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It’s a bad day.
And Eddie knows that it’s just part of the job. That not everyday can be their family laughing over the dinner table with Bobby’s famous mac and cheese. Calls that leave them snickering in the truck out of sheer ridiculousness or ones that have his adrenaline pumping so fast Eddie feels a little breathless, but smiling because he knows Buck is by his side. Everyday can’t be Hen and Chim cornering Ravi about his mystery date and Bobby rolling his eyes fondly because all of them are being insufferable. And while most days don’t flay him open, reaching right through his sternum to rip out his beating heart, the days that do hit a little bit harder.
He’s been anticipating a bad day. He’s told Frank as much since he’s been back with the 118. It’s normal, Frank assures him, to be nervous about those kind of days. Now that Eddie feels a little more, represses a little less, the bad days leave him feeling a little too heavy. Crawling into bed after the shift is a battle, but getting out of bed to do anything is impossible. It leaves him feeling even shittier when Christopher hugs him goodbye before school. He should be able to function, to at least get his son where he needs to be, but his veins are filled with concrete and it’s easier to sink further into the mattress, beneath his shame and guilt than to get up and face the day.
“Hey,” Buck smiles as he runs his hand through Eddie’s mussed hair, “it’s okay, Eds, you rest and I’ll take Superman to school.”
“I should—”
“You don’t have to climb all your mountains in one day,” Buck scratches at Eddie’s scalp lightly.
Eddie wants to cry, but he blinks back the tears, saving them for when he’s alone. He swallows back his weak protest and nods, lets Buck take care of him like he knows he’s allowed to.
Eddie’s not quite sure how Buck is standing after a shift like that. They had the kind of call that they all know will stick with them for weeks. The one that leaves them in a haunting silence on the way back to the station, flitting through the rest of their shifts like ghosts put on autopilot. Eddie bolted from the truck as soon as they were back, heaving the contents of his stomach for a solid two minutes. He’s pretty sure the only reason he made it to the showers was the familiar, warm hand on his shoulder, the small of his back, that guided him there. Buck came over to Eddie’s without question. He almost asked Buck to come to bed with him, just so he could have something to hold onto, just so he could take away the exhausted and pained expression in his best friend’s eyes. But there are some things Eddie isn’t quite brave enough to ask for yet, so Buck crashes on the couch and Eddie collapses into bed, falling into a restless and miserable sleep.
Buck cons him into drinking a smoothie he picked up on the way back from dropping Christopher off, but he doesn’t leave the bed. He fades in and out to the sound of Buck doing laundry or washing dishes or talking to Maddie on the phone. At some point he smells cookies and his eyes go a little misty when he hears Christopher’s delighted laughter when Buck says he can sneak one in before dinner. Somewhere between Christopher finishing his homework and asking to watch an episode of his television show Eddie finally manages to find the willpower to get out of bed. He still feels a little off balanced, a little shaken from the things that live behind his eyelids, but he’s standing, and that’s a start. He fishes a hoodie out of his dresser, one that’s slightly too big and smells a little like pine, which means it must be Buck’s. He slips it on, feeling a warmth bloom in his chest as he makes his way into the living room. Buck and Christopher are playing rock paper scissors to decide whether they should have pasta or tacos for dinner and when Eddie enters the room Buck spots him first, his lips curling into a smile that reminds Eddie of the sun.
“Hey Eds,” Buck says before he frowns at Christopher’s excited whoop, “I guess we’re having pasta for dinner.”
“Don’t forget the garlic bread,” Christopher states importantly, “that’s the best part.”
“Eddie,” Buck says in a mock serious tone, “you really have to teach your kid that cheating is bad, there’s no way he can win rock paper scissors every time.”
“Hey,” Christopher says before falling over into a fit of giggles.
“Oh,” Eddie smiles for the first time today, small, but soft, “I think he learned that from you,” he points at Buck, who pretends to be scandalized by the accusation, causing Christopher to laugh even harder.
“Eddie,” Buck slaps a hand over his chest, “you wound me.”
He gets up from the couch, his shoulder brushing Eddie’s as he makes his way into the kitchen. Eddie grabs his wrist, frowning as Buck turns to face him, “Do you need any help?”
“Nah,” Buck says, his fingers gently smoothing the frown lines away, “just relax with Chris, I think I can handle dinner.”
His fingers drop so that he can give Eddie’s hand a reassuring squeeze and Eddie’s pretty fucking sure he’s so close to blurting out something embarrassing like do you know how much I love you? But Buck’s already heading into the kitchen and Eddie takes a deep breath to control the hurricane of emotions swirling in his chest. He sinks down onto the couch and Christopher lets him cuddle close as they watch an episode of Digimon because, apparently, it was Buck’s favorite show as a kid, so naturally Christopher has to watch it too. Eddie doesn’t feel magically better, but the ache in his chest quiets to a dull hum. The sound of Buck moving about in the kitchen soothes some of his frayed nerves and he settles further into his seat, letting the warmth from Buck’s sunshine smile, of Christoper pressed into his side seep some of the chill out of his bones.
When dinner is ready he pushes most of it around his plate. Forces himself to eat enough to stop Buck from giving him worried glances over the table. He quietly listens to Buck and Christopher debate whether sharks are actually fish or not (to which Eddie has no fucking clue where to begin on that subject) smiling to himself when both boys gesture wildly between them to articulate their points.
“Buck,” Christopher says as he deposits his napkin onto his empty plate.
“Yeah, buddy,” Buck hums as he begins to clean up, waving off Eddie’s weak protest that he can at least do the dishes since Buck cooked.
“I think we should take dad for a drive.”
Eddie blinks a few times, not sure he heard Christopher correctly.
“You know,” Buck grins, his head popping back in from the kitchen, “I was just thinking the same thing.”
Eddie shakes his head, wonders if he accidentally fell asleep, “What?”
“A drive, dad,” Christopher repeats, “Buck and I take them when we’re feeling sad.”
Eddie ducks his head and tries to hastily wipe the tears pooling in his eyes. The ache in his chest comes back tenfold, but it’s dulled by the warmth he feels from Buck and Christopher still softly smiling at him. He knows it’s okay to be sad and for his son to know he’s not hiding, but he’s still working to untangle all his messy feelings and his even messier head.
“Sure,” his voice wavers a little, “a drive sounds nice.”
He has no idea what it entails or how it makes them feel better, but Christopher looks a little relieved, which makes guilt curdle in Eddie’s stomach and he has to fight to keep his dinner from coming back up. Buck catches his gaze, reads it clearly on his face, because he’s Buck and Eddie’s never been good at hiding from him.
“Chris,” Buck says, “why don’t you grab a jacket and meet us by the door.”
Christopher nods, getting up from his seat and patting his dad’s arm on the way to his bedroom. Eddie tries not to cry. Again. He pulls his lip between his teeth for a moment, blinking back the tears before he gives in and looks at Buck. He just raises an eyebrow, not trusting his voice to remain steady.
Buck’s head dips to his chin, a far away and sad smile ghosting his lips, “Uh, when you were in the hospital after you got shot,” Eddie tries not to flinch, “Christopher and I would drive along the coastline, listening to music just to — to get out of the house, you know?”
Eddie doesn’t say anything, but his face softens into something fond as he looks at Buck.
“Anyway,” Buck huffs out a puff of air, “we still drive around sometimes when we’re sad,” Buck is grinning again and Eddie thinks he might actually melt right into the floor, “we have a playlist and everything.”
“Should I be scared?” Eddie teases, knowing anything Buck and Christopher put together is probably utterly obnoxious and oddly endearing.
“Oh,” Buck looks a little too delighted, “just you wait, Eds.”
Buck offers his hand out to him and Eddie pretends to consider not taking it before Buck playfully shoves him. Eddie wants to trace over the lines in Buck’s palm until he can lace their fingers together, until he can hold onto Buck for forever like he wants to. He doesn’t though. He lets Buck slip right through his fingers, mourning the heat the younger man takes with him. He follows Buck out to the hallway where Christopher is already eagerly waiting.
“I swear,” Eddie sighs as he helps Christopher into Buck’s Jeep, “if that Lego song is the first one on this playlist I’m calling Hen to come pick me up.”
Christopher cackles before he starts singing, “Everything is awesome,” bouncing in his seat until Eddie cracks a smile.
“Please,” Buck scoffs, buckling his seatbelt, “we have taste.”
“Yeah, dad,” Christopher agrees, “we have taste.”
“It’s obviously the closing song not the opener,” Buck smirks in Eddie’s direction just to watch Eddie, predictably, roll his eyes.
