, yes,” and his hips move forward again, Buck barely guiding them, and then back of their own volition, forward with Buck’s hand just resting on his hip.

Buck moans around his cock, lets him see how good it is, how much Buck wants it, and Eddie’s hips are stuttering in these short, tight thrusts as he fucks into Buck’s mouth, his hand in Buck’s hair twisted tightly. Eddie is making these soft noises at the back of his throat, his thighs tensing under Buck’s hands, a ripple of tension that shudders down his body, and he says, “Fuck,” in this one choked voice.

Eddie looks down and the expression on his face is what Buck thought it would be, what Buck imagined, his mouth slightly open, his brows drawing together, eyes tight, tension in his cheeks, all flushed and red down his neck, and he says, “I–I’m gonna–” and on the next thrust Buck draws him further in, past his gag reflex, to the back of his throat where it hurts, where it’s going to bruise, and Buck swallows.

And Eddie groans and comes, gripping Buck’s head, Buck’s hand digging into Eddie’s hip to pull him forward, pull him as far in as he can get, Eddie pulsing down into him, salty and hot, threatening to leak up into his sinuses, and Buck gags for real this time, feels bile rising but he forces it back down, feels the sore throb in the back of his throat blocking his airway. He pulls off halfway, holds Eddie there as Eddie twitches and jerks, works the last beads of come out with his tongue at the slit. And Eddie’s whining, this one low pitched noise that goes on as Buck works at him, works him clean, swallows it all, until finally Buck’s not moving anymore. Just sitting there with his mouth loose and soft, holding Eddie in him. He’d stay kneeling there for the rest of his life if he could; he never wants to move again. 

Eddie’s hand falls away from his head. Buck gets the memo and pulls off.

Buck’s face is wet. His neck is slimy where saliva dripped down. He doesn’t even remember orgasming but his hand in his underwear is sticky, so he wipes at his chin with his other hand. Gives up and wipes both his hands on his shirt. Eddie’s looking away, down at the floor as he pulls his pants up, an awkward wiggle, and Buck’s knees are starting to hurt–he’s pretty sure he’ll be stiff tomorrow.

And his mouth still tastes like Eddie, he can still feel Eddie’s come working its way down his esophagus, and suddenly Buck is–a little dizzy. There is a–a pit in his stomach all of a sudden, a looming that comes at him out of nowhere, some huge distance beneath him and he’s faltering right there at the edge, gaze locked on the space that’s waiting for him to fall.

Eddie is–not looking at him.

And then the oven timer goes off. And Buck jolts, gets up off his knees so that he doesn’t burn Eddie’s house down, and then he has to get the oven mitts and a plate for the pizza, and when he washes his hands while he’s at it, and when he finally turns back around Eddie is just all hunched up against the countertop.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” Eddie says hoarsely. And there’s the lurch, there’s the snap, that tightrope giving in one fell swoop, the plummet of it.

“I,” Buck says. “Fuck, I’m sorry, fuck–”

Eddie is rubbing at his face. And Buck knows that that means that his shoulders will lock up next, then his spine, then he will start breathing in that shallow way, then–

“Look. It doesn’t have to be a big–it can just be. Whatever it is,” Buck says, and he’s babbling now, knows he’s babbling, scrabbling for handholds as he slides downwards.

“I’m not...” Eddie says. “I don’t...”

“Okay,” Buck says. “That’s, yeah, look, it’s not, it doesn’t mean anything.”

Eddie is still all hunched up, eyes darting toward Buck and away again, nostrils flaring.

Buck says, “It’s really not a big deal.”

It sounds unconvincing, maybe because he’s pretty sure Eddie’s fucking come is still coating his fucking molars, but Eddie shifts, scrubs at his face, says “Fuck, I’m sorry, it’s all just–it’s all fucked up–”

Buck can’t help it, can’t help how he gives at that, Eddie all washed out and exhausted, and Buck says, “Let's just. Can we just. Eat the pizza.”

And Eddie just sighs. And then he shudders. And barely nods.

“Okay, great, I’ll uh. Grab the plates,” Buck says.

As they eat in front of the TV, some spaghetti western on, Buck can feel Eddie's eyes on the side of his face. But whenever he turns his head, Eddie isn’t looking. And it doesn’t have to be–Buck meant it, not a big deal, just the kind of thing that happens sometimes. Something Eddie needed, something Buck could give him, circuit complete.

And if Buck’s head is kind of spinning, if there’s an echo of a sour feeling in the pit of his stomach, then that’s–that’s nothing. That’s nothing.

Buck can deal with that.

-

Buck kind of figures it’s going to be awkward. Expects it to be awkward, actually, figures that’s kind of the price you pay for blowing your best friend. And honestly, Buck’s okay with that, Buck can be okay with that. Awkward is better than flat, awkward is better than absent, so if they have to tiptoe around each other for the foreseeable future, then that’s fine, so long as Eddie stays here, solidly in the reality they both inhabit.

It’s not awkward. Eddie is sad, Eddie is downright miserable, actually, but Eddie is still Eddie. He still bitches at Buck about Buck’s propensity to play Candy Crush at full volume, still raises his eyebrows at Buck when Buck says something really not socially appropriate to a patient. It actually freaks Buck out a little bit, how easy it is to put aside with all the other things that are already true about them that nobody else would understand. Because it’s always been like this, hasn’t it? Always some world created with just the two of them and their unspoken communication, their wordless glances.

It’s like. It’s like...

It’s like sometimes when they’re not together, because contrary to popular belief Buck doesn’t actually spend all of his time with Eddie, Buck thinks out of nowhere: I hope Eddie is having a good day right now. And sometimes when he’s at Eddie’s house, he notices that Eddie has started buying Fuji apples, even though neither Eddie nor Chris particularly like Fuji apples–Chris says they make his teeth feel itchy–but Buck likes them, considers them to be the superior apple. And sometimes Buck will scroll back through his and Eddie’s text message exchange and see the dozens of pictures they’ve exchanged without commentary, things that would make no sense to anyone else. Eddie can send him a photo of a funny-looking pigeon and Buck will know exactly why Eddie considers this funny-looking pigeon something he thinks Buck would like. It’s immediate, instantaneous, the context that fills in all of the gaps around them. Until sometimes it seems like–like everywhere inside himself that Buck turns, Eddie is already there.

Because the thing Buck has been hiding from, ducking behind buildings and cars to avoid and still it’s inescapable, the thing is:

Buck wants Eddie all the time.

Not just sexually, although definitely that, it’s a little late for denial on that front, but also. He wants to watch Eddie’s face when he tries Buck’s recipes. And he wants to watch Eddie’s face when he frowns down at his phone. And he wants to watch Eddie’s face when Buck makes him laugh; God, Buck loves when he makes him laugh. And he wants to watch Eddie’s face when Eddie finally, rarely manages to get some sleep.

Buck is beginning to think he might have a word for it, for the thing that’s living in his chest. The thing that he always thought was undefinable, BuckandEddie, EddieandBuck. It’s a word he doesn’t want to think, a word he doesn’t want to look too closely at, because it’s–disgusting, the way he wants, all bodily fluids, all viscera. Red and raw and peeled right there in the middle of him. And Eddie isn’t–and Eddie doesn’t–Eddie just needs something to hold onto. Buck can be that, Buck can give him that. 

Buck can keep the rest of it hiding under his tongue. Words like: Anything. Anything. I’ll give you anything. Anything–

-

The next week at work, Buck hands Eddie a macchiato. Eddie takes a sip and squints.

“Still no pumpkin spice peppermint vanilla chai mocha,” he says.

“They say it’s seasonal,” Buck says.

And Eddie cracks the ghost of a smile.

-

-

It’s been at least two weeks since Buck last texted Tommy, that pathetic little ‘I’m sorry’ the last thing floating between them. And if Buck is being honest, he hasn’t actually been thinking about it that much. Which he should feel bad about, and he does, on the abstract list of “ways Buck has fundamentally disappointed people.” He owes Tommy a conversation, an explanation, a real life person-to-person moment, even if the thought of doing so kind of makes Buck want to melt into a pool of guilt. So he finally decides to be a goddamn adult for once, and sends the ‘can we talk’ text. He gets back the name of a bar and 8pm, and that’s all.

Tommy’s already there when he arrives, holding a cocktail and looking bored in that way that Buck has come to know means he’s unhappy. Any doubts Buck had about how this was going to go vanish when Tommy gives him that raised-eyebrow look, and Buck sits on the stool across from him, tries not to slump, tries not to fidget.

“So,” Tommy says, ice-cold. Buck clears his throat.

“Yeah,” he says. And then he can’t think of what to say next. 

Tommy just regards him, frowning.

“I kind of thought you were going to apologize,” Tommy says finally. “Thought you’d get all–Buck about it.”

“Oh,” Buck says. “Would that help?”

“No,” Tommy says. “It would not.”

“Yeah,” Buck says. “Okay.”

Tommy sips his drink.

“Was it the whole time?” he says quietly, face impassive, but there–there is a twist of real hurt there. 

It kind of makes Buck want to vomit, that he knows Tommy well enough to read that, and that he still doesn’t–that it’s all so academic to him. That Buck cares, but from a distant orbit, not up close at all.

Buck really wishes that he had a drink too, or anything to occupy his hands.

“Not... Not the way you think,” he says, and Tommy sighs.

“I genuinely never cared who you were fucking,” he says. “You get that, right? Like it wasn’t–it wouldn’t have bothered me. But what I cannot stand, Evan, is the bullshit.”

“I didn’t...” Buck says. “It wasn’t...”

Tommy just looks at him, his mouth turned down at one corner, and Buck stops talking.

“Kinda my fault,” Tommy says quietly. “It’s not like I didn’t know. Not that complicated of a puzzle. Guess I just thought...”

He trails off and shrugs.

“I really am sorry,” Buck says.

“No, you’re not,” Tommy says. He taps his fingers on the cocktail glass and then gives Buck a crooked false smile. “Well, hey. We had fun, right?”

Buck swallows. And Buck wishes–he wishes he was less of an asshole, because he should be groveling, or making stupid promises, he should feel something other than red hot shame and the knowledge that every single time he’d still make the same choice, still wouldn’t do a single thing differently.

“Look,” he says. “I fucked up here. I really did. I’m not saying this because I think I deserve better or anything. But I should have… There should have been another way. It shouldn’t have gone down like this.”

Tommy sighs.

“Yeah, alright,” Tommy says.

He tosses back the rest of his drink. Looks at Buck and shakes his head. Seems to come to some kind of a decision.

“Look, Evan, word to the wise,” Tommy says. “You can drag someone out kicking and screaming, set the closet on fire. But more often than not, the whole house is gonna come down with it.”

Buck can’t really think of any way to respond to that.

“It’s not like that,” he says finally, and Tommy snorts. Tommy still has those eyebrows up, all flat and sardonic, but there’s also something... weirdly understanding there. More understanding than Buck ever saw from him in their time together.

“Yeah. Well,” Tommy says, grabbing his jacket. “May you succeed where the rest of us have failed.”

-

Eddie twitches in his sleep. Restless, always restless. Buck’s turned the TV off, turned the overhead lights off, threw a blanket over him on the couch, and still Eddie mutters, still his face creases. 

Buck sits there next to him, a book open on his lap, but it’s just for show, he hasn’t turned a page in minutes. Eddie mumbles, stirs, and Buck wants to wrap his arms and legs around him and bury his face in the side of Eddie’s neck and inhale him like oxygen. He watches Eddie’s jaw work, watches his throat move. Wants to lean in and press his mouth to it, feel the fluttering thrum of Eddie’s pulse under his tongue. Not even in a sexual way; he just wants to feel that pressed up against the wet hot middle of him. He doesn’t, of course, and he feels kind of creepy for even wanting it in the first place, especially with Eddie asleep like that, but Buck just. He wants–

Buck goes back to his book.

Chapter Text

When Eddie is small, his favorite things in the world are his rocking horse, his neighbor’s cat, and his mother. He only gets to see his neighbor’s cat sometimes, but he gets to see his mother every day, clings to her and buries his face in her hair when strangers approach in the grocery store to coo over how cute he is and try to touch his face. His mother always pets his head and tells him to smile for them, Eddie, can’t you smile for them? But he never can.

When Eddie is a little bigger, his favorite things are his toy truck, his blue bedroom with the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, and his picture books. He takes his toy truck with him everywhere he goes, to bath time, to bed time, always makes sure to tuck it in next to him and give it a kiss, and his mother calls him silly, says that’s not how cars work. Whenever his dad comes home, Eddie is quiet; Eddie doesn’t do that with his truck around him. Not for any reason, he just doesn’t want to. Instead he sits on the floor and makes vrooming noises and pretends to be racing. His father’s hand is large on his head when he ruffles his hair. Eddie likes it when his dad is there, his mom humming Celia Cruz in the kitchen, picking Eddie up to bounce him around, and his father laughs, tells her she’s going to spoil him if she isn’t careful, and Eddie laughs too even though he doesn’t understand the joke.

When Eddie is big enough to feed himself and dress himself, his favorite things are his red striped shirt, his GI Joe figurine, and his sandbox. He plays in it most days, right outside the kitchen window where his mother can keep an eye on him outside while she rests inside, hand rubbing circles on her pregnant belly. He builds castles and uses his action figures as the people who live in them. His mother comes out eventually to crouch next to him and ask what he’s working on, and Eddie shyly shows her the house he built for his toys, the scooped out swimming pool, the GI Joe asleep in a bed made of sand and twigs. Eddie’s mom watches it all with a smile, but her eyes look tight, and eventually Eddie stops talking, and they go inside for a snack.

His GI Joe goes missing a few weeks later. Eddie’s mom shrugs and says he must have left it at the park somewhere, and Eddie cries and cries. Eddie’s mom gives him a popsicle, which he doesn’t want, and she gives him his truck, which he doesn’t want, and finally she gets down on her knees in front of him and holds his shoulders and tells him desperately to stop crying. Stop crying. You’re too big to cry like this, don’t you know that? Don’t you know that?

-

The year when Eddie is 10 and Sophia is 7, she is obsessed with Selena. They have an old VHS of one of Selena’s concerts, and Sophia watches it over and over, starts shrieking if anyone tries to put on anything else. And Eddie doesn’t mind, even though he acts like he does, because he thinks the long long hair and the glittery outfits are kind of... mesmerizing, like she’s from another world, one where everyone moves in a way that’s beautiful. So when Adriana naps and their mother falls asleep on the nursery floor, Eddie takes Sophia downstairs to the TV room so they don’t wake her up.

Sophia’s favorite song is Amor Prohibido and she has a whole dance routine for it. She decides she needs a backup dancer, but then actually Sophia decides that they’re not dressed the part, so they sneak into their mom’s closet and drape themselves in her silk scarves and chunky necklaces, and Eddie lets Sophia smear his face with her chalky child makeup set, paint his mouth red and his eyelids blue, and then they’re finally ready. And Eddie knows all the words by now, of course he does, Sophia has made him listen enough times, so maybe they’re singing louder than the tape, maybe they’re singing loudly enough to be heard on the upper floors, but no matter how loud they’re singing, a single sigh from the doorway of the room is still loud enough to cut straight through.

"Oh, Eddie," his mother says despairingly. "What did you let her do to you?"

"We’re Selena," Sophia says with pride.

"Yes, I can see that. Okay, darling, I think it’s time for your snack. Eddie, go wash up, won’t you?"

Eddie does. He untangles himself from the scarves, and he puts all of the beads carefully back in their places, and he has to wash his face five times to get all of the weird waxy makeup off, and by that point Sophia is eating apple slices and watching her tape again and Eddie’s mom is in the kitchen arranging tater tots for them on a plate.

"Well, at least you’re clean now," his mother says, putting the plate down in front of him. "And Eddie, don’t touch my scarves, alright? They’re expensive."

"Okay," Eddie says.

He picks up one of his tater tots but can’t quite get himself to bite it. Eddie’s mom comes over and cups his face gently, her eyes searching his. Then she kisses his head. Eddie eats the tater tots. They don’t taste very good.

-

Four days later, Eddie’s father comes back. His mother cooks a big dinner the way she always does, ham and baked potatoes. Sophia and Adriana squeal when he comes in the door, and Ramón scoops them up and spins them around and asks how his princesas are doing. When he gets to Eddie, he pulls him into a bear hug and Eddie breathes in and inhales the smell of old leather and tobacco smoke and Texas sun that always seems to cling to his father’s clothing. He holds onto that scent so tightly when his dad is away, tries to conjure it lying in his bed at night when he can’t sleep and he starts thinking about what it’s going to be like to grow up, but he can never quite get it right, and Eddie never, ever, ever wants his dad to let go.

Sophia keeps making faces at Eddie when their parents’ backs are turned, trying to get a rise out of him, but Eddie is floating on a cloud, Eddie doesn’t fall for it. Eddie just eats his mom’s food and listens to his dad talk about work. Eddie tries to listen hard, be as adult as he possibly can, because when he asks just the right questions his dad smiles at him, looks at him with a kind of pleased and surprised look that he never gives either of Eddie’s sisters.

After dinner his mom shepherds the girls off to bedtime. Then it’s just Eddie and his dad in the kitchen, which doesn’t usually happen, but Eddie isn’t complaining. He just sits there and watches his dad drink his beer and wonders if that’s what he’s going to look like some day.

"So, Edmundo," his dad says. "Your mom tells me you’re doing really well in school."

Eddie works hard not to beam, because the priest says pride is a sin, but still. He looks down at the tabletop and nods. He’s sure if he talks, he’ll talk too much, he won’t be able to stop, and then Ramón will look at Eddie like–like he’s not paying any attention anymore, like Eddie has lost him. Eddie wants desperately not to lose him.

"That’s great," Ramón says. "You know, study hard, work hard, you can have a good life. That’s all your mother and I ever wanted for our children. A good life."

Eddie nods.

"You’re smart," Ramón says. "You take after your mother. She works so hard taking care of all of you. Too hard. You see that, I know you see that. And I wish I could be there for her, but I can’t always be. Sometimes I have to be away to take care of this family. And you, Edmundo, you’re one of the reasons I can do that. I can go out there into the world and I can not worry because I know you’re home with your mother and sisters, you’re keeping them safe."

"Yes, sir," Eddie says, sitting straighter in his chair, a warm balloon inflating in his chest.

"And you know, you’re old enough, it’s time for you to step up a little, I think. Your mother needs someone to help her out, especially now with Adriana. Do you think you could do that?"

"Of course I can help Mom," Eddie says.

"It’s more than that though, Eddie," Ramón says. "I need you to be the man of the house, do whatever needs to get done without complaining. Take responsibility for yourself, take responsibility for other people. You’ve got to be strong for your mother and sisters, you’ve got to give them something to lean on. You understand what I’m saying?"

"I..." Eddie says. "I think so."

Eddie’s father smiles. Eddie’s father smiles at Eddie and only at Eddie. Eddie can count on one hand the number of times his father has looked at him like that. He keeps them in a special place, something he doesn’t think about very often because he’s worried he’ll wear them out if he does.

"Of course you do," his father says. "You’re my son."

-

The next time Ramón is in town, he says, "Hey mijo, you want to go to a baseball game?"

Eddie has never been to a baseball game before. But it’s just him and his dad, not his sisters, no one else, and Eddie is–giddy with it. They get hotdogs, which are messy, and Eddie is concerned about getting ketchup on his shirt, but he acts like he isn’t. Ramón makes Eddie promise not to tell his mother before he lets Eddie have a sip of his beer, bitter and sour and fizzy, and Eddie acts like he likes it.

They’re pretty far away, so Eddie can’t see all that well, but Eddie watches his dad and cheers when he cheers. Not just when he cheers but how he cheers–Ramón shouts with his whole chest, his arms held high like he’s making his voice even bigger, his mouth open wide in a shout at a bad call, his eyebrows pulling down, teeth exposed. It’s a face Eddie will practice in the mirror later. For now he just yells when his dad yells. He can’t quite do it right, because he’s not quite big enough, but soon he will be. If he waits, if he practices, if he tries hard enough, soon Eddie will be just like him.

-

His mom gets tired sometimes. He figures everyone’s mom does. Especially with Adriana, especially with a fussy toddler. Sometimes his mom takes naps in the afternoon if she can, but sometimes there’s no time for it. Sometimes she just floats through the whole day, her face drawn, telling the girls she has a migraine, can they please be quiet. He helps her more those days, takes his sisters outside to play.

This is one of those days. A quiet day, where he takes his sisters to the park after school, watches them run around and scream. Starts a load of laundry at home so his mom doesn’t have to. She still cooks, she cooks every night, says what kind of a mother would she be if she didn’t? Even if he says we could just order a pizza, she says no, none of that processed crap. So she cooks, and he helps her with the cleanup afterwards, the tension in the sides of her face that means the migraine isn’t getting better, the silence of her wiping down counters, him wiping down the stove. Usually she asks him about school, about comics he’s reading, their hands brushing as she hands him dishes to put away. But this evening she’s quieter, this evening she’s not asking him anything.

And when they’re done she just sighs, stray hairs drifting in front of her face. For the first time he notices the crow’s feet around her eyes, the way she holds her shoulders so stiffly, like it’s not just her head that hurts. And she’s staring out the window over the sink, her arms wrapped tight around her torso as she looks out at the night out there, and then she turns and she’s giving him this look. This one quiet look.

