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“What are you looking at?” Chim peers over Buck’s shoulder as he scrolls through his phone. “Car listings?”
On the couch across the loft, Eddie glances up from the newspaper he’s sharing with Hen—he has the sports section, she has the crossword--and exchanges a surprised eyebrow raise with her.
“Daydreaming about Ferraris, Buckaroo?” She teases. Buck wrinkles his nose at her and shrugs Chim off his shoulder.
“Nah. I’m trading in the Jeep.”
Eddie and Hen put down their respective pages. Chimney drops into the chair next to Buck, brow furrowed.
“You love that Jeep.”
“Yep.” Buck doesn’t look up from the phone.
“Maddie gave you the Jeep.”
“Yep.”
“Is something wrong with it?” Eddie ventures. “I could take a look at it.” Buck is already shaking his head before the sentence is finished.
“No, it’s fine, in great shape honestly for its age.” He glances around at them, sighs, drops the phone on the table. “You’re all looking at me like I’m nuts.”
“You’re talking about trading your Jeep,” Hen says gently. “That seems a little nuts to us.”
“Ah, yes, except!” Buck bursts into motion again, grabbing his phone and texting them a link in the group chat. “Except I was online last night--”
“Doing research,” the three interrupt in unison, because of course Buck was doing research.
“Exactly, stop laughing, because I looked up crash safety ratings.” Buck leans back in his chair, arms crossed. “And do you want to guess how safe the Jeep is in literally any kind of car wreck?”
A pause. Finally, Eddie ventures, “not well?”
Buck turns a flat gaze to him. “Terribly. Getting hit in my car would be like getting hit in a paper cup.” He resumes scrolling, not looking at any of them.
“Hang on, though.” There’s something curious in Hen’s voice, though she keeps the words kind. “That’s not been a problem for you before, has it? I know you’ve gotten into a few scrapes with that car.”
“Yep.” Buck doesn’t look up this time. “But now I have Christopher in my car, and eventually Jee-Yun. So!” He rolls to his feet and strolls to the stairs, not looking at any of them. “Time to get a new car. I’m hitting the gym if anyone wants to join!” And he’s gone, jogging down the stairs and either oblivious or indifferent to the shocked faces behind him.
Hen recovers first, using a couch cushion to muffle her laughter. Eddie and Chimney blink at each other, and Eddie wonders if he looks half as shell-shocked as he feels.
Buck doesn’t mention it again, not in the truck for any of their back-to-back-to-back calls, not when they grab a few minutes downtime playing video games or speed-eating the food Bobby makes for them. Eddie doesn’t bring it up either, though part of him desperately wants to. You’re giving up the car your sister gave you, for my kid? Why?
He has the next two days off, but between replacing rotted planks on Abuela’s porch and taking Chris to the library so he can return the enormous stack of books he’d checked out last time and check out another enormous stack of books, he doesn’t have time to check in with Buck beyond a few texts that mostly consist of him sending exasperated emojis and Buck responding with laughing gifs Eddie doesn’t entirely understand.
Then he shows up for his 24-hour shift and there’s an unfamiliar, violently orange hatchback parked in Buck’s usual spot. It has paper temporary plates, and a familiar custom child seat in the back.
The world grinds to a halt for Eddie as he stares at the car. He’s still staring at it a moment later when he feels a presence at his shoulder.
“What do you think?” Buck sounds proud. “Certified used, has less than a thousand miles on it. And it’s orange!” He seems most thrilled about that. And then: “hopefully Chris approves of the color.”
“Why the hell—why is Chris factoring into your car choices?” He wants to reel the words back in almost as soon as he says them. He sounds irritated, annoyed that his best friend is concerned with his son’s safety when, jesus, nothing could be further from the truth. He’s just confused—no one, not even his grandmother or his damn parents, had done something like this for Chris. For Eddie. He hadn’t even considered it something that should be done, that he could ask for. And here Buck was just . . . just offering it?
He’s been quiet too long, and Buck hasn’t said anything either. Eddie risks a glance at him, and sees Buck staring at the car, chewing on his lip apprehensively. Giving Eddie a chance to clarify, he realizes with a jolt. He’s keeping a lid on whatever hurt Eddie’s comment inflicted because he knows Eddie didn’t mean it like it came out. Try this again, brain, and don’t fuck it up this time.
