Archive of Our Own

El Paso is great. The air smells like desert. The sky is blue today, and that’s nice. Eddie can see the Franklin Mountains from his new bedroom’s window, if he looks down the street at a specific angle. That’s nice too. If there’s one thing he missed about El Paso, it’s the mountains. Plus, it’s warm out for early December, and Eddie is glad that with all the changes, one thing he doesn’t have to worry about is acclimating to drastically different weather. His new house is empty, full of cardboard boxes, and eight hundred miles closer to his son than the one he left behind in Los Angeles. Everything is great. Really. 

“It sounds like you’re lying,” Buck says. 

Eddie is standing in the middle of his living room now. It’s completely bare of everything besides the pile of boxes in the corner and the couch the moving guys had helped him bring inside, and it’s sort of overwhelming—all this empty space in the house that’s supposed to be his. Buck had made him promise to call once he was settled in, and he’s pretty sure that was supposed to mean completely unpacked, which is something Eddie’s not. But something about leaving the boxes felt terrible, and something about taking out all of the stuff he’s used to seeing against the backdrop of his LA house and putting it here felt worse, and then Eddie didn’t really know what to do besides stand there and question everything. Questioning everything felt like the wrong move, especially only five hours into stepping foot into this city, so he called Buck. 

Buck’s voice doesn’t sound accusatory—just like he’s merely stating a fact. Eddie scoffs. 

“I’m not lying,” he says, toeing at a box by his feet. “I’m just—I’m being optimistic.” 

Buck hums, long and pointed. “Right,” he draws, clearly disbelieving. Eddie doesn’t know if he’s picking up on nuances in Eddie’s tone in a way that shouldn’t even be possible through a phone speaker, or if he just knows Eddie too well. Probably the latter. “Is this like how you weren’t lying about liking the potato casserole Chim brought to Bobby’s house that one time? That kinda thing?” 

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Because I wasn’t lying about that either.” (He was. He so was. How do you make potato salad taste sour? ) 

“C’mon, Eddie. You know you can always be real with me.” 

The truth is, Eddie’s not really sure how things are going. There’s an unease that comes from being in El Paso again, and he’s not quite sure what the cause is: all the memories from the years he’s already spent here, or the apprehension for the ones to come. He doesn’t have anything against El Paso, not really. It’s just a city, made up of nothing but dirt and buildings and thousands of people he doesn’t know. But if he looks past the physical, it feels like something more—like a vacuum of space and time he has no control inside of, a place where everything is destined to spin and shatter and spiral. A black hole of pain and loss that’s been threatening to pull him back in for years, and now he’s finally succumbed to the gravity of it, because he has to. He has to for his son. 

He’s not sure what ruined this city for him. Sometimes he wonders, if I had been raised in a different house, with a different set of parents, would I still feel this way towards it? But Sophia and Adriana both loved El Paso, both still lived in it by choice, not necessity, so it has to be something about him. Like he and this city both have a magnet of the same charge embedded in them, repulsing each other. 

Eddie will live here. He can do it. He’s just not sure he can do it without being the slightest bit miserable about it. 

He doesn’t want to speak that out loud, though. He doesn’t want to give too much weight to his fears, doesn’t want to soak in his misery. He wants to be present here, and he wants to enjoy it—getting to be within arm’s reach of his son again. He’s accepting his fate—accepting whatever living here will bring him—but that doesn’t mean he’s not hoping it’ll be something actually good, despite his doubts. And even if it’s not, even if the months or even years or (god forbid) the forever he spends here are the worst of his life, there’s always one silver lining: Christopher. 

“I know, Buck. I promise, I’m not—I’m not going to be keeping things from you over here.” Lord knows he’s already going to be suffering from a serious Evan Buckley drought he’s not prepared for. He doesn’t want to make it harder for himself by trying to hide from the one person he’s never had to hide from. “It’s so early, man. I literally just got here. Haven’t exactly had time to spiral yet.” 

Buck huffs. “You never know what could happen in five hours,” he says, but that’s how Eddie knows that he’s dropping it, letting Eddie off the hook for now. 

Eddie takes a breath in relief and ends up inhaling a bit of dust from one of the boxes. 

It’s silent for a moment. Eddie feels weird just standing here with his phone pressed to his ear, doing nothing but staring at where the light is pouring in from the blinds and streaking against the shiny hardwood floors. He should start unpacking, give his hands something to do. He can see a box from where he’s standing that has the words living room scribbled on the top; maybe he could start there. But then he remembers what’s in it—all the pictures of Buck and Christopher and Shannon that used to go onto his mantle—and the idea of taking those out just makes him ache as much as it did to put them in the box in the first place. 

None of this feels right. It’s a feeling he can’t get rid of, no matter how hard he tries. A feeling he’s going to have to weather. 

“So,” Buck says, breaking the silence. “You already went over to your parents’ place?” 

“Yeah,” he says, then pauses. He did go, because as soon as the moving guys had driven away, Eddie realized he couldn’t stand in El Paso for another second without seeing his son. But that hadn’t been pre-planned, so—“How did you know about that?” 

“Um.” Buck hesitates, and Eddie can see it just as clearly as if Buck was in front of him—the flush he knows that’s infiltrating his cheeks, the way he’s probably ducking his head, sheepish. “I saw your location.” 

Eddie snorts, not even surprised. “Of course you did.” 

“Sorry,” Buck says, as if Eddie is anything other than fond right now. “I don’t want to hover or anything, it’s just—” He breaks off with a huff, like he can’t find the words to explain himself. 

“Hey,” Eddie says, soft. “I get it.” Then, teasing: “And I rest assured knowing that if my drive here ended with me in a ditch, you would be the first to know.” 

Buck laughs, and even through the phone, the sound makes Eddie smile like only a few things can. Eddie chuckles too, and for a second everything feels normal. 

“But yeah,” Eddie says, once they go silent, “I went over there.” 

“And?”

Eddie shrugs even though Buck can’t see him. “It was…I mean, it was about what I expected. My parents were surprised. Disapproving, probably, although they didn’t say anything.” 

In retrospect, he probably should’ve told his parents he was moving—not because he owes them anything, but because the heads-up would’ve probably prevented a lot of the awkward shuffling and confusion. He thought telling them would lead to more chances of him being talked out of it, and the decision was already hard enough by itself, but showing up out of the blue and with a hey I actually live here now! was probably not the best move either. 

His mother had opened the door, shock morphing into confusion and then displeasure. She let Eddie inside with a face that said she was only doing it because she had to, as if their relationship was bound more by politeness than love these days. He arrived in the middle of their dinner, which was good and bad. Good, because it meant Christopher was downstairs already, and bad, because it meant he didn’t have a chance to say anything to him without his parents hearing. Surprisingly, though, his parents held their tongues for the duration of the meal. Eddie is just glad they left the days of screaming matches behind when he turned thirty (although he’s pretty sure that this is only because they’ve accepted he’s going to be a fuck-up no matter what they do).

“And Christopher…well, he didn’t seem mad, at least? He was confused too, at first, and then when I explained…I don’t know. He acted indifferent towards it all.”

“He’s a teenager, though,” Buck points out. “That could mean he was secretly thrilled.” 

“I don’t know about that. But he didn’t ignore me, so.” Eddie shrugs. “And my mom said I could come over for dinner on Wednesdays and Saturdays—apparently those are the only days Christopher doesn’t have anything after school—and I offered to give him a ride, if he ever needed one. Don’t know if he’ll take me up on it, but he didn’t seem against the idea.” 

“That’s great, Eddie,” Buck says, sounding genuine. 

“Yeah.” Eddie really tries to believe it. Then suddenly, desperate for reassurance: “I mean, do you—do you really think this is going to work? Do you think he’ll warm up to me?” 

Buck clicks his tongue consideringly. “You’re his dad, Eddie. He misses you, whether he shows it or not. And besides”—Eddie imagines Buck shrugging—“I know how hard you’re willing to try to fix things with him. It may take some time, but…there’s no way he’s not going to see that too.” 

Time, Eddie thinks. All he needs is time. And he has time—however long he needs. More time to reconnect with Christopher, more time for this place to rot him away from the inside. 

The Law of Conservation of Matter applies to healing, Eddie has realized. To fix one part of you, you have to take something from another. There is nothing that can be gained without sacrifice. 

Eddie hates it. He hates what he’s sacrificing. But it’s Chris—he always comes first. 

“What about you?” Eddie asks. “You’ve been up to anything?” 

Buck chuckles. “Haven’t left the house yet.” 

He says it like it’s fine, like it’s not something to worry about, but Eddie still freezes. 

“Buck,” he says, mouthing going dry. “Are you— you’re not—” 

“Eddie, relax.” Buck cuts him off before he can go any further, laughing a little bit like he’s amused. “I’m already missing you like crazy, don’t get me wrong, but—it’s my day off, man. Even if you were here, I would probably still be spending the whole day in bed.” 

No, you wouldn’t, Eddie thinks. Because you would be with me. You would be on my couch, scrolling through your phone and telling me about the podcast you listened to yesterday, or you would be next to me at the grocery store, knocking into my shoulder as I push the cart, helping me pick out the best squash. 

His heart aches in his chest, and for a second, he can’t even breathe for how badly it hurts. 

Distantly, it occurs to him that they’ve only been apart for twenty-four hours, and they’re both already acting like the world is going to crack down the middle any moment now. Like the other is in danger of shattering. 

They’ve spent twenty-four hours apart before, more times than Eddie can count. They’ve spent as long as a week apart before, like when Eddie came here for his father’s retirement party. But they’ve never spent twenty-four hours apart like this before—knowing that it could be the first of an uncountable amount. That makes it all the worse. 

Eddie blows out a breath, follows it with an unsteady laugh. “Sorry man,” he says. “It’s just—” 

Would it be weird if he said I’m worried about you? Buck must know it, anyway. Eddie’s spent so much of the last month caught up in the move—in all the logistics and finances—but he’s so in tune with Buck, even when he has no energy to give, he still finds himself watching him. Picking up things. And Buck has seemed fine, for the most part. But Eddie has seen the cracks. He knows Buck too well to miss them. The fine is a facade, and under it is a league of hurt, of fragility. 

Buck’s been trying to hide it from him, because he thinks it’s selfish, maybe, to be hurting; or because he doesn’t want to get in Eddie’s way or make him feel bad for his decision. And Eddie thinks that’s valiant of him, but misplaced. Knowing Buck is hurting without knowing how much Buck is hurting has only stressed Eddie out more. Like he’s not only going to lose Buck to the distance, but lose him to himself too. 

He wished Buck would just be honest. He’s said it: I’ll miss you. He’s said it a thousand times. But he hasn’t said, I wish you would stay. 

Maybe that’s for the best. It probably is. Still, Eddie finds himself thinking, ridiculously, I want to hear it, even if he wouldn’t be able to listen. 

“I get it,” Buck says, before Eddie can devolve into a spiral. “This is all—big changes.” 

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. As if being concerned about how Buck is doing has ever not been a thing for him. 

“You doing anything right now?” 

Eddie glances around. “Well, I’m standing in a living room full of boxes, if that counts.”  

“You haven’t started unpacking?” 

“I was getting there,” Eddie lies. Maybe he was just planning on living in an empty house forever, that’s how little he wanted to actually touch any of it. But he’s sure at some point he would relent. 

“Maybe you should get started,” Buck says. “Don’t want to leave the book I got you for your birthday rotting in a box for too long.” 

Eddie looks at the cardboard jungle he’s surrounded by and thinks that none of this stuff deserves to have to live here, but none of it deserves to be locked away either. He sighs. “Fine. You have time to stick around?” 

“Yep. Actually—” Eddie hears a shuffle, as if Buck is sliding out of bed. “I’ll get started on dinner while you’re doing that.” 

Eddie remembers all the days he would sit at the kitchen table, working on his finances or doing some early Christmas shopping online, as Buck cooked. Buck used to say it helped him focus to have somebody else working near him. Sometimes they would talk, sometimes they would be silent, but either way, it was calming—the deep, easy familiarity it takes to just sit and exist near somebody else, listening to Buck chop his vegetables as he clacked on the keyboard. 

Maybe they don’t have to lose that just because they’re eight hundred miles apart. Eddie sits down, criss-cross applesauce on the floor. Buck walks down the stairs. 

Pulling the first cardboard box in front of him, Eddie thinks, it’s gonna be okay. It’s all gonna be okay. 

When Sophia and Adriana first find out he’s in El Paso, nearly a week later, they’re pissed. His text messages are a stream of i’m gonna kill you eddie, and Omg why didn’t you tell us, and you’re the worst brother ever, and You’ve already been here for a week???

Then, it’s so, when are we seeing you? 

All three of them haven’t been in the same room together in far too long. He saw Adri last year, when she came up to LA for a trip with some friends. Eddie took her out to his favorite restaurant, and that three hours was all they got before she had to run off to some other plans. Sophia and her husband were there for his dad’s retirement party, but Adri was busy with graduate school all the way in Seattle, and couldn’t make it. The last time they got together, all three of them, was Sophia’s wedding, and that was nearly five years ago now. 

This has been a long time coming. 

They set up a date and a time, and a week later, they’re both at his door. 

It’s a flurry of motion, of squeals and hugs and I can’t believe you’re here s. Adriana wraps her arms around him, the bottle of wine she brought clinking against his back, and hugs him like she’s missed him. Sophia, on the other hand, only holds the hug for a split second before she’s leaning back, taking him with her dark eyes. He’s wearing a dark green henley and blue jeans, and Sophia flicks at the fabric of the shirt, frowning with exaggerated distaste. “I see you still dress like you’re on the set of Brokeback Mountain.”

Adriana laughs. “Dangerous comparison,” she says, and Eddie’s never seen Brokeback Mountain, so he feels like he’s missing something. “Also, give him a break. He’s a millennial.” 

Sophia rolls her eyes, pushing past Eddie to walk into the foyer. She’s always been this way—breezing into every room like she already owns it. “So am I. It’s not an excuse for bad fashion taste.” 

Eddie looks down at his outfit with a frown. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” he asks, scrambling to follow them into his living room, where they’re both looking around with considering glances. 

The house has come a long way in the two weeks since he got here. Finally, he’s completely unpacked, and the rooms are all furnished—but still, it feels achingly empty. He wonders if they see that too. Sophia’s only been inside the house on South Bedford once, Adri twice, but he wonders if they feel it anyway—how lifeless and impersonal this one is in comparison. 

Neither of them say anything. Adriana sets her bottle of wine on the kitchen counter. Sophia flops into a chair, swinging her legs up over the armrest, and says, “It looks like you’re a dad. And also like you haven’t changed since high school. It’s not a good combination.” 

Eddie makes eye contact with Adriana, and they both shake their heads, amused. “Thanks for your opinion,” he says. “Next time I care about being fashionable, I’ll come to you.” 

The conversation dies out a bit after that. Adriana pours them each a wine glass, then after expressing that she doesn’t trust either of their music tastes, commandeers control of Eddie’s bluetooth speaker. Eddie recognizes the opening song to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, and it makes him think of Buck—in the kitchen in a past life, The Chain playing from his phone as he used his batter-coated whisk as a pretend microphone. He used to always do that, exaggeratedly mouthing along to the words while keeping eye contact with Eddie, and it always made Eddie laugh. 

Now, he aches over it. 

Eddie sits down on the couch. Adriana settles next to him. For a long moment, it’s silent, and Eddie suddenly realizes he’s not sure what to say to them. 

Once upon a time, he knew these two nearly inside and out, back when they all lived under the same roof and spent Sunday mornings side by side in the same church pews and Friday nights at their Tio’s dining table. Their relationship had never been super close, not like Maddie and Buck’s, but they were siblings, and that counted for something—it counted for a lot. There’s a level of understanding, of familiarity, that comes from years of squabbling and fighting over the bathroom and the last popsicle in the fridge, and from those rare moments of companionship that came in between. 

Eddie used to braid these girls’ hair. He used to tell them bedtime stories. He used to pick them up and throw them on the couch until they couldn’t breathe from how hard they were giggling. He taught Sophia how to crack an egg, making breakfast for themselves on mornings both of their parents were gone. He would let Adriana crawl into his bed on nights when she had nightmares or got too scared by the thunder outside her window. When Sophia’s first boyfriend broke up with her, he dabbed away her running mascara with a napkin and told her he thought she was beautiful. 

Then, Eddie met Shannon, got her pregnant, joined the army, and nothing was ever the same. The world pulled him out of that house, out of the closeness of those relationships, and he never fully got it back. Adriana was only fourteen when he left for his first tour, Sophia seventeen—and thirteen years later, those are still the only versions of them he truly knows. 

He thinks of Sophia as being headstrong, sure, fiery. Thinks of Adriana as being gentler, on the quiet side, smarter than anyone he’s ever met. But now Sophia is married, and Adriana is straight out of grad school with a PhD in biochemistry, and he doesn’t know how much of that is still true. Doesn’t know how much they’ve changed while he’s been too wrapped up in himself and Christopher for over a decade to be paying attention. 

Eddie remembers his resolution to try to make something good out of this, out of being here, and he thinks maybe this could be his way—taking the opportunity to truly get to know his sisters. So, resolving to put aside any lingering awkwardness, he breaks the silence by asking questions. 

Within thirty minutes, he learns that Sophia’s getting a new partner at her vet clinic, and that Sophia and Matt had a big blowout fight a year ago, but now their relationship is better than ever and they’re even looking to adopt their first child. Adriana tells him about her new job, some sort of pharmaceutical research that goes straight over Eddie’s head, and how she has a date with one of the lab technicians she works with next week. Sophia got a new pet snake; Adriana’s thinking about adopting a cat. There’s a new burger joint that got put in by the Target, and both Adriana and Sophia are dying to try it. 

But after a while, Eddie runs out of questions, and finally, the attention gets turned to him. 

“So,” Sophia begins, dragging a finger across the fabric of Eddie’s chair. “How have you been?” 

She phrases the question meaningfully. Eddie looks at her, then Adriana, and they’re both looking back at him intently—as if they’re waiting for a real answer and not just a half-hearted I’m fine. 

Eddie sighs. He figures he should offer them some genuine honesty after everything they’ve divulged to him already. “It’s been…a lot,” he answers, truthfully. “I…” He looks at them. “How much do you know about what happened?” 

Sophia and Adriana share a meaningful glance. Adriana looks back at him and admits, tentatively, “A lot. But it was Mom who told us, and—”

“We don’t exactly trust her word for it,” Sophia finishes for her, glancing at him. 

Eddie can read the subtext: whatever Helena said to them, it wasn’t kind. 

“It’s probably true, what she said,” Eddie says, as much as he hates to admit it. Although he’s sure his mother didn’t do him any favors, this is the sort of story you don’t need to embellish to make him look bad. It’s right there, at the center of it, an unavoidable truth. “I—I really fucked up this year. I’m trying but—” He breaks off with a sigh, dragging his hand over his face. “I don’t know if it’s fixable.” 

“Your relationship with Christopher?” Adriana asks, her voice quiet. 