They pull out of Eddie’s driveway and he is pleasantly surprised to hear Young Blood by The Naked and Famous float through the radio. He relaxes against his seat, turning so he can look out the window. The sun is just beginning to set, the sky bathed in hues of oranges, yellows, pinks, and blues that makes Eddie wish he knew how to paint. The cityscape of LA slowly begins to disappear as Buck heads towards the coast. Some of the songs surprise him, some make him laugh, but nothing makes him feel more at home than listening to Buck and Christopher sing along to every single song, never missing a beat. Eddie inhales deeply, the smell of salt and the cool brush of air from the rolled down windows makes something beneath his skin tingle, a pleasant buzz that only magnifies when he catches sight of Buck in the setting sunlight. His curls are windswept, cheeks a dusty pink. He looks happy, vibrant, and all Eddie can think about is the sun, how he’s just a planet caught in Buck’s orbit, happy to fall into his gravity forever.
“Buck,” Christopher says, a little breathless, “it’s time!”
Eddie snaps out of his love-stricken daze, catching Christopher’s mischievous grin in the rearview mirror, “Time for what?”
“The best song of the drive,” Buck answers, turning the volume up.
The first few notes of the song play and Eddie has to close his eyes. It’s the last song he expects, especially when he feels something close to nostalgia wrap like a coil around his chest. He’s fifteen again in the kitchen with his sisters and Eddie can not do this.
“This song?” He chokes out.
“On really bad days,” Buck explains, his eyes soft as gives Eddie’s leg a gentle squeeze, like he knows what this means to Eddie, “Maddie and I would pile into the Jeep and she would drive around our small town, blasting this song on repeat until we were both crying with laughter.”
Eddie isn’t crying. He’s not. But he sniffs a little, his voice watery when he says, “You and Maddie listened to this song growing up?”
“Oh yeah,” Buck smiles, “making Christopher a Celine Dion fan was cake.”
To prove Buck’s point Christopher starts singing, overly dramatic, hand gestures and all. Eddie lets a few tears slip down his cheeks and he shakes his head to rid himself of the feeling that’s beginning to grow in the space between his ribs.
“Not this song,” a fifteen year old Eddie groans, stabbing his fork moodily into the leftovers abuela saved for him.
He points his heated glare in Adrianna’s direction, her shark-tooth grin only growing wider as she cranks up the volume on the radio. Sophia is by the sink, making a mess more than she’s doing dishes, soap suds slipping down her arms, covering their mother’s bright blue kitchen towels with sunflowers. She pulls a spatula from the water, brandishing it like a microphone.
“Come on, Edito,” Adrianna says as she flicks his ear, “we both know this song always makes you smile.”
“Not now,” he sighs, dropping his fork so he can cross his arms over his chest.
He’s tired and unbelievably frustrated. He’s just gotten home from a double-header where they lost in the bottom of the ninth because Eddie struck out. He only has a day to prepare an explanation for when their father gets home from a work trip. The bitter sting of disappointment is already wrapping his lungs into knots, making it hard to breathe. The only thing to make it worse is that Mark, his best friend on the team (that stupidly makes something warm and pleasant buzz in Eddie’s chest when Mark laughs) currently isn’t talking to him. Something about almost blowing their chances at the playoffs and that Eddie needs to get his head in the game.
“There were nights when the wind was so cold,” Sophia starts and Adrianna drops back to drape her arm around her sister’s shoulder, “that my body froze in bed if I just listened to it right outside the window.”
He sinks further into his chair, ignoring them as they carry on dramatically, singing into the spatula, twirling around the room trying to catch Eddie’s eye. He frowns unhappily when a soap bubble lands on his nose and he blows it off with more force than necessary. They sandwich him in the chair with matching grins singing much too loudly in his ear, “There were nights of endless pleasure, it was more than any laws allow!”
Eddie sighs dramatically, but he drops his arms, smiling as he joins in the next line with them, “Baby, baby!”
“You have to sing dad,” Christopher brings him back to the present, his finger poking Eddie in the shoulder.
“Who says I know the words?” Eddie tries to keep his voice neutral, casual, but he misses the mark.
“It’s Celine Dion, Eddie.”
“Yeah, it’s Celine Dion, dad.”
Eddie can only laugh, but he refuses to sing. Crossing his arms over his chest like a shield, like he did all those years ago. He tries not to think about when his father would say things like boys don’t sing songs like that. How he and his sisters would sneak outside in the middle of the night, with their kitchen radio, creating coordinated dances beneath the stars of El Paso. How this song still makes something deep within his bones, stir, beat against his chest, begging to be free. Buck and Christopher suddenly go quiet, both of them leaning closer towards Eddie, the sun slipping below the horizon.
“But if I touch you like this,” they whisper sing and Eddie closes his eyes, knowing he will give in instantly if he looks at them, “and if you kiss me like that. It was so long ago but it’s all coming back to me.”
Eddie shakes his head. He can’t do this. He won’t do this. Buck and Christopher keep singing, growing louder, off-key as the song continues to build, “There were moments of gold and there were flashes of light.”
It’s unbearably endearing and Eddie fights the smile that curls in the corner of his mouth. That something behind his breastbone, embedded in his marrow just grows and grows and grows. It pounds behind his sternum, thrums like electricity in his veins, and it’s not just Buck and Christopher he can hear singing, but Adrianna and Sophia in the kitchen with a spatula as a microphone, “There were nights of endless pleasure, it was more than all your laws allow!”
And Eddie doesn’t — can’t — he inhales and —
“Baby, baby, baby!”
His hand is gripping the front of his shirt and he finds Buck’s sunshine smile as he joins in, just as loud and untamed. “When you touch me like this and when you hold me like that. It was gone with the wind, but it's all coming back to me.” The three of them fill the Jeep with their voices, the wind picking up their melody, floating it out over the Pacific Ocean.
“When you see me like this,” Eddie solos, holding his hand out to Buck.
“And when I see you like that,” Buck calls in return.
They both turn slightly, pointing to Christopher who takes the next line, “Then we see what we want to see.”
“All coming back to me,” They all come back together, “The flesh and the fantasies all coming back to me. I can barely recall but it's all coming back to me now.”
The way Buck looks at him makes Eddie feel like no matter how high he goes, how far he jumps he will always find solid ground. That Buck will always catch him. And Eddie can’t keep this one, last piece hidden anymore. It’s broken though his crumbling defenses, past the walls shattered by Celine fucking Dion. He loves Buck. Unconditionally. Irrevocably. All of those stupidly romatinc sentiments that has him so far gone for the man sitting next to him he’s practically vibrating out of his skin. He wants to tell Buck, wants to scream it for the universe to hear, but he doesn’t know how.
As if Buck reads his mind, he reaches over, taking Eddie’s hands in his own, intertwining their fingers. And maybe, as he catches Buck’s steadfast gaze, those beautiful ocean eyes, Buck feels the same. Eddie squeezes tightly, his thumb brushing lightly over Buck’s warm skin. They stay like that until Buck pulls into an overlook area, Christopher passed out in the backseat, snoring softly. They’re somewhere by the water, the stars brighter, dotting the sky endlessly so far away from the city lights. They settle against the Jeep and Buck takes Eddie’s hand again without a second thought. Eddie feels like he’s burning from where they’re touching, all points of contact their own five-alarm fire.
“You know,” Eddie says after a long while, because he needs to say something, “when I was younger my sisters used to play that song all the time.” Buck tilts his head, lips curled softly in the corners as he listens. “We would dance around the kitchen, singing until our lungs gave out.”
“I knew you were a secret Celine fan,” Buck teases, bumping his shoulder lightly into Eddie.
Eddie laughs, chin dipping to his chest. He bites his lip, lets everything he’s been feeling for Buck sink deep into his entire being. When he finally looks up Buck is waiting, but there is no tension or apprehension. Just gentle assurance that tells Eddie he would wait forever. Eddie takes a deep breath, he thinks Buck has waited long enough.
“Thank you,” he whispers, his free hand coming up to cup Buck’s cheek.
“For what?” Buck asks, leaning into Eddie’s touch, his eyes fluttering close.
Everything. For loving Christopher. For loving me. For never giving up. For always being there. Just—
“Everything,” Eddie says because it’s true and he wants Buck to know.
“For you, Eddie,” Buck says looking at Eddie now, “always.”
And when you kiss me like this
Eddie closes the distance between them kissing Buck slowly, reverently, savoring the way Buck tastes and how he sounds as Eddie swipes his tongue across Buck’s lips.
And when I touch you like this
Buck wraps his hands around Eddie’s waist, pulling him closer, kissing him harder, deeper, with everything he has. Eddie’s knees are weak and the only reason he is still standing is because Buck is practically holding him up.
And if you do it like this
(It's all coming back to me now)
And Eddie wants to tell Buck, wants to imprint the words I love you into his skin, but for now he just holds onto Buck tighter and kisses him under the moonlight and the stars.