“Were you worried,” he asks more gently now, “about something happening?”
Buck sighs. “I mean, yes? I always worry about something happening to Chris when he’s with me. My track record isn’t great, Eds.”
“Your only demerit is literally a natural disaster no one saw coming, man. Your track record is stellar.”
“And I still worry.” Buck rakes a hand through his hair. “I’d never even considered it, you know? It was just my car. Freedom and movement and yada yada. But it’s not just carrying me now, is it? It’s carrying Chris, and there was literally no place in it where if we got into a collision that he wouldn’t be seriously injured at best. One of the reviews I read said passengers would have a better chance of survival if they were ejected from the vehicle. Ejected, Eddie.”
“Okay, that is pretty bad.” Buck shoots him a wild look, like see what I mean? But Eddie feels like he doesn’t, not quite.
It’s absolutely reasonable to trade in a car you realize is dangerous for your kids. But for your friend’s kid, even your best friend’s kid? Logically, Eddie knows it’s not just for Chris; Buck takes being Jee-Yun’s uncle very seriously, but…
But he mentioned Chris first. And Chris’s seat, the one Buck asked Eddie and Carla about, then went out and bought, is right there in the back. Not an infant seat for Buck’s niece, Chris’s seat. Eddie’s son.
He takes a deep breath. If he says anything now, there’s a near one hundred percent chance of him fucking it up. Thank you doesn’t even begin to encompass how he feels; why are you treating Chris like your own sounds defensive, not hopeful; I’m debating kissing you over this stupid car will probably make Buck run, and that, more than anything, Eddie cannot have happen.
So he shrugs, claps Buck on the shoulder. “Chris is gonna love the orange. It looks like a pumpkin.”
Buck’s worried face splits into a wide smile that Eddie can’t help but return.
#
Chris does indeed love the hideous orange car, and immediately starts talking about how they should put stripes on it, so it can be a tiger. Buck sounds entirely on board with the idea, and they spend part of Friday night movie night on Chris’s tablet, looking up decals and debating whether they should just use paint themselves.
“No,” Eddie says from where he’s lying on the couch looking at his phone. “You absolutely do not want to paint it yourselves.”
“Aw, Dad.” Chris manages to draw the word out to about six syllables. When his kid started sounding like an exasperated teenager, Eddie has no idea. “That’s not fun!”
“Yeah, Dad,” Buck laughs and ah, that’s probably when. “No fun.”
Eddie rolls his eyes. “Putting store-bought paint on a car will just ruin the car. You’ll never be able to sell it again.”
“Who says I’m selling it again?” Buck sounds affronted. Eddie tilts his head as far back over the armrest as he can, looking at his best friend upside down. Buck is frowning at him.
“I dunno.” Shrugging hurts in this position. “If you ever decide you want a Jeep again?”
Buck balls up his napkin and chucks it at Eddie’s head. “Did we or did we not go over the fact that the Jeep is a literal death trap--”
“Yes, but eventually when Chris isn’t a kid anymore and--”
“He’ll be magically safer once he turns fourteen? Sixteen?” Buck isn’t just frowning at him now, he’s glaring. Eddie’s fucked this up somehow. “I’m not getting another Jeep, man. I’m sticking with my tiger car.” This last sentence he directs at Chris, face softening back into a grin, that Chris returns a thousandfold, seemingly unaware of the tension. Eddie flops back down on the couch, blinking at the ceiling and wondering why his eyes burn.
Because your best friend anticipates being around when Chris is a teenager, his conscience, ever unhelpful, supplies. Because he’s planning to be here, and to be safe for your kid. He plans to stay.
“Beer,” Eddie tells the ceiling, and rolls to his feet. “I need a beer. Want one?”
“Sure.” Buck flicks a lazy salute his way, engrossed in some tiger-car-related thing Chris has found. “Thanks.”
Several hours, one Thor: Ragnarok, and many arguments over animal camouflage patterns later, Chris is in bed, Buck has gone home, and Eddie sits in front of his laptop without seeing a damn thing on the screen.
He plans to stay. He loves Chris. He has your back, always.
And you? You love him, idiot.
It’s an extremely inconvenient time to be having an epiphany, but here they are.
#
Albert, of all people, is the one who finds the perfect decals, dropping them in Buck’s lap as he’s waiting for Chim to get off-shift, and Buck and Eddie are heading on. He knows someone who knows someone, because Albert is gifted at connecting with people in a way the rest of the 118 can only wish they were.
“Dude!” Buck shakes the package with a grin. The decals are matte black under the glossy plastic, realistic uneven stripes like on the actual animal, rather than the cartoonishly symmetrical triangles the Internet keeps offering as options. “These are perfect! Chris is going to love this!” He leaps up and gives Albert a bear hug, making him grunt.
“Don’t break him, Buckley!” Chim calls from halfway down the stairs. “We’re meeting Maddie for dinner and he’s promised to help me build another bookshelf!”
“Another?” Eddie asks as Buck puts Albert down.
“Yes, another.” Chim sounds exasperated, but fond. “It wouldn’t be necessary if one of Jee-Yun’s uncles didn’t buy her three books every time he passes a store.”
Eddie glances at Albert and Buck, who are wearing matching unrepentant grins, and Eddie’s pretty sure Jee-Yun’s massive and growing storybook library is solidly both of their faults.
“I should probably get Chris another bookshelf,” Buck muses as Albert clatters down the stairs after his brother. “I noticed the other day he’s making stacks on the floor again.”
Eddie nudges him. “Maybe if you stopped buying him books every time you guys go out.”
“Hey, man, books are not toys or video games. They’re educational, you can’t ever have too many.” But there’s a flicker of something else in Buck’s face as he says it, something that Eddie has long since started calling parent bullshit in his own head.
“Had a lot of books as a kid, huh?” He asks lightly, testing the theory. Buck’s face scrunches a little.
“Wanted a lot of books. It got annoying after a bit, I think.” His voice is cheerful, but his eyes are sad. Eddie adds another strike to his mental schematic of Reasons why Buck’s Parents are Garbage.
“Next day off,” he says instead. “After you and Chris stripe-ify your car.” It still feels weird, seeing the orange hatchback in the parking lot. Like Eddie’s missed a stair, his balance momentarily thrown. He feels like he’s constantly swallowing the knowledge that he loves his best friend, feeling it bang against his teeth, press against his windpipe. The car is a neon-colored reminder of the ease with which Buck loves his kid, the depth of his care for both Eddie and Chris, but far from the only one. Their house is littered in evidence, from the books on astronomy and history in Chris’s room, to the repaired washing machine Buck spent a day off fixing while Eddie was none the wiser at work, panicking about how to afford a new one, to that creepy coffee maker that made the best coffee Eddie had ever had at home, though he taped a post-it over to make sure it couldn’t read his face.
But while Eddie knows that Buck loves them like he knows his own damn name, he doesn’t know if it’s the love of best friend-brother-I’ve got your back or partner-lover-stay with me forever, please, please. And if he assumes the latter—and he’s wrong—and they lose the former—
He can’t lose that. Full stop.
He orders Chris a new bookshelf during some downtime on their shift, while Buck is off helping Bobby make food. Hesitates, then orders a book on philosophy he saw Buck eyeing the last time they were at the bookstore with Chris. Hopefully he hasn’t already gotten it for himself.
#
He doesn’t have a whole lot of time to think about it again, between Charlie and his mother (what the fuck), and then getting shot (what the fuck) but laying in the hospital bed and staring at the tiled ceiling, suddenly he has all the time in the world to think, and no idea what to do with his conclusions. He FaceTimes with Christopher and Buck daily, getting updates on school, on what book they’re currently reading, and one day Chris crows about how jealous his classmates are because he gets picked up and dropped off in a tiger-car, which apparently trumps even the most expensive sportscar.
“I aim to please,” Buck says, all mock-seriousness, before his face splits into a tired grin. “Or at least be the weirdest possible.”
“Weirdest and best!” Christopher’s laugh makes the tiny phone speaker crackle, and Eddie misses them both like oxygen.
“I get discharged tomorrow,” he says when Christopher has said his goodnights and gone to brush his teeth. “Can you pick me up?”
Buck frowns. “Me? I mean, yeah of course, but I thought Ana was getting you?”
Ana, probably the only concrete step he could take to manage all the damn thinking of the last several days, deserved a place in heaven for how patiently she bore his morphine-addled rambling, how firmly she told him they should probably part ways. He definitely deserved to be shouted at, but she was a much better person than him, and he hoped her next partner wouldn’t let her down like he had.
He was good at letting people down, unfortunately.
“Ana’s . . . we’re taking a step back,” he hedges finally. “You know”—he waves his good hand clumsily, trying to encapsulate the vague everything before remembering he’s holding the phone in that hand—“get shot, priorities clarified, seeing life in a new light, et cetera? For both of us.”
“O-kay.” Buck looks a little bemused but let’s the explanation rest. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow, man.”
#
He tells Buck about the will, tries to convey that him being reckless with his own life is really, really not okay, without actually letting slip the words “I” “love” or “you” in that order. He thinks it penetrates, if the stunned, aching look in Buck’s face is anything to go by. He hopes it does.
They go home. The orange tiger-car still has a whiff of that new-car smell, and Christopher’s seat in the back has a water bottle leaning against it, half-empty. There’s a Ziploc bag full of his favorite granola bars handy, too. Eddie bites the inside of his cheek until it feels raw.
#
Being stuck at home sucks. Being stuck at home during a pandemic sucks even more. Physical therapy, regular therapy, doctor’s appointments, they only take up so many hours in a week, and nearly all the household tasks have been commandeered by Buck or Carla, who really do have everything under control, honestly, Eddie’s a little terrified of their combined organizational power.
But it means he has more time on his hands than he knows what to do with, and that means more time to get stuck in his own head.
The car thing won’t leave him alone. He’s not sure why the stupid thing has suddenly become a glaring metaphor for his and Buck’s relationship, or whatever, but every time he sees it parked next to his truck in the driveway, with its ridiculous stripes, he finds it hard to catch his breath in a way that has nothing to do with pain or the exertion of his traumatized arm.
(“It’s absolutely awesome,” he overheard Chim say to Buck one afternoon when he dropped off groceries. “But I shudder to think how you’re going to explain it to a future date.”
“That would require me to want to date, and honestly, that’s the last thing on my mind right now.” Buck had laughed, that worn-out laugh that spoke of too many sleepless hours but his ever-present willingness to keep trying, and Eddie’s heart went from the pit of his stomach to his throat so fast he thought he might cough it up.)
He’s thinking about it one night, sore and headachey and also congested, which strikes him as deeply unfair given that he hasn’t been any further than Christopher’s school pickup line, with Buck, in the two weeks since he got home from hospital so how did he manage to get sick on top of everything else? Chris is asleep in his room down the hall, and there’s nothing to distract him from his discomfort, his spinning thoughts, except his computer. He thinks back to the conversation that predicated the arrival of the tiger-car, and on a whim, looks up the safety statistics.
Twenty minutes later, he gets up to get some cold medicine, because the chills-and-congestion combo is starting to wear on him, and a bottle of water. Ten minutes after that, thoughts still spinning, he searches the statistics for his parents’ old sedan, the car he had with Shannon, his truck now.
Forty-five minutes later, he realizes he’s made a terrible, terrible mistake: cold meds, and pain meds, do not mix. Cold meds, pain meds, and the mess in his head? Disaster.
His parents’ car is a death trap. The old car he and Shannon used to take newborn infant Christopher home from the hospital: death trap. His new truck? Not quite a death trap, but not safe for anyone in the backseats, at all. And where does Christopher sit when he’s in the truck? Eddie feels like he’s choking on his own horror.
How did he miss this? How did he not even know, even think to look at the crash test ratings for his truck? What the fuck was he thinking?
You weren’t, sneers the voice in him that never hesitates to point out how he fails, the one that sounds like his parents in stereo. You saw those fancy-ass trucks at the fights and decided you wanted one for yourself, you selfish idiot. You weren’t thinking of your son then, you aren’t thinking of him now, you’re going to get him hurt, or killed, because you don’t think. Look at you now, shot and drugged and incapable of even making your child breakfast. Of course you didn’t think to look. You don’t think.
He shoves back from the kitchen table, forgetting that one arm is in a sling, and the reverberations of pain down his back, into his fingertips, drown out the litany of self-loathing long enough for him to fumble for his phone. He can’t see, his eyes blurry from the med cocktail or tears, he’s not sure which, and his fingers shake as he brings up Buck’s contact information.
“What’s wrong?” Buck says in lieu of a greeting, because it’s nearly midnight and usually they text. Eddie opens his mouth to say I fucked up or where were you then with your statistics, I needed you, or even you’re the only person who cares as much as I do about my kid, and I can’t lose that. What comes out is a horrible, grating sob.
“I’m on my way.” He hears a thud and the jangle of keys, and Buck mutters an oath under his breath, probably looking for his shoes. “Tell me what happened.”
“I doubled pain and cold meds, completely forgot I had taken them too close together.” His face is sticky, burning with shame. “I can’t move without getting dizzy, I can’t drive, what if Chris has an emergency, my fucking truck is a hazard, my parents—!”
“—are in El Paso and none the wiser.” A car door slams on Buck’s end of the line and his voice reverberates as he switches to speaker. “Chris was fine when he went to bed?”
“Yeah.” Eddie puts his head on the table. He feels like he might be sick. “But if he comes out--”
“He’ll see his dad feels rotten and you’ll tell him the truth—that your meds are messing with you, and I’m on my way. Or you can give the phone to him, I’m not hanging up.” He can hear the engine rumbling as Buck hits the freeway. “Why is your truck a hazard?”
It’s meant to be a distraction, a safer topic of conversation to keep Eddie from spiraling. He knows this. But fresh panic wells up in him and he drops the phone to muffle a terrible injured-animal sound with his only usable hand.
“Eds, what’s wrong?” Buck sounds worried now. “Seriously, it’s going to be okay.”
“You traded your Jeep!” Eddie bursts out finally to the phone on the table. “You checked, you fucking cared enough to check and then you got a new fucking car to protect my kid. Do you know who else has done that? No one, Buck, fucking no one. Not even me, I just got the stupid thing because I wanted it and I was so fucking selfish and I never even thought--!”
“Eddie.” Buck’s voice is sharp, cutting through the tirade like a lighthouse beam in the dark. “Eds, close your computer, now.”
“Buck--”
“Now.”
He slams the laptop closed like an angry child. He kind of wants to throw the phone, or cry. Wait, he’s already doing that.
“Head down towards your knees, you know the drill.” The road sounds have changed while Eddie was ranting, no longer the high hum of the freeway, but the lower rumble of local roads. “Don’t put pressure on your shoulder. Breathe.”
“Can’t.” Tears and this stupid fucking cold have built up so much pressure behind his eyes and in his chest that leaning forward makes him feel like he’s going to suffocate.
“You can,” Buck says soothingly. “I’m turning onto your street right now. Breathe for me for like thirty seconds, okay?”
Thirty seconds. Okay. Fine. He can do that for thirty seconds. He can do anything for thirty seconds. He counts in his head, inhaling every four beats, holding for four, exhaling for four. He’s on his second round when headlights slice across the living room window and he hears a car engine cut out. On his third when the front door unlocks and he hears Buck sliding out of his shoes.
The footsteps in the hall pause outside Chris’s door, and he knows Buck is checking Christopher is still asleep, that he hasn’t heard his dad lose his fucking cool in the kitchen. Eddie puts his face in his good hand and tries not to weep.
“Hey, hey, Eds, it’s okay.” Warm fingers circle his wrist, pull his hand gently away. Eddie slouches forward to press his forehead against Buck’s shoulder. He’s wearing an oversized hoodie that smells like it just came out of the dryer. “I did this once a few years ago, it sucks, but it’ll pass. How long between the mixup?”
He tries to remember, but everything feels foggy and hard to parse under the howling recriminations echoing in his head. “Three hours? Maybe?”
“Okay, okay, we can work with that. Let’s get you lying down so you can ride this out not doubled over on a crappy chair, okay? Come on.” Buck gently bullies Eddie to his feet and down the hall to his room, one arm wrapped around his waist. He deposits Eddie on the edge of his bed and disappears into the bathroom, rattling around in the cupboard and turning on the sink. Eddie leans forward, elbow on knees, and tries not to succumb to the wave of vertigo that wants to dump him on the floor.
“Do you think you’re going to puke?” Buck asks from the bathroom.
“Possibly.” His voice sounds like he’s swallowed marbles. Buck’s socked feet appear at the edge of his vision, and a wide, warm palm on his good shoulder gently pushes him upright again. Buck’s other arm is full of towels, a glass of water held at a precarious angle in his hand. He clunks it down on the bedside table, muttering an apology when some of it slops out, and lays a towel out over Eddie’s pillow, another on the floor by the bed. He disappears back into the house, and returns with a garbage can, freshly lined. This, he sets down on the toweled part of the floor, then puts his hands on his hips.