Eddie nods, lips pressed together. He takes a long sip of his wine, washing down the pain of the reminder with the earthy taste. 

“Look, Edmundo,” Sophia says, leaning forward in her chair. “That kid loves you. You’re written all over him—it’s honestly a bit uncanny.” 

Eddie wonders if they’ve seen him a lot over the last couple of months, especially as Adriana starts nodding in agreement. “His smile…” 

“It’s all you,” Sophia says, tilting her head at Eddie with a small curve to her own lips. “I can’t promise anything, but I don’t think there’s anything unfixable with a love that strong.” 

It’s strange to hear her speak so genuinely. She’s never been an emotional person, always was quick to side-eye anyone who showed vulnerability or weakness, always quick to hide any of her own. Maybe that’s why she did so much better than Eddie when it came to their parents. Maybe it was just a coping mechanism learned from living in their care. But either way, Sophia had never been sentimental, or comforting, had never been a soft creature. She was a wall, and Eddie respected her for that. 

This—this is new. A product of her age that Eddie hasn’t seen before. 

He smiles, weak but grateful. “Thanks, Soph.” It’s reassuring, even if he’s not sure he fully believes it. 

“I just don’t think all is what it seems with him, you know,” Adriana pipes in carefully, looking down into her glass. This is how it’s always been, even when they were kids—Sophia asserts her opinion without hesitation or shame, while Adriana hesitates, measuring the value and weight of every one of her words. Eddie appreciates both the blunt honesty and the consideration. “He’s hiding what he’s really feeling from you.” 

“Nobody actually likes living with our parents,” Sophia says in agreement. 

Eddie frowns, looks at both of them. “Well—you did.” 

Simultaneously, Sophia and Adriana roll their eyes. 

“Totally.” 

“Yeah, that’s why we're so great and well-adjusted now, because of their stellar parenting.” 

“Honestly, I just wish we could move back there, I miss it so much.” 

“For sure—”

“Okay, I get it,” Eddie rushes in before they can go on, cheeks flaming. “The sarcasm was unnecessary.” 

They both grin, amused. 

“Look, Eddie,” Sophia says, crossing her legs. “We’ll gladly let you take the award for Most Mistreated Diaz Sibling if you want it, but you should know it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park for us either.” 

Eddie considers this. He had never known it growing up—that Adriana and Sophia were having a hard time too. Sure, they got in trouble sometimes, for stealing Helena’s fancy lipstick or for sneaking out, but that was different from what Eddie faced—years worth of neglect and disapproval. In comparison, Ramon and Helena always seemed so loving towards his sister. But maybe he had missed it—the truth hidden under his jealousy. Maybe their love was just as sharp as their scorn had been, too. 

“Yeah, but—” he shakes his head. “They’re different now. They act like completely different parents around him.” 

It bothers him a little bit. Not that he doesn’t want Christopher to be treated well by his grandparents, because he does. He’s happy for Chris, happy that he can have a good relationship with them even if Eddie’s will always be rocky. It’s just, sometimes he sees them with him, teaching him how to play chess or showing up to his school events, and thinks you never would’ve done this for me. 

Sophia rolls her eyes again. “They hover over him like helicopters, Eddie. I can’t imagine any fourteen-year-old enjoying that.” 

Christopher, for sure, wouldn’t. He’s always wanted to be independent. 

“He’s settling for them,” Adriana speaks, “because he’s too stubborn to ask for you.” 

“I think he’s waiting for you to ask for what you want first,” Sophia says, grabbing the wine bottle off of the coffee table to pour herself a new glass. 

Laughing, Eddie says, “I’m pretty sure he knows what I want.” It’s pretty fucking obvious. 

Sophia takes a sip and looks at him from over the glass rim. “Like Adri said, he’s stubborn. He loves you a lot, but he’s scared of getting hurt again. Before he gives you anything real, he wants to see that you’re serious about fixing things. He wants to hear you say you want him to come home.” 

Eddie blinks at her for several seconds. “Well, aren’t you two insightful today?” He wasn’t expecting their reunion to turn into a philosophy lesson, or a psychoanalysis on his son. It’s kind of refreshing, though—this reminder that they actually care. That they’ve been thinking of him over the last couple of months, and not just out of pity for his situation. 

“You need it,” Sophia says. “You’ve always been the dumbest sibling.” 

If she wasn’t holding a glass of red wine, Eddie would throw a pillow at her. 

Instead, he settles for sticking his tongue out at her. She sticks her tongue out back, and they’re in the middle of an epic tongue-sticking-out-battle when Eddie’s phone dings on the table next to him. 

Usually, his phone stays on silent. But now that he’s in El Paso—eight hundred miles away from about five of his favorite people—it’s become a more important source of communication. Most of all, he doesn’t want to miss one of Buck’s regularly scheduled phone calls, so when he’s not at the station, he keeps his ringer on. 

He flips over his phone. Predictably, it’s Buck’s name on his screen. Eddie clicks on the message. 

Had a fun call, it reads. 

Attached is a picture of Buck in his turnouts, his hair left a sweaty mess from removing his helmet. He’s holding two kittens, one in his arms, the other balanced on his shoulder and trying to get a good lick of face. The cats are adorable—both tiny and black—but the real highlight of the photo is Buck himself, smiling so brightly it could outshine the sun; his eyes squinted up and crinkled out of real joy. 

Eddie aches with affection. Before he can overthink it, he holds down on the photo and saves it to his camera roll. Then, he types out a message: Please tell me you didn’t try to take one home. 

No, comes the quick response. But Bobby did have to physically drag me away. 

Biting his lip, Eddie tries and fails to quell his smile. 

He looks up from his phone and realizes that both of his sisters are watching him, and suddenly looking very, very interested. 

“What is it?” Sophia asks. 

“Um.” Eddie hesitates, looks back at the image. Smiles again, because he can’t help it. “Just Buck,” he says, and he sort of forgets that he might need to explain further, sort of forgets that there’s anyone who wouldn't know exactly who that is. 

“Buck…?” Adriana begins. Her eyes widen, and she looks at Sophia. “Is that—?” 

“Instagram Guy,” Sophia says with a nod. “It sure is.” 

Adriana gasps, and Eddie jerks his phone away from his face so fast it nearly gives him whiplash. “What?” he demands, eyes flying between the two of them. “Why are you calling him that?” 

“Because he’s always on your Instagram,” Adriana says at the same time that Sophia says, “Because he looks like an Instagram model.” 

Adriana nods sagely. “That too.” 

Eddie gapes. Sophia rolls her eyes. 

“What?” she says. “I’m married. Not blind.” All at once, her eyes narrow on Eddie’s phone. “What did he send you?” 

Flushing, Eddie clutches his phone to his text. He doesn’t like where this is going. “It’s nothing.” 

The wrong move: now they only want to see it more. Finally, after a good minute of begging, Eddie flips the phone around and lets them. 

Instantly, they’re both gasping and cooing, like Buck is a newborn baby. 

“Oh my god,” Adriana says, “that is so adorable.” 

“I want to fucking squeeze ‘em,” Sophia says. 

“The kittens or the man?” 

“Both.” 

Eddie blushes harder. He knows Buck is a good looking guy. It’s kind of impossible to not know it. But something about this—seeing other people recognize it so vehemently—makes him feel like he has permission to recognize it. Makes him feel like maybe he has nothing to be ashamed of for thinking about it a little bit more than he probably should. 

It’s a weird feeling. 

Eddie turns the phone back around, pulling it back towards himself. 

“Seriously,” Sophia says. “What do they put in the water in LA?” 

Eddie chuckles, and the sound comes out a little bit awkward as he slides his phone into his pocket. “Nah, that’s not an LA thing,” he tells them. “Buck is just special.” 

Another wrong thing to say, if the way Sophia’s eyebrows jump into her hairline is any indicator. “Hmm,” she says, taking a very pointed sip of her wine. “And how is he doing with all of this?” She gestures a hand to the house around them, its bare walls and hardwood floors, the couch that used to be sitting inside South Bedford. 

“Uh.” Eddie searches for an honest answer. “It’s been a lot. For both of us. We’re both kind of used to having each other to lean on, y’know.” 

Adriana looks at him with soft, sad eyes. “You miss him, huh?” 

Eddie nods. Maybe he should feel embarrassed by it—this dependency on another person he’s never had before—but it’s just the truth. “Yeah,” he says, his voice quiet “I really do.” 

“You should’ve asked him to come with you,” Sophia says, and she doesn’t know that she’s being mean, but she is. Just a little bit. 

Because Eddie’s thought about it. Of course he’s thought about it. He thought about it during their online zooms with the realtor and when they were sitting shoulder to shoulder packing up Eddie’s kitchen appliances and the day he left, sliding into his truck and wishing the passenger seat wasn’t so empty. But Buck has LA in his veins, and Eddie couldn’t take him away from that. Just the one of them being miserable in El Paso was enough. 

The reminder hurts though—the idea of Buck being here, next to him on this couch, their couch, driving him over to his parents, playing chess with Christopher on the kitchen table. He wants it as much as he knows he can’t have it. 

“I couldn’t,” he says, shaking his head. “Our lives are separate. His is in LA. Mine is wherever Christopher is.” A hard truth. Eddie wishes Buck could just follow him anywhere, but that wouldn’t be fair to either of them. 

“Well.” Sophia tilts her head. “You know what could fix that?” Holding up her left hand, she points to the big rock sitting on her ring finger. 

Adriana gasps, scandalized. “Sophia,” she admonishes. 

“What?” Sophia says. “I’m just saying, if a man looked at me like that”—she jabs a finger at the picture of Eddie and Buck sitting on the end table beside her—“I would put a ring on it ASAP. Sexuality be damned.” 

Eddie feels his cheeks heat at the implication. Not even the implication—the statement. Sophia is bold; he’ll give her that. 

He glances at the picture, even though he already knows exactly what it is, even though he’s seen it a thousand times. 

Christopher had taken the photo. They were all together at the beach, and it’s visible in the background, the blue expanse of the sea hiding behind Buck’s head of curls. Eddie is smiling at the camera—smiling at Christopher behind it, maybe—his grin a bit lopsided, the sun in his eyes. Buck is looking at Eddie like he's a treasure he just dug up out of the sand. It always makes Eddie breathless, and maybe that’s why he has it sitting in his living room, right by the couch chair he sits in when he watches TV. Maybe that’s why he’ll pick it up sometimes, holding the frame in his hands, and just stare at it until the sun starts setting. 

“I don’t think that’s how sexuality works, Soph,” he hears Adriana say. He’s still looking at the picture. 

“Well, Eddie should make it work that way. This is a once-in-a-lifetime type of guy,” she says. 

Except, no. That’s not right. Buck is a forever type of guy. There’s nothing once about him, about the way he’s been in Eddie’s life. It’s always, it’s constant, it’s infinite. This is an important distinction, Eddie thinks. 

“Also his arms,” Sophia adds. “Like, if somebody with those muscles came into my life, you best believe they would never be walking out of it—”

“Whoa,” Eddie says, finally looking away from the photo. He puts his hands out, palms forward, because this is going a little far. This is Buck they’re talking about, and he’s not a piece of meat. “Calm down there.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Sophia waves a hand, “I know he’s taken.” 

Eddie glares at her. “ No ,” he says. “But you are.” 

Rolling her eyes, Sophia scoffs. “Matt doesn’t care. He would agree, actually. He likes his men bigger.” 

“Stop—” Eddie blushes. “Stop talking about Buck like that.” 

Sophia, who’s clearly in an evil mood and maybe has had too much wine, wiggles her eyebrows. “Why? Getting jealous?” 

Eddie should’ve never let her into his house. This was a terrible idea. “Buck and I aren’t like that,” he says, trying to make his voice sound as firm and confident as possible. 

Sophia sighs, pours more wine into her glass. “That’s so lame.” She takes a sip, looks at him like she knows him better than he knows himself. “You’re gonna regret it in ten years if you don’t make a move. I’m just telling you now.” 

“I’m not—”

“She’s right,” Adriana cuts in, before he can finish his sentence. 

Eddie’s gaze jerks to her. She’s sitting on the couch, legs crossed, looking composed and a lot less drunk. She gives Eddie a sort of half smile when she sees him looking. 

“What?” he asks, half convinced he misheard. 

She shrugs. Says simply, as if it explains it all: “You blush when you talk about him, Eddie.” 

“So?” He’s pretty sure he’s blushing now, so Adriana might be right. 

“You never blushed when you talked about Shannon.” 

And that—that kinda leaves Eddie reeling. 

Since childhood, Eddie has always taken what Adriana says into more consideration than anything Sophia does. Sophia says what she thinks, but she doesn’t actually spend that much time on the thinking part—she’s more of a doer, jumping headfirst into everything. If Sophia says it, it could be true. But it also might not be. Adriana, on the other hand, is the kind of person who lives inside her own mind. She wouldn’t say anything unless she really believed it, and she wouldn’t find it worth saying unless it meant something. Unless it was important. 

That’s why, for the most part, he’s able to take Sophia’s implications that he and Buck should be something more with a grain of salt. But when Adriana says it, he can’t help but think: 

What if…? 

He doesn’t have time to dissect the thought, not really, because suddenly, Adriana is turning to Sophia, bright-eyed, and saying, “Oh my god. We should call him.” 

Sophia’s eyes widen. “Yes!” 

“What?” Eddie says, looking between them. Sometimes he feels like they speak a language he was never taught. “Why?” 

“Because,” Adriana says, “we want to meet him.” 

Eddie thinks that’s probably a really, really bad idea, considering how this conversation has gone. “You already have met him,” he points out. 

“Yeah, at Shannon’s funeral,” Sophia says, with a roll of her eyes. “Not exactly an appropriate time to scope out the goods.” 

And really, that’s the only time Sophia has ever met him, or seen him in real life. It’s funny that she has all these ideas about him and Eddie, and yet the only thing she knows about him is that (in her words, not Eddie’s) he has nice muscles and that he stood next to Eddie during the ceremony, keeping a supportive hand on the small of his back as they watched Shannon’s grave be lowered into the ground. Maybe that’s all she needed to see. Eddie doesn’t know—he barely remembers anything from that day. 

“I just want to know the guy who has you smiling like that in your Instagram photos,” Adriana says. “I need to see if he’s good enough for my big brother.” Adriana smiles softly at him, and the genuineness of it almost makes Eddie want to relent. She’s always had the power to do that to him, third to only Buck and Christopher. 

“Well, the real question is whether Eddie is deserving of him, but,” Sophia mutters under her breath, just loud enough for Eddie to hear it, and again, he contemplates chucking something at her head. Twenty years ago, he would’ve done it. 

Eddie stares at the ceiling and sighs. He knows that they’re just going to talk him into it anyway. “Fine,” he says, digging his phone back out from his pocket. 

Instantly, Sophia is snatching it out of his hands, giggling excitedly. 

“Just—be normal,” Eddie says, knowing it’s probably a futile request. 

“We’re always normal,” Sophia says. She grins like she knows it’s not true and starts clicking through Eddie’s phone. 

Really, Eddie should probably feel nervous about giving her free access, but he’s already resigned himself to whatever may come tonight. And anyway, she doesn’t even react when she sees Buck’s contact photo—a picture of him with a much younger version of Christopher on his shoulders, pointing at a Rhinoceros in the LA zoo exhibit. 

The phone starts ringing. Eddie holds his breath. 

“Hey, Eddie,” comes Buck’s voice. Instantly, there’s a warmth there, a familiarity, happiness, like he’s glad Eddie called, even outside of their scheduled times. It occurs belatedly to Eddie that Buck is on shift right now. But it doesn’t matter—he still picked up the phone. “Everything good?” 

Sophia looks at Adriana, a plotting glance. Adriana nods, and Sophia opens her mouth to speak. 

“Hey, Buck,” she says back, dropping her voice low in what’s clearly meant to be an imitation of Eddie. 

Instantly, she has to pull the phone away from her face, slapping her hand in front of her mouth to stop herself from giggling. 

There’s a long silence on the other end of the line. “Um…” 

“How’s your day been, partner? ” She says the world like it’s meant to be some sort of double entendre, shooting Eddie an obnoxious wink. 

Who let this woman have so much wine? 

“Eddie?” 

Buck sounds like he’s ten seconds away from calling the police, which is why Eddie sighs and says, loud enough for Buck to hear him, “I’m here.” His voice comes out distinctively resigned. 

Another pause. Then it seems to click. “Wait. Are these your sisters?” 

He sounds genuinely thrilled. 

Sophia and Adriana laugh in tandem. “Hi, Buck,” Adriana says into the phone speaker. 

“Hi, Sophia,” Buck says back. “Or Adriana. I don’t know which is which. Not based on voices at least.” 

“Aw,” Sophia says, placing a hand over her heart. “You know our names?” 

Buck laughs. “Of course I do. You’re like…family by association.” 

Adriana and Sophia both make a face like that is the sweetest thing they’ve ever heard, and Eddie wants to say, yep. There’s the typical Buck experience for you. He refrains, only because his grave has been dug deep enough as it is today. 

“Also, I’ve heard a thousand stories about you guys,” Buck adds. 

Sophia gets this glint in her eye. “And I bet you have a thousand stories about our brother.” 

“Oh.” Buck laughs again. “You have no fucking idea.” 

That’s how it starts. Buck talks, and talks, and talks—as he does—and Adriana and Sophia find themselves hopelessly charmed. Unsurprising. As the night goes on, Sophia’s eyes get bigger and browner. At one point, she even looks over at Eddie and mouths he is so sweet with hearts in her eyes.

And you know what? Maybe Eddie will have to marry Buck, just so Sophia can’t do it first. 

Eddie dreams about Shannon dying. 

He’s been dreaming about it a lot, ever since he moved here. He doesn’t know why. Shannon didn’t die in El Paso. Theoretically, the distance from where it happened should be helping. But really, Eddie only has a couple of memories of Shannon from LA—their hookups, the day at the beach, the restaurant when she told him she wanted to get a divorce. 

El Paso, on the other hand, screams her name. It’s like she’s built into the foundations of this city, embedded in the dirt here despite her grave being eight hundred miles away. On his drive to his parents’ every day, he passes by the bowling alley they went to with a group of friends back when Eddie was just an idiot with a crush. Next to it is the abandoned warehouse kids used to sneak into to smoke, where he and Shannon would camp out until midnight in the parking lot outside, sharing a single cigarette. The general store he bought a pack of pregnancy tests from when she told him she missed her period. The park they took Christopher to when Eddie came back after his discharge, back when they were fighting and could hardly even look at each other, but were doing their best to have it together for their kid who was too young to understand any of it. Eddie remembers they pushed Christopher on the swing together, and although they retired to the same bed every night, that was the first time their hands had even brushed in over a week. 

Shannon is a ghost who is always haunting him, just a little bit, but it’s impossible to not think of her here. And maybe that’s why most nights he ends up seeing her like this, frozen in the moment he lost her. 

This time, though, it’s different. He sees her, flayed out over the street in that same yellow blouse, her face and lips turning pale. Pushing past Chimney and Buck, he runs to her, and she says the same thing she always says: This is so embarrassing. When they slide her on the backboard, a blood stain is left behind in the concrete, and Eddie tries not to look. She’s brought to the ambulance; he goes with her. 

And it’s while he’s saying I love you, Christopher loves you, that he realizes it’s not Shannon he’s looking at anymore. It’s Buck now. 

It’s Buck, and Eddie’s saying, over and over, stay with me, stay with me, clutching at Buck’s hand so hard it might crack the bones, and Buck’s leg is bloody and disfigured on the gurney where Chimney and Hen are furiously leaning over him. Buck is nearly passed out from the pain, but he blinks open his eyes, gaze swimming with tears as he tries to focus on Eddie. 

I love you both, he’s saying, and they’re Shannon’s words, but Buck’s mouth, and then the monitor Hen and Chimney have them hooked up to starts beeping incessantly, and—

Eddie wakes up bathed with sweat. 

It takes him a long time to adjust, a long time for him to realize where he is, blinking against the darkness. He’s not in his bed in LA—he’s in El Paso, and for some reason, that makes the gaping hole in his chest have an even harder time closing. He knows Buck is fine, he knows that Buck survived that crush injury, he knows he’s sleeping in his bed in LA, and yet—Eddie can hardly breathe, his fingers tingling with panic. Feeling fragile, sick down to his stomach, he turns over in bed. His t-shirt sticks to his back as he reaches for his phone with shaking fingers. 

This is the fifth time he’s had the dream with Shannon since he got here. The first four times, he was fine. He woke up with a pit in his stomach, idly thought about calling Buck, then rolled over and forced himself to fall back asleep. But Buck was in the dream this time, and that’s never happened before. 

He doesn’t really think about it. His panicked brain has always been better at knowing what he needs—and at letting himself have it—than his fully functioning one, and he’s too worn-thin to stop himself. Finding a way to lean on Buck has always been Eddie’s first step to survival. 

Buck picks up on the third ring, quicker than it would’ve been than if he was sleeping. 

“Eddie?” His voice is raspy, with a tired edge. Eddie’s spent many mornings with Buck, shaking him awake on his couch so they could follow through on their plans to go to the grocery store. He knows what Buck sounds like when he’s been woken up, and this isn’t it. “You alright?” 

“Hey,” Eddie says, and he sounds—god, he sounds wrecked. Unsteady. “I, uh—” 

Buck’s voice softens. “Nightmare?” 

He says it with such gentle care, with such concern, that Eddie doesn’t feel like he has to be ashamed about it. Doesn’t have to feel weak, for needing Buck. It’s okay to need him. Buck likes to be needed. 

“Yeah,” he whispers, clenching his eyes closed. 

Buck lets out a soft noise, something close to a laugh. “I actually…I had one too.” 

Eddie wonders what Buck’s was about. It’s sort of funny, in a depressing way, how many options there truly are. The truck bombing, the pulmonary embolism, the tsunami, the lightning strike—and that’s assuming Buck’s dream was even about himself. Eddie knows Buck dreams about the shooting sometimes, even if Buck has never told him that directly. It’s obvious, in the way he looks at Eddie the next day, as if he’s scared that the simple fact of his existence is up in question.

It’s a truth Eddie’s learned in the past decade—seeing someone you love in a hospital bed is often a lot worse than being in one yourself. And that feeling lingers, never fully washes itself away, which is Eddie’s awake at two AM, terrified all over again about something that happened seven years ago. 

“Alright?” Eddie asks, the best he can manage right now. 

Buck just hums in response. It’s not the most convincing, but Eddie understands. Buck might not be alright, but he will be, and that’s what matters. 

Eddie remembers the days after the shooting, when Buck lived on his couch for three weeks because Eddie couldn’t do so much as put on a shirt without help. Then, the nightmares had been worse than ever. Eddie was scared to fall asleep each night, but the painkillers would drag him in without his permission—and he would always wake up screaming, itching out of his skin, feeling like he would rather die than live with this for a second longer. Within seconds, Buck would be pushing through the door, crawling into his bed, gathering Eddie’s broken pieces to his chest. Murmuring, hey, hey, it’s okay, you’re alright, you’re still here, Eddie. You’re still here. It felt like a reminder and a mantra and a promise Eddie was meant to keep to him. It felt like a life raft, anchoring him above water. 

He wishes Buck were here now, so he could lay his head on his chest, feel the steady rise and fall of his breathing. Put his finger to his pulse and calm the rattling thing in his chest. Show himself, look, Buck is alive. Buck is here. Buck hasn’t left you yet. 

He can’t, though. Buck’s heart is beating, but it’s doing it eight hundred miles out of his reach. There’s no warm arms to hold him now, no comforting hands to run over his back. 

But the sound of Buck’s steady breathing over the line manages to be enough. Slowly, Eddie feels his body start to relax, his pulse steadying. 

The sticky residue of the nightmare fades. Eddie starts thinking. 

He’s been doing it a lot, ever since he got here: cataloging everything he’s gained and everything he’s lost. A list of pros and cons, sort of. He started it to make himself feel better, but really, it’s depressing how short the pros side always ends up being. Regardless, Eddie repeats them to himself often. On his weakest days, he needs the reminder. He’s closer to Christopher. He gets to hang out with his sisters. There’s a nice coffee shop right outside the firehouse, which is convenient. His new team at Station 33 is nice, and he fits in well. There’s nothing warm about the camaraderie there, nothing even close to what it’s like at the 118, but for most people coworkers never become family, anyway. Eddie is back to being most people. And that’s fine. It really is. 

Except—Eddie isn’t happy. He knows it; he can’t deny it. He can’t push it away. That’s the biggest con, the thing in big bold letters on the other side of the T-chart. He manages to be happy in moments, like when he miraculously gets Christopher to smile at him or when his phone dings with a text from Buck, but they're always fleeting, over faster than they came. Replaced by dread, the cold trickle of reality. Eddie walks around most of the day feeling like an empty shell. When he’s at work, he’s a firefighter. When he’s with Christopher, he’s a father. When he has Buck on the phone, he’s a best friend. But there’s too much time in the day, and Eddie has no other ways to fill it. 

His shift ends. Helena walks him to the door with a pitying smile. Buck hangs up on him. Eddie goes back to his too empty house and sits in the silence, collapsing in on himself. 

They’ve been silent for at least twenty minutes now, but Eddie knows Buck isn’t asleep yet—can hear it in his breathing. That’s what makes him say it, makes him roll onto his side to where his phone is laying, placed on speaker mode. “Do you…” He hesitates. Exhales. “Do you ever just feel alone?” 

Because that’s the problem. That’s what it is. Eddie is closer to his son, the person he needs the most, but he’s still so far away, and there’s no one to lean on here. No one he can touch. Eddie has spent a lot of his life feeling alone. Follow the pattern, and it’s clear: the more lonely, the worse his mental health, the more the nightmares, the more he pulls into himself and away from those who love him, and starts the whole cycle again. 

Eddie is sick of the cycle. He’s sick of feeling lonely. If he were in LA, it wouldn’t be so bad. He would drive over to Buck’s house right now and crawl into his bed and promise to never take it for granted again—how Buck makes him feel whole. 

There’s a long pause before Buck answers. “Yeah, I do,” he says. “I have. I felt like that for the first twenty something years of my life.” 

And Eddie thinks about Buck in that house in Hershey. Unloved, uncared for, never even offered an explanation as to why. He thinks about him as a young adult, in and out of towns and bedrooms and jobs, nothing ever sticking. Eddie was Buck’s first ever best friend, Buck told him once. Getting emotional over that felt stupid, but it sort of broke Eddie’s heart. All those years, all those women, and Buck never stopped feeling alone. Eddie thinks of himself, dodging bullets in the Afghanistan desert, and thinks that maybe—despite how different their lives were—they both spent their early twenties feeling a lot of the same things. 

“What about now?” Eddie asks, and he’s not even quite sure what he means. What about now, right in this moment? or what about now, now that I’m gone?

Buck chooses to answer the former. “I’m never lonely when I’m with you,” Buck says simply, softly. 

Eddie aches. “Yeah,” he says. “Me either.” 

But he won’t be with Buck for long. Because when they hang up—probably in the morning after they fall asleep with the line still connected—they’ll both have to go without again. And tomorrow, Eddie’s going to take Christopher to see a movie, but he’ll have to drop him back off at his parents’ place afterwards, and maybe Christopher will ask him to stay for a while, but he probably won’t. Buck and Eddie will call again, but what’s that—thirty minutes out of twenty-four hours? It will end, like everything does, and Eddie will eventually be plagued with another nightmare, because of course he will. 

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? The good things are always so goddamn temporary.  

In the end, it only takes Eddie four and a half weeks of living in El Paso to realize a truth he’s been running from for seven years: he’s in love with Buck. 

There’s a lot of reasons it happens now, out of all times. In the silence of his new house, he’s had a lot of time to reflect—something he’s trying to do for Christopher anyway, to be better for him—and those reflections often lead back to Buck, often lead back to himself, lead back to all these nebulous feelings in his chest he doesn’t know how to decode. He knows he misses Buck like crazy, a physical pain haunting the confines of his chest, and he knows that it’s not a normal ache. Adriana and Sophia have dragged him out two times since their first meet up, and they keep hinting at it—him and Buck—with varying levels of subtlety, and the more they talk about it, the more Eddie’s shoulders relax, the less opposed he gets to the idea them being something more than best friends. The more he starts to think, maybe it’s not wrong to want that. Maybe I do. 

But mostly it’s this: 

“Hey. I, uh—I heard you got into a fight with your parents?” 

Eddie is laying stomach first on his couch, collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, when Buck calls him. He feels fucking terrible. The anger is slowly fading away, replaced with a numbing emptiness and this bone-deep sense of failure. He said he wasn’t going to do this. He said he was going to keep it together. 

“Christopher tell you that?” 

“Yeah,” Buck says. “I think he’s worried about you. Are you alright?” 

Christopher, worried about him. That’s the kind of thing Christopher would never show it to Eddie, but apparently he shows it to Buck. Maybe even asked Buck to check in on him, although Eddie’s sure Buck didn’t need to be prompted once he heard what happened. Distantly, Eddie wonders what other things Christopher tells Buck that Eddie isn’t privy to. It doesn’t bother him that they have a line of communication he’s not part of; he’s grateful for it. But sometimes he wishes Christopher could just say real things to him, without the buffer of Buck between them. 

Things have been looking up the past couple of weeks with Chris. Most of the time, he still acts carefully indifferent towards Eddie, but that’s loosening a little bit. They talk more, and Eddie gets answers longer than two words now. He’s been spending full days at Eddie’s place, staying the night in the guest bedroom Eddie set up for him. And when Eddie tentatively offered that he could stay here permanently, Christopher blinked and said yeah, sure, maybe. 

He thinks that’s what caused it. Ever since he got here, his parents have been vaguely unhappy about his presence, hiding their distaste with it really is good to see you again, Edmundo, and how long did you say you were renting that house for? But now, he’s less of a simple nuisance and more of an actual threat. Christopher is starting to detach from them, and they’ve gotten scared. At dinner tonight, the shots didn’t stop firing. Eddie’s used to their criticism, but today his hackles rose and didn’t fall. One barbed comment implying that he didn’t really care for Christopher’s well-being, and Eddie snapped. 

He doesn’t even remember half of the things he said. He knows he accused them of a lot of stuff—of not caring for him as a kid, and not caring for him now, of coddling Christopher, of acting like he was a commodity they had a right to. He knows he had lost hold of himself a bit, and he can still feel his palms burning from where he had been digging his fingernails into the skin. 

“I’m—I’ll be fine,” he says finally, because at least that’s true. “I just hate how they make me feel. Like I’m still a fucking kid.” 

Like he’s eight, being yelled at for spilling tomato sauce on his church button-up. Like he’s thirteen, looking up at the crowd during his first baseball game and seeing nobody. Like he’s nineteen, hands shaking as he broke the news about Shannon. Like he’s twenty-six, listening to his mom say don’t drag Christopher down with you. 

There’s something age-regressing about being around them. Suddenly, he’s all those different versions of him at once, young and old and still hurting in the exact same places. Running to his room to cry, wipe his tears, and re-emerge with his back straight, because that’s how it works in the Diaz house—weakness is not allowed to last for longer than thirty minutes. 

“I know how that feels,” Buck says, and Eddie believes him. He had been there when Margaret and Phillip came into town, had been the one Buck came to in the aftermath, when he was still fuming with anger over their fight. “And it sucks. I’m sorry.” 

“It’s fine,” Eddie mutters, burying his face into his pillow. And it is. He’ll get over it. His parents will too, and by tomorrow, they’ll be back at a stalemate. His words will be disregarded by them completely, and nothing will change. Eddie’s used to it. 

Buck makes a sound like he doesn’t believe him, but he doesn’t push. Instead, he asks, “Do you need anything from me? I’m here for you.” 

Buck is here for him. Of course he is. Eddie’s heart hurts, because he realizes it’s been years since he’s ever had to doubt that. That’s the thing about Buck—he burrows his way in, and then he’s just there, such a constant present in Eddie’s life that he can almost convince himself it’s normal. But it’s not normal, the way Buck cares, the way he gives, and Eddie is suddenly struck with the magnitude of it. Of how much he’s gained since meeting Buck. 

“Can you just—tell me about something?” he asks, because Buck’s voice—that’s what he needs. He’s struck with the magnitude of that, too, that he hardly even hesitates to ask. Because it’s Buck, who makes him feel safe, and that’s not normal either. 

“Alright,” Buck agrees, soft. “I was actually listening to a podcast this morning, and—” 

It goes on from there. Eddie clutches the phone to his ear and closes his eyes, falling into the familiar, gentle comfort of Buck’s voice. Slowly, the melting pot of emotions from the day drains out of him, and he’s left with this—the unhurried crest of a realization. 

Buck is the one who calls him when he knows Eddie might be struggling. Buck is the one who comforts him. Buck is the one who makes him feel safe to ask for what he needs, and Buck is the one who gives it to him. Buck is the one who’s always there for Eddie, through everything. Buck is the one that Eddie always looks for in the dark, the hand he’s always reaching towards. 

It’s a simple equation, and all at once, Eddie is no longer blind to what’s on the other side of the equal sign. 

He loves Buck. Of course he does. It’s easy. It’s obvious. It’s almost relieving to finally realize it. 

Eddie always thought about falling in love as if it were a painful thing, a rabid animal that crawls out of his chest and leaves a gaping wound there. He thought he didn’t want to do it again, because it hurt, and it was messy, and it would leave his hands mangled and stained with red. 

But falling in love with Buck—whenever it happened—wasn’t like that. He doesn’t recall it ever hurting, doesn’t remember every slamming into the ground. Maybe that’s because he hadn’t fallen at all. Maybe he had just woken up inside of it, and it was everywhere, and it was home. 

Eddie is sitting on his hospital bed, waiting for the nurse to come back with his discharge papers, when his phone starts ringing. 

With the hand that’s not currently in a split, he slides it out of his pocket. The name on the screen instantly makes him groan. 

“Hi, Buck,” he says as the line connects. He sets his phone on speaker, balancing it on his thigh. 

Buck’s voice comes through instantly. “I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

“Well, don’t do that,” Eddie says. “Can’t knock a man down when he’s already wounded.” He holds up his injured hand as if Buck can see it through the phone. 

They were called to a four-alarm structure fire in an apartment building, their last call of the shift. Eddie was clearing out the uppermost level when the floor collapsed under him. He fell eight feet at most, and his right hand bore the brunt of the fall. A closed scaphoid fracture. Eddie will be on medical leave for at least a month, but it could’ve been a lot worse. Other than his hand—and some mild tenderness in the rest of his body—Eddie is fine. 

“Why did I have to hear through Christopher ,” Buck seethes, “that you got injured on a call and ended up in the hospital?” 

“Um.” Eddie blinks. “Probably because I was getting checked out and couldn’t text you myself?” 

Buck huffs. Eddie can hear the incessant sound of footsteps coming through the line—Buck is pacing. “Ok, well, aren’t they supposed to call me about this stuff? I mean, I’m still your emergency contact, right?” 

“Yeah, but.” Eddie looks to the door, where Ramon and Christopher had disappeared out of a couple of minutes ago to get Christopher a drink from one of those vending machines. The Captain at the 33 asked him who to call, and Eddie had said his father, not because his company was remotely as valuable as Buck’s, but because Ramon had something Buck didn’t: the ability to drive Eddie home. “It wasn’t an actual emergency. It’s just a broken hand.” 

He’s not sure if Christopher told him this part. Maybe Christopher had said hey, Dad’s in the hospital, by the way, and then hung up. That would explain Buck’s restlessness, the clear anxiety dripping from his voice. 

But Buck just seems to bypass this information altogether. “I’m coming there,” he announces, suddenly, his pacing coming to an abrupt halt. 

Eddie jerks to an upright position. “What? No, you’re not.” 

“I am,” Buck says. “I’ll talk to Bobby, and I can find a plane ticket—”

“This isn’t necessary—” 

“You’re hurt, Eddie,” Buck says, like it explains everything. “You—”

“It’s a broken hand,” Eddie stresses, this time loud enough that it cuts through. “Okay? I’m fine, I swear. I’m sorry if Christopher scared you or anything, but—there’s nothing to worry about. My life isn’t in critical condition.” 

There’s a long pause. Eddie thinks maybe Buck is going to relent. Then, he hears the pacing start again, quickly followed by, “I mean, how did this even happen?” 

Eddie sighs. “There was a structure fire—”

“Was Cameron with you?” Buck interrupts. 

Cameron is Eddie’s partner at Station 33. Eddie does his best to mention him as little as possible around Buck, because it feels like sort of a sore subject they’d both rather avoid. Eddie doesn’t like working without Buck—it feels distinctly less joyous, distinctly less fulfilling. Buck definitely doesn’t like working without Eddie, although at least he has the rest of the 118 to fill the gap. Neither of them are exactly happy about the current arrangements. Besides, Eddie knows Buck gets insecure about being replaced, and there’s already enough standing between them as it is. 

“Of course he was.” 

“Did he warn you?”

Eddie hesitates. “I don’t think he saw that the floor was collapsing until it was too late, Buck.” 

“Well, he should’ve,” Buck practically spits. “He should’ve been watching, and he should’ve grabbed you. You shouldn’t—you shouldn’t have fallen.” 

“That’s not fair,” Eddie says, dropping his voice in low warning. Buck is clearly being stupid, and they both know it. “Cameron tries his best. He’s a good partner.” 

It’s not meant to be a low blow—just a reminder to Buck to be fair—but he realizes as soon as he says it that it might’ve been the wrong move. It’s easy to make Buck sad these days. He tries to hide it, but Eddie can always tell when he hurts his feelings, like yesterday, when he accidentally referred to his house in El Paso as home over the phone. 

Buck’s voice is stony as he says, “Is he?” 

“Yeah,” Eddie answers, a truth. Cameron is a good partner, and he’s a good guy too. It all pales in comparison, though. “But he’s not you.” He softens his voice as he says it, his chest aching. “Nobody could be as good as you.” 

Eddie truly believes it, too. Nobody is as good as a partner, in and out of the turnouts. Nobody is better at having Eddie’s back. Nobody is better at taking care of Eddie. Nobody is better at loving him. It always will be Buck for him. Eddie knows this. It’s a simple fact of the universe. For a guy that’s so scared of being replaced, Buck is startlingly irreplaceable. 

Over the line, Buck exhales. Eddie can imagine his shoulders dropping, the mask slipping. He thinks he hears Buck take a seat. “Eddie,” he says, and his voice cracks down the middle. He sounds like how Eddie feels all the time, like his heart is aching.

Eddie knows he’s got him. “C’mon, Buck,” he prods, keeping his voice gentle. “What’s wrong? Tell me what this is about.” 

Buck takes a shaky breath. There’s a pause, like he’s fighting to keep the words in, but eventually he relents. He always does for Eddie. 

“I wasn’t there,” he says. It’s practically a cry. “You got hurt, and I wasn’t there.” 

Eddie gets it then. Because Buck was there when the well collapsed, was there when a bullet ripped through Eddie’s shoulder. He was there; he’s always been there, and he’s never been able to do anything about it—but at least if something happened to Eddie, he would know the exact moment he lost him. Eddie knows that even if Buck had been there today during the structure fire, he probably wouldn’t have been able to stop Eddie from falling. Nobody could’ve. But it’s that perception of agency—the perception of control—that gives Buck comfort. And when Eddie is eight-hundred miles away, he has none. 

He feels a little bit breathless as he looks down at his phone with sad eyes. If Buck were here, Eddie would take his wrist between his fingers and guide it to Eddie’s own chest, and let him feel the beating of his heart, let him feel life under his fingertips. But Buck’s not here, so Eddie just breathes out, “Buck…” 

“And I just—” Buck says, voice trembling, “I just keep thinking what if it something worse happens, and I’m not there, and you—you—” 

“Shhh,” Eddie cuts off before he can go there. “I’m alive, okay? I’m alright. I’m not going anywhere.” 

“You can’t,” Buck sniffles, a little bit petulant. “You’re not allowed to.” 

Eddie smiles despite himself, a small thing Buck can’t see. He’s always full of it—this fondness for Buck—and there’s too much of it now for him to know what to do with. “I won’t,” he promises. “Not if I have anything to do with it.” 

He said it to Christopher then, years ago: I’ll always fight to come home to my family. And he meant that—it’s one promise he’s dedicated to keeping for the rest of his life. Buck is part of that, part of his family, and Eddie still has a long way to go until he’s ready to come home to him, but he will. He’s not going to let death get in the way of that. 

“I just wish I was there,” Buck says, finally, quietly, like it’s a confession. 

Eddie has to close his eyes; it hurts so bad for a second. He misses Buck all the time, just like this, like it’s a gaping wound in his chest—but sometimes it opens up wider, and Eddie can’t even breathe around the feeling. That’s how he feels now. He’s drowning in it. 

For a second, he’s overcome with the desire to tell Buck. To tell him that he loves him, that he wants him, that he wants to be with him, and it’s with a desperation that’s nearly tearing him apart. But he can’t tell him, not yet. That’s not the kind of thing he wants to say over the phone. It’s the kind of thing he wants to say to Buck’s face, so he can see the way his eyes crinkle with the realization, so he can kiss soft and sweet after it sinks in. 

So instead he just says, “I wish you were here too,” and it’s close enough. 

When he finally figures things out with Christopher, when he’s finally ready to go home, and they get to reunite with Buck in LA, Eddie will say it. Eddie will say it then, he promises himself. The next time he sees Buck, he’ll say it. 

Five days later, Buck calls Eddie out of the blue while he’s trying to chop vegetables in his kitchen. There’s a couple things, he’s discovered, that are hard to do with only one fully functioning hand, and this is one of them. But he’s gotten tired of ramen noodle cups. 

He’s been struggling a bit more with everything since he got injured. Now that he can’t work, he has too much time in his day, and he never knows what to do with it. He’s lonely, and he misses LA, and he wishes he got to see Christopher more between school and all of his extracurriculars. A couple of days before the structure fire, Christopher had finally agreed to move into Eddie’s house, but the injury has caused his parents to push back against the change even harder. They said it was a bad time for him to start taking care of Christopher again, with his limited mobility. Reluctantly, Eddie agreed—mostly because he was too tired from the painkillers to keep talking—and said they would talk about it again once he had healed. 

It sucks, though, feeling this lonely all the time. Those months working in dispatch were already bad enough. Being without the job he loves in a city he hates is a whole other beast, and it’s ripping him up inside. Still, he’s managed to survive. It’s just a broken hand. It’s just a job—and it’s not like it fulfills him as much as working at the 118 did, anyway. He’s fine. Things with Christopher are getting better. Everything is fine. 

Eddie drops the knife and scrambles to pick up the phone.  

“Hey, Eddie,” Buck says as soon as the line connects. His voice is pure sunshine. 

“Uh, hey, Buck.” He tries to hold his phone between his shoulder and his ear so he can use his free hand to keep chopping his zucchini, but the phone slips. Eddie sighs and decides to give up on cooking for now. “You good?” 

He can tell based on Buck’s voice alone that he’s grinning—the big one that crinkles his eyes and makes Eddie feel like he could explode with fondness. He wishes he could see it. “Yup,” he says, cheerfully. “You up to anything?” 

“I was trying to make dinner, but, uh—it’s not going so well.” Whatever. Eddie pushes the knife further back on the cutting board, turning around and leaning against the counter. “What’s got you so chipper today?” 

Buck has always been easily excitable, but Eddie hasn’t heard him like this in months. He’s been quieter, muted, ever since that day Eddie broke the news about his move, like losing Eddie to El Paso stole a bit of the life out of his eyes. Eddie missed this Buck—missed his full-out grin, the way his words sometimes run over each other when he gets too excited. He’s glad to have him back, but he’s also a little confused on what this sudden shift is about. 

“Nothing,” Buck says. Eddie imagines him biting his lip around a cute, flushed smile. “Just—thinking about you.” 

Eddie jerks, hand freezing around the phone. He feels a flush rise to his cheeks, hot and pressing. “Buck…” 

He swears he can hear Buck’s grin grow, but when he speaks his voice is soft. Meaningful. “I’m always thinking about you, Eddie,” he says, and it sounds—it sounds like more. 

Eddie clenches his eyes shut. He can hear it in Buck’s voice, this intention that he doesn’t expect. Buck’s said things to him before—sweet things, things that could be construed as romantic, things that Sophia has insisted to him definitely are—but nothing like this, nothing that has such a clear implication. Nothing so strong that even Eddie can’t deny it. 

And he doesn’t know what to do with it. He’s thought about it, of course—the nebulous idea of Buck loving him back. But it was always a passing dream, an idle fantasy, the sort of thing you wish desperately for but don’t trust to ever come true. 

Now, though—for some reason, all at once—he knows. He knows, and it’s amazing and it’s wonderful and it’s the best thing, but also—it’s not the right time. 

Not now, when Eddie is still in El Paso. Not now, when there’s eight hundred miles and so much uncertainty between them. Not now, when Eddie can’t even touch him. 

“Buck,” Eddie says, voice pained. “We can’t.” 

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “Can’t…?” Buck prompts. 

“I don’t want to have this conversation over the phone,” Eddie says, and it kills him a little bit, but he knows it’s the right choice. 

If he’s right, and Buck is trying to tell him what Eddie thinks he is, then he’ll be grateful for himself in ten years—when they’re both in LA together, sharing a house and sharing a bed and maybe even a last name, and people are asking how they go together and he won’t have to tell some underwhelming story about a phone call and chopping zucchini— 

“Oh,” Buck says. “Okay.” 

Distantly, Eddie hears the doorbell rings, echoing through the empty halls of the house. Eddie frowns, shifts of the counter. Mindlessly starts walking to the door. 

“I’m sorry,” he says into the phone. “It’s just—this isn’t—”

“Hey.” Buck’s voice is soft. “It’s okay.” 

“I just—” Eddie sighs, rubbing a hand over his face as he walks into his foyer. “It’s not like this is me saying we’re never going to have the conversation; I just—I’m sorry, but I just think we should wait until—” 

“Eddie,” Buck says. Strangely, he sounds amused. “You should—” 

Eddie gets a hand on his front door knob. He’s rambling now, he knows. “I’m sorry, Buck,” he says for the third time. “I don’t want you to think…” 

His words promptly disappear off his tongue as he opens the door and sees exactly who’s standing on his front porch. 

Buck lowers the phone from his ear and grins. “Hey, Eddie.”

The flood gates open. A tidal wave of emotions: butterflies in his stomach, weakness in his knees, numbness creeping into the tips of his fingers. But above all—he’s overcome with disbelief, frozen down to the core. 

Eddie’s phone falls from his fingers. 

Buck watches it hit the ground, bouncing once off the stone once before it settles by his feet. He raises his eyebrows at Eddie and says, “This is why I keep telling you to get a new phone case.” 

Buck has been telling him that, for months now, ever since Eddie’s original one got cracked on a call. You’re gonna break your phone, he would say, and then you’re gonna be pissed about having to spend a grand on a new one. Eddie just rolled his eyes: you’re the clumsy one, not me. But what he hadn’t accounted for then was this:

Buck showing up at his doorstep, cast golden by the late afternoon light, smiling at Eddie with his crinkling, fond eyes. He didn’t account for Buck, here, in the space in front of him, reachable and touchable and everything Eddie’s ever wanted all at once. Of course he dropped his phone. Of course his whole body is frozen. Of course he can’t breathe. How else is he meant to be feeling? 

All Eddie can do is stare as Buck leans down to pick up the dropped phone. Standing back up, Buck brushes dirt off the surface, tilting back and forth to survey the damage. “Well,” he says. “It looks alright. Guess you got lucky.” 

He holds out the phone to Eddie. Eddie stares and stares and stares. 

“Eddie,” Buck laughs when only silence rings out between them. He’s looking at Eddie all fond and amused, fitted with a self-satisfied smile like he knows exactly what he’s doing, knows exactly the effect he has on Eddie. “Are you broken?” 

“How—” Eddie’s sure he looks ridiculous, gaping like a fish as he searched for words. “How did you get here?” 

Buck looks at him. Then his grin grows. “I don’t know if you know this,” he says. “But in 1903 there were these brothers, and they invented this cool little thing called an airplane, and—” 

“Oh, fuck off,” Eddie says, finally snapping out of it. The shock and confusion don’t dissipate, but Eddie finds himself rolling his eyes and laughing on instinct. Because it’s Buck, and they’ve teased each other like this a hundred times. A thousand times, even, and Eddie misses getting to do it like this—across from each other instead of through a phone line. 

He watches as Buck’s eyes crinkle at the sound of his laugh, irises turning liquid. It makes Eddie feel a little bit weak. 

Pushing the door further open, he takes a step back. “C’mon,” he says, gesturing for Buck to enter. 

Buck steps inside the threshold, and, side-by-side, they walk into Eddie’s living room. It’s weird for Buck to be here—in his house that’s not his house, not like the house on South Bedford was. Buck belonged in that house; he doesn’t belong in this one. Maybe neither of them do. When do four stucco walls become a home, Eddie wonders? A month and a half into living here, and it still hasn’t happened. Secretly, Eddie knows it never will. There’s no place in this world that could be home without Buck. 

But Buck is here now, taking everything in slowly, with a neutral but considerate expression. Eddie wishes, desperately, to know what he’s thinking. 

Buck turns to him and smiles—a little bit weaker. “Nice place,” he comments. “Lots of space.” 

Shrugging, Eddie slides his hands into his pockets. “It’s alright.” He looks at Buck. It’s hard to believe that he’s here, really here. Eddie has seen him, of course, over FaceTime and staring too long at the new photos Buck posts on his Instagram feed, but it’s different now. He’s three dimensional, more than just pixels on his screen. Eddie can see the acne scars littering his jaw. The wisps of his eyelashes. 

It’s overwhelming to be faced with so much of him at once, like a flash flood immediately after a drought. Eddie wants to collect all the water he can—wants to touch him, brush his fingers over everything that he’s so dearly missed. 

“Buck,” he says, stealing Buck’s attention back from where he was examining Eddie’s fireplace, wiping a finger through the dust that’s collected on the mantel. Buck pauses, turns to look at him with a raised brow. “What are you doing here?” he asks. 

Buck’s expression turns shy in an instant, cheeks flushing, his head ducking to hide it. “I, uh—” he hesitates. 

Eddie holds up his splinted hand. “It’s not about this, is it? Because I told you—” 

“It’s not,” Buck rushes to say. Then, he pauses. “I mean, well…that was part of it. But, mostly—” He bites his lip. “I just wanted to surprise you on your birthday.” 

Eddie blinks several times. Thinks about getting his phone out so he can check his calendar. Had he forgotten— no . He knows it’s not his birthday. His birthday is still in two weeks. He’s been a little bit scatterbrained since he got here, a little bit out of it, but he wouldn’t get that mixed up. Not this badly. 

“It’s—it’s not my birthday, Buck.” 

“Oh,” Buck says, standing up straighter. “I know. I mean—that was the plan. I was going to fly in, like, next Friday. Surprise you, and then stay down here for a couple of days. I already had the plane ticket and everything. But, uh. It didn’t work out like that. Clearly.” He gestures to himself in emphasis. “Because it turns out I have concerningly low impulse control, especially when it comes to you.” 

He takes a step closer, looking at Eddie with a tilted head. Eddie feels his heart rise up to his throat. Remembering I’m always thinking about you, he’s breathless all over again, thrumming with the possibility. “W-what are you saying?” The words come out half strangled. 

Another step forward, and then they’re right across from each other, nearly toe to toe. Buck is smiling at him, and his eyes are twinkling like Eddie is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, like he’s the hand that placed every star in the sky. “I’m saying,” he says, dropping his voice into something soft and gentle, “that I flew all the way here because I couldn’t go one more second without telling you that I love you.” 

It feels a little bit earth-shattering, like the ground under Eddie’s feet is shaking. He doesn’t know what he wants to do—laugh or cry. Or both at the same time, while flinging himself into Buck’s open arms. 

Instead, it comes out choked: “Buck.”  

Buck’s sweet smile is a constant on his face, and it’s the most beautiful thing Eddie has ever seen. Slowly, he reaches across the tiny divide between them and places a hand on Eddie’s waist, thumb sinking into the divot above his hip. It feels like a brand. A homecoming. “I love you,” he says. “Eddie, I love you.” 

“Buck.” Eddie laughs, a slightly watery sound. “I’m not—I can’t come home yet.” He says it like it’s a warning, a silent are you sure you want to do this right now? 

Because they still can’t be together. Not physically. Eddie has to stay here, and Buck will have to go back to Los Angeles; no amount of love can change that. He wishes it weren’t like this. He wishes he could pack his bags right now, grab Christopher from his parents, and end up in LA with the two people he loves most. But things are still complicated between Eddie and Christopher. Forgiveness hasn’t been fully obtained. And Christopher comes first. They both know that. Eddie won’t leave without Christopher, won’t bring him back without him asking to come home. 

So he would understand, if Buck doesn’t want to start this right now, when they can’t have the full thing. He would understand, if this isn’t the right time. 

But Buck just looks at him, hands sliding up and down his hips and sending shivers down Eddie’s spine. “I don’t care,” he says. 

“I’m a mess, Buck,” Eddie says. “That hasn’t changed. You don’t have to—” 

“Eddie,” Buck says, cutting him off. He brings his other hand to Eddie’s waist, bunching up the fabric in a fist. “I really, really, really don’t care.” 

His eyes are on Eddie’s lips. Eddie only realizes this milliseconds before Buck is closing the distance. 

The kiss is sweet. Light and gentle, like Eddie’s always dreamed of it being. Buck’s lips feel like heaven, soft and plush under his own, but it’s so much more than that—it’s Buck. It’s Buck everywhere, all around him and tucked into his heart and running through his bloodstream, like he’s the very thing that keeps Eddie’s heart beating. Getting to touch him, knowing that Buck loves him—Eddie’s never felt anything like it. This is what it feels like to stumble upon gold.  

After a moment, Buck pulls away. He brings his thumb to sit at the corner of Eddie’s lips, palm pressed to his cheek, and looks at him with that same look in his eyes—like he would rather die than look away. Eddie has the thought that Buck sort of looks at him like this all the time, and it almost makes him want to laugh. How did it take him so long to see this? To see Buck? 

“I love you,” Buck whispers, as if he just can’t get enough of saying it. He leans in to press a kiss the space between Eddie’s eyebrows, the tip of his nose, each cheek, his jaw. It’s like he’s trying to map out every piece of Eddie, like painting a portrait of devotion, and Eddie feels himself melt further with each press of his lips. 

He waits until Buck leans back to say it. “I love you too,” he says, and god, it feels good. It feels good to finally say it after living with it unknowingly for so long. “You’re one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. You and Christopher.” He reaches out to place his uninjured hand over Buck’s heart, and he can feel the organ jump under his fingertips, as if to greet him. “You guys make me whole.” 

Buck grins, and it grows and grows and grows until it’s stretching his cheeks all the way out—until it doesn’t even seem to be about what Eddie said anymore. 

“What?” Eddie asks, laughing. 

“Nothing,” Buck says. “It’s just—your voice sounds so much better in person.” 

Eddie softens. For a second, he’s overcome with it. The simple fact of Buck being here. How he flew all this way just to say this to him, because he couldn’t wait any longer. Eddie loves him so much he thinks he could explode from it. 

He kisses Buck again, reaching around his back to pull him in. Buck comes with an oof, and then quickly gets back to business, hands roaming over Eddie’s chest, sighing happily into the press of his lips. 

And Eddie’s spent so much of the last month and a half feeling lost, but kissing Buck? It feels like coming home. 

There’s so much to figure out, so much left to talk about. Eddie doesn’t know how long Buck will be here, when he’s leaving to go back to LA, when Eddie will be able to follow him. He doesn’t have answers, and he still doesn’t have solutions—not to fix his situation with Christopher, or to fix how badly they’re going to miss each other while they’re apart. Eddie doesn’t have answers, but he has this: 

Buck, in his hands. Buck, leaning in, pressing kisses down his neck. Buck, who loves him and lives in his heart, no matter how many miles they are apart. 

And a cell phone in his back pocket—unbroken despite Eddie’s appalling lack of a phone case—that will always have Buck’s name in it, ready to be dialed up anytime. 

He has everything he needs, the ingredients for happiness right at his fingertips. And right now he’s the most confident he’s ever been that he can figure the rest out. He can make something beautiful out of it. With Buck by his side, he can do anything. 

They’re okay. Everything’s going to be okay. For once, Eddie can actually believe it. 

“So,” Buck says, when he finally breaks away, grinning lopsidedly. “Do you have a bedroom here you want to show me to, or…?” 

Eddie laughs. “You’re an idiot,” he says. 

But he takes Buck's hands in his and leads him there without any other protest.