"Thank you, Edmundo," she says softly, and he nods uneasily, watching her. He should hug her now, wants to hug her now, but she seems fragile like old paper, and he’s not sure if that would hurt her more. She presses a dry kiss to his forehead.

"Go wash up for bed now," she tells him, and Eddie complies. But he thinks about it, lying there in the dark. Thinks about the pictures he’s seen of his mom as a girl, when she was his age, her small pinched face in the corner of family photos, overcrowded by her four older sisters. Always looking right at the camera, like she’s asking what the camera wants from her, what other expression she could possibly be making.

-

Middle school is hard for Eddie. In the lower grades he had friends, mostly girls, and they liked to sit and draw pictures together or talk about books. But by the time he reaches fifth grade he’s not friends with any of those girls anymore. He doesn’t know why, they didn’t do anything wrong, he just doesn’t feel like hanging out with them–they fill him with a weird kind of itchy energy, always asking who he thinks is cute.

He plays kickball with the boys in his class during recess, eats lunch with them, but he’s quiet when he does. He knows that whatever he could say to them would probably be boring. Mostly he hangs out with his cousins, and he loves them, but they kind of stress him out if he’s being honest, always running and tackling each other and trying to trick Eddie into eating boogers. The place Eddie likes best is church, where he can sit and be quiet and nobody bothers him.

He loves how the church looks, with light that filters in from high up windows. He loves how it smells, like old wood and industrial floor cleaner. He loves the altar at the front where Mary rests in her blue robes, and he reluctantly loves the Jesus that hangs above, although it creeps him out a little how the eyes follow you around the room. Eddie loves church as a whole, likes the sermons and the stories. He loves when the priest talks about being kind to your neighbor. He loves when the priest talks about the lion and the lamb. Most of all Eddie loves hearing about heaven. The priest says up there, everyone will be one with God. The priest says up there, any sins or flaws or failings will be wiped away. The priest says that up there, only the good will be left.

-

The summer before high school Eddie’s body begins doing things that Eddie has no idea what to do with. He starts getting hair in strange places, his voice starts unexpectedly cracking, his forehead turns into an active combat zone. And Eddie can’t help but feel kind of put out that his body, which had previously been fine, not something he thought all that much about, could just up and decide that he didn’t get a say anymore, could turn him into some sweaty, gross, greasy thing.

He’s always concerned he smells weird, always concerned that... other things are happening, which he would prefer to not be happening, which seem to happen for no rhyme or reason. And Eddie is in despair that all of this could just happen to him and that it shows no signs of stopping. His cousins his age seem excited about in a way, yelling in their new deep voices, forcing each other to smell their armpits. Eddie yells too, because they’ll chase him if he’s too quiet, but secretly Eddie spends most of his time hating it and hating it and hating it, and wondering why no one else seems to feel the same.

He passes most afternoons that summer at Manuel’s house with the rest of his cousins, where Manuel and Rico duke it out on the Xbox, and Javi is constantly bugging them for a turn, and Adriana gets bored of hanging out with Sophia and Marisa, and comes downstairs to whine that she isn’t having any fun, and Rico is shushing her, and Eddie is sitting at the couch at the back of the room watching everyone, and he’s mostly just glad nobody is asking him to deal with his sisters. Sometimes when he’s with all his cousins like this, he feels like he fades into the background, becomes a part of the wallpaper. Not that that’s a bad thing, since the alternative is Manuel calling him Eddito and trying to give him a wet willie.

About two weeks before freshman year starts there’s a boy at Manuel’s house, and that’s not concerning, the neighbors and the friends of friends are always coming by. What is weird is that Eddie doesn’t know this boy, who has baggy pants, the kind Eddie’s mom would never let him wear; who has floppy hair, like Eddie’s mom will never let him grow out. Manuel says his name is Diego, and he’s a year older than Eddie and he just moved in up the block. Then Manuel does something in Call of Duty that makes Rico put down the controller and start trying to hit him in real life, and nobody pays any more attention to the couch at the back of the room where Eddie and Diego are sitting.

Eddie watches Rico and Manuel attack each other, and then looks away before one of them catches him looking and decides he should be forced to pick sides. He glances over and Diego has pulled a Sharpie out of his pocket and is doodling on his shoes. Eddie stares at him. His mom gets mad if he so much as gets mud on his shoes–she would actually kill him for taking a marker to them. But Diego is doodling little skulls on his. He catches Eddie staring and fixes him with a glare.

"Uh," Eddie says. "Those are cool."

Diego looks Eddie up and down from his clean sneakers to his jeans (which Eddie’s mom insists on ironing) to his carefully buttoned shirt. Diego’s mouth quirks up at the corner like he thinks something is secretly kind of funny.

"Uh-huh," he says, all flat and dead.

Eddie shifts on the couch and goes back to watching his cousins lose at video games.

-

Eddie thinks about that moment more than he should for the next few weeks. Tries to figure out if there was something that he should have done or said instead that would have gotten a different reaction. He doesn’t know why he cares, it’s just some guy being a jerk. It’s not like nobody’s ever been a dick to Eddie before; Manuel loves telling Eddie exactly how lame and ugly he is. But Manuel always stops once Eddie stops telling him to be quiet, always apologizes in the end.

This boy, Diego, he was just–just mean. Without a reason behind it–he’d never met Eddie before in his life. And Eddie can’t stop thinking about how he looked Eddie up and down, from his shoes to his carefully combed hair, how he’d taken all of Eddie in like a picture and decided something. Something not good. So Eddie is maybe a little heated about it, is maybe fuming, thinking what he’ll say next when he sees the guy (he hasn’t come up with anything), when he walks in to the first day of high school.

High school is terrifying, a whole new campus, and the seniors lounging around look like actual adults, yelling to each other and whooping in the hallways. Eddie is just focused on trying to get from class to class, until he gets to math class and sees Angelica who he kind of knows from church, even if she’s kind of intense and cries every time she sings about Jesus.

He sits next to her, and her friend that he doesn’t know but she introduces as Shannon, and he starts getting out a pen and pencil and paper and the obnoxiously heavy math textbook they make them all lug around, and he tries to relax a little, because–Eddie’s alright at math. Not great or amazing, but at least alright, and he knows Angelica, even if he doesn’t know anyone else. And sure this teacher is famously a hardass, but teachers like Eddie. He’s great at getting teachers to like him.

Then the door bangs open right before the bell rings and Diego slouches into the room. Same ratty skate pants, different hoodie this time. He slumps into the desk behind Eddie and then starts rustling through his bag. At the front of the room the teacher has started introductions, and Diego leans forward and pokes Eddie’s shoulder. Not hard enough to bruise, but hard enough that it leaves a tingling impression where his finger was.

"Hey," he hisses. "Do you have a pencil?"

And Eddie–Eddie doesn’t know what gets into him, but he hisses back:

"It’s the first day. You didn’t bring a pencil to school?"

"Shut up, I lost it last class," Diego snaps.

"You only brought one? One single pencil?"

"And another one of my very obvious class policies is no talking when I’m talking," the teacher says loudly, looking at them. "Detention after school, 30 minutes, both of you."

Eddie actually thinks he might cry, he has never gotten detention in hislife.

Diego just slumps back in his chair and groans.

After another moment of tense silence between them, Eddie fishes in his bag and silently hands Diego a pencil.

Detention sucks. It consists of sitting in a basement room with buzzing fluorescent lights and having to write an essay about the importance of respect in education while a teacher’s aide reads a magazine at the front of the room. Diego copies Eddie’s essay, Eddie hissing out of the corner of his mouth that they are going to notice if you just change one or two words. But they don’t notice. And then Eddie has to take the late bus home, and he has no idea how he’s going to explain this to his mother–he’s going to have to tell her he stayed for some extra credit something, there is no way he could tell her the truth–and Diego winds up taking the same bus.

He sits across the aisle with his headphones on listening to his iPod, which Eddie is secretly jealous of, his parents will barely let him have a cell phone. When it’s Diego’s stop, he doesn’t say anything to Eddie. But he does give him this little two finger salute, one eyebrow quirked up in a way that’s between sarcastic and not. And Eddie forgets about Diego being a jerk that first time, forgets about detention, and starts replaying that moment in his mind, trying to figure out if it means Diego will be less of a dickbag in the future, if it means they’re friends or not, if it means anything at all.

-

So they ride the bus together, and the bus quickly becomes Eddie’s favorite part of the day–not because of Diego, just because high school kind of sucks. It’s busy and loud, and the only people who really talk to Eddie are his cousins, and at home Eddie is always trying to get Adriana to sit down and finish her snack, get Sophia to do her homework, and so the bus is just. One second where Eddie isn’t supposed to be doing anything else. And Diego is also there, being kind of quiet and staring moodily out the window, or drumming along on the back of the seat in front of him to whatever he’s listening to on his iPod. And then Diego will tell him about Doom, which Eddie isn’t allowed to play, and Eddie will listen and agree that it sounds pretty cool.

Diego is still weird, still kind of a freak with his ratty hoodie and his shaggy mop of hair too long for a boy, but when Diego’s head-banging to music, or when he’s telling Eddie all the gross gory details from some video game, he’s—interesting. He’s new in a way that seems exciting instead of just scary, and even the way he talks about things makes Eddie care about things he’s never cared about before. Like wrestling, which Eddie always thought was kind of dumb and fake before, but Diego says yeah it’s fake but have you seen how those guys move, fucking brutal. He says brutal in total admiration, and the next time Eddie is flipping through the channels and wrestling is on, he pauses for a second, before his mom walks past and tells him to turn that off, too violent, too crude, Eddie mouths to himself fucking brutal.

-

Another thing that’s different about Diego is the music he likes. All kinds of things Eddie knows his mom would never let him listen to, even if he’s never heard of half of it.

"Well, what music are you into?" Diego says, and Eddie shrugs.

"I don’t know, Celia Cruz?"

"Celia–Jesus fucking Christ," Diego says. "I knew it was bad but I didn’t know it was this bad, dude, Celia Cruz?"

"She’s good!"

"Okay, but what about System of a Down?"

Eddie gives him a blank look.

"Nine Inch Nails?"

"I don’t know that I’m really.... into your stuff," Eddie says and Diego rolls his eyes.

"Stop being so fucking lame," he tells Eddie. "I’m gonna make you a CD and you’re going to have your mind blown."

"Uh-huh."

"Just wait and see."

A week later, as promised, there’s a CD slipped into Eddie’s locker titled LOSER, black Sharpie skulls drawn on it. Eddie has to listen to the music low on his stereo so his mom doesn’t hear, but it’s–interesting.

He meant what he said, it’s not really Eddie’s kind of music, but it’s fast and angry and he can see why Diego likes it, the hoarse voice screaming, the shrieking guitars. It sounds like smashing glass, it’s exciting, it’s scary like speeding in a car, like the lurch when you lose your balance, and it fills Eddie with this urge, this urge to–to run, to go fast, to break something on purpose, and Eddie–

He turns off the music and stares up at the ceiling for a long time.

-

It’s not true, what Diego thinks about him, that he can’t have any fun ever. He can, sometimes. He just has to be careful about it, make sure it’s smart, and safe, and mostly that his parents aren’t going to find out. Manuel helps with that second part, since his mom never seems to ask any questions where he’s involved, which she should, because Manuel and Rico get a box of fireworks from God knows where. They all trek out to some big empty lot to set them off, and Eddie has to bribe Adriana twenty whole dollars not to tell their mom. Diego is looking unimpressed and bored as always, but he’s got one eye on the fireworks with just enough interest that Eddie knows he’s excited.

There’s anticipation when Manuel lights them, and they all jump and ooh and aah at the explosions overhead, green and blue sparks raining down. Diego looks up, straight up at the light and the brief flash of combustion. There’s something feverishly bright in his eyes, not just the explosions reflected, and Eddie looks up too, tries to see whatever it is that he sees up there, not just light, but whatever causes it.

Then Javi breaks out the sparklers, and Manuel starts chasing his girlfriend with one, and Diego grabs one and chucks it at Eddie’s head. Eddie catches it on reflex, and Diego is laughing, and there’s a fizzy bright star in Eddie’s hand now, spitting sparks, howling quietly as it burns. He doesn’t want to let it go, but it’s beginning to feel warm in his hand, uncomfortably warm, so he throws it back at Diego, and Diego catches it too.

Diego laughs and says go long, go long, and they’re throwing a lit firework back and forth between them. The girls around them shriek and tell them to stop, Sophia on the verge of tears, glaring like they’re the stupidest people on the planet, but Eddie doesn’t care, he’s in a field in the dark, and the firework is the only light, bobbing back and forth between him and Diego, singeing his hands and burning on and on.

-

The year trudges on and tows Eddie behind it. He keeps waiting to adjust to school, keeps waiting to wake up without that heavy, jagged sensation in his stomach, and it keeps not happening. Still, school is better than home, better than the squabbling of his sisters while Eddie tries to do homework, tries to keep them quiet, tries to get the laundry done. He prefers to hang around after class for as long as he can, doing his homework on the bleachers, frowning down at algebra, trying to remember the difference between mean, median, and mode.

On the field the lacrosse team is practicing, shouting and headbutting and tackling each other, and Eddie can’t focus on math. He watches them with a loose fascination–at some point somebody is going to bleed. The bleachers rattle and Eddie looks up to see Diego making his way over, his tall form slouched. He smells like marijuana and Eddie wrinkles his nose. Diego laughs and swats at the back of his head clumsily, his hand getting briefly tangled there.

"Some day," Diego says. "I’m going to pull that stick out of your ass and beat you over the head with it."

"Yeah, whatever," Eddie says. He stares back down at his homework. Tries not to think about Diego’s hand getting caught in his hair. Diego sighs and stretches, languid, his back cracking, and Eddie glances over and then forces himself to look out at the field. The boys out there are yelling about a goal, tackling and dogpiling on each other, a blur of interlocked legs and arms thrown around shoulders. The sun is getting lower on the horizon, and the air has started to cool down, smells like cut grass and the coming night. Eddie’s arms raise in goosebumps even though he isn’t really that cold.

"You wanna see Hellboy on Sunday?" Diego says. "They’re doing a half price matinee downtown."

"Can’t, church," Eddie says absently, and Diego snorts.

"You sound like Angelica. Jesus freak," he says, and Eddie scowls.

"It’s not–" he says. "Look, it makes my mom happy, alright?"

"Jesus freak and a momma’s boy," Diego says, and Eddie glares at him.

"Is it really so bad to want to believe in something?"

"It is if it isn’t true," Diego shrugs.

"You don’t know it isn’t true."

"Really? I don’t know? I don’t know there isn’t a big dude in the sky sitting on a cloud watching everybody? I don’t know that some guy didn’t die for three days and come back to life?"

"Okay, not that, but–they think God loves them. You don’t know that’s not true."

Diego just stares out at the field, his eyes flat.

"Yeah, well, love shouldn’t cost so much," he says finally.

Eddie doesn’t really know what he’s talking about there. Eddie can only think about his family, or about the papery communion wafer on his tongue, and he thinks of course it does. That’s what makes it love.

-

It gets so hot in his room in the middle of the night. Which is why he winds up on the roof, climbing out from the upstairs bathroom window. He did this once or twice as a kid before his mom yelled at him, what if you got hurt, Edmundo, what would your sisters do, but now he needs the air, needs the space. The air still presses against his skin out there but at least there is sky above him, cloudy and flat; at least he can look up and see nothing, no weight bearing from above, just emptiness, just void. It comforts something in him, all that dark empty space.

He hears creaking from inside the house and winces, tries to scramble over to the window but he almost loses his balance, swears and grabs onto the gutter, and Sophia pokes her head out the open window.

"Eddie?" she whispers.

"Shh!" he hisses through his relief.

"What are you doing out there?"

"Nothing. I just–got too hot in my room," he says. "It was too..."

But Sophia is clambering out onto the roof next to him, gangly twelve year old limbs folding over themselves, her bangs swinging in front of her eyes.

"Sophia, get back inside, it’s not safe–"

"You’re doing it."

He glares at her and she glares back.

"I’ll wake up mom," she says, an empty threat and they both know it. But he scoffs at her.

"It’s hot in my room too," Sophia says quietly, and that… In the low light her face looks drawn, strands of hair drifting from her braids to float hazily around her head. She sits with her knees up and her arms wrapped tight around her torso and Eddie... sighs.

"Yeah," he says, and they sit there for a while in the dark, the purple glow settling onto the rocks and manicured cacti around them, the neighbors’ houses, the neighbors’ roofs.

"Do you think it gets easier?" she says. "When you’re an adult, I mean."

Eddie wants to say he thinks it does, that it all gets simpler at least. Because it’s Sophia, who steals all his nice pens, and Sophia who used to toddle behind him around the house always getting in his way, and Sophia who is in almost all of his earliest memories, the two of them before Adriana, before their mom got so... the way she is. Him and Sophia and their mom at the park, soaring on swing sets. Small legs arcing up and up, felt just like flying.

"Maybe," he says.

"It’s just," Sophia continues in a whisper. "Sometimes I look at her, and I think, is that going to be me? Because I’m–and I look just like her, I know I do, everyone says so."

Their mother with that displeased expression on, wiping at cabinets, at countertops, the set of her shoulders stiff.

"She’s doing her best," Eddie says.

"Yeah," Sophia says. "And it sucks."

And Eddie laughs, he can’t help himself, and Sophia snorts too. Until that dies away and they’re quiet again. Sophia has always been a little too much on eye contact, even as a baby she would lock on and grab your stare and hold it, like she was looking for something in there. It hasn’t changed as she’s aged; she still stares like she’s in a stranger’s house looking through all their cabinets, constructing a picture of a life based on debris.

"Eddie, are you okay?" she says quietly, and Eddie frowns at her.

"Of course," he says. "Why wouldn’t I be?"

Sophia shrugs.

"I don’t know," she says. "Sometimes you just seem..."

She trails off and shrugs.

"Sometimes you don’t even hear me when I say your name," she says. 

"Oh," he says. "Sorry, just–spacing out or whatever."

"Yeah," Sophia says, picking at a loose thread on her sweatpants. "Okay."

-

The world shifts around Eddie as the year drags on. That itching in his stomach in the mornings doesn’t seem to ever go away completely. School is exhausting. Homework is exhausting. His sisters are always squabbling so loudly. And no matter what he does he’s never quite keeping up, his mom looking at him with pursed lips and saying she knows he can do better than a B-, his mom sitting in a dark bedroom with the curtains drawn because the light hurts her eyes, his mom saying really, Eddie? Really? Can’t you just keep them quiet? How hard can it be? And Eddie just says sorry. Sorry. Even though he feels something stirring in the back of his throat, something that wasn’t there before. Something twisting and burning like acid, something pounding at the confines of his ribcage.

And it’s like that more and more lately, like the rest of the world is closing in in some indefinable way. Every single building Eddie is in, he is deeply aware of the walls, how close they are to him, how there’s no real air in there. He can’t sleep, the walls of his room are closer than they’ve ever been, he can hear his family snoring in their rooms and he doesn’t want to sleep when they sleep. He wants to–sprint or something, he’s full of this endless jittering energy that shakes his knees and his fists with the effort to keep it still. 

-

Diego’s text just says 'meet me on the corner.’ The night air smells like summer, like dying lawns and the round, sweet smell of the sage drifting over from the mountains. Eddie leaves through the back door and walks down to the corner in his pajama pants and sneakers, no socks on. Diego’s waiting there, sitting on his bike, watching one of the street lights flicker.

"Wanna go to the quarry? There’s a party," Diego says, instead of hello, and Eddie frowns. The quarry is a little ways out of the city, next to the railroad tracks. It’s not open to the public because some kids drowned there in the 80s but everyone sneaks in anyways.

"What, now?"

"Yeah, now," Diego says.

Eddie worries at his lower lip. He wants to go, but–but he’s never done anything like this before, leaving the house like this in the middle of the night. But there’s something itching in him. It’s been itching more and more lately, scratching at that place in his center he tries not to think about too often. The place that twinges when Eddie says amen, when he lies awake at night with his hand on himself and thinks about a naked girl just lying there. He’s seen plenty of porn but he can never get this naked imaginary girl to do anything, she just lies there and looks at him. 

And now he feels it like an ache in his teeth. He can’t go back and sit in his room, the room he knows best in the world; he can’t be in it for one second longer. He is sick of the twin bed and the glow in the dark stars still stuck to the ceiling and the same view out of the window he has stared out of his whole life.

And Eddie, Eddie’s never going to say no to Diego. Not that he would ever say something like that, he’s not stupid, but. It’s just.

Eddie has memorized Diego’s hands. He’s memorized the perpetual scabs on Diego’s elbows, that blissed-out look he gets when he’s listening to a song mind-numbingly loud, the way he bites his cheek. And sometimes it just–comes over Eddie in this weird wave, this urge Eddie has when they’re together to run, to go fast, to smash things, to break shit, and every time Eddie can only sit there in silence, boiling and boiling, his palms aching, his teeth hurting. And he’s so careful not to give it away, to make sure Diego doesn’t figure out this thing that’s writhing inside of him. Eddie stays the same as he always has, Eddie keeps his shoes clean.

"Yeah, alright," Eddie says, and then, with his stomach sinking: "My bike is in the garage though."

Diego shrugs.

"Just hop on the back of mine," he says, and Eddie... hesitates. Then complies. 

He stands on the spokes coming off the back and braces his hands on Diego’s shoulders. He can feel muscles flexing under his hands when Diego grips the handlebars. And then they’re off, and the air is fast on Eddie’s face. It’s just the same old street he’s been down a thousand times before, but it feels different in the middle of the night with the wind on him, feels like flying, clutching Diego’s shoulders and knowing if he fell off the bike right now he’d probably at least break an arm, and that’s if he was lucky, but Eddie doesn’t care. For once, Eddie doesn’t care.

Diego dumps his bike in some bushes and the road up to the quarry is dark. Eddie’s only been here once or twice with Manuel, always in the daylight–it’s not really the kind of place Eddie’s church friends hang out at. He hears the party before he sees it, the thump of bass from some shitty speaker, people whooping and cackling. There’s a giant bonfire, and it hisses and pops  as people chuck cans and random shit into it. There are a few people from school that he recognizes, but they look different in the firelight, strange and distorted. Eddie stands at the edge of the crowd and watches. A girl wanders past, glassy-eyed. Stops in front of him to giggle.

"Oh my god, holy shit, Eddie? Math class Eddie?" Shannon says, one hand clapped in front of her mouth, but still giggles are leaking out. "That’s so funny, oh my god, that’s so funny, it’s so funny, I can’t believe you’re here–"

Diego appears at Eddie’s elbow and hands him a Solo cup.

"Fuck off," he tells Shannon dryly, and Shannon sticks her tongue out at him, still giggling. Then she sees someone else in the crowd and says, "Oh my god," and she’s off again.

Eddie drinks his drink. And then spits part of it back into the cup.

"Little stronger than church wine," Diego says, and Eddie rolls his eyes.

"Shut up," he says, but he doesn’t drink any more, puts the cup down on the ground.

"Shit, you’re a brick fucking wall, huh," Diego says, and Eddie prickles, shrugs. "You really need to loosen up."

He waggles a joint in front of Eddie, and Eddie shakes his head. Diego shrugs and wanders off a little ways from the party, tucked behind a large rock next to the fence that separates the quarry from the railroad tracks. Eddie stumbles after him, tries to turn it into a casual saunter, tries to hide how desperate he is not to be left alone out here. He watches as Diego brings the joint to his mouth and lights it, little ember flaring, watches the way Diego’s lips pucker and his cheeks hollow as he inhales.

Eddie stares out through the chain link fence. Across the tracks there’s just desert and the lights of the power plant at the far edge of town. The darkness makes his head spin–no clear horizon. Eddie settles back against the rock. It occurs to him that nobody in the whole entire world other than Diego knows where he is right now. At that something in him exhales, the itching in his middle fading slightly. There’s a faint sound in the distance, the quiet whisper of an incoming train far out.

Eddie can’t help glancing sideways again, curls of smoke trailing out of the corners of Diego’s mouth and spiraling up towards the flat black sky. In the dim the firelight catches on the thin hair on the back of Diego’s arms, makes it look golden and shiny, a contrast to the hair under his arms that’s thicker and darker and peeks out when he raises the joint to his mouth.

"Okay," Eddie says. "I’ll–I’ll try."

Eddie’s mouth is dry.

"You didn’t bring your drink, did you," Diego says. "You’re gonna cough like a bitch."

"I will not–"

"Yeah, you will, everyone does. It’s cool though, just–c’mere."

And then his hand is on the back of Eddie’s neck, yanking him closer, and Eddie–freezes, turns into an awkward pile of limbs, and Diego snorts.

"God, relax, would you?" he says. "It’s fine, just–open your mouth, and breathe in when I breathe out."

"What?" says Eddie, but then Diego is holding him by the chin, his fingers pressing in under Eddie’s jaw, and Eddie’s mouth opens of its own accord. He can feel how close Diego is to his face, their noses bumping together, and Diego exhales and Eddie barely stutters an inhale. It tastes like smoke and something herbal, and Eddie can feel the moisture of Diego’s breath across his lips, can feel it on his tongue, his mouth flooding with saliva, and Diego pulls away. The distant sound of the train is getting louder, a faint clattering roar, and Eddie’s hand fumbles out and grabs at Diego, lands on his wrist.

"Again," he says, and his voice is an insistent whisper. 

He hears Diego exhale, and then he brings the tiny floating ember back up to his face. 

The sound is loud now, loud enough that it replaces all the thoughts in Eddie’s head, and the empty broken glass on the ground begins to rattle, quietly at first, then louder, and louder. Eddie can feel the vibration of the approaching train in his sternum and his molars, and this time when Diego leans in, maybe he misjudges the distance, maybe Eddie does, but their mouths land solidly on top of each other. And when Diego exhales the tip of his tongue grazes against Eddie’s, and Eddie inhales, which pulls Diego’s tongue into his mouth, and then it’s just the slick slide of kissing, the roaring and shrieking around them, so loud it hurts Eddie’s ears.

Eddie’s kissed people before. He kissed Delia Gonzalez behind the church when they were twelve–well she kissed him, but that counted–and then last year he got locked in Seven Minutes in Heaven with one of Manuel’s girlfriends’ friends, and that was–nice. He’d kept his hands on her waist until she’d moved them to her chest, which had been–new, and she had been very... suction-y with her mouth, which he hadn’t exactly loved, but it was still fine, it was still very nice.

But it wasn’t like this, the vibrations of the train hurtling, shaking the ground and the rocks, reverberating through his ribcage and landing to twist and hum in his pelvis. His whole face feels hot, his stomach is rolling, and he wants in a brand new way. The train rips past and the loss of the motion, the rattling dying down, the screaming roar fading into a background whisper, it all feels like a physical absence, like something has been removed from the middle of Eddie as Diego pulls away.

And everything is... humming faintly, all the empty spaces inside Eddie.

Diego is giving him such a strange, dazed look, waxy and alien in the firelight, before he shivers. Before he smacks Eddie on the chest and says, "Let’s get you another drink."

Eddie follows. Eddie always follows, stumbling out behind him. There’s so many people out there. So many bodies, all these limbs and faces. There’s a cup in his hand, Eddie drinks it, doesn’t taste anything, still only tastes smoke. The music is loud. There’s a girl there, some girl Eddie doesn’t know. Her arms wrapped around Diego’s front. She tugs his head down. Whispers something in his ear, and Diego grins at her, that wolfish sullen grin of his, and then he’s gone, wandering off into the dark with the girl. He doesn’t even look back.

Eddie stares into the fire, his head hurts, his body feels so strange and disjointed, like it’s three seconds behind his brain. Everything is spinning, the hot fire and the hot night. People are whooping and cackling, jumping over the bonfire; someone trips and lands with their foot in the embers, hops off with a burning shoe, everyone laughing and shrieking. It’s all starting to swirl together. The throb of the bass the only constant, ramming itself behind Eddie’s eyelids. It’s loud and his head hurts, it’s loud and he can’t think, can’t see anyone he recognizes, can’t feel his face or his hands. When Diego reappears his neck is bruised purple with hickeys. Eddie’s head spins, his stomach lurches, everyone’s teeth are shiny in the firelight.

On the ride back Eddie clings to Diego’s shoulders so carefully, so cautious about where he puts his hands. Diego’s back is stiff under his hands, the world is jagged, the pop and crunch of bike tires over gravel is sharp, abrading something away. Diego drops him at the corner, and Diego says, "I’ll see you around," scuffing his foot into the sidewalk, staring down at his handlebars.

And Eddie’s face is burning and the grinding is back and it’s so loud this time, loud enough to physically hurt. Eddie can feel it in his joints, feels it all the way into the soles of his feet, the grating shriek inside of him, his shoulders shaking, all that prickling, all that scratching. He is beginning to wear a hole in the center of himself, a place where things disappear into.

-

It’s not like anything changes, exactly. They still ride the bus together, and Diego still drums along on the back of the seat to Slipknot. But Diego doesn’t offer to share his headphones anymore, and Eddie doesn’t ask, and then summer starts, that vast expanse of time, hot days, hot nights, the hum of AC, condensation dripping everywhere. He hangs out with Manuel and Diego isn’t there, and Eddie doesn’t ask. Everything feels too close, too stifling. Eddie lies awake for hours at night, the ceiling telescoping downwards, close enough to touch, like he could reach out and bang his fist against it, bang and bang and shove at it with all his might and nothing would happen.

The months march on, all those long days spent lifeguarding. At least he’s making money, saving up for something, not sure what, probably a car. Not that his parents couldn’t afford to buy him one, but his father has always said that real men make their own way, prove their own worth, and his mom has always said that he has food on the table and a roof over his head and isn’t that enough?

Eddie spends hours watching the pool water, wishing... not that someone would drown or anything, just that something, anything would happen. Instead of him just sitting there under that umbrella in all that heat watching families splashing and playing and feeling like–like they’re existing in a different dimension than he is. Like they’re all on the other side of a smudged sheet of glass. And it’s not like his family has never gone to the pool, not like he’s never splashed his sisters, but it seems like something else these days. Like everyone is in these little boxes, the pregnant mother, the crying little brother, the sullen older sister. Everyone is playing their part so perfectly that sometimes, in a weird way, Eddie starts to wonder if they’re real people at all. Lying awake in the middle of the night with his head buzzing, wondering if the world is just–mannequins and dolls, if anyone is real, if he’s real, pinching his arm over and over just to watch a bruise form.

He is an unstable hum of motion these days, everything vibrating behind his eyes. He swears he can feel his cells, feel them dividing and dying, he can feel all the blood pumping inside his body and it drives him crazy, all of it. The itching in the center of Eddie is worse, like something has burst open and begun seeping, and now it’s leaking into his bloodstream, now it’s into his bone marrow, all that acid dissolving everything it touches. His mouth is full of it, it’s all he’s really made of.

-

That Sunday, everyone gets dressed for church, Adriana fussing with her hair, Sophia yelling at Adriana for stealing her tights. Eddie stays in bed and stares at the ceiling. It just looks like a regular ceiling. Everything looks normal in the daylight. Everything is all covered up by the sunshine, by the sounds of his sisters fighting, his mother snapping at them with an edge in her voice. 

She yells for Eddie. Eddie gets up. 

Downstairs at the breakfast table, his mother’s face turns despairing when she sees him.

"Edmundo, you’re not even dressed!" she says. "We are going to be late–"

"I’m not going," Eddie says. And his mother’s face turns cautious, confused.

"Are you not feeling well?" she says. "Feeling sick? This wouldn’t happen if you slept more."

"I’m not going," Eddie repeats. And his mother stares at him for a while, and then her expression shutters closed.

"Adriana, Sophia, go get in the car," she says.

"But I’m not done with my–"

"Go get in the car."

Adriana and Sophia creep out to the car quietly, Sophia giving Eddie one long, concerned look.

Eddie stays sitting at the table. Helena stays standing, staring at him.

"Eddie," she says. "What’s all this about?"

Eddie shrugs.

"Eddie, come on now," she says. "You–you need to go, it’s not... What will your father say?"

Eddie doesn’t say anything and Helena exhales.

"Did something happen?" she says quietly.

Eddie just stares at her. The roiling of his stomach hurts. The roaring in his ears is too loud.

"No," he says, and Helena sighs.

"I know it’s not–" she says. "Boys your age, of course you’re going to push back, but I just. I worry about you, Eddie. I don’t want you to be alone."

And Eddie can’t–can’t help it. He barely even thinks it, it just slips its way out of him, slides out of his lips serrated and bloody to land between them on the table.

"Like you?" he says, and Helena’s brow furrows.

"Eddie," she admonishes. "Of course not. I have your father, don’t I? And you, and your sisters. I have a whole family. And a whole–a whole community. The church, they are good people, Eddie. They’re good, they’re kind, they’re caring people. You’ll need that someday."

"I’m not going to lie."

"It’s not a lie. It’s just... faith. That’s what believing is."

And Eddie just... watches her. The tight angry twist to her mouth.

"Do you believe?" he asks her, and she shakes her head. Always so–removed from it, dismissing the questions before they can be asked.

"Oh, Eddie," she says, like it’s a silly thing to say. 

But he waits. He has gotten so good at sitting in silence. Until his mother turns away.

"Of course I do," she says.

-

The weeks before school starts again are the fastest of the summer, every day hot and thick with the knowledge that something is ending. All his cousins feel it too, everyone talking about well maybe next summer we can, already planning for their next taste of freedom. And Eddie wants to ask them, don’t you get it? It’s not real, it’s all just an illusion. The way the air whips across your face. You think it’s flight but it’s just trajectory.

At the breakfast table, his hands don’t look like his hands. At school, his voice doesn’t sound like his voice. Manuel teases him. He teases Manuel back. Sophia steals his phone charger and he yells at her. He hears his mother on the hallway phone late at night, hears her saying but why can’t you– hears her saying, can’t you just come home. Hears her cry in the kitchen, cry when she thinks everyone is asleep.

The baseball team is having tryouts. Eddie is good at hitting things hard. Eddie is good with a bat in his hands. Eddie is good at redirecting motion.

-

It surprises him how easy it is to slide into it, a controlled fall down a slippery slope. Soon he has friends on the team, other boys’ houses to play video games at. Soon he gets good grades, soon he’s polite to his parents, soon he doesn’t respond to his sisters harassing him, soon he’s hitting home runs, soon he’s looking at colleges, soon it’s never been any different at all.

He’s growing up. It’s normal. Putting the rest of the stuff away, the stupid stuff, the childish stuff. Soon he will be set, cured into the shape of the mold held by all the pieces around him. Soon it won’t be about what he wants anymore, but it doesn’t matter, because Eddie wants this, Eddie wants this. Soon Eddie will be a man, soon it won’t be about him alone in the middle of the night. 

June. Graduation season. All the seniors wandering the hallways with an aura of excitement, thrilled for the rest of their lives, thrilled to be moving, going, onward, no more treading water. Seems like half the graduating class is shipping out. Army, Navy, Air Force. Everyone grabbing on to any moving vehicle.

Eddie’s headed to the parking lot to drive home after baseball practice one day–it’s quickest to cut over through the underside of the bleachers. There’s usually a few kids gathered there, weed smoke or the hiss of whippets emanating from their furtive huddles, and Eddie feels bad for them, Eddie thinks they’re going nowhere fast.

But this time there’s nobody there except for a single solitary figure standing on the patchy grass leaning against a pole; a girl in a sundress and a leather jacket several sizes too big. He averts his gaze when he approaches, but then glances back because–it’s Shannon. She’s got one arm wrapped around herself, the other hand holding a cigarette that’s trailing smoke towards the sky, and she’s staring up at the underside of the bleachers with a lost, empty expression on. His pace slows.

"Hey," he says, and she snaps around with a sneer that smooths out somewhat when she recognizes him.

"Oh," she says. "Hey."

They regard each other for a minute. Shannon looks like she’s been crying, maybe. Her face is a little puffy and her eyes a little red. 

She looks... tired. 

"Do you need a ride?" he says. 

Shannon frowns and looks him up and down. Scuffed baseball uniform, backpack slung over one shoulder.

"What, chivalry isn’t dead?" she says.

He shrugs. She stands there sucking on her teeth for a minute before she nods.

"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, okay, thanks."

She grinds her cigarette out under her sneaker and falls into step beside him, and it’s an awkward thirty seconds before he asks her about English class, and she starts calling their teacher a fuckwad and complaining about an essay she got a bad grade on. Eddie only nods, although he did just fine on that essay, leads her to the truck, a fucked up old pickup he got for cheap, fixed up with Manuel’s help. Throws his backpack in the back with the rest of his gear.

Shannon falls into silence when they start driving, her fingers drumming against her wrists in her lap, her head leaning against the window. He flips on the radio and finds some scratchy station playing old bolero, keeps it turned down low. He knows vaguely which neighborhood she lives in, though not specifically, but he doesn’t really–he doesn’t really want to talk. She’s making him feel strange, like a sore tooth, like pressing on a blister. So he doesn’t ask, figures she’ll tell him eventually.

He turns down one street, and then another, winding his way over to her part of town, passing empty storefronts, the afternoon light washing everything out into the same amber sepia. In the passenger seat Shannon is chewing on her thumbnail. He stops at a stoplight, watches a crow on the side of the road hopping and cawing around.

"What if we didn’t go home?" Shannon says, and he looks over, startled. She’s got a weird expression on, a half frown as she stares at her cuticle where a tiny bead of blood is welling up.

"What?"

"Just–I don’t really want to go home," she says. "My dad, he... it’s just. Not that cool right now."

It’s the middle of a heatwave, air shimmering along the asphalt, and the truck has shitty AC, one of the reasons he could afford it in the first place. It’s hard to breathe in here, harder to breathe outside. Eddie should be getting home himself. Adriana will need help with her homework, and Eddie has homework to do too, and he knows it will be hot at his house, especially sitting in that same old bedroom, those same plastic glow-in-the-dark stars taped to the corner of the ceiling where he’s always too lazy to get them down.

He knows what the other boys say about Shannon, what some of the other girls call her. Jealous because she’s pretty, maybe, he thinks, with her big eyes and dark eyelashes and shiny lip gloss. Right now there’s no lip gloss. Her hair is hanging limp and flat around her face, and her lips are chapped and bitten. There’s a jolt of something in the middle of him, something cutting through layers of fog, like taking one sudden, shocking, freezing cold, deep breath.

"Yeah, okay," Eddie says.

Shannon slumps back against the passenger seat, still chewing her thumbnail.

"Where should we go?" he says. She stares straight out the windshield.

"How about California?" Shannon says, and he half-laughs, not sure if she’s joking or not. She doesn’t seem like she knows if she’s joking or not either. She shakes her head.

"Anywhere," she says. "I don’t care, take me anywhere."

Eddie knows friends’ houses, and the YMCA, and the church, and the school. Bowling alley. Movie theater. All the places where teenagers go and hold hands and drink milkshakes together. He doesn’t feel like going to any of those places. He doesn’t know where he’s going, hasn’t figured it out until he’s already almost there.

She doesn’t seem concerned, not even when he pulls off onto the dirt road, tires crunching along before he gets to the edge of the quarry and parks. There’s nobody else around, closing in on sunset, school night, just him and her. Shannon blinks.

"Damn," she says. "I haven’t been here in years."

"We can go somewhere else if you want," he says.

"Nah," she says. "It’s a... throwback, or whatever."

She gets out of the truck and he follows, and she stands there with her hand shading her eyes, looking out at the water. Then she drops her jacket onto the dusty ground, toes off her sneakers. Peels off her dress in one long move until she’s just in her underwear, no bra. Eddie flushes and looks away, but she’s not looking at him.

Shannon walks towards the water straight on, just keeps going once she reaches it. She walks until it covers her knees, her hips, her ribcage, her shoulders, and then she takes a breath and goes under. Eddie, trailing her to the shoreline, watches, because–but she pops up after a moment, hair glued to her skin in dark inky streaks, nipples pebbled in the cold water, and she laughs, and she’s grinning this ferocious smile like she wants to sink her teeth into something, like something is itching right in the middle of her.

"Well?" she calls. "You coming in or what?"

So he shrugs. Kicks his shoes off, pulls his shirt off, and he joins her.

-

Later, in the back of the truck, it’s different than he thought it would be. He’s a little worried that he–but it’s just because he’s cold, and once he warms up he can. Shannon is plenty happy to take the lead anyway, happy to straddle him and press herself up against him and put his hands where she wants them. He thinks about how real she is, how jagged and sharp. He thinks about the train that passes in the distance on the other side of the water, the pistons of it churning, the violence of motion, all of it hurtling onward and onward, too big to outrun, and then he doesn’t think about anything at all.

Afterwards, they sit with their backs against the truck rear window. She goes fishing in her purse and pulls out a flask, takes a swig and makes a face. Holds it out to him and he follows. It tastes terrible.

"You’re different than you seem," she says quietly, and maybe it’s the burn of the liquor in his throat, but it doesn’t bother Eddie, doesn’t bite at him the way it normally would. Instead he just leans his head back against the glass.

"How do I seem?"

Shannon shrugs.

"Like everything is cool," Shannon says.

"Everything is cool," Eddie says, and Shannon snorts.

She leans her head on his shoulder, and she looks out at the quarry, which is really just a pit, a hole someone dug in the ground so they could pull something out of it, and then when they got what they wanted they just left, just left it there to fill in with mud and rocks and water.

"Can I tell you a secret?" she says. And he glances over at her, and she’s looking at him, and her eyes are wide and dull like old quarters. She's got such long lashes, Bambi eyes, such a pretty face, but she doesn’t look pretty right now. He doesn’t say anything and he waits. Shannon leans in until they’re nose to nose.

"I’m gonna get the fuck out of here one day," she whispers, and Eddie can’t help it. Eddie laughs. It’s a little unruly, gets away from him a little, but it’s alright, Shannon is laughing too.

-

It’s easy, being with Shannon. More and more and more it’s the only thing in his life that feels easy. He lies awake at night again and he doesn’t know why, and his breathing comes short and fast and he doesn’t know why, all he knows is he can see time stretching out in front of him in this one long line, narrow and straight all the way down. There’s a roaring behind him, this endless sound that’s getting louder and louder, but he can’t move his neck, he can’t turn around, and some mornings he wakes up and the bed is soaked with sweat, the only sign he ever slept at all. At school he just grins, and agrees with whatever everyone else is saying, lets Manuel beat him at Call of Duty, does his homework, goes to practice, helps his sisters, helps his mother, and still there’s the roaring, and still there’s the roaring.

And then there’s Shannon who shrieks in his car and punches the dashboard and shouts that her dad is an asshole and Shannon hates him, Shannon hates him. And Shannon who sings loud and off-key to Rihanna on the radio. And Shannon who always tastes a little like cigarettes and bubblegum. And Shannon who whines and says yeah and like that until he doesn’t have to think at all and it’s just skin on skin. And Shannon who wraps her arms around him when he shakes and shakes and she says yeah, I know, baby, I know. And Shannon who watches him play from the stands and she’s the only one in the crowd not smiling and she’s the only one in the crowd who is really there at all.

Shannon, who grabs him between fourth and fifth period with her fingers tight around his wrist. Shannon who drags him off to under the bleachers, where her face is so pale, all her freckles standing out, her eyes are red and puffy, her nails are digging into her palms. Shannon who looks so terrified.

Shannon who says:

"I need to talk to you."

-

Eddie got it wrong. He’s an idiot, feels stupid for how long it took him. All those days spent lifeguarding, all those nights spent pinching his arms, all that time spent searching, trying to pry the lid off things, trying to peer into the insides, trying to find something under all the plastic. He was looking in the wrong place. Everyone else, they’re perfectly real. They’re solid.

All that time spent buzzing, vibrating out of his skin. That’s the sound an empty glass makes.

His parents just stare, when he tells them. Ramón rises and paces. Helena sits there with her hand over her mouth. Eddie just waits.

"What girl?" his mom keeps saying. "What girl?"

And he has to say, "You don’t know her. You’ve never met her."

And Helena says, "How could you be so stupid. How could you–"

She cuts herself off, closing her eyes for a split second.

Ramón sits back down on the couch again finally, rubbing at his face.

"Well," he says slowly. "A man needs to be responsible for what he does."

And Helena just–just looks at Eddie. And he’s pinned there, all hollow and weightless, he’s just an exoskeleton, just an echo of other people’s noises. He can’t feel his hands or his feet, he can’t feel his whole body anymore. It’s just the mechanism that pilots him around, the thing that moves him from one room to another, but it’s just another room, isn’t it? His body, just another room with a locked door. He can feel it crushing in around him, can feel the unbearable weight of it, bearing down and down and down, pushing him somewhere small, somewhere dark. And he can’t breathe through it, can’t open his mouth, it’s filling his lungs up, spilling into his mouth and nose, his eye sockets, his sinus cavities, the dead silence of it, fingers scraping at a crack, prying and prying, fingernails scratching at it, one quiet last breath, and it sounds a little like, "Mom."

And Helena just... looks at him. And her brow gets all tight. And she looks at him.

And then she looks away.

"My dress might fit her," Helena says. "If she isn’t showing yet."

And it’s just–the lurch of it. The hinges slamming shut. The steel and the roar. Too loud to think.

Eddie knows what the sound behind him is.

There’s no point in turning around now.

-

Helena takes care of most of it. The reception venue, the seating arrangements. Shannon fights her on the music and wins that round, loses on the flowers, the cake.

In the hours before, his mother fusses with his cufflinks, fusses with his tie. Rental suit too big at the shoulders. Fixes his hair for the thousandth time. She blinks, not crying, just blinking rapidly. She puts her hand on his cheek, soft and dry and smelling like her gardenia lotion.

"You look so handsome," she tells him.

Eddie can’t quite get himself to smile, but he nods.

-

Shannon refuses to see him off. Slams doors at him, screams she hopes he gets blown up out there. And then cries and cries and says she’s sorry, she didn’t mean it, he has to come back to her, he has to, they’re a family, they’re a family.

Ramón is working. Sophia and Adriana are at school, Eddie said goodbye that morning, hugged them both tight and kissed their heads. Adriana clutched at him with sharp fingers and he thought she wasn’t going to let go. Sophia just gave him a long, hopeless look, so much sadder than he’d ever seen her, and she’d hugged him and said in a whisper, you could still say no you could still stay you don’t have to go you don’t have to go– and he’d had to pull away before the hot feeling in his chest worked its way up onto his face.

Helena drives him to the bus. She gives him half of a hug, tugging his head down to press a kiss to his temple.

"I love you," she’d said, and he’d wanted to hug her again. He wanted to hug her the way he hadn’t hugged her since he was a little boy, burying his face in the side of her neck, wrapping his arms all the way around her, like he can remember being part of her body, like he can remember being just that small.

Helena clears her throat. Helena takes a deep breath. Tells him to call any time, write any time, his sisters will want to hear from him.

"Alright," he says.

"Be safe," she tells him, her eyes bright and damp with tears that won’t spill over. "Please be safe."

And then it’s up to Eddie. To move his feet, shoulder his duffel, fall into line with all the others. His mother stands in the crowd with all of the other parents. Her arms are wrapped tight around her torso. She doesn’t wave, doesn’t even blink, she just watches him go.

Chapter Text

On the third day of Eddie staring at his phone, staring at the TV, staring at the wall, Buck says, "Hey, you wanna go for a walk, get some sunshine?"

Eddie, from his position on the couch, groans.

"Not a cactus," he says. But Buck gives Eddie a look, and Eddie sighs.

"Fine," he says, and goes to get his shoes.

They go to the park. It’s the one by Eddie’s house, and Buck has probably been to that park dozens of times, hundreds. Dragged Chris there for some vitamin D. Chris loves to nap in the grass, or he did when he was smaller. Even had a picnic once or twice–potato salad, lukewarm beer, Eddie lying on a blanket with Buck’s book over his face.

Now they just walk. Not that big of a park, they loop it a couple of times, watch two ducks at the very sad water feature. It’s the height of summer, the heat sticking to their skin like a second set of clothes, bees buzzing. Fire season is on its way, but it’s pretty before that when all the vegetation is alive and just beginning to turn yellow at the edges. Buck points out the different plants he knows because he’s got a book on it, and Eddie looks at all of them, doesn’t say a lot. 

Until they walk past the jacaranda trees in full bloom, purple flowers crushed underfoot, and Eddie says, "Chris loves this park."

And Buck’s stomach feels low and empty when he says, "Yeah."

Eddie doesn’t say anything else, so Buck forces a grin.

"Hey, do you remember that picnic last Labor Day?" Buck says, bumping their shoulders together.

"When you got stung by a wasp?"

"I–yeah, totally forgot about that," Buck says, and Eddie rolls his eyes.

"You wouldn’t stop complaining."

"I have sensitive ankles," Buck says.

"Chris wouldn’t stop talking about... something," Eddie says. He sounds a little urgent. "But I can’t remember. What was it? Do you remember?"

Buck frowns, thinking.

"Overwatch," Buck says. "The gorilla."

"That’s right," Eddie says, his face clearing in relief. "Winston."

"That was a pretty good picnic," Buck says. "Even if I did get grievously injured."

And he expects Eddie to–maybe tease him a little bit, he’s giving him an in. But instead Eddie takes this one deep ragged inhale and stops walking. Blinking up at the trees, all those flowers, all that life, and Eddie so washed out and colorless in the middle of it.

"Do you think," Eddie says. "Do you think he’s happy there?"

"He..." Buck says, and he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want to imagine Chris unhappy anywhere. But he doesn’t want to imagine Chris happy in El Paso either, doesn’t want to imagine him sitting with his grandparents smiling, three chairs around a kitchen table. It makes him a little sick to think about.

"He sent me a picture of a cow skull," Buck says instead. He shows Eddie on his phone. Doesn’t open the chat or anything, knows Chris wouldn’t want that, but he... it’s just a picture. Eddie takes his phone for a moment and stares at it, blinking rapidly. He clears his throat.

"Nice," he says, handing the phone back.

"Yeah," Buck says. And then, because he can’t help himself, "Eddie, he’s coming back."

Eddie exhales.

"You don’t know that," he says. 

And–no, no Buck doesn’t know that. But he knows Chris is far away from Eddie. And Chris shouldn’t be far away from Eddie.

"I just–" Eddie says abruptly. "I keep thinking, why them? Why did he call them? He could have–he could have gone to you, he could have called Abuela or something–but. He called them. And I keep wondering if... if maybe he never wanted to leave Texas in the first place. You know, maybe I shouldn’t have taken him. He was so small, he wasn’t going to argue with me, he just wanted me around. And then I dragged him off to California, and I thought it would be good for us. I really did, I thought it could be... a new way to be, I thought–"

Eddie sighs.

"I really thought I was going to be someone else out here," he says finally, mostly to himself.

And Buck wants to reach out and grab Eddie where his shoulder meets his neck, the same place he’s always grabbing Buck, a place Buck has come to think of as Eddie’s. As an anchor point. But Buck can tell, doesn’t need to ask, that Eddie doesn’t want anybody touching him right now.

"Well," Buck says. "I’m glad you’re not."

Eddie snorts.

"Thanks."

"Chris, he… He’s fourteen," Buck says. "He’s gonna hate everyone and everything. It doesn’t mean–Eddie, you didn’t make a mistake, bringing him to California. I mean–I–I–I got to meet him, didn’t I?"

"Yeah," Eddie says. He looks too tired to smile, but at least he frowns a little less. "You did."

"And I got to meet you," Buck says, quiet enough that he’s almost hoping Eddie doesn’t hear it. Eddie doesn’t say anything to that, kind of scuffs at some flowers on the ground by his feet.

"Sometimes I think," Eddie says finally. "I think maybe he called them on purpose, to hurt me. And you know what’s kind of fucked up is, I’m glad. Because the other option is that he missed them that much, and. And. He was too little. He doesn’t know what they’re like."

"What are they like?"

Eddie shrugs.

"They’re parents," he says. "You know how it goes."

Buck sighs.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I do."

-

-

Buck has never known what to say to Chris about Shannon, about the whole thing. He seems to always get stuck in it, and Buck–Buck met her once, he barely even–But somehow it’s always him. Him and Chris and the dead woman in the room, Eddie right outside like he can’t take one step further in, like he’s paralyzed at the thought of her.

And Buck knows Eddie, knows him, but this. Her. His marriage. It’s always been the thing Buck could never quite touch. He tells himself it’s none of his business, which he knows is a lie, and not even a good one, because when has Buck ever cared about whether Eddie’s life was his business? But it’s always been an area full of potholes. An area where Buck always missteps, says the wrong thing, leaves them both lurching for balance a little. Except now it’s not a pothole anymore, it’s a sinkhole. Something nobody paid any attention to until the ground started caving in, swallowing cars, roads, a whole house. Something Buck should have noticed, should have seen, but he didn’t, he didn’t.

It’s just. Sometimes Eddie is fine about it, references it like it’s no big deal. And then sometimes it’s something that engulfs him whole, this lost empty look darting across his face when someone says something that hits a little too close to home. Buck thinks that probably Eddie doesn’t even know how Eddie feels about it. But–Buck also doesn’t know how Eddie feels about it, and that’s stranger. Because even when Eddie is tight-lipped and shut down, Buck can still read him. Buck is supposed to always be able to read him. 

So when Eddie starts giving Hen advice about anniversary presents, or when Eddie tells the hysterical newlyweds that a bloody nose is not a life threatening injury, or when the two of them eat takeout at the kitchen island, framed pictures of Shannon on the fridge, everyone happy at the beach, everyone smiling, Buck can’t help it. Can’t help trying to–pry, excavate, this one piece he’s never understood, the one part of Eddie always, always, always out of reach. 

Buck looks at the photos. He says, not knowing where he’s going, "I was thinking."

And what comes out of his mouth is:

"How did you meet Shannon?"

And he can’t believe… six years and he’s never asked, not once. Eddie immediately gets all stiff and brittle the way he does whenever anyone brings her up.

"Math class," he says.

"Wait, really?"

"Yeah," Eddie says. "It was–I didn’t really notice her at first, actually. We didn’t... talk much. Until later."

Buck tries to imagine Eddie, age 18, standing at an altar somewhere back in time. Standing there and waiting.

"It’s..." Buck says. "I was talking to Chris–"

Eddie’s head snaps up.

"You were talking to Chris?" Eddie says. "How is he? What did he say?"

"He’s fine," Buck says. "I think he–I don’t know. He wanted to know... he was worried. He wanted to know if you’re okay."

Eddie’s face freezes.

"Did you ever..." Buck says, licks his lips. "Talk to Frank? About her?"

And Eddie–shrugs, all jerkily.

"Once or twice," he says.

"And...?"

"And he always said the way it ended didn’t need to define the whole thing," Eddie says, picking up his beer again. "That it was okay if I loved her anyways."

"Right," Buck fiddles with the plastic fork wrapper. "You ever think about going back?"

"To therapy? Not really. I mean, the PTSD is pretty handled, so."

"Oh. Yeah. But I mean. He just," Buck says, fumbling. "Chris asked if you were having panic attacks again..."

Eddie gets up abruptly. Goes to the sink and turns the water on, starts scrubbing at a loose spoon.

"Eddie."

Eddie keeps scrubbing. Buck approaches, puts a cautious hand on his shoulder. Feels Eddie freeze, and then slowly, slowly slump.

Eddie says, "Sometimes I think maybe he’s better off there."

"What?"

"I mean. They love him so much, spoil him rotten. And they–he was never scared. With them."

"You didn’t mean to," Buck says softly. "It’s not your fault."

"Yeah, people keep saying that," Eddie says. "But the thing about parenthood is, that only gets you so far."

"You’re not being fair to yourself. You keep trying. You keep trying."

"Exactly!" Eddie says, throwing the spoon back into the sink with a clatter. "I try and I try and I keep. Fucking up. Can’t blame him for thinking he’d be better off with–people who are more stable, people who are more–are more..."

"Do they try?"

"What?"

"Do they try," Buck says. Eddie stares at him. Then he turns away, and he doesn’t say anything.

"I just," Buck says. "You said nobody would fight for him as hard as I do. But that's not true Eddie, you do."

"Maybe I shouldn’t," Eddie says, not turning around. "Maybe all I’m doing is. Ripping him apart."

"You don’t believe that," Buck says.

Eddie shrugs.

"I don’t know what I believe anymore," Eddie says finally, all empty and exhausted, and it sounds like. Sounds like it’s been yanked from him like a bloody tooth, like the truth dredged out of him.

-

It’s not–it’s complicated, is what it is. Because clearly Eddie–and clearly Chris–and Chris doesn’t mean to be doing it, Buck is sure. Chris has no idea of the effect he’s having, when he calls Eddie and sits in silence on the line. And Eddie chokes out a:

"Chris?"

And then Chris takes this one inhale and hangs up, and then Eddie is on the phone with his parents, saying, "No, he just–okay well he–"

Until Eddie slumps down onto the couch, head in his hands.

"He called by accident," he tells Buck. "That’s what he told them."

And Buck says "Eddie–"

And Eddie gives a brittle laugh.

"No, it’s–fine," he says. "It’s fine."

-

It is, of course, not fine. Eddie at work all glassy-eyed and far away. Eddie barely grunting responses to the things Buck says. It’s not fine. But Buck can make it fine, he can follow Eddie home, can sprawl across the sofa with his feet in Eddie’s lap while the TV chatters on, Eddie staring at the screen and not blinking.

Commercial break for a heart medication, for a new car, and Eddie, out of the blue, blurts out, "I didn’t sleep with her."

Buck stares at him. 

"Who?"

"Kim," Eddie says. "When Chris walked in. She kissed me, but I didn’t... I didn’t ask, I didn’t... want..."

Buck blinks.

"Oh," he says. "But you said–"

"No, I didn’t," Eddie says. "You just assumed. But I–I wasn’t."

"Oh," Buck says. And he replays that morning in his head, Eddie’s awful frantic energy, Eddie falling and falling and well aware the ground was coming up. And... Buck, horrified and helpless, watching from the sidelines and knowing how fucking useless he was.

And last time it was–it was fast, and messy, and Buck has still been playing it over in his head when he can’t sleep, playing it over and over, the damp heat of Eddie’s breath against the side of his neck, and then–And it sticks to him like a splinter working its way into the sole of his foot. What did you do? God Evan, what did you do? All Buck knows is Eddie was miserable, and Buck wanted him to not be miserable, he would have done anything for Eddie to be less miserable–

This time Eddie lets out a kind of shaky exhale and leans sideways, his nose brushing the corner of Buck’s jaw, the edge of his ear, bumping Buck’s own nose. It’s the least coordinated kiss Buck has received in several decades, more like Eddie is pushing their faces together, their mouths brushing in a random way. Like Eddie’s never kissed anyone before, like he knows what kissing is and how it works but he doesn’t know how to make his mouth move.

"Okay," Buck says against him, pulling back a few centimeters to catch Eddie’s shoulder, Eddie whose eyes are squeezed shut, his face is red, breathing raspy, his hands are flexing and unflexing on his thighs. Buck pulls one loose and puts it on his own waist and Eddie latches on, fingers knotting in the fabric of his shirt, tugging Buck closer until Buck swings one leg over and sinks into Eddie’s lap, the warmth of Eddie’s thighs under him. Eddie’s hands splay across his waist, thumbs catching under the edge of Buck’s shirt, lifting to notch his fingers into the divots between Buck’s lower ribs.

"Okay," Buck says again, settling onto him, and he kisses Eddie slow, licking at his mouth, nipping at him, one hand trailing across Eddie’s chest, feather-light. Eddie sighs against him and his fingers dig in, and Buck grinds down against him slowly. He feels Eddie’s body wake up under him as he inhales, the kiss getting wetter, deeper, Eddie half-hard under him. Eddie drops his head to start working at a spot on Buck’s neck, teeth grazing, not sharp enough to leave a mark but Buck wishes, Buck wants. He says, "You can," and Eddie’s hips jerk up as he bites, and Buck exhales into the sting of it.

He works his hips downwards, gasping against Eddie’s temple as Eddie sucks at his neck, until Eddie is fully hard under him, his hips rocking up to meet Buck’s, until he’s rutting up against the curve of Buck’s ass and Buck is scrabbling against his shoulders. He wants there to be less clothing, he wants Eddie close, he wants Eddie closer, he says, "Eddie," and his voice comes out all cracked, he has to try again and say, "Eddie, what do you want. What do you–" 

Eddie stops biting, his face hidden in the crook of Buck’s neck as he slides his hands down to Buck’s hips, his fingers dipping below the waistband of Buck’s sweats to land at the top of the swell of Buck’s ass, fingertips digging into the meat of him. Buck tries to press backwards against Eddie’s touch, forward against Eddie hard under him.

Eddie’s voice against the side of his neck is rough, quiet and hidden like he’s telling a secret when he says into Buck’s skin, scratchy and quiet, "Can I fuck you?"

And Buck feels his own cock jerk at that, the front of his briefs getting tacky under his sweatpants with how bad he wants Eddie in him, wants Eddie rammed deep enough in him that Buck can feel it in his fucking stomach, wants Eddie lodged up behind his eyelids. 

He’s babbling up against the side of Eddie’s forehead as he says, "Yeah, yes, yeah, please, please, please," and Eddie bites him again, the same spot as before, already raw and red and Buck spasms, a thready moan working its way out of him. He feels delirious with anticipation, with Eddie, drunk with proximity. Eddie sits up and Buck awkwardly slides off his lap, has to catch himself against the arm of the couch so that he doesn’t fall, jams his elbow kind of weird and winces.

"Shit, sorry–" Eddie says, catching him by the arm. "Are you–I should have–"

"I’m good," Buck says, rubbing at his elbow. And Eddie’s hands follow suit, grabbing and prodding gently at his arm like he’s going to find his humerus snapped in half. It’s so familiar, so endearing, something Buck has seen him do a million times, assessing the damage, and he drops his head and kisses Eddie, can’t help smiling against him when he does.

"I’m good. Really," he tells Eddie, and, because he’s feeling bold: "Be a lot better with your dick in me."

Eddie kind of huffs a laugh against him.

"Yeah, yeah, c’mere," he says.

And Buck kind of thinks–kind of thinks he might die? But in a good way, he can’t imagine a single moment of his life being better than this one, not when Eddie kisses him again and it’s greedy, Buck sucking at his tongue, trying not to give up an inch of contact as Eddie walks him backwards down the hallway into the bedroom. Buck pulls them backwards onto the bed, pulls Eddie’s full weight on him, one knee nestling between Eddie’s, one leg curling up around Eddie’s hip so they’re slotted together through their sweatpants, hard and hot through all the fabric. Why is there so much fabric, fabric was a stupid invention, he wiggles and kicks and tugs until he’s naked, until Eddie’s naked. 

This time when Eddie settles back on top of him it’s skin against skin, the hair on his chest brushing against Buck’s nipples, the head of his cock sliding in the crease of Buck’s hip, and Buck is leaking precome, so embarrassingly wet, and when Eddie rolls them together the heads of their cocks drag against each other, and Buck bites the inside of his cheek hard, doesn’t make a noise at all because he almost comes.

"Eddie," he says, clutching at him, pushing him back a little, no, wait, tugging him closer, no, wait– "Eddie, you gotta–I want–I want–"

And Eddie says, "Yeah, yeah," except then he kind of pauses. Pulls back a little, eyes darting towards Buck’s face and then away again.

"I’ve never–" He says. "I haven’t–"

And Buck says, "Okay, okay." And truthfully Buck doesn’t actually care if he’s ready or not, doesn’t care if Eddie just shoves into him, doesn’t care if it rips him open, but that sounds ill-advised, so he says, "Lube?" and Eddie goes rummaging in his bedside drawer to emerge with lube and condoms. Buck takes the lube and coats his fingers in it, he’s staring at Eddie, looking right at him as he presses the tip of one finger in, clenches and relaxes, and Eddie’s chest heaving, and Eddie licks his lips. Buck moans, a second finger joining the first, and it’s always a little awkward at this angle, doing this to himself, kind of cramps his wrist when he curls his fingers until, there, and he gasps, high and thready, doesn’t even realize he’s panting out, "Eddie, Eddie, Eddie."  

Eddie watches him, eyes wide and dark, his hips are making these tiny twitching movements but he doesn’t even have a hand on his dick, watching Buck with something akin to hunger or wonder, and Buck’s voice breaks in his throat, and Eddie shivers, goosebumps rising on his arms.

He says, "I–can I–" and then his hands are between Buck’s legs, cold lube, warm hands, and his fingers are sliding into Buck and Buck’s breath catches in a sob, his hand on his own cock tightening instinctively, and he is so close, too close, he’s saying Eddie’s name in this ongoing gasp, and "Please, I need you, I need, please."

Buck whines at the loss when his fingers slip out of him, keeps his own hand fisted at the base of his cock while he watches Eddie put the condom on, slick himself up, flushed across his neck and down his chest, Eddie fucking into his own hand once, twice, like he cant help it. And then Buck is saying, "Eddie please, Eddie, Eddie," and Eddie is there, the head of his cock catching at Buck’s rim. Buck moans, pulls the other knee up until he’s spread open and Eddie can press in, the burn of it, the stretch, and Buck can feel his heartbeat in his throat, can hear it in his ears, every inch of him overstimulated, a raw nerve, because that’s Eddie, that’s Eddie buried into him, and it’s not until Eddie collapses onto his elbows, face red, mouth open and gasping, a fine tremor starting in him, that Buck realizes he’s waiting for permission to move.

So Buck rolls his hips a little, feels the edge of pleasure white-hot in his gut, watches Eddie choke and gasp, and Buck says, "please," and Eddie’s hands on Buck’s hips dig in–he’s going to leave bruises, Buck hopes he leaves bruises–and he’s moving, slow at first, until Buck starts arching back up against him, still saying, "please," and, "please," and Eddie is fucking into him huge and hard and thick, and Eddie is talking, Eddie is talking, saying, "oh my God baby you feel so good, you take it so good, oh my god." Buck arches and grinds and says, "there, there, I, fuck", Buck’s clawing at Eddie’s waist, at his back, wherever he can reach as pleasure builds incandescent in him, rising and pulling him along with it.

He says, "Please I–" and Eddie tugs Buck’s hand away from himself, replaces it with his own, tugs at him once, twice, fingers slippery with lube and precome, and Buck is spinning out, couldn’t stop now even if he wanted to, and he says, "Eddie," or he thinks he does and he comes. Whining, shuddering, fighting so hard to keep his eyes open because he wants to see Eddie’s hand getting coated in it, leaking through Eddie’s fingers to drip onto Buck’s stomach. Eddie is slowing down, but Buck says, "No, keep going, keep–" and he draws Eddie back in even as it makes him gasp and twitch, anything to keep Eddie moving in him.

Eddie says, "I–I’m–" and Buck whines and clenches, clamps down, and Eddie’s breath catches in his throat as he comes, rutting Buck down into the mattress, collapsing onto him, face buried in Buck’s neck and still his hips are moving in these staccato jerks. Buck can feel the rush of heat inside him, wishes desperately there was no condom, wants Eddie spilling into his insides, into his guts, wants to keep Eddie inside him there all day, for the rest of his life. Eddie’s hips stop moving slowly, an aftershock reverberating between the two of them.

Then it’s Eddie breathing onto his skin. Pulling out with an obscene sound, even if Buck would prefer he didn’t, but Eddie doesn’t go far, just removes and ties off the condom and then flops down onto the bed next to Buck. Buck watches him, warm and sleepy, the rosy flush across Eddie’s chest. He doesn’t mean to close his eyes, doesn’t want to, but he must, because when he blinks again he’s on his side, and Eddie is pressed up behind him, ankles tangled together, the rise and fall of Eddie’s chest against Buck’s back.

This has always been Buck’s favorite part. Not that he doesn’t like sex, he loves sex, but his favorite moment is still the afterglow. When he and another person’s skin is touching and everyone is breathing, heart rates slowing back down together. And with Eddie, Buck doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to risk doing anything that would make him shift away. He doesn’t mind lying there streaked with semen that’s drying, turning itchy, as long as Eddie is lying behind him, one arm flung possessively over Buck’s hip, his forehead tucked between Buck’s shoulder blades, the warm solid heat of him pressed all along Buck’s spine.

Eventually Eddie stirs, mumbles something. He rolls away, and Buck braces himself, because Eddie is going to get up now, Eddie is going to grab his clothes and rub at his face and they’ll be back to how it always is between them, which is fine, Buck is fine with that, Buck can be fine with that. Except Eddie doesn’t get up. He just lays there starfished on the bed, Buck curled around his side next to him like an apostrophe, and Eddie stares at the ceiling, his eyebrows drawn together a little.

Eddie says, "She asked for a divorce."

And Buck watches him, watches his profile, the tension under his eyes, and Buck says, "Oh."

"Right before–right before she died," Eddie says. "I asked her to get back together, and she asked for a divorce."

"I... I’m sorry," Buck tells Eddie, and Eddie shuts his eyes tight.

"I gave her," he says. "Literally everything I could possibly give her. And she didn’t..."

His voice cracks and his scrubs at his face even though he’s not crying.

He says, "God, we used to have these fights, screaming, slamming doors. And it was like, we’d always... And then she... And I loved her. I loved her so much. And now it’s like, I just get to spend the rest of my life waiting."

"Is that why, with Kim?"

"I don’t know," Eddie says, hand still over his eyes. "I don’t know. I saw her and I thought. It felt like a… like a miracle. Like something I don’t even believe in. Like a chance to finally... I wanted her to tell me to my face. That it wasn’t enough. That it was too much. I wanted–all the shouting, I wanted it to be done."

"It’s not wrong to want closure," Buck tells him. "I mean yeah, okay, the method left a little to be desired, but..."

Eddie snorts.

"It’s..." Eddie says. "Shannon saw me the best. Even when we were kids, she always did. She spent her whole life like that, until she couldn’t any more, until she had to go, like–like she couldn’t look at me a second longer, like..."

"Maybe it wasn’t about you," Buck says gently, and Eddie shakes his head.

"It was about a lot of things," he says. "But. It wasn’t not about me either, you know."

Buck is quiet for a minute. And then he says  firmly, means it more than he means most things.

"You did the best that you could," he tells Eddie. "And it wasn’t your fault."

And Eddie kind of shudders at that, this one exhale from his chest down his stomach. And then he doesn’t say anything else, and Buck doesn’t say anything else.

-

-

It’s–different after that, somehow. Not in any major tangible way, Eddie still sulks around, still stares at walls, still checks his phone obsessively, truly obsessively until Buck wants to grab it and toss it out the nearest window. But still it’s... little things. Like how Eddie cooks for once, nothing fancy, only pasta, but he says he’s tired of takeout and Buck cooks for them enough as it is, and Buck says he doesn’t mind, and Eddie says yeah, well. And Buck eats it and tells him it’s delicious, tells him twice actually, and Eddie rolls his eyes and says, "Don’t patronize me," but he says it with a grin, so Buck slurps at his spaghetti extra gross.

Or how they do the dishes together afterwards, Buck rinsing, Eddie drying, and their hands catch together on a pan for a second, soap bubbles across their fingertips. It goes on past what it should, longer than is casual, longer than can be explained, their fingers laced together, smelling like pasta sauce and dish soap. And Eddie’s throat works, and he reaches out and dabs a cluster of soap bubbles onto Buck’s nose, and then he laughs.

And Buck can feel it swelling up in him, knows it will wash everything away, and he is reckless, he is tumbling, and Buck. Buck cannot handle the thing that lurches inside of him, he wants to grab Eddie and squeeze him until he pops. He wants to unhinge his jaw like a boa constrictor and swallow him whole. He wants more things than his body can do, he needs a different one, a bigger better body that could hold it all, because this one can’t, this one is cracking under the pressure of it. He’s patching leaks before they happen and he worries it’s seeping from him anyways, knows it’s streaming invisibly from his eyes and ears and nose. It’s filling the house, filling the kitchen, lapping invisibly at their ankles, the rising tide of it.

-

Of course it wasn’t going to last. Of course not, Buck knew that, should have known that, did know that. He just wanted it bad enough to let himself lie.

Afternoon sunlight, syrupy and warm. Hot in that bedroom, Buck would be sweating even if they weren’t in the middle of it, even if Eddie didn’t have him pinned with two fingers in him, even if Buck wasn’t whining and grabbing at his shoulders, saying, "Please Eddie please I want it so bad, I want you so bad." And he doesn’t really–his brain is not thinking, is preoccupied with other things, when Eddie’s fingers curl and hit that spot inside him and Buck’s breath leaves him in this thready moan, and he’s saying, "It’s you, it’s you, it’s you."

Except. Eddie is kind of. Freezing up. His movements getting less fluid, more stiff and jerky, and he’s pulling his hand back, the sensation of loss is almost sickening. He’s sitting back on his heels, naked, hair falling onto his forehead, chest still sweaty and heaving, and he looks. So strangely lost like that, this one line between his eyebrows.

"What?" he says.

"What?" Buck says.

"It’s–you just said–"

"No, I–" Buck says. "Sorry, it’s... Sex talk I mean, it’s not..."

The problem is, Buck has always been a terrible liar.

"Yeah," Eddie says, except he says it all quiet.

"Hey," Buck says. "No, no, it’s not, that’s not what I... I don’t mean..."

"Yeah," Eddie says again, all stiff-backed. He gets up and grabs his pants from the floor, puts them on with that good old fashioned military precision.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Eddie says. "Just–not really in the mood, I’ve got a lot to do today, I have to..."

"Eddie–"

But Eddie’s stalking out of the room, leaving Buck to hop into a pair of boxers and scramble after him. Into the bathroom, washing his hands, and then down the hall, into–Chris’s room? Where Eddie is stripping the cover off the duvet.

"What’s going on?" Buck says.

"Nothing," Eddie says again. "Was thinking, it’s probably getting dusty, and when–if–he wouldn’t want it to be dusty. Bad for his lungs."

"Eddie," Buck says again, reaching for his shoulder, but Eddie dodges him again, sidesteps back out into the hall, leaving Buck trailing behind him all the way to the laundry room. Where Eddie throws the duvet cover in the machine and starts a load, still moving so precisely, all careful and clockwork, and Buck doesn’t know whether–if he should touch him, he hates when Eddie gets like this, hates when Buck is left pawing at a brick wall, hates not knowing what Eddie needs, hates feeling so goddamn dumb. All he can do is grab Eddie’s wrists.

"I didn’t," Buck says. "I wasn’t."

And that’s all he can think to say. But there under his hands Eddie slumps a little, the warmth of the muscles and tendons of his hands, Buck can feel the shifting of ligaments and bones, and he wants–he wants to sculpt Eddie’s hands, he’s never sculpted anything in his damn life, but he wants to start now, wants to cast them in wax, in bronze, so they’ll stay put.

Eddie chews at his lip. He takes a deep breath.

"Did you mean it," he says. 

"Of course not," Buck says. "It’s not..."

But Eddie is watching him, not blinking.

"I…" Buck says, and Eddie’s face–Eddie’s face. And Buck did it again, didn’t he, thought it was solid ground, like an idiot. But now he hears the vibration of it, like right before the flashover hits, like when the roof beams start to groan and you know what’s coming, know no amount of fire retardant gear is going to save you this time, enormous, engulfing.

Eddie looks at him all miserable, and says, "I can’t do this."

And Buck says, "Do what?" Like he can still head this off at the pass, like he’s still got a way out of this one.

"This. It’s too much, okay," Eddie says. "It’s too–too fucking close, I need–I need–I can’t–"

"Okay, so we won’t," Buck tells him, and Eddie is still shaking his head.

"No, no, you don’t–" he says. "It’s all too much, you–you can’t, you can’t–"

And there it is, the chasm, the pit in his stomach, too clingy, too needy, too big, can’t you just, can’t you just–

"Oh," Buck says, quiet. "Okay."

"Stop agreeing with me, stop–"

Except now the pit in Buck’s stomach is roiling, turning over, because. If Eddie needs it, Buck can give it, if Eddie would–If it’s not enough for Buck to core himself out, then fine, fine, it never is, Buck is used to that. If it’s not enough for Buck to hold Eddie steady then fine, that’s fine, Buck knows that failure intimately well. If Buck is too much, then he will untangle himself, he will pry his fingernails loose, bend his limbs backwards until they snap if he has to to give Eddie what he needs, but he doesn’t–Because Buck tries, and he tries, and he’s never getting it right, he’s always somehow choosing the wrong answer, and Eddie never–he sits there, all hollow and tragic, while Buck flays himself open, and flays himself open–

"What do you even want from me right now!" Buck says. "Literally just tell me what you want and I will do it, okay! You wanna fuck, we can fuck, you want space, you can have it, literally just–just tell me and it’s yours–"

"That’s what I don’t want!" Eddie says, and Buck wants to grab him and shake him, and finally it–tears out of him. Because he doesn’t–okay, sure, Eddie is proud, and Eddie hates any amount of effort directed his way, any amount of help, but he’s acting like–and Buck doesn’t, he doesn’t fucking get it, all he does is try to read him, and try to read him, and still Eddie is a locked fucking box, still Eddie is some foreign language, still Eddie pulls back, and Eddie pulls back, and Buck is always left trailing behind him, always struggling to catch up, and still Eddie is far away.

"Don’t you fucking get it," Buck yells, doesn’t mean to be yelling but it’s ripping out of him, geyser force, spewing out and upwards. "I would do anything for you. Anything."

Eddie flinches, jerks away, and he says, "Buck."

But all that heavy gasping in the middle of his chest, it’s cracked. And Buck has been wrestling it down tightly, but all it takes is one second where Buck isn’t holding on and it’s loose in him, it’s roiling, filling his chest and his head red-hot, it comes tumbling out of Buck, all that pressure until the force of it could knock him backwards, knock him down, rushing everywhere, flooding everything–

"I would," Buck says, barreling on. "Every day you’re what I think about, and every single second it’s–And I want to know how you’re doing, and I want to know what you’re seeing, and I want to know what you’re thinking, and–"

"Buck, stop," Eddie says urgently, and Buck ignores him, for once in his life Buck fucking ignores him.

"It’s like. You," Buck says. "You’re–you’re in me Eddie, don’t you get that? You are inside me."

And Eddie is just. Staring at him, chest heaving, breathing all jerky, and he closes his eyes. A crease between his eyebrows. And for a second he’s all–his face is all cracked open, his jaw working, his mouth open a fraction, one exhale, like he wants, like he’s going to say–

But he opens his eyes again, and his face is tight.

"I think you should probably go," Eddie says thinly.

"What?" Buck says, stepping back. Because he can’t–not if he–

"You need to leave," Eddie says. "This was a bad idea."

"I," Buck says. And Buck can’t breathe, and Buck can’t think, and he says, "Eddie."

And Eddie says it like he’s got a trump card in his hand, like he’s pulling a trigger, all quiet and final:

"I want you to leave now."

So Buck–takes a step back. Feels it screaming all the way up through his legs, and he doesn’t–he wasn’t–

Another step, until he bumps into the wall and has to turn around, until the walls and the hallway carpet are blurring, face hot, eyes hot, gulping for air, dressing while trying not to–

And there’s a whine tearing its way out of his throat, and he scrubs at his face, scrubs at it hard, puts his hands in his hair and tugs, and it’s not–he didn’t–and there it is, rising up in him again, always, always, you fucked it up, you fucked it all up–skin crawling, mouth sour, for God’s sakes couldn’t you just, for once can’t you, why don’t you, why are you so. Why are you.

-

He drives and he breathes. Count of four, hold, count of four. Sits in the parking lot and counts five things he can see, four things he can hear. All the grounding techniques, everything to prevent him from spinning off, spinning out the way he wants to, until. Until he’s barely dizzy at all.

Maddie opens the front door. She has a smear of tomato sauce on her shirt, hair up in a messy bun, and she looks–she looks the exact same as she did when he was 8, when he was 18, like eating fast food at a drive-in movie, like singing along to No Doubt on the radio, like scraped knees, like band-aids, like home.

"Hey, I didn’t know you were coming over," Maddie says. "Sorry, did you text me?"

"I’ve been sleeping with Eddie," Buck blurts out, and Maddie says, "You what?" and in the kitchen behind her Buck hears a clatter and a crash followed by Chimney swearing.

"Oh," Buck says. "Hi, Chim."

Chimney appears holding two halves of a serving bowl.

"Hello, Buck. Won’t you please come in. You know, honey, I think I’m going to take Jee to the park," Chim says. "Not for any reason at all."

"Right," Maddie says. "That’s–yeah, you should do that."

Chim hustles Jee out the door, muttering something that sounds like seven goddamn years–

And Buck paces, nearly trips on a stuffed alligator on the living room floor, and Maddie catches his arm, says, "Okay, do you wanna–sit down maybe or–"

"Maddie," he says. "I think I really fucked up."

"Was the sleeping with Eddie part the fucking up?"

"What? No! Well–but–okay, that’s been going on a while–"

"A while?"

"I don’t know, a month?"

34 days to be exact, but Maddie doesn’t need to know that.

"A month..." Maddie says, sounding faint. "You–what?"

"I–Okay. Rewind. Chris moved to live with his grandparents in Texas. Actually, rewind before that. Eddie met this woman who looked exactly like his dead wife."’

Maddie’s face goes on the longest most complicated journey of his life.

"Maybe you can start from the top," she says.

So he does. And Maddie sits there, her eyes getting larger and larger. Just lets him ramble about Kim, about Chris, about Eddie’s goddamn parents. Until he’s talking himself in circles.

"I was worried. He didn’t just think she looked like his dead wife. He thought she was..." Buck says. "He was... I don’t know! He said a lot of really crazy things. And then, then Chris left. And Maddie, I’ve never seen Eddie like that, he was–It was..."

Buck fidgets.

"He," he says quietly. "He–he needed something to hold onto, okay."

"So you slept with him?"

"I…" Buck says. "Yes."

Maddie hisses a breath out between her teeth.

"Right," she says.

"I know but. He was. I’ve never... I’ve never seen someone go away like that," Buck says. "I was scared, okay, I was so scared. I didn’t–I didn’t know what he was going to do, and he–he can’t leave, he can’t, he can’t. I mean he can leave me if he wants, but he can’t, he–"

"Okay, Evan, breathe with me," she says. "Breathe with me, in, out, okay, okay."

"If I can’t fix it," Buck says. "Then why would he–how could he..."

Maddie’s hands fist over each other in her lap. Her flexing knuckles, the downturned edges of her mouth. She gets up abruptly. Goes to the kitchen, gets a glass of water, puts it on the end table next to him. But then she sits there staring at it.

"Sometimes," she says. "I really do want to kill our parents."

Buck lets out a hollow laugh. He leans forward and digs his thumbs into the bridge of his nose.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah."

He tries to breathe, feel the air rushing into his sinuses and out again. He feels Maddie’s hand on his leg rubbing soothing circles.

"Buck, you can’t save people. You know that, right?" Maddie says quietly. "You can only sit with them while they try to save themselves."

"It’s different," Buck says, and he hears how that sounds, is already amending, "It’s not like that, it’s–It isn’t–He isn’t–"

"Oh, Buck," Maddie says and she sounds like her heart is breaking.

"I," Buck says miserably. "He has to be okay. He has to be. He’s my–the–Maddie, it’s Eddie."

And Maddie watches him. His throat and nose hurt.

"What if you can’t fix it?" Maddie says finally.

"I–It’s not–I–"

"What if you can’t," Maddie says, and Buck. Feels it snap. That tightrope, that tether line, feels it fray and give, one final lurch and then he’s tumbling, then he’s falling.

"I have to," he says, the tears are hot and thick, he wipes at his face and they keep coming.

"I know," Maddie says. "But that doesn’t mean you can."

And he tries to–to picture it, to understand it, Eddie silent and miserable a year from now, five years from now. And the idea makes him want to–want to vomit, want to bite his tongue off, claw at his face, because that’s Eddie, and Eddie is–Eddie can’t–

And in that panic he’s spinning into, he reaches, reaches for Eddie, who–

Eddie, who gets this one crease between his eyebrows when he’s thinking hard, when he’s assessing a patient.

Eddie, who has this one goofy smile right before he eggs Buck on, like the whole world is their private joke, nobody else can touch it.

Eddie, who tumbles and slides into violence, into anguish, and then slowly crawls his way out again to stand in the sunshine for a little while between crises, the pit and the joy, both recurring.

"Would you still want it?" Maddie says, all quiet. Like it’s a genuine question. "If it never... if you couldn’t?"

Buck takes a deep gulp of air and it doesn’t help. It’s all wrenching out of him, dripping down his face and shredding his throat in these awful achy sobs.

"Yeah," he says, and he hears how raw his voice sounds, how ragged, how small. "Forever."

Maddie takes a long breath in. And then she holds it. And then she lets it out.

"Okay," Maddie says.

"I just..." Buck says, and his voice gets all cut off, all choked.

And Maddie says, "I know honey, I know."

And Buck–folds sideways, his face in her lap like he’s not twice her size now, like he still fits. And Maddie knows him, Maddie knows all the ugly sticky parts of him, Maddie knows when all he can do is cry it out.

-

"Well, Evan, it’s been a while," Dr Copeland says. 

It’s strange, he’s never actually seen her in person before, always on that little screen. Safely contained.

"Yeah, I guess it has."

"Not that it isn’t a pleasure to see you again," she says. "But did anything in particular bring you back?"

He fidgets on the chair.

"Do you ever feel like. You can never figure out what to say or do?" he asks her. "Like everyone got a guidebook you didn’t?"

"I think everyone feels that way sometimes," she says mildly. "I think it’s part of just being a person."

"I don’t think I like being a person very much," Buck tells her, and she smiles at him.

"Yes," she says. "I think everyone feels that way too."

-

-

It’s not easy. It’s maybe the hardest thing Buck has ever had to do actually. It grates at him like nails on a chalkboard, worse than the ladder truck, worse than coughing up blood clots, worse than a hundred million volts lighting up every nerve ending in his body, but.

He’s good at doing difficult things. Good at doing impossible things, running through fire, swimming through floods. He’s good at doing things that scare him. Letting it crush him, end him, and then rising from it all, clambering back towards life, getting his screaming limbs to work again, letting the blood drip into his eyes and seeing the world a whole new way.

Eddie, at work, is miserable. Eddie, at work, is silent, is sad. Eddie, at work, stares at his phone, and Buck doesn’t bribe him with coffee, doesn’t harass Chimney into a debate about conspiracy theories because he knows it will get Eddie to roll his eyes, doesn’t spend all shift every shift pressed against Eddie’s shoulder, waiting and waiting for Eddie to stumble, so Buck can be the safety net, so Buck can catch him.

He chats with Bobby. Mops the floors until they’re fucking sparkling. Bitches with Hen. Grins at Eddie, and lets himself be loose around him, lets it be easy, it’s so fucking difficult but he lets it be easy. Buck watches Eddie and instead of the knot inside him, the horrible churning panic, the desperation, he tries to feed it. He tries to kindle it, to let it be something bigger and warmer. Something less like a chasm and more like a den, more like a space something could live, more like a place something might call a home.

-

When Eddie calls, his voice is all faint and scratchy and far off, and he says, "I need to talk to you."

And of course there’s the fear, of course there’s the panic, of course there’s the terror.

But there’s also Eddie, breathing on the other end of the line. And waiting.

"Yeah," Buck says. "Let’s do that."

-

The house is quiet, the way it is now, the familiar, shuffling footsteps that used to fill it far away. Just Eddie sitting at the kitchen table. And Buck sitting across from him.

"I’m sorry," Eddie says. "It wasn’t fair to... freak out at you like that."

"Yeah, well," Buck says. "It wasn’t fair for me to act like it was pity sex when it. When I."

Eddie kind of winces, kind of flinches, and he says, "You really do, don’t you."

And Buck takes a deep breath, lets go of all the debris in there, lets go of the ledge, lets go.

"Yeah," Buck says quietly.

Eddie shakes his head.

"You shouldn’t. I’m going to–let you down."

Buck almost–almost laughs. He recognizes it’s probably not the right moment for it, but.

"Eddie. You never have. You never could."

"You don’t know that."

"Yes, I do. What, you think I don’t–"

"I lied about not going to see Frank," Eddie blurts out.

"You..." Buck pauses, derailed. "What?"

"I mean, I did stop going months ago. I wasn’t–I felt like. Like I was doing so good, what am I still doing here? And he was always picking at things, always making me feel... So I stopped going. And then," Eddie says. "But after–well, after everything. I went back. Just the once. And he uh. He tried to write me a referral for a psychiatrist, so. "

Eddie kind of laughs. Not a happy sound.

"Guess I’ve officially... lost my marbles, or whatever."

"Oh," Buck says. Wants to say, why didn’t you tell me, or something like that. But Eddie is rubbing at his mouth, looking off into the corner.

"Didn’t go," Eddie says. "Didn’t need–didn’t want..."

He clears his throat. His eyes flick towards Buck then away again.

"I think," he says. "What if–What if this is it."

"This isn’t it," Buck says. "I know it seems like that right now but that’s not, that isn’t..."

But he falls quiet. Because Eddie is still looking away from him. Eddie’s eyes shut tight, lips clamped together.

"I am so tired of feeling like this," he says. "Like–like everything’s impossible, always, and I. Never hit the mark. And nothing ever... It never stays good, it never... And I think it might be me, it might just... I might be like this."

Buck is quiet for a moment.

"I like what you’re like," he says finally, and Eddie groans.

"No, really," Buck says. "You’re–you try harder than anyone, and you. You care, and you work so hard, and you shouldn’t have to, and you don’t even get angry about that, you... You just love."

"You can’t do that. You can’t," Eddie says. "I’m not–I’m not that. I’m..."

Eddie bites his lip, shakes his head.

"You see too much," Eddie says hoarsely.

And it’s true that Buck sees a lot. Maybe not the whole thing, but he does like to think he sees Eddie, at least some of the parts of him. The parts that Eddie lets the world see, and some of the parts he doesn’t, the ones he keeps locked up in a box somewhere because they’re too big, too jagged, too caustic, too much. Buck would like to see them all, if Eddie would let him. If Eddie could want that.

"No," Buck says. "I don’t."

And Eddie. All those rigid lines of him crumbling, he sags down with his elbows on the table and his face in his hands, and tears dripping down between his fingers.

"I’m scared," he says. "I’m scared I’m never going to get better."

"You will. You will, there’s always help, we’ll get you–it’s okay–"

"Yeah, but," Eddie says, wiping at his face, wiping it away and still there’s more of it. "What if I don’t?"

And he’s sitting there all... open. All the raw layers of him. Eyes wet and bloodshot, biting his lip, those dark circles under his eyes, the ones Buck always wants to smudge away with his thumb, chapped mouth that Buck wants to kiss, hands limp and curled together on the tabletop and Buck wants to grab them, wants to wrap himself around Eddie, take Eddie somewhere soft, wants to kiss the underside of his jaw, the shell of his ear, tell him he’s strong, and he’s kind, and he’s everything. And it doesn’t matter what he does, what he becomes, who he hurts, Buck isn’t going to–He’ll always. And the only way he’s ever leaving is if Eddie wants him gone. Other than that it’s. Well, Buck meant what he said to Maddie.

"Okay," Buck says.

"It’s not, though," Eddie says. "It’s not okay, you’re gonna–you’re gonna get–I’m too fucking heavy, I’m going to drag you down."

"No, you won’t," Buck says.

"I will, I will–"

"No, you won’t," Buck says. "You’re not going to drag me anywhere. I’m just... I’m going to come with you. You get that, right? I’m just going to... I’m going with you."

Eddie makes a noise, a wet, sad, miserable sound. And Buck licks his lips, because here’s the crux of it, here’s the meat of him, here’s the thing he’s dug and pried out of his insides to hold out in front of him, beating and beating.

"Only," Buck says. "Only if you want that, though."

"You shouldn’t," Eddie says, "You should–go far away. I crush–I crush everything, I–"

"Eddie," Buck says quietly.

Eddie’s mouth moves but nothing comes out. His throat working, that rattling breath.

And Eddie says, so quietly, almost subvocal, "Please."

Eddie says, "Please, yes, please, stay, stay, please–"

Buck grabs his hand. Says, "I’m not going anywhere." Kisses his knuckles, kisses his fingertips, kisses his palm, kisses his pulse point. Heartbeat against his mouth, blood humming under his lips, Eddie sitting so close, Eddie right there with him, Eddie alive under Buck’s skin.

-

Eddie takes his pills. The round white ones that make him bounce his leg and chew at his nails, make him pace and pace and pace, 2am, 4am, still pacing, Eddie stops taking the round white pills. The square blue ones are a little better, Eddie is calm at least, Eddie is even. Eddie spends a lot of time blinking slowly at things, and it’s okay, good maybe, until the day Eddie blinks at Buck with a slow dawning horror and says, "I forgot your name." So Eddie stops taking the square blue pills, starts taking the hexagonal pink ones. And he starts blinking a normal amount. Stops staring off into space quite so much. Starts going for a run in the morning not on the treadmill but actually outside, sending Buck pictures of dogs, plants, a cool car he saw.

Starts seeing Frank again. Stops seeing Frank. Says, "No, yeah, Frank is great, we just..." and Buck says, "You can say you don’t like Frank." And Eddie says, "Okay, I don’t like Frank." Buck laughs at him, because he can do that now, he can laugh at Eddie and Eddie can glare at him and it’s not a huge deal, it’s not the end of the world.

And it’s not like it’s all good, or even mostly good. Eddie still freezes, still spirals, still shakes, and Buck comes, Buck always comes, with beer or pizza or a movie or a board game or with nothing at all, sits there in the living room and lets Eddie tremble, fingers digging into his knees. Buck wants to grab him and make him calm but that’s not–they haven’t, not since–and that’s okay, that’s probably for the best.

So if Eddie doesn’t want to move, they won’t move, they’ll sit on the couch. And if Eddie wants to hit things, they’ll go to the gym, they’ll spar at kickboxing and Buck will tease Eddie and call him Rocky. And if Eddie doesn’t want him to touch him, Buck won’t do that, he’ll stay three feet away and make sure their hands don’t brush. And if Eddie doesn’t want to talk, they won’t talk, and Buck will sit there in silence next to him. And wherever Eddie goes, whatever he sees, Buck will stay still. So that Eddie has a landmark, so that Eddie has a lighthouse, so that Eddie can find his way back.

-

The text says, come outside. So Buck does, squinting in the early morning sun, sweatshirt, pajama pants, cold seeping through. Eddie is in the parking lot, still in his truck, the engine running.

He’s gripping the steering wheel tight, fingers flexing, staring out the windshield at the LA street, the light that pale yellow it gets at dawn as it filters through the smog, when it smells like exhaust and petrichor. Eddie says:

"I’m going to El Paso."

And Buck doesn’t say anything for a minute. He waits. He waits for Eddie to say, "See you when I get back." For Eddie to say, "Chris would love to see you." Waits for Eddie to say, "Come with me." Eddie doesn’t say anything. Chewing on his lip, eyes a little red-rimmed but he’s not shaking, he’s just. Sitting in the driver’s seat staring straight ahead. Until he finally turns. Finally looks at Buck.

Finally looks at Buck.

And Buck inhales and nods.

"Okay," Buck says, "Lemme go pack a bag."

Chapter Text

Eddie drives and Buck leans against the window. Falls asleep within an hour or two, gentle snoring. Eddie glances over at him sometimes at stoplights, at gas stations where Buck stirs and smacks his lips and then continues sleeping, his breath fogging up the glass. Eventually he shifts enough to blink around blearily, rubbing at the back of his neck.

"We should swap," he says. "You should rest. It’s been what, 6 hours?"

Normally Eddie would say no. Would say that he’s good, make some excuse, just another hour or two.

Except. Eddie is trying. Eddie is trying so, so hard.

"Yeah, okay," he makes himself say. He’s rewarded with a sleepy, private smile from Buck, one Eddie was maybe not even supposed to see.

So Buck drives and Eddie leans against the window. Cornfields and oil fields, tractors, semi trucks, ads for hair pills, sex stores, the sprawl of America out in front of him and Eddie closes his eyes. Buck flips on the radio because he knows Eddie likes it. They drive and they listen to country and they listen to mariachi and they listen to talk radio and they listen to static, bars and chords flickering in and out through white noise.

-

They get out of the car and it all smells the same. Dust. Hot concrete. Undercurrent of sage brush.

It’s not like–it’s not like he hasn’t been back. He’s been back plenty, or, well, back enough. None of it is unfamiliar, he doubts it ever will be. But it still hits him every time, that rush of heat when the car door opens. A rounder sort of heat. He thinks that even if he couldn’t see and couldn’t hear, he would still know where he was from the way the air feels on his skin, the way it sticks to him.

They’re pretty well cocooned in the suburbs, a two bedroom bungalow, because one thing Eddie was not going to do was sleep at his parents’ place in one of his sister’s converted bedrooms, Buck in another, Chris in what used to be Eddie’s, his parents down the hall, one big happy fucking family. He’s getting a little claustrophobic just thinking about it. No. No, they’re in a new neighborhood, a development that’s nowhere near his parents’ place, nowhere near where he and Shannon used to live, or only Shannon, really–Eddie doesn’t think he can count himself as having really lived there.

"You wanna go inside?" Buck says, and it hits Eddie how gentle and genuine his voice is, like Eddie might actually prefer to keep standing here in the driveway of this AirBnB staring off into the middle distance in this godawful heat, and Buck would be totally fine with that, would pull up a lawn chair and let Eddie do his thing.

"Yeah, of course," Eddie says. Inside the house it’s marginally cooler, and Eddie drops his stuff in the master bathroom, considers if he has time to take a shower, except Buck is not behind him. He pokes his head into the hallway to find Buck in the other bedroom reorganizing his duffel bag. Buck stops reshuffling his socks to glance up at Eddie.

"You good?" he says.

Eddie opens his mouth and manages to get out, "You took the smaller room."

Buck kind of squints at him.

"Well," he says. "Kinda thought you might want more space. Or something."

"Right," Eddie says.

Buck stops folding his socks, chews at the inside of his cheek a little.

"Do you?" Buck says.

Eddie wants to say, what the fuck are we doing in Texas, we shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be here, I should be–I should be–I should be–

What Eddie manages to say is:

"Uh."

Buck’s face kind of falls a little, and Eddie–he’s not going to spiral, he’s not–

"Okay, well," Buck says. "You change your mind, you know where I am."

"Okay," Eddie says, and goes to take a shower, and bang his head against the wall, ideally quietly enough that it doesn’t bother anyone.

-

The city has changed. New developments. New high rises. A couple of stupid new traffic signals that take him by surprise. The city hasn’t changed at all. Same mountains in the background. Same late afternoon light turning everything the same washed out gold. Buck doesn’t really talk much, kind of looks out at the passing blocks. Eddie points out a couple of places, the YMCA, the hall where Sophia had her quince, the arcade Manuel used to take him to, now it’s a hair salon. Buck just nods, taking it all in.

"What did you do for fun?" Buck says, and Eddie’s mind goes blank. God, what did he do for fun? Was fun something he’d had as a child? He couldn’t remember.

"Baseball, I guess," Eddie says.

"Oh," Buck says. "I thought you joined the team in high school."

"No, I did, I guess before that I..."

Eddie is quiet for a minute thinking.

"Comics," he says. "I read a lot of comics as a kid."

He glances over at a stoplight and Buck is grinning at him, unbearably fond, soft in a way that makes Eddie’s stomach flip. But all he says is, "Marvel or DC?"

Eddie rolls his eyes. Says, "Marvel, duh, some of us have taste."

Buck laughs at him and says, "Okay, nerd." Eddie swats at his arm, Buck yelping and rubbing at it for show, and then there’s another stoplight and they watch the pedestrians, a man with three dogs, a woman pushing a double stroller with twins, a teenage girl following sulkily ten steps behind her dad.

"Is it weird to be back?" Buck says. Eddie swallows past a dry mouth.

"I’ve been back," he says. Doesn’t have to look over to see how Buck is glancing sideways at him. Because yeah, he’s been back. For holidays and graduations, a weekend in the old house, in the old rooms, same layout, same decor, same faces, same smiles. But he’s never been back with–even Ana, even wondering if he should marry her, even then she never met them. But they’ve met Buck, and it’s not–

Eddie can’t really think about that too hard, especially while he’s trying to drive.

"Yeah, I know," Buck says. Eddie sighs.

"I guess it’s a little weird," Eddie says, and Buck’s hand lands on his shoulder. Just for a minute. Touch soft and light, not pressing, just present, there and gone again.

-

Eddie takes the long way to the house, and then he parks, and then he stares. He knows he has seconds, not minutes. His mom will have heard the car, will come out onto the porch soon, always rude not to greet a guest. It was a stilted phone call in the car, a guarded, "We’re on our way," he’d hung up before they could talk about it, before they could start in on each other. And now he’s staring at the house, and for a second he thinks he sees his sisters on the porch squabbling over a Barbie, he thinks there’s a curtain flickering in the western window, a boy looking out. He blinks and it’s gone.

"You ready?" Eddie asks, ostensibly to Buck. 

Buck reaches a hand out, and Eddie tenses, then regrets it, feels stupid for it, but Buck snags the keys out of his hand and locks the car.

"I got you," he tells Eddie quietly, and Eddie’s eyes shift off him. Eddie goes to ring the doorbell.

It’s–odd. It is. Exchanging polite hugs, letting his dad clap him on the back. Trying to swallow the rising feeling in his stomach, the panic that bubbles up and threatens to swallow him whole. Making stilted small talk with his father about baseball in the living room while Helena disappears upstairs. She comes back down shaking her head.

"He, ah," she says. "He won’t come down. I did try to tell him, you came all this way–"

"No," Eddie says. "No, just–let him be, it’s–we can have dinner, right? We can have dinner."

Helena nods, her mouth tight.

"Of course," she says. "Of course."

It’s not–it’s not relief in his stomach, it’s not, but. Chris refusing to look at him, Chris with his voice all small and hard, and Eddie–Eddie doesn’t know if he can do that again. He will, of course he will, again and again and again, he’ll walk across coals, crawl across glass, he’ll do whatever it takes, but. The knowledge that he might do that and it still might not–that he might have broken it for good this time, for forever, and he might–Buck knocks their elbows together, casual enough for it to be an accident as he walks over to look out the window and say, "You’ve done a really wonderful job with the yard."

Dinner is excruciating. Eddie, 13 years old at this table, trying to get Adriana to finish her dinner. Eddie now with a beer in front of him that his mother put there without asking. Buck with a glass of wine because she had asked him. The salmon is delicious. Buck tells Helena that, and she smiles without it reaching her eyes, although maybe Buck doesn’t notice that.

"Oh, it’s nothing," she says.

"You’ll have to send me the recipe," Buck says, and Helena waves him off.

"No recipe," she says. "Just a little lemon."

"I’ll have to try it," Buck says. Helena sips at her wine.

"I hope the trip wasn’t too bad," Helena says,

"No, I mean, we traded off driving, so," Eddie says.

Helena’s eyes flicker between Eddie, cutting asparagus and thinking of every combat zone he’s ever been in, and Buck, hands clasped in his lap, smiling politely.

"Of course," she says.

After dinner drinks on the patio. Warm night, as always. Can see more stars out here than you can in LA, not a whole lot more but still a few. Coyotes yipping in the distance. Makes Eddie think of home, makes him relax a little. He stands a little closer to Buck, their shoulders brushing together once or twice. His mother is talking about the garden, the landscapers. Used to be a sandbox in that corner, Eddie thinks. Somewhere under the bush over there their old cat is buried.

When they go, his mother stops him for a moment, grabs his hands in hers. Soft hands, dry hands. Same gardenia lotion as always.

"Don’t take him," she says, voice all soft and urgent. "Think about what’s best for him, Eddie."

"I’m not here to take anyone," he says. Bites back, unlike some people.

"He’s doing good here. He really is," Helena tells him. She looks... old, he realizes. The spots in her hair where the grey is fading through the dye at the roots. It mostly sounds like a plea.

"If it were me, what would you do?"

Helena sighs. He remembers that firm set of her jaw. He doesn’t remember her being so brittle.

"I don’t know, Eddie," she says. "It’s always been different with you."

-

Lunch with Sophia and Adriana, Buck hiding out at the AirBnB. He insists he has a headache but Eddie knows he’s trying to give him this, his sisters, how tall they are, how grown. He’s still not over how old they are, will probably never be over it. He can see where the laugh lines will be one day not that far in the future. Makes him consider his own face, peer at it in the mirror and try to find traces of the boy in there, hidden in the chin maybe, in the eyebrows. He’s got to be in there somewhere.

For all they’re grown women, they’re still his little sisters, Adriana still ready to tease him about his hair and make him touch her pregnant stomach and feel the baby kick. It’s a strange sensation, one he’s never felt before. He was gone for Christopher, was far away, and it startles him at first, the pressure under his hands like tiny bubbles popping. Sophia laughs. And then dumps her own daughter on him, toddling and full of unintelligible opinions. Last time he saw Mariela she was barely walking, and now she’s zooming around the room with the determination only a two year old can muster.

"Aw, she likes you, Tío Eddie," Sophia says. "She’s usually pretty shy."

Eddie... He’s never... Even with Chris, it wasn’t until later, until Chris was five or six that Eddie could ever really sit there and talk to him, could ever really be there in a tangible way. Before that it was video screens, his son in pixels, Shannon’s text updates, the knowledge of a child as a theoretical. What he ate that day, what he watched, what words he said. Eddie squinting down at them in some unknown desert trying to understand, trying to picture a body, a little body doing those things and making those noises, and every time thinking, this is your son. This is your son.

"I guess," he says. Sophia looks at him, that frank, even look she’s so good at, the one he is sure she uses as a lawyer all the time, the one that says "if you lie you will make my job harder." He doesn’t know how much Sophia knows, what his mother told her; knowing his mother, something polite and euphemistic; knowing Sophia, she’s read between the lines. She was always good at that, always a little too serious to be close to Helena, always a little too unimpressed. She waits until Adriana is in the bathroom for the millionth time before she tugs Eddie aside into the kitchen where Mariela is mouthing at Cheerios.

"You need to talk to Mom," Sophia tells him. "They’re serious about custody."

And that lodges in Eddie’s stomach like a dead weight, like a hand around his ankle, his he’s not going to–he’s not going to–

Eddie says, "I will."

Sophia says, "No, you need to talk to her."

"I’m going to."

"Okay."

Mariela knocks over her sippy cup, and Sophia sighs, grabs it from where it’s rolled under the table and puts it back in front of her.

"Just," Sophia says. "We’ve got to stop it."

Eddie says. "I’m his father, she can’t just–"

"Not that," Sophia says. "I mean… It’s all got to stop. It’s not going to stop unless we stop it."

She pets Mariela’s hair, Mariela sucking noisily at her juice, leaning her small head into her mother’s hand.

Eddie says, "Yeah. Yeah, I know."

-

He tries not to feel like he’s marching to his own execution.

He finds her in the garden, big sun hat on, kneeling on her knee pad to prune the roses. She’s always loved those roses. Wrong climate for them, burned and stubby little things, but she’s always fighting the environment to maintain this one facet of the life she left for Texas, the lawns and suburbs of the midwest for the dust and sun.

"Hey, mom," he says, and she turns.

"Oh, I didn’t hear you arrive. Hello, Edmundo," she says. 

Even after school as a kid, he’d come home and it was always, hello, Edmundo. Eddie later on, Eddie after chores, after dinner. But in the first moments, always Edmundo, like he was safer from a distance.

"The roses look great."

"Yes, well. They take a lot of work," she says, snipping at a leaf. Eddie grits his teeth.

"Pretty, though," he says finally, once he’s swallowed it back, swallowed it down.

"Yes."

He says, "Mom–" at the same time she says, "Eddie–"

"You go," he says.

"Eddie, he’s happy here," she says. "He is. He deserves a family that loves him, a big family I mean. He deserves a community that can be there for him."

"He has that in Los Angeles," Eddie says.

"Does he?" she says. "Why did he call us, then. Eddie you–you did your best. I know that. But Chris needs... he needs more."

Eddie tries not to–sometimes he thinks he could bite his tongue hard enough to taste blood, familiar and old. Sometimes he talks to his mother and he can still feel all those walls closing in. She’s always had a knack for the squeeze. 

"Chris gets to decide what he needs," he says slowly.

"He did."

"No. He was reacting, not–not deciding."

"So that’s why you’re here, then," she says, not turning around. "So that he’ll decide."

"God, Mom," he says, and he can’t help the edge that creeps into his voice, knows it won’t help, that it will make it all worse, and he can’t keep it out anyways. "He’s my son, you act like I don’t have the right to talk to him."

"Well, Eddie," she says, all calm and collected now, she’s the reasonable one now. "You went away. You chose that."

Inhale through the nose, out through the mouth.

"Yeah," Eddie says. "And I’m choosing something else this time."

Helena sighs.

"We can’t change the choices we’ve already made, Eddie," she says.

Ramón pacing. Helena sitting there, so stiff, so silent. And Eddie. Waiting, staring at his mother, waiting while she refused to look.

"Yeah," he says. "You’d know about that."

Helena bristles.

"I have no idea what you’re talking about," she says.

"Right," Eddie says, all quiet. Sophia always ran at their mother like a battering ram trying to break something open. Eddie has never seen the point of that.

"He could have a good life here," Helena says, tugging at a weed with more force than necessary. "We can give him a good life here."

Eddie shrugs. Glances around the yard. How many years in this backyard? How many years spent under that tree, in that clubhouse now overtaken by spiders, how many years sitting on the eaves of that roof?

"It’s not up to me," Eddie says.

-

Dinner at Sophia’s. And suddenly now Buck is anxious, suddenly now Buck is insisting they stop so he can grab a bottle of wine, and Eddie rolls his eyes.

"Sophia isn’t going to care," he says.

"Okay, well, it’s still rude to turn up empty handed," Buck says and Eddie eyes him.

"You didn’t bring anything to my parents," he notes and Buck bites back a small grin. Eddie rolls his eyes and says, "Fine, fine we’ll stop."

Buck is nervous in front of Sophia, practically blushing when he grabs her hands and kisses her cheek, like he’s fucking European or something, Sophia’s eyebrows climbing higher. And then her face breaking into a fond smile when Mariela toddles out, thumb in her mouth, to hide behind Sophia’s legs. Sophia scoops her up and bounces her daughter on her hip, Mariela hiding her face in Sophia’s shoulder.

"She has trouble with strangers," Sophia says, and Buck nods somberly.

"I understand, people can be pretty scary. How does she feel about stickers?" Buck says.

Mariela stops chewing on her doll’s arm and looks over at him. Buck produces a sheet of stickers from nowhere, some very familiar Dalmatian stickers, the kind that live in the station to be awarded to kids coming through on tours.

"Did you steal those from work," Eddie says, and Buck glares at him.

"They’re my tax dollars too, Eddie," he says, and then he sticks one on his nose, and Mariela giggles and decides he needs to see every toy she owns.

David is working late, so it’s the four of them, takeout around a kitchen table, and Sophia steals all of Eddie’s sweet and sour sauce, and Eddie steals her wontons. Sophia insists on cleaning up even though Buck offers to do it, but Mariela has to show Buck her blocks in the living room. So it’s Eddie and Sophia, Sophia loading the dishwasher, Eddie wiping down counters, and for a minute. For a minute he doesn’t know what kitchen they’re in, keeps expecting her to have two pigtail braids and a gap in her teeth. Then she sighs, and he doesn’t mean for it to slip out of him exactly, not the way it does, all stilted and half-formed when he says:

"How has he been?"

"Honestly?" Sophia says. "Miserable."

Eddie is silent.

"Just... he doesn’t have any friends here, he’s bored all the time, he hates the weather, he... and you know what she’s like. Still cuts up his food and shit, can’t take a word of criticism."

There’s nothing Chris hates more than being infantilized, being made to feel like he can’t do something. It’s the number one way to get him to try and do it. The idea of Chris sitting there and biting his tongue, the idea of Chris trying to swallow that down, trying to sit there with his stomach itching–

"I shouldn’t have let him come here," Eddie says, and Sophia frowns.

"Did you?" she says. "Let him, I mean."

"Not really. Honestly, Sophia, I kind of…" he says. "Lost my mind a little there. Again."

Sophia’s eyes get soft.

"What was it this time?" she says, and Eddie laughs all hollow.

"It’s, uh," he says. "A little too complicated to try to explain, but I really hurt him. All that stuff with Shannon, and I could never–I spent so long pulling her around behind me. Didn’t ever think about what that was doing to him. So I just... He called them. I thought, somewhere without baggage, right? Somewhere where he could be..."

"Somewhere without baggage?" Sophia says. "Eddie, I live in the same town as them, and the last time I went over there was eight months ago, what are you even talking about?"

"I just thought," he says. "Maybe it would be good for him to have something stable."

"Kind of seems like he already has that."

"Okay, did you not hear about me losing my shit–"

"Not talking about you, Eddie."

In the living room Buck is helping Mariela build towers, gasping in mock outrage whenever she giggles and knocks one of his over. Eddie doesn’t say anything.

"Chris talks about him a lot, you know," Sophia says quietly. "Even when he wouldn’t talk about you. He could never shut up about Buck this, Buck that."

Eddie half smiles at that. He thinks about Chris, small enough to carry, hopping up onto Buck’s hip without a second thought.

"He loves him," Eddie says.

"And you?"

"Of course I love my son–"

"Don’t play stupid, Edmundo," Sophia scoffs. 

There’s Sophia, 12 years old, eyes narrowed. "Just because I’m a kid doesn’t mean I don’t understand things," she’d used to say, usually when she thought adults were being idiots. There’s Eddie, rolling his eyes and telling her to "let it go, Sophia, can’t you let it go for once." Sophia indignant, her whole face one big scowl, saying, "No, Eddie, no, no."

Sophia on the roof, her chin on her knees, Sophia saying, "It gets hot in my room too."

Eddie’s throat is kind of tight, he’s not sure if he could squeeze words out of it right now, but. He can nod. Sophia watches Buck in the living room with her daughter.

"I like him, you know," she says. "He’s... weird."

That gets Eddie to laugh, not what he was expecting at all, but–

"Yeah," he says. "You really don’t know the half of it."

Sophia leans forward against her kitchen island, her chin in her fist.

"Alright," she says. "So tell me."

Eddie sits next to her, hands wrapped around his tea cup.

He clears his throat, clears it all out of his airways.

"This one time," Eddie says. "We got called out to a petting zoo, right..."

-

"That was nice," Buck says. "Man, Mariela is so smart, she was counting all her blocks for me and she got all the way up to 50, that’s crazy, I definitely couldn’t do that at her age."

"She liked you," Eddie says. "Sophia too. I think you passed the sister test."

Buck smiles, but it’s a little–it’s uncertain.

"Eddie–" he says.

"Sorry," Eddie says. "Sorry, I wasn’t trying to imply–"

"No, it’s," Buck says. "It’s fine, just. If you’re not–It’s fine. It’s really fine. I’m not going anywhere, I promise. But if you don’t actually–Then I–Can we just. Let it be."

Eddie’s mouth is dry. There is all that itching in him, scratching at that same familiar place. And he says, "Yeah. Yeah."

-

He hasn’t been to the grocery store with Buck in years. Usually Buck is the one who does the shopping, Buck or Carla–Eddie can never quite get it together enough to get to the grocery store on time. But Buck refuses another day of fast food, says, "Did you know that the largest kidney stone ever recorded was the size of a grapefruit?" and okay, he has a point there, so they wander the aisles. 

They’re old pros at this by now, Buck knows Eddie prefers whole wheat to sourdough, Eddie knows that Buck will buy a regular cereal for breakfast and a sugary cereal for midnight breakfast. It’s easy, reaching past each other to grab things off the shelves, and Eddie realizes, for a second, what it looks like, the two of them making cowboy puns, Eddie swatting Buck’s arm, Buck making Eddie smell the peaches because they’re that ripe. Eddie catches the cashier’s eye, some kid probably still in high school; she’s looking at them and smiling, and then goes back to her phone. 

Somehow it doesn’t feel like a big deal, feels easy for Eddie to go back to teasing Buck in order to watch Buck get mock indignant, Buck doing his terrible impression of a Texas twang until Eddie has to reach out and smack his shoulder and tell him that is offensive, Eddie is deeply offended, and Buck very sadly says, "Aw shucks pardner," and Eddie laughs so hard he cries.

-

It stays easy. It stays easy in the car, and it stays easy back at the AirBnB, all loose-limbed and simple. Like none of his bones ache, like there’s no bullet holes, no scar tissue, only skin that hasn’t been marked yet, like Eddie could still be young. 

Buck hums to himself while putting tortilla chips away in the cupboard, different kitchen, not their kitchen. Eddie doesn’t know when but at some point he began thinking of the kitchen in LA as theirs, even though Buck doesn’t live there. But it can’t be just Eddie’s, not when Buck has cookbooks stashed above the stove and has his weird protein drinks in the fridge and has coupons pinned to the fridge. Eddie didn’t do that, that was all Buck, coming in and reorganizing, streamlining because Buck read some book on conscientious design in living, and suddenly everything had to be organized perfectly, and Buck is good at that. 

So Eddie watches him put away food, the strange cramped little kitchen of the AirBnB, and he says, "You shouldn’t be in the smaller room."

Buck says, "Huh?"

"Just–You took the smaller room, but. You shouldn’t have."

Buck pauses, coffee creamer in hand. He tries to catch Eddie’s eye, but Eddie is stacking cans of tomato sauce in the cabinet.

"Okay," Buck says. "Did you want to… swap?"

And Eddie is so… so goddamn tired of it. The secret that isn’t even a secret, because Eddie is a bad liar, all Eddie does is tie himself in knots, and it’s not–it feels so pointless suddenly.

"No," Eddie says, clipped. "I don’t want to swap."

Buck’s voice is cautious, bridled hope, something that tugs when he says, "Eddie…"

Eddie is so tired of that pit that everything falls into. Eddie is tired of having the corpses of the people he could have been dragging at his ankles. Eddie is tired of fighting to get back up to the surface for one ragged inhale at a time before he goes under again. He wants to sit there for a while, wants to see if maybe if he’s quiet and still, maybe then he could learn to breathe in whatever surrounds him. Maybe he wouldn’t need to choke.

"I do," Eddie says. "Want it, I mean."

It’s not difficult. It’s not, it’s simple. The shriek of it, the grind, that’s just air in his throat. The roaring in his ears, that’s just his own heartbeat. Just his own blood rushing. That’s how heartbeats work. The thud of muscle against muscle. There’s nothing terrible there. Only what has been waiting for him, waiting with violence, waiting with patience, waiting with so much love, waiting for him for as long as it takes.

Eddie turns around. Can’t quite do this eye to eye, he’s a little too scared for that, but at least he can do it face to face.

"I want you," Eddie says. "It scares me so fucking much, how much I want you. It’s not like... I’ve never... It’s like, I thought I knew what the word meant, and then..."

He risks a glance up then quickly back down at his knuckles, because he’s a little worried the expression on Buck’s face is going to crack him open, drag internal organs out into the light.

"I don’t know if I’ve ever even actually known what wanting was before this," Eddie says, and Buck makes this one strangled noise, and then he says, "Eddie." Then he’s right there, his hands on Eddie’s waist, his forehead bumping against Eddie’s, and he says, "Please can I kiss you right now, please, I swear to God–"

Eddie kind of laughs, even if it’s a little thick in his throat, and says, "Yeah, yes–" except his words are cut off because then Buck’s mouth is on his, all gentle and soft, kissing like–like it’s simple, like it’s breathing, that innate, the same principles, an exchange of carbon dioxide for oxygen, something that slips into your bloodstream, something that courses through your heartbeat.

Eddie is shaking slightly, and Buck pulls back and says, "Okay, okay, no, we don’t have to–" and Eddie says, "No, it’s not that this time, it’s–something else."

He pulls Buck back down to him, drags their mouths back together and tries to show him, tries to tell him with spit and breath. Buck is slow melting back into it, but when he does he hums against Eddie, a funny little happy sound for the middle of a make-out session, and Eddie smiles at that, is trying to kiss and smile at the same time, is doing a terrible job at both of them, until he has to grab Buck by the face and kiss him with a resounding smack and say, "You drive me fucking crazy." Buck laughs, burying his face in Eddie’s shoulder, his breath huffing out, and Eddie cards his hand through his hair.

"Can we please do this more horizontally," Eddie says.

It’s a different bed than the one he’s used to, mattress softer than expected when Buck collapses back against it and Eddie crawls on top of him, catching his face between his hands to flick his tongue past his lips again, lets it get messy, lets it get slick. Buck tugs at Eddie’s shirt, which sounds like a good plan to Eddie, less clothes are always a good plan when it comes to Buck. He wants Buck naked all the time, he thinks. He wants to see the flush rise on his skin where Eddie puts his mouth, wants to swirl his tongue around a nipple and feel it flush and harden under his tongue, the tiny little breathy noise Buck makes at that. Eddie repeats the motion until it’s not such a tiny noise, and Buck is breathing in heavy through his nose.

Eddie mostly wants Buck, wants him splayed out like this, like a buffet in front of him, wants to bite at his pectorals, sink his teeth into skin and watch the pink indentation left behind. He sucks a strawberry mark on top of it, Buck gasping. Eddie trails marks down his stomach, and Buck’s hips are grinding up against air, looking for purchase. Eddie stills him with a forearm across his hips, nosing at his happy trail, and Buck is saying, "Please, please," Eddie sucks another mark in the crease of his hip, one at the inside of his thigh, Buck’s skin sweat-damp under him. Eddie likes it, likes being able to nuzzle his face into the base of Buck’s cock and breathe in, likes being able to taste the salty hot musk of him when he presses open-mouthed kisses to the base of him. Eddie takes mercy, fists at the base of Buck’s cock and brings just the tip into his mouth, sucking at it, working his tongue into the slit, and Buck makes this one gasp that’s so loud it’s almost comical, and he says, "I–Fuck–" 

Eddie pulls off. Buck’s hands are twisting in the bedcover, saying, "Please, Eddie, Eddie." And it doesn’t matter if he says it desperate or says it teasing or says it serious or says it like the last word he’s ever going to say, Eddie is never ever going to get tired of his name in Buck’s mouth. 

Buck whines as Eddie crawls back up his body, pulling at him, petting at him, not seeming to have any kind of clear goal until his hand manages to find its way onto Eddie’s cock. Eddie sighs appreciatively, and Buck is saying, "You’re so hot, how are you so fucking hot, oh my god."  

Eddie kind of laughs, which turns into a groan when Buck flicks his thumb under the head. He settles onto Buck’s hips, and he kind of wants this, just this, wants to come across Buck’s chest and across the marks he’s left there, wants to make sure that Buck is covered in him, that anyone who looks at Buck’s skin knows.

But he also can feel the shape of Buck’s cock trapped behind him, nudging at the cleft of his ass, and he can’t help but lean back into it, and Buck groans and his eyelids flutter, and Eddie wants to see him make that face again. Buck’s hands are on his hips now, flexing like he’s trying not to thrust up against Eddie, and he’s saying, "Eddie, I–you–" in this one choked voice.

Eddie kisses him again, spit smearing across their faces. He reaches up with one hand to pinch at a nipple, roll it between his fingertips, and Buck jerks at that, moans into his mouth, and he’s saying something and it takes Eddie a second to understand he’s saying, "Whatever you want, whatever you want," saying it like a question, saying it like a prayer. So Eddie says it against his mouth, mumbles it right up against his lips.

"I want you to fuck me," he says, and he feels Buck’s cock twitch at that, dragging a gasp out of him, and then Buck is babbling, "Yes, yeah, oh my god, yes."

It’s not–it’s not like anything else, splayed out across the bed with Buck’s hands warm and slick between his legs, and he clenches at the touch, clenches hard, and Buck almost stops, won’t keep going until Eddie swears up and down it’s fine, it’s fine, and then Buck moves so goddamned slowly, even if Eddie doesn’t want to go slow, Eddie wants it now. But he breathes and he listens to his body, lets it take things at its own pace, biting his lip at the strange slippery intrusion of it, until Buck’s fingers work and Eddie twitches, back arching, and he says, "Holy shit do that again."

Buck looks immensely satisfied, and he does, until Eddie is panting, until Eddie is groaning, until he says, "Jesus, just fuck me, come on, come on. " 

Still Buck is moving so carefully, so gently, and Eddie has to grab him, has to guide him in, and there’s the stretch of it, there’s the burn of it, it fucking hurts for a second. Buck freezes, mouth open and gasping, red all down his neck, but he freezes, starts to pull back.

Eddie says, "No, no, just–just give me a second–"

He tries to breathe into the stretch, into the pain until it’s an ache, until it’s not pain at all but something else, a brand new sensation, and he says, "Okay, you can move."

Except Buck still isn’t moving, lying still and frozen on top of Eddie, looking down with wide eyes.

"Are you sure? If it’s hurting then–" Buck says. Eddie rolls his eyes, adjusts his hips, finds what feels alright, and then what feels good, what feels really good. Then Eddie is gasping, saying, "C’mon, Buck, baby, c’mon," and finally Buck starts moving, still so gentle, so Eddie has to arch back against him, work himself back onto his cock while Buck makes these whimpering noises, and Eddie says, "You’re doing so good, baby, you’re doing so good, you feel so good," and finally, finally Buck starts moving in earnest.

And it’s–fuck, it’s good, it’s more than good, it’s something Eddie’s never–and Eddie’s panting, these choked out noises punching out of him at every thrust, and he’s saying "Yeah, that’s so fucking–yeah," and Buck’s face is red, mouth open and gasping, and he’s saying, "Eddie, Eddie, Eddie," eyes all glazed, and Eddie’s hand is on his cock, working himself, shudders of pleasure running from base to tip with every thrust, he feels like all the nerve endings in his spine are lighting up, the white-hot hum of it fizzling through his whole torso, and he’s saying, "Fuck, so good, baby, so close–"

Buck whines at that, drives into him, hands locked onto Eddie’s waist, pulling him closer, and pulling him closer, and all that pressure in Eddie’s spine coils downwards to the base of him, to the center, and he says, "Buck," and then he’s coming. He knows he’s saying something stupid, he doesn’t care at all, not when it goes on and on, a controlled burn, wracking through him again and again until he’s spasming and gasping, and Buck is saying, "Eddie," always Eddie, and he’s grabbing Eddie hard as Eddie slumps onto him, boneless, pliant. He kisses Buck lazily, easy and slow, and Buck barely even moves when he comes, just his face changes, his breath caught in a helpless stuttering inhale as he grinds into Eddie as deep as he possibly can, as close as they could possibly be. 

He slumps sideways onto Eddie, still so careful to keep his full weight off him, but their chests are pressed together, sweat and come gluing them together skin to skin, and then it’s eye to eye for a moment, nose to nose. Buck’s watching him, not looking away. Eddie feels all–scraped clean, hollowed out, like there’s a breeze somewhere there hasn’t been a breeze before. It’s a little much, honestly; he blinks and his eyes are wet, blinks again and his face is, and Buck’s voice is soft when he says, "You okay?" with his brow furrowing up a little.

"Yeah," Eddie says all quiet. "Just–It wasn’t really like this. Not with Marisol, or Ana, or. Or Shannon."

"Oh," Buck says. Eddie sniffles, and it’s kind of ugly.

"I wanted it to be," he says. "I did. But I..."

"Yeah, okay," Buck says.

"I just," Eddie says, and he’s actively crying now, and this is possibly the single most embarrassing thing to ever happen to him. Apparently one mind-blowing orgasm is all it takes to turn him into a blubbering mess, but he can’t help it, the tears won’t stop coming, thrashing their way out of his chest, something clawing its way out, catching in his sobs, and Buck tugs him into his chest and says, "Eddie," over and over, like it’s the only word he knows. Until it washes through him in waves, until it ebbs, and it’s the shaky light-headed tremble of it. His face is gross and wet, Buck’s chest is gross and wet, and Eddie wipes at his face with the flat of one hand.

"Sorry," he says. "Sorry, that was..."

Buck’s hand on his face is gentle, wiping tears away, and Eddie doesn’t know how to say thank you. Knows Buck wouldn’t want to hear it, but Eddie doesn’t mean it like–he means.

"It’s you too, you know," he says.

Buck smiles, his eyes all crinkly. He kisses Eddie, mouth open and tender, like he’ll take it all, take whatever Eddie gives him.

-

He could take the long way to the house again. It’s not that much longer, an extra ten minutes to skip all this, but. It doesn’t feel so necessary anymore. And he kind of wants to see it.

He drives. Lets the hum of the engine fill him up. Lets his hands sit loose and easy on the wheel, ten and two, lets it be simple, lets it be soft. On the other side of the car, Buck is Buck’s version of quiet. For months he’s been watching Eddie with this shrewd look, like Eddie’s a grenade Buck thinks he might have to jump on. But that’s gone now. Buck adjusting the AC, Buck asking about local flora and fauna, Buck telling him about the real history of the Alamo like Eddie wasn’t stuck watching the same documentary about it in school year after year.

The trees on the streets are the same trees, Eddie thinks, the same branches stretching upwards. A block of shotgun bungalows, beater cars in driveways. He’d only been inside once to sit on plastic covered furniture, the click of the ceiling fan overhead, their knees pressed against each other, and her face so tight and refusing to cry, not even when her dad threw a beer bottle at the wall.

"Shannon grew up there," Eddie says, nodding at the house, and Buck stops in his enumerations, peers at the place. Paint chipped and weather worn, kid’s bike in the front yard now.

"Huh," is all he says, and he settles back in his seat.

The same path now, but backwards. The sun outside at the right angle, the streets tinged sepia. Fewer empty storefronts than there were years and years ago, he guesses that’s a good sign, economy or whatever. Same stoplights, those wide empty streets. There used to be a time of day when the sun was overhead and it felt like he might be the singular car on the road, like he could drive for miles and miles. 

Buck is saying something about neural pathways in the brain, and how memory works, and Eddie is nodding, and the words drift over him, not that Eddie isn’t listening, he’s always listening. It’s just that sometimes he’s also somewhere else, and sometimes, rarely but sometimes, it’s not a bad place to be. Buck shifts in his periphery; for a second there’s nobody there, only movement.

The high school comes up on the left, and Buck interrupts himself to say:

"Hey, did you go to school there?"

Eddie says, "Yeah."

He slows the car for a second as they drive past, because Buck is staring out the window with his forehead pressed up against it, so Eddie is looking too. At the groups of cheerleaders all huddled together, the boys rough-housing in the courtyard, the bright green football field. The bleachers with kids sitting on them, binders open on their knees, probably doing homework. The kids under the bleachers, fishnets and band T-shirts and trench coats, all the marks of the social outcast, and a girl there, a girl in a sundress smoking a cigarette, a girl grinning with a kind of violence, a girl staring up at the flat open blue sky like she wants to tumble into it and land somewhere else, somewhere far away.

And then the person behind him honks, and Eddie hits the gas again, and Buck unsticks his face from the window, red mark on his forehead where he was leaning against the glass. He rubs at it and knocks a few curls loose. His hair is curlier out here, all that humidity. Eddie likes it, commits to running his fingers through it later, seeing if he can memorize each specific curl; wants to know if it’s the same shapes every time, if he could learn that like a landscape, if he could learn to picture it with his eyes closed. Buck yawns.

"You could not pay me enough to go back to high school," he tells Eddie idly, and Eddie laughs, and Buck is smiling at him from the passenger seat, leaning back all calm and at ease, or as at ease as Buck ever gets, just grinning at him. Eddie says, "No, never."

The radio plays some old country song, days gone by, loves lost, and Eddie doesn’t mind. Eddie’s always liked these ones. Eddie drives on.

-

He pulls up to the house and he gets out. If he cranes his neck he can see the edge of the roof, can imagine two sets of legs dangling off the edge of it.

"You don’t have to stay," Eddie says suddenly, realizes he’s never said it. "If he doesn’t–if he won’t–I’m not going. But you don’t need to–you’ve got Maddie, and Jee, and–if you want to go back to LA, then that’s. We can figure it out."

Buck rolls his eyes, all fond and exasperated.

"Eddie," he says. "Why would I ever want to go anywhere you’re not?"

Eddie feels that hitch in his chest, feels it hook in and settle. It’s still hard sometimes to look right at him, but Eddie can–Eddie can grab his hand and squeeze once.

"Alright," Eddie says. "Okay."

Buck grins.

"You ready for this?" he says.

"I think I preferred active combat," Eddie says, and goes to ring the doorbell.

Same awkward song and dance, his mother cutting fruit in the kitchen, his father grilling outside. They talk about baseball, talk about Mariela, talk about the weather. Buck lets slip that he’s never managed to get sear marks quite right and then Ramón is launching into it, a fourteen point lecture on the perfect steak, and Helena rolls her eyes at him when she comes out with the cubed pineapple.

"Eddie, would you help me with the ice tea?" she says, and Eddie follows her inside.

"Chris not coming down?" he says, and Helena frowns where she’s slicing lemons.

"Maybe later," she says. "He gets tired easily."

"No, he doesn’t," he tells her, and Helena bristles.

"There’s no need to push him," she tells him, and Eddie sighs.

"Look," he says. "If he doesn’t want to see me, that’s fine. Really, it is. But I am gonna need him to tell me that."

"I think he’s been pretty clear, Eddie."

"No. I think you’ve been," Eddie says, and Helena’s nostrils flare.

"Right," she says. "Because it’s all on us, all on me, like always."

"That’s not what I–"

"Oh, but it’s what you meant. Like we’re really that awful, like–"

"I do not–"

"You got shot Eddie," she says. "And you didn’t tell us for weeks."

Eddie rubs at his face.

"I didn’t want to worry you."

"We should have been worried! You’re always–always running right into danger–"

"It wasn’t like that–"

"It’s not right," she says. "If something happened to you, what would he do, hm? He needs a family, Eddie, he needs someone to take care of him."

"He has someone."

"Not if you die, he doesn’t."

"He does," Eddie says. "Buck is his legal guardian."

Helena jerks at that, knife clattering, lemons on the floor.

"He what," she says. "What would possess you to do something like that. Good lord, Edmundo, what are you doing, this–this man who–"

Eddie looks out the window to where Ramón and Buck are standing in front of the grill, his father relaxed and limber in a way Eddie never saw him pre-retirement. He watches as Buck throws back his head and laughs, the round curve of his cheeks, the easy stretch of his neck.

"Mom," he says. "You know."

Helena begins plucking up lemon slices.

"I have no idea what you’re talking about," she says. "Always so cryptic, like I’m supposed to read your mind–"

"No," he says. "You always knew."

Helena’s hand stills. She glances at him and then away.

"You always," he says, "And you never–"

He hates the way his voice catches. He has to pause to collect himself. Helena closes her eyes briefly, a line between her eyebrows, her mouth taut.

"So... California, then," she says. "A thousand miles away."

Eddie frowns.

"What?" he says. "I went to California for Shannon–"

"For Shannon!" she says, her eyes snapping open again as they trod back onto familiar territory. "Of course, for Shannon. And then she wouldn’t see you for years. Can you understand, Eddie, why I am concerned, I mean that, that was the mother of your child–"

"Oh, you want to talk about Shannon?" Eddie snaps, and then winces at the volume. "Sorry."

"No," Helena says. "Speak your mind, clearly you’ve been waiting, clearly you’ve been holding back on us."

"I haven’t been–"

Helena glares at him and Eddie exhales through his teeth.

"Shannon left me," he says carefully. "And Shannon ran away from you."

"Eddie, you can’t be serious–"

"I’m not done," he says, voice hard, and she narrows her eyes; he knows she’s going to say something about his tone, but he barrels onwards. "She–We were kids, okay? And we needed help. And you, you never–"

"I never helped?" she says. "I–I rewrote my life for you, for Christopher. The lunches, the dinners, the appointments, all the appointments, and you weren’t there, you were too busy playing hero–"

"I was running away from you too!" Eddie explodes, and Helena stops and stares at him as he rubs a hand across his mouth.

"I fucked up," he says. "A lot. I should have been there. I shouldn’t have left. But I was a kid. I wasn’t a husband, I wasn’t a father. I wasn’t even... I was eighteen years old, mom. And I was so, so scared."

"Oh please, Eddie, like having a family is so terrible–"

"Mom," he says, and he’s so tired that his voice cracks a little. Helena subsides. She looks down at the lemons clutched in her hand and puts them on the counter, wiping her hand on her apron and looking away from him.

"When you were little, you got this awful fever, and I had to take you to the hospital," she says, more to herself. Eddie stares at her.

"I didn’t know that," he says. "I don’t remember that."

"No, of course not, you were–under a year, so small. At first you cried and cried, and then–then you stopped crying, and you wouldn’t wake up, and–"

Helena’s voice shakes a little.

"Nobody else was around," she says. "I had to drive you to the ER myself. Middle of the night. Didn’t even remember to put my shoes on. I kept looking in the rearview mirror, kept looking at you in the car seat, and I just. I couldn’t figure out how you got sick or if there was something I should have done or if there were signs I missed or if I should have given you Tylenol instead of Motrin or if...

"And we got to the hospital and they started you on fluids and–and you were fine. It didn’t take very long at all, just a couple of hours. Then you were crying again, you hated being covered in all those tubes, and you were happy when I held you, and. And it was all alright. But Eddie. Eddie those moments in the dark, when I couldn’t even see you, and I thought–and I thought–"

"Mom," he says gently. "I’m fine."

"I know that," she says. "But for years. For years I’d check on your breathing in the middle of the night, for years. All of you, all of my children, always watching, always trying to make sure I caught it, asthma or a flu or a cold or whatever it was, anything that could hurt you. Because it was my job, it’s what I am meant to do. I’m your mother–I keep you. I keep you close to me and it keeps you safe. But I could never... With you, whatever I said, it was just–just never the right thing. Wherever I went, you went somewhere else, like–like you remembered that car ride, like you knew."

"So don’t you tell me–don’t you tell me I wasn’t there," she says. "I was right there and you hated it. And you, you always wanted things, always needed things, and I would try and it was never the right thing, I could never figure it out. Tell me what to do, Eddie, tell me what to do and I’ll do it. What should I do?"

It’s in the way she asks it, plaintive and desperate, her voice getting quiet.

"What am I supposed to be doing?" Helena asks him.

"I," Eddie says, and he clears his throat. "I don’t know."

"I don’t know what to do to make it not like this," his mother says. "I never wanted–I should have. I should have done it differently, I. I didn’t want you to be... I know what it’s like, to be somewhere alone, and I never wanted that for you. I thought–I thought I could do something different."

"I’m not alone."

"You’re far away."

"Yeah, well," he says. "So are you."

She wipes at her cheeks, her face all pulled down at the edges.

"If you want to do something different," he tells her. "Then let me."

Helena looks at him.

"He’s in his room," she says in a whisper.

Eddie thinks about hugging her. Wonders if it would hurt her less, this time. Wonders if it would hurt him less. But in the end he grabs her arm for a moment. Squeezes her hand.

Then he goes.

-

It’s different now. He read something about an urban renewal grant a while back, something like that, he didn’t realize where it went, but it’s–nice. No more chain link fence, no more half-hearted padlocked gate keeping exactly nobody out. A small stretch of green lawn and a few big oak trees, picnic benches, the rocky shore littered with people in swimsuits now, lifeguard looking bored in a tall chair.

"Where are we?" Chris says warily, and Eddie–well, he thinks "you were conceived about 20 feet over there" is putting too fine a point on it, so he says, "Somewhere I used to come with your mom."

Chris looks around, all bored and disinterested. There’s a determination to his disdain that sparks fondness in Eddie. He knows that face, remembers her making that face. Eddie settles onto one of the benches, and Chris rolls his eyes, sits on the other end with his arms wrapped tight around his torso. Eddie just–looks out at the water, the kids splashing in it.

"You know, I was your age when I first met her," he says, and Chris–startles a little at that. Looks quickly at Eddie and then away again.

"I thought you didn’t date until later," he says.

"No, we didn’t, but–freshman year math class, that’s where we met," Eddie says, and Chris chews at his cheek, shifting.

"What was she like?" Chris says. Eddie looks out at the water.

"Angry," Eddie says. Chris is watching him now, like he’s waiting for something, but Eddie doesn’t–doesn’t really have anything else to offer.

"I don’t..." Chris says finally. "I don’t remember her a lot."

"You were pretty little when she left," Eddie says.

"I remember..." Chris says. "She used to cut up bananas and arrange them into a smiley face."

Eddie smiles.

"Yeah, she did do that," he says.

"I don’t really remember you, either," Chris says, and Eddie swallows.

"Yeah," he says. "I wasn’t around much."

"You were sometimes," Chris says. "I remember... the fighting. You two used to–you guys would scream at each other sometimes, I could hear it through the wall."

Eddie winces.

"I didn’t know you could hear that," he says. "I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have... You shouldn’t have had to listen to that."

Chris shrugs, eyes locked down at his hands.

"She wasn’t..." Eddie says. "It wasn’t..."

Chris doesn’t move.

"We were probably going to get a divorce," Eddie says, and Chris looks up at him.

"No, definitely," Eddie amends. "We were definitely going to get a divorce, she asked for one right before–Well. Right before."

Chris is quiet.

"Was she going to leave again?" he says finally.

"I don’t know," Eddie says. "I hope not, but. I guess I’ll never be sure."

"Oh."

"It wasn’t about you. You have to understand that. You get that, right Chris?"

"Yeah," Chris says. He doesn’t look angry now, only sad. "I get that."

"She wasn’t... She wasn’t always doing very well. Your mom."

Chris snorts, and it takes Eddie a second to see the humor in it, but he manages a grin.

"Alright," he says. "Guess I’m not really one to talk."

"Yeah, you think?" Chris says, and Eddie sighs.

Chris is looking at him so carefully, so analytically. Looks exactly like his aunt, actually.

"Dad," he says. "Are you okay?"

Eddie leans against the back of the bench.

"Honestly, probably not."

"Are you going to be okay?"

"I hope so," Eddie says.

Chris is silent, digesting that one.

"I’m not going to say it’s gonna be alright," Eddie tells him. "Or say that if you come back, everything will be–fixed. It’s not–I’m not–"

Eddie doesn’t speak for a minute.

"I think I should probably stop lying to you," he tells Chris finally, and Chris sniffs a little, wipes at his face.

"I can always tell," he tells Eddie. "I can always tell when you’re lying, you’re not even good at it."

"Yeah," Eddie says. "I’m really not."

"If I come back," Chris says. "Are you gonna leave again?"

"Never," Eddie says. "Never, I swear to you, I will never–"

"I don’t mean–like that," Chris says. "You just, you–you go places sometimes, and it’s–I don’t know."

Eddie could be anywhere in the world right now. Hot rooftop at midnight. Under bleachers between classes. Fingers streaked with blood somewhere far away. Buried under earth. Bleeding onto asphalt. Hospital delivery room. 

Hospital delivery room. Where an infant opens his mouth to scream for the very first time.

"Wherever I go, I’ll always come back to you," Eddie tells his son. Chris is wiping at his face with his sleeve now, wiping and wiping and still tears are falling, and Eddie doesn’t reach out, Eddie doesn’t touch him or hold him, Eddie lets him sit as far away as he needs, and Eddie waits.

And Eddie waits.

Chapter Text

Chris sleeps in the car, head against the window. He starts snoring after a while, these gentle little huffs of breath that fog up the window. Eddie watches him in the rear view mirror, watches as Buck reaches back to toss Chris’s jacket over him.

"He snores almost as bad as you," Eddie tells him, and Buck frowns at Chris’s sleeping form.

"I don’t think he’s that bad," he says, and Eddie snickers.

"So you admit it," he says, and Buck makes a face at him.

"Listen, do you know what’s in LA smog?" Buck informs him. "Hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, ozone, all kinds of stuff. It’s been studied since the 1940s..."

He trails off at the fond look on Eddie’s face.

"Really, it’s a wonder the whole city isn’t congested," Buck says, like he’s won something.

"Uh-huh, I’ll tell that to your CPAP machine in ten years."

"Eh, I figure I have at least twenty," he says, and Eddie rolls his eyes.

"Fine," Eddie says. "Then I’ll tell you then."

Buck kind of grins.

"Yeah, alright," he says comfortably. "Sounds good to me."

-

"You guys did what," Chimney says, crowding into the video call next to Hen and Bobby.

"Look, when in Vegas..." Buck says, and Eddie smacks his arm. Carefully, below where the cling wrap is.

"Did you guys get married," Ravi says, sticking the edge of his face over the front of the screen, only his nose and one eye visible. Hen throws a Cheez-It at him.

"Ravi, we are already at oh for two for department lawsuits, the third time is not the charm–"

"Maddie would genuinely kill me if–" Buck says, and then says, "Wait, two?"

"Did Hen not tell you yet?" says Ravi’s eye.

"I was saving the good news–"

"Good news?"

"Ding dong, the witch is dead," Chimney says, doing jazz hands.

"Wait, he’s dead?" Eddie says, at the same time as Buck shouts, "Yes!"

"I believe that was a poor choice of words," Bobby says.

"Ding dong the witch is fired with just cause has less of a ring to it," Hen says. "But is significantly more satisfying."

Chim nods.

"You kick a man where it hurts," he says solemnly. "Right in the pension."

He and Hen high five each other.

"You two sued the department?" Buck says. "What, so when I do it–"

"The union sued the department," Hen says. "Did you know the statute of limitations on workplace harassment is three years in California? Do you have any idea how many people that man has pissed off in three years?"

"Wait, we have a union?"

"You know Buck, I worry about you sometimes," Hen says. "I really do."

"Okay, so if you didn’t elope–" Ravi says.

"We’re not even in Vegas–" Eddie says.

"We’re like 50 miles of barren wasteland away, Eddie," Buck says. "Also, Ravi, check out these guns."

He flexes and Eddie groans.

"Oh, sweet," Ravi says. "New tattoo?"

Buck gives Eddie the saddest look, and Eddie sighs and rolls up his sleeve.

"Oh, okay," Ravi says. "So I get yelled at for the elopement question, that’s too far, it’s fine and normal for a couple of coworkers to get matching tattoos of one of their kid’s names–"

"Dad," Chris yells from the other room. "If you’re gonna take forever, can I have some quarters? There’s a slot machine in the lobby–"

"Wh–No, Christopher, you may not–"

"It’s okay, Ravi," Buck says. "When we get back, the whole 118 is going to get matching tramp stamps."

"We are not," Bobby says.

"If you get back," Chim says. "If you don’t bake to death like beef jerky out there. Aren’t you supposed to wear more clothing in the desert, not less?"

"I keep telling him," Eddie says.

"Despite the hateful words, I will still bring you all novelty keychains," Buck informs them all with an air of dignity, just in time for the station bell to ring.

"Alright, that’s our cue–" Chim says, getting up, his palm descending towards the camera the last thing on the screen before Eddie snaps the laptop shut. Buck turns to him with a wicked grin.

"You haven’t told me to cover up once," Buck says.

"I told you to at least put underwear on if you’re going to get ice, that counts," Eddie says.

"Okay," Chris calls. "Well if it’s a no to the slot machine, can you hurry up–"

Eddie opens the door to their adjoining rooms.

"Fine," he says. "Fine, we’re going–"

Christopher is already outside, the motel room door banging shut behind him.

"Kids these days," Buck says. "No respect for their parents."

"Not true, he respects you."

"Eddie, yesterday he asked me if my face always looked like this, or if it was something that happened to men as they aged."

"If your face looked like what?"

"I have no idea."

Eddie groans and then pulls Buck in by the waist and kisses him with a resounding smack.

"Well, one of the Diaz’s likes your face," he says.

Chris pounds on the door.

"If you’re being gross in there I’m going back to Texas," he yells, and Eddie sighs.

"The Valley of Fire has been there for 150 million years, I think it can wait two more minutes," he yells back, and lets Buck go. Buck laughs at him.

"Alright, alright," Eddie says, tucking the key card in his pocket. "Guess we should get out there."

"Yup," Buck says. "Right behind you."