“Do you want to attempt a shower, or would you rather be horizontal now?”
He looks tense, uncomfortable somehow. Of course he does, you yelled at him for caring about your kid you stupid fuck. Eddie swipes angrily at his eyes and looks away.
“Uh-uh, nope.” Buck’s fingers on his chin are achingly gentle, but unyielding. “Eyes up here, Diaz. We’ll talk about the other stuff when you don’t feel like hot garbage. Shower or bed?”
“Bed,” Eddie whispers finally. His voice cracks anyway.
Buck nods briskly and sets about getting Eddie out of his jeans and button-down with near-clinical efficiency. He grabs sweats and a stretched-out t-shirt that Eddie is pretty sure is actually Buck’s from several laundry loads ago, and they get them on Eddie’s person with only a bit of swearing. That done, Buck pulls back the blankets and manhandles Eddie into the bed. It should be humiliating, and maybe it will be when his body and brain aren’t sloshing with competing chemicals, but right now he just wants to rest, to not hurt, for the endless noise in his head to stop.
Then Buck flops down next to him, and rests a gentle hand on Eddie’s chest, and the voice shuts up with such suddenness it leaves his ears ringing.
“You aren’t selfish,” Buck says quietly. “You’re a good dad, a great dad. Not having the wherewithal to know everything about every choice you made while you were grieving does not make you a bad parent.”
He opens his mouth—to argue, to fight back—but Buck’s hand presses down more firmly, the weight of it tugging Eddie toward sleep.
“Later.” Buck’s voice leaves no room for argument. “When you’re not hurting as much.”
There’s nothing to say to that. Eddie rolls onto his good shoulder, facing Buck, and clutches that hand to his chest. He thinks, as he tumbles into exhausted dreamless sleep, that he may have said something, but he can’t remember what.
#
He wakes up feeling like something crawled into his mouth and died in the night, which he had expected, considering. His arm throbs in the sling, and a quick glance at the alarm tells him he’s overslept, that Chris should have been fed and started on remote school an hour ago. He lurches upright, hissing in pain. At least he no longer feels like his stomach is turning inside out.
There’s a post-it note, neon green, on the bedside table, next to a glass of water and a pair of pills. Come get food once you take these, empty stomach + painkillers = hell. Chris & I will be in living room.
Eddie swallows the pills and chases them with the full glass of water, trying to ignore the anxiety buzzing in his fingertips. There’s no relief of fuzzy memory to save him from what happened last night. He remembers every awful detail, and he knows his face will give that away the moment Buck sees him.
But he can’t hide in the bedroom forever, so Eddie steels himself as best he can, and steps out into the hall.
Something smells vaguely smokey, and the windows in the living room are open. Christopher sits at the dining room table, headphones on and laptop open. He glances up as Eddie walks in and gives him a wave and a smile before focusing his attention back on the screen. Buck got him set up for Zoom class, clearly. He has a glass of orange juice next to him, and his schoolwork sits in a tidy pile on the other side of the keyboard. There’s a muted clatter from the kitchen and a muttered curse, so Eddie squeezes his son’s shoulder as he passes and goes to investigate.
Buck stands at the kitchen sink, scrubbing something off the skillet like it’s mortally offended him. The vaguely smokey smell is stronger in here, and the kitchen windows are open as well. Eddie couldn’t stop the helpless grin on his face if he tried. “Did you burn something?”
“Not a word.” Buck wags a finger at Eddie without turning around. He resumes scrubbing. “I had to reboot the router so Chris could get into class and I left the heat too high.” He holds up the skillet, eyeing it critically, but seems satisfied with what he finds, because he gently rests it upside down on the stove to dry. Finally, Buck faces him, drying his hands on a dishtowel. He looks tired, Eddie notices with a pang of guilt, but the discomfort from last night seems to have vanished. He nods to the coffeemaker. “Want any?”
“Should probably eat first.” Eddie is about to reach for the fridge, but Buck turns to oven and pulls out a casserole dish, filled with hash browns and an omelet—red pepper, ham and cheese, Eddie’s favorite.
“Thank you for reminding me, or omelet take two would have gone to rubber.” Buck plates the food and slides it across the counter to him. A fork and knife follow, and Buck wanders toward the coffeemaker muttering about mugs.
“I’m sorry,” Eddie says to his back. “I’m sorry about last night.”
Buck stills, looks at Eddie over his shoulder. “What for?”
“C’mon, man.” Eddie rubs his face tiredly. “For being an idiot and mixing my meds? For losing my shit on the phone? For yelling at you for the terrible crime of giving a damn about my kid?” His voice breaks a bit over kid and he clears his throat hard. Buck turns back around and leans against the counter, arms crossed, frowning at him. It’s his this is a puzzle and I’m going to figure it out frown, and Eddie resists the urge to shrink away from it.
“I get the feeling this isn’t about the car.” Buck’s thumb is tap-tap-tapping against his opposite arm and it’s distracting as hell. “Not entirely, anyway.”
Eddie grunts a concession, then sighs. “It’s just—you—I—ugh.” He shoves a forkful of hash browns in his mouth, trying to marshal the words in his head as he chews and swallows.
“I spent months after Shannon left hearing about how I wasn’t keeping Christopher safe enough,” he finally settles on. “But neither of my parents ever thought for a second about upgrading their car to something safer. Neither of them ever thought about how to make the things Chris wanted to do accessible so he could do them safely. Neither of them saw any reason to.
“And then, after, with the--” he gestures angrily, trying to encompass the Shannon dying-ladder truck-embolism-tsunami-lawsuit-fight club clusterfuck that was their lives for a while, “—I didn’t think about how to keep him safer. I just . . . saw something I wanted and took it.” Shame tastes acrid at the back of his throat, and he pushes the plate away. Buck frowns more deeply.
“But you were always thinking about how to keep him safer. No, shut up a sec”—Eddie snaps his mouth shut on an argument and Buck shakes his head—“thank you. Eddie, you tied yourself up in knots trying to shield Christopher back then. You made sure he was in therapy, you talked to him, you tried to help him see that you weren’t going anywhere and he didn’t have to be afraid to let you out of his sight. Hell, the whole reason you ended up where you did was because you didn’t want him to see you angry and worry. How is that not trying to keep him as safe as you could?
“And as for the truck.” Buck pulls out his phone and slides it down the counter to Eddie. “Maybe it isn’t an armored tank, but I checked your laptop, and you were looking at the ratings for the regular model, not the extended cab, which you have, and there’s a pretty big difference, man.”
Eddie stares at the little screen for a moment. Blinks. Pushes it away and presses the heels of his hands into his burning eye sockets. His injured shoulder throbs.
“I am so sick of crying!” He hisses. It’s not what he meant to say, but its close.
He feels, rather than hears, Buck cross the kitchen. A pair of long arms wrap carefully around him, and a chin plants on his good shoulder.
“Me too,” Buck says quietly. “I feel like a leaking faucet pretty much on the daily.”
It’s not funny—at all—but Eddie finds himself laughing anyway, and Buck is too, so maybe it’s a little funny in its grimness. Eddie drops his arms and winds them around Buck, resting his forehead on his friend’s collarbone.
“Your car made me realize,” he says slowly, voice muffled by the fabric of Buck’s t-shirt, “that our lives—mine and Christopher’s—have so much of you in them, and it’s all the best parts. The parts that we couldn’t bear to lose. And I’m—” he swallows, inhales “—I’m fucking terrified that I’m going to somehow screw this up and we will. Lose you, I mean.”
“Why would you lose me?” Buck sounds curious, but there’s a wirethin trace of insecurity there too. “I’m not going anywhere unless I’m sent away, you know that.”
He does know that. Buck has been the one left behind over and over—hell, even Eddie left him, however briefly, during the aforementioned clusterfuck—but he doesn’t leave, not even when maybe he should. His brain, ever the traitor, latches onto unless I’m sent away and Eddie finds himself twisting his fingers in Buck’s shirt, just in case he somehow missed himself suggesting the unthinkable in the past five minutes.
“No,” he bites out. He can’t say the rest: No, you’re not going anywhere. No, I would never want that. No, don’t even put that out there. No, don’t go, please.
“Okay.” Buck’s broad palm between his shoulder blades feels warm, and it soothes up and down Eddie’s spine. “Help me out, Eds: what do you think you’re going to screw up so bad?”
And—well. The chance to bow out is right there, to say nothing to say, sorry man, the meds screwed with me more than I thought.
But if he tilts his head a bit, he can see the living room windows, and the aggressive orange of Buck’s car. The car he got because he wanted to keep Christopher safe, the car he intends to keep because he intends to stay. And suddenly the prospect of telling Buck doesn’t feel so gut-droppingly frightening. His love for them is as glaring as the orange paint. Even if it’s not on the exact same frequency as Eddie’s love for him, it’s there, certain and steady.
Eddie pulls back enough to see Buck’s face and braces himself. “I love you.”
Buck stares. “What?” It’s the same slightly shell-shocked expression from the hospital room. It is not a recoil, or a rejection, so Eddie counts it as a win and plows on.
“I love you—am in love with you, but you’re also my best friend and Chris’s best friend and the one who’s had our backs from the start, and I’d take your friendship any day—every day—regardless of what my heart wants rather than have me be the reason you leave.”
The quiet is so complete, he can hear the hum of Chris’s class, muffled by headphones, out in the other room. Can hear the fridge buzzing. Buck stares at him with wide, startled blue eyes, and Eddie resists the urge to close his own. The fear is starting to bleed back into his stomach like ice water.
Then Buck breaks into a smile, and it’s like a fucking sunrise.
“And here I thought I was being obvious.” He reels Eddie back in and Eddie goes willingly, tension draining out of him as Buck gently knocks their foreheads together. “I thought you knew, Eds. I thought you not saying anything was because you were okay with it, even though you didn’t feel the same.”
“Didn’t know.” Eddie huffs out a laugh that’s limned with yet more goddamned tears, but they don’t even annoy him too much this time. “But. Uh. Just to clarify--”
“I am so in love with you it’s not funny,” Buck says seriously. “I am stupidly, irrevocably, profoundly in love with you, I love Chris like my own damn kid, and I told myself it was just fine if you married Ana, or some other person, because I would rather be your best friend than be the reason you two left.”
Profoundly in love with you. There’s really no sufficient response to that except to kiss him, so that’s what Eddie does.
#
“Are you staying?” Chris asks, pulling off his headphones when they re-enter the living room. Zoom class is apparently taking a break. Buck pauses, glances between Eddie and Christopher. His son, Eddie notices, is clearly fighting a grin, and losing.
“Uh, well I do have to go back to my apartment to do some chores, bud, but the plan was movies and Thai food tonight, right?”
“Yep!” Chris has absolutely lost the fight against his smile. “You should just live here with us. Then we can do the chores here together and it’ll go faster.” He pops the headphones back over his ears and refocuses his attention on the screen before him like he didn’t just cheerfully throw a grenade into the middle of the conversation. Eddie and Buck stare at each other, wide-eyed.
“You could, though.” The words are out before Eddie has a chance to second-guess himself. Irrevocably. Profoundly. He may not have all the words like Buck does, but he has this. “You should. If you want.”
Buck glances at Christopher and his computer, then nods to the living room. Right, this isn’t a conversation to have in full view of a bunch of sixth-graders, even if his son is grinning like a loon. They move into the relative privacy of the living room and sit down on the couch.
“What do you want?” Buck asks, turning to face Eddie and pulling a knee up. “Aside from being able to further divide chores, of course.”
“Of course. My kid knows what’s important,” Eddie says drily. “Work smarter, not harder. Or something.” He shrugs his good shoulder, takes a breath. “I want you here, with us. With me.” He swallows back forever because there’s brave and then there’s just getting way too far ahead of himself. Let’s maybe go on a date, first.
“Yes.” Eddie’s gaze jerks back to Buck’s. His sunrise smile is back.
“Yes? Just like that?” Because literally when has anything in Eddie’s life been this easy? But apparently—
“Yes, just like that. I want to be here with you too. With both of you.” Buck tilts his head, considering. “But I’m taking over cooking, which means you’re on dish duty.”
“You already took over cooking,” Eddie tells him, unable to keep a stupidly wide grin off his own face. “You took over that job, what, two years ago?” I want to be here with you too. With both of you. Profoundly in love with you. Love Chris like my own damn kid. He feels like a shaken soda bottle, like the effervescence of those words will buoy him for months to come. He glances out the window, at the obnoxiously striped orange car on his driveway, sitting there like it belongs. Like it’s home.
And for the first time, Eddie is certain down to his bones, that it is. That they both are, at last, home.