Chapter Text
Most mornings, much earlier than he should be awake, Bucks drives to the beach.
It’s both easier and harder to think with the white noise of the ocean. Thoughts come and go with the waves, like how he never loved Taylor the way he was supposed to and how he almost lost Chim and Hen and how if luck hadn’t been on his side, he would have lost Christopher to the water, too, and how he’d talked with Maddie mere hours before she walked into the ocean and he hadn’t realized. And then there’s Eddie, buried beneath forty feet of mud, bleeding out in broad daylight, locked in his bedroom.
Inhale, and the tide draws in.
Exhale, and the waves break around Buck’s ankles. His bare feet sink deeper into sand. The longer he stands here, the deeper he’ll go.
For a breath, he lets it happen. There’s no real danger at this depth, anyway. What’s the harm in sinking a little bit?
He’s able to shake himself free and walk away.
***
“You know how to surf, right?”
Laying beneath the summer sun on a shoreline closer to Eddie’s house, Buck cracks an eye open. Eddie frowns but the expression isn’t sad, only thoughtful.
“I did,” Buck answers. “I think I still do.”
“You wanna take over for Christopher’s teacher? I think he’d rather have the time with you.” Eddie’s lips quirk up, his eyes mischievous. “You’re also less expensive.”
Buck grins. “Oh, so it’s like that?”
“LA isn’t cheap, man.”
“Like you’d ever leave.”
Buck tries to sound confident, like a part of him isn’t terrified Eddie will say, actually, Buck there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. It’s the same part of him that chased Taylor when she visited her dad, that watched Abby disappear through the glass doors.
He thought that part was gone, before.
Before Maddie ran. Before Chimney followed. Before Eddie told him to move on.
Before his family shattered.
But now, Eddie’s smile turns fonder as he turns his face to the ocean breeze. “You got me there. Wouldn't dare get between that kid and the ocean.”
Buck follows Eddie’s gaze to the shoreline, where Christopher is piling lumps of sand atop each other. Eddie told Buck once that Christopher never really built anything with LEGOs that looked like anything, he just liked sticking the pieces together, and the same rings true for sandcastles. Still, he constructs sand piles with a single-minded determination, tongue poking through his teeth in determination, cheeks flushed with the sun. The sight brings warmth to Buck’s chest, only broken with the slight anxiety that accompanies a wave breaking too harshly.
“It’s a miracle he still likes the ocean,” Buck murmurs. “After…”
“I’m telling you,” Eddie says. “He remembers it differently than we ever will.”
We.
Buck swallows hard. They don’t do this, usually. They don’t bring up the times they almost lost each other or Christopher. But he’s tired from the sun and bold with Eddie saying he’ll stay, so he asks, “How do you remember it?”
Eddie leans back on his elbows, quiet for a moment. "The worst thirty seconds of my life,” he says eventually. “Followed by knowing you had the worst ten hours of yours.”
A lump rises in Buck’s throat as another wave breaks around Christopher, because, yeah. That’s pretty much it. That, and the overwhelming feeling that he’d lost Christopher and Eddie in a single wave, before he ever really had them.
“I still don’t know how you forgave me,” he says.
“Buck.” Eddie settles a hand on Buck’s shoulder. The heat of his palms, his fingers, has nothing to do with the sun. “You aren’t responsible for the ocean.”
Buck swallows hard. Maybe not, but he’s blamed himself for a lot less. He wouldn’t have blamed Eddie, had he been mad. He had every right.
With Eddie’s forgiveness, more than one miracle happened that day.
And, Buck thinks. He still made you Christopher’s guardian.
Buck studies Eddie in the sun, the red flush of his chest, the new brushes of hair growing around the bullet scar on his shoulder. He can finish Eddie’s sentences. He can anticipate his every move in the field. Yet even now, Buck still struggles to understand the specifics of Eddie’s choice to name Buck as Christopher’s legal guardian. He’d done it after the well collapse, but didn’t tell Buck until a year later. He’d told Buck nobody would ever fight for Christopher like him, but nothing more. He’d called him Evan, but never did it again.
Buck wants to ask. He wants to ask what else Eddie remembers, from the other times.
Buck fears Eddie will run if he does.
“Buck,” Eddie says, his voice full of that fond exasperation that Buck knows so well. “I need to hear you say you’re not responsible for the ocean.”
“Not the ocean,” Buck concedes.
Because he knows: the water is powerful in a way he will never be. It drags and takes and controls, and not everyone is safe from it.
He knows: he may not be able to control the ocean, but he can place his body between those he loves and the all-consuming tide.
***
Buck thinks a lot about the word expendable. Expendable things are of little significance, able to be abandoned without thought or guilt; expendable things are designed to be used once and discarded. Expendable, Eddie chose, and told Buck he was anything but.
So maybe he’s not expendable. His value, though, is in who he can save, and his track record for the past year isn’t stellar. After Eddie was shot, it seemed his entire world slipped through his fingers. He was tossed into the ocean with and lost all sense of direction, and Taylor was all he could cling to. He’s let go of Taylor, yet he’s still in the water, still trying to find which way is up. He thinks he should have found it, by now, and it makes him angry that he hasn’t.
A lot makes him angry, these days, but even lost in it, he knows three things.
One: he will weather the tide without pulling anyone else under, without being too much.
Two: he will not let his family fall apart again.
Three: he will not let anyone else he loves get hurt, whatever it takes.
***
Eddie claims he’s too tired to drive, tossing the truck keys to Buck—Buck knows Eddie just doesn’t like driving when he doesn’t have to. Buck complains to save face, but really, Eddie surrendering responsibility so openly warms his chest in a way he can’t explain. They hit the bridge in golden hour light; there’s a song with too much banjo for Buck’s taste playing on the radio, but Eddie’s humming along, his feet kicked up on the dashboard, and Buck would give anything for this moment to last forever, for Eddie to remain so unburdened.
In front of them, a car slams the brakes. Buck does the same, jostling Eddie.
Buck remembers himself.
“You know you shouldn’t have your feet up like that,” Buck says, swatting at Eddie’s legs. “How times have we seen tibias forced through—”
“Tibias?” Christopher echoes from the backseat.
Eddie arches an eyebrow. “Yeah, Buck, where have we seen tibias?”
Christopher is getting older—but probably isn’t old enough for what Buck wanted to say, which was nearly poking out eyeballs. He settles for, “Not where they should be.”
“In car accidents?” Christopher asks. “Is that’s why it’s dangerous?”
“Exactly.” Buck smirks at Eddie. “You should remind your dad.”
“It’s fine.” Eddie settles deeper into his seat, deeper into the sunlight coming through the window. “Buck’s got us. He’s a great driver.”
Buck’s got us.
The words echo in Buck’s mind, the full weight of Eddie’s faith in him settling on him at once. Buck’s got us. It’s a lot to hear aloud, tossed out so casually as they’re stuck in traffic and tired from spending the better part of the day in the sun. It makes Buck’s stomach hurt a little bit, because Eddie trusts him so much. He’s broken that trust before and they’ve bounced back, but he knows better than to think anything entirely unbreakable, especially when he’s involved.
Buck’s got us.
What if he doesn’t, one day?
What happens then? What if he loses them both, like he almost has before?
“Buck!” Christopher laughs. “You have to press the gas pedal!”
Buck blinks. The car in front of them is a good couple feet away, recklessly accelerating. Buck used to drive the Jeep like that, weaving in and out of traffic. You drive like that, you’re gonna kill somebody, son, a cop had told him when he was inevitably pulled over, and Buck hadn’t known how to explain that he wasn’t trying to be reckless. He was just upset and didn’t know what he’d do with all that energy if he wasn’t driving.
Buck keeps his distance. He’s not taking any risks, not with Eddie and Christopher here.
“I’ll take my feet down if you’re going to drive like Abuela,” Eddie says.
Buck snorts. “I’ve seen your abuela drive.”
“Got me there.”
“Just trying to get us home safe.”
At this, Eddie quiets, no sound but the radio. Buck drums his fingers against the wheel. He’s afraid to logic through Eddie’s silence, because’s it’s the truth, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do if the truth is too much. Wherever he goes with the Diaz boys, his goal is always to deliver them home in one piece.
Buck parks the truck as the sun begins to set. As he helps Christopher down and slings the beach bags over his shoulder, he can still feel Eddie’s eyes on him. He looks up, and Eddie offers a smile—small, sincere, and an expression Buck would walk through fire to see.
“Come on,” Eddie says, nodding his head toward the door. “I’ll cook us dinner.”
Eddie cleans up first, then heads for the kitchen. Buck puts away the bags, and once Christopher is finished in the bathroom, rinses off. He’s pleasantly tired, his skin sun-tinged and raw from the saltwater, but he still follows Eddie to help cook.
Buck pauses in the open kitchen door.
Eddie’s wet hair falls over his forehead as he chops peppers and onions, his tongue curled over his top lip in concentration. He glances at Linda’s recipe card, smudged from use, then back at the cutting board, his brow furrowed. Buck smiles to himself. He’s known so many versions of Eddie in these past four years—the Eddie who had his walls all the way up and barely admitted he had a kid, the Eddie who saved his life, the Eddie who was filled with rage, the Eddie whose demons nearly pulled him under. They’re all wrapped into the man in front of him, and Buck doesn’t play favorites, but this Eddie?
Buck really, really likes this Eddie.
“You just gonna stand there?” Eddie calls.
Buck steps inside the kitchen. “I can help—”
“Nah.” Eddie nods at an already-open beer, condensation beaded at the bottle’s neck. It’s Buck’s favorite brand, the type Eddie didn’t like as much but keeps in the fridge anyway. “Just drink. Stay and keep me company.” He grins. “That’s all I need.”
***
People leave. Buck blames himself.
Dr. Copeland told him that’s leftover from his childhood, from the secrets his parents kept and made Maddie keep. Sure, Buck said during his session. Didn’t mean he believed it.
People leave, sometimes on purpose, sometimes because they are taken.
Bucky rarely allows himself to think about how many times Eddie has almost been taken from him—how many times Buck failed him.
Alone on the shoreline, he turns down that road.
The water laps at his ankles, and he remembers lightning strikes and rain pouring over his turnouts. He remembers mud under his fingernails, the desperation tearing through his body. He remembers the looks exchanged when everyone thought he was distracted, the terrible feeling that the mission would become recovery rather than rescue. He remembers Eddie stumbling through the crowd, a goddamn miracle, and holding him upright.
The wind holds him back, and he remembers Eddie’s locked door, Christopher lingering behind him. He remembers the pinch in his shoulder as he broke through, the ruin that greeted him. He remembers the silence, the loudest silence he’s ever heard. He remembers relief and terror in equal measure as Eddie sobbed.
Water and wind meet, spraying his face.
It tastes like copper, and Buck veers away.
***
Buck’s phone rings at midnight. Cold fear gathers in his gut when he sees Eddie’s name—Eddie rarely calls at all, let alone this late.
Shaky breathing greets him.
Buck’s running for his shoes and keys before Eddie can speak.
“Fifteen minutes,” Buck says. “Give me fifteen minutes, Eddie, I’ll be there.”
His only response is a choked sob. Buck takes the stairs two at a time, nearly tripping over his own feet. He’s still hurting. Eddie was still hurting, and Buck hadn’t noticed. Of course, things weren’t perfect, but Eddie was crying again. Again, and Buck hadn’t noticed the lead-up until the call came. He’d seemed fine the day they went to the beach; he’d seemed fine, making dinner and jokes, handing Buck a drink.
How could Buck have missed the signs?
Buck pushes the Jeep past the speed limit. He keeps Eddie on the phone. Every quiet sob creates a new faultline in Buck’s heart. He’ll have to be better. He’ll have to watch closer.
Fifteen minutes turns to ten. He barely remembers to put the car in park before he’s leaping out, running to unlock the door, navigating the darkened house to reach Eddie’s bedroom. “Eddie?” he whispers. “Eddie.”
The door is unlocked. Eddie’s sitting with his knees curled to his chest, hands interlocked and pressed against his forehead. No blood. No destruction. Only twisted bedsheets, his tear-stained shirt, and his shoulders trembling.
Faultlines turn to fissures, and Buck’s heart breaks.
“Hey, hey.” Buck sits on the bed’s edge. “What happened?”
Eddie blinks, his face puffy with tears. “Nightmare.” His voice is raw, and shit, how long had he been crying before he called? “Christopher?”
“Still asleep, it looks like.” Buck exhales. “Come on.”
He knows Eddie struggles with being in his bedroom after a nightmare, so Buck leads him to the couch. With a long exhale, Eddie sits, staring at Buck like he’s seeing him for the first time. “That wasn’t fifteen minutes.”
I was scared, Buck needs to say, since they’re trying not to pretend with each other. I thought I was losing you. Yet he can already see that while tonight might be bad, it’s definitely not where they were months ago, so he shrugs. “You know how I drive.”
Eddie shoots him a knowing look. “Only when you’re alone.”
Once, Buck might have bit back playfully. Maybe he needs to, for his sake and Eddie’s. He can’t bring himself to speak, because if he opens his mouth, he might say, I thought you could be dead, the night Christopher called me or do you think about that day, too? He simply shrugs and goes to the kitchen, filling a glass with ice and water. When he hands it to Eddie, Eddie makes a small, grateful sound.
“What was it about?” Buck asks.
“Not…” Eddie clears his throat. “Not tonight.”
Fear creeps closer. “But—”
“Buck.” Buck’s name leaves his lips as a snagged syllable. “Eventually. Just not tonight.”
Buck tries not to frown. Eddie doesn’t have to tell him anything, and healing doesn’t have to be linear, but this is too reminiscent of a hidden hospital trip, Eddie’s thinning body and insistences that he was fine.
“You’ll stay?”
Eddie’s voice pulls him from his mind. As much as Buck wants to push, Eddie’s looking at him with questioning, tired eyes.
“Yeah,” Buck says. “I’ll stay.”
For tonight, Eddie needs stability.
Buck needs to keep watch.
***
The thing is, while Eddie was breaking down without Buck realizing, Maddie also walked into the ocean. Maddie called him, before. He hadn’t known then, and he hadn’t realized what she tried in the aftermath, when she was in Boston. He does know this: people who walk into the ocean aren’t usually found. Buck would have spent the rest of his life with the what if, looking over his shoulder at every turn, looking for his sister.
Twice, he missed signs.
The thought cracks his chest open.
Buck sits at the ocean’s edge, letting the water soak his clothes. The sun hasn’t quite decided if it wants to come out today or not, so he’s left with a weird half-light. Eddie still hasn’t told Buck what his nightmare was about, but he hasn’t had another one.
Unless he’s hiding it.
His breath snags in his throat as he stands, steps deeper into the water. He didn’t notice. He was supposed to notice, but he didn’t, just like he was supposed to protect Eddie from the sniper. No matter what he does, it never feels like enough. The people he loves still hurt; he keeps hurting them, like when he let Taylor in on investigating Jonah.
He’s up to his shins now. The water is freezing. He hardly feels it. He wonders if Maddie stepped in slowly or ran. He wonders if Eddie’s last coherent thought was locking the door before he took a baseball bat to his walls
Another step.
Even this feels dramatic. Too much, like he’s always been since he was a kid. Not enough, like he’s been feeling lately, like he felt every day when he woke up beside Taylor. She stayed; she was there and would have tried again. Telling her no felt like progress.
But where is he supposed to go from here?
The back of his throat tightens. His eyes burn. It has to be from the sea, because he doesn’t think he can cry, not anymore. He hasn’t, at least, not since…
It’s been a long time.
He grits his teeth against it. There’s no reason to cry. Not now, when everyone is okay—when everyone is home.
He steps closer to the breaking wave.
In his pocket, his phone rings.
With memory of Eddie calling only a few nights ago, his hands tremble—even more when he sees Christopher’s contact photo on his screen. He answers. “Chris?”
“Buck.” Christopher’s voice is a whisper, low and serious. “It’s my class’s party for the last day of school. I was supposed to bring cupcakes.”
Cupcakes? “Christopher, it’s—”
“Dad went to the store yesterday to get a card for my teacher and asked me three times if there was anything else I needed, because I already forgot to give him my uniform to wash…”
And Buck’s getting the picture—Eddie is patient, but the cupcakes might deliver them into a straw-and-camel’s back situation. “So you need me to smuggle cupcakes into your house at six in the morning?”
“Don’t tell Dad.”
“Buddy, I hate to break it to you, but I think he’ll notice two dozen cupcakes.”
“He’ll be really happy to see you, and then he can’t be annoyed.”
Buck starts out of the ocean, toward the Jeep. He isn’t sure about Christopher’s logic. Still, he doesn’t argue, and arrives with twenty-four cupcakes at six-thirty sharp. He lets himself in and nearly collides with a bleary-eyed Eddie. To Eddie’s credit, he doesn’t seem alarmed at his door opening, just confused. More importantly, he looks okay.
Looks, though, can be deceiving.
“What do you…” Eddie frowns, nose wrinkled. “Cupcakes?”
“Cupcakes.” Buck sets them on the dining room table. “You’re lucky he didn’t Uber to the store himself. Something about you asking him—”
“Three times.” Eddie shakes his head, peering into the bag with an approving nod. “You’re a life-saver. I just started the coffee.” He arches a brow. “Your hoodie’s wet.”
Buck glances down at the saltwater darkening the hem of it, the memory of the tide coming around him like an embrace close to the surface. He can’t tell Eddie. Not when any mention of the shooting sets him on edge, and that’s the last thing Buck wants to do.
“Spilled something,” Buck says. “Did you sleep okay?”
An emotion Buck can’t pinpoint flickers in Eddie’s eyes, and for a moment, he doesn’t know what Eddie’s going to say next. He prepares himself for the worst, bracing until Eddie says, “Fine.” In the clear. “How about you?”
Couldn’t, Buck thinks. Woke up at four in the morning, wandered into the ocean, wandered back out. No big deal.
“You know me.” Buck summons a winning grin. “Always out like a light.”
***
They drive together, taking the truck to drop off Christopher and then to work. Eddie doesn’t seem off, except he keeps looking at Buck in a way he can’t really make sense of. It’s not because he doesn’t recognise Eddie’s mannerisms—he already knows it’s at least part worry, directed outward instead of inward. He’s just not sure what’s Eddie’s worried about.
Buck’s still puzzling through it in the first hours of their shift, standing in the kitchen and watching Eddie lounge on the couch, his eyes closed. It’s unusual for him to sleep in the middle of the shift like this. Another nightmare could have kept him up. Buck still doesn’t know what the last one was about, and if he’s still having them more nights than not…
“Hi?”
Buck flinches. Oh, shit. He’s standing in front of the fridge, and there’s Lucy, staring at him with her head cocked.
“Hey,” she says. “Whatcha doing?”
“I, um… I was…” I was watching Eddie sleep sounds creepy, even for him, so he grabs an apple from the bowl on the countertop. “Apple.”
“Aw, he knows his fruits.”
Lucy grins and shoulders past him to open the fridge, grabbing a canned cold brew. She pops it open with a cool confidence, and Buck remembers how easy it was to kiss her in the bar that night, when he thought Eddie ghosted him entirely. For a moment, his brain quieted. No worry over Eddie. No responsibility to Taylor. No wondering where Maddie and Chimney were. He’d kissed her because kissing (and sex) fixed things before.
Not really, he reminds himself. It had been wrong then. It would be wrong now. Didn’t mean it didn’t feel good—didn’t silence the screaming in his head for a moment.
All he needed was a moment of air to go back under.
“Earth to Buckley?” Lucy waves a hand in front of his face. “You good?”
“All good.”
Buck bites into the apple. He isn’t hungry, but he eats anyway—the interaction doesn’t need to be any weirder, especially since he’s still watching Eddie. On the couch, Eddie shifts, his brow furrowing. Buck’s stomach turns at the sight, worry rushing in. He wouldn’t want to have a nightmare here, so he must be exhausted, if he’s sleeping in the lounge, and—
“Can I ask you a question?”
Lucy’s voice startles him again, but Buck clears his throat. “Um, yeah. Yeah.”
“Do you think Eddie is good to be back?”
Buck frowns. “Why would you ask that?”
“Because I’m a lot more observant than you give me credit for, and I can’t help but notice that you’re watching him like a hawk.”
“He’s ready.” Buck feels a strange desire to defend Eddie, even though Lucy’s question is valid. “He’s one of the best in the field. Always has your back.”
“Ravi’s said as much.” She sips her drink. “How come you’re watching him, then? Do you not trust him when he says he’s good to be back?”
Maybe a month ago, Buck would have said yes. Eddie wasn’t a habitual liar. He still had a habit of lying when it came to his own wellbeing, though. Now, he’d worked on that with Frank and was better at expressing his needs. So what gave?
“I trust him,” Buck says, and it’s the truth.
The other half of the truth, Buck realizes, is that he doesn’t trust himself.
Because he was the one who let get Eddie shot—the one who didn’t have Eddie’s back. Bobby said it wasn’t Buck’s fault, but at the end of the day, Buck was standing there. Buck should have reacted quicker. He was the one who didn’t realize Eddie was breaking down, who told Eddie to put it away and move on, who told Eddie that he didn’t panic.
Lucy’s looking at him with a strange expression, so Buck repeats, “I trust him.”
Just not myself.
Before she can say anything else, the bell sounds. Eddie leaps off the couch like he hadn’t been asleep at all, and Buck can only tuck away his worry and follow.
***
“And she’s saying mama, but everything is mama! Even me!” Chimney sighs, leaning back in his seat as the engine speed toward the accident and the siren blares. “I keep trying to get her to say—oh, I’m sorry, Buck, are my problems boring you?”
Buck scrunches his nose, fighting back another yawn. “No.”
“You know, I think you did this somehow. Did you tell her not to say dada?”
“All part of my—” A yawn breaks through. “My evil plan.”
From the captain’s chair, Bobby snorts. “You have an evil plan?”
“Maybe!”
“You barely know what you had for breakfast,” Hen says. “Let know an evil plan.”
Buck snaps his fingers and points. “Pancakes, thank you very much, and coffee.”
“Dude, I’m coming to your apartment for breakfast.” Lucy grins in a way that could become flirtatious, if Buck wants to push it that way. A part of him wants to—he’s not gonna find the great love of his life quickly, so might as well fool around for a little, no strings attached.
“Wrong house,” Eddie says, interrupting Buck’s thoughts. “My pancakes, my coffee.”
Buck leans forward in his seat, trying to hide his amused smile. “Your kid calling me at six in the morning to bring him cupcakes.”
Eddie smirks at Buck before he says to the others, “Last day of school. Christopher remembered everything except the two dozen cupcakes he volunteered to bring.”
“And he didn’t tell you?” Chimney asks.
“I’d already washed the uniform he forgot and been to the grocery store twice.”
Hen shakes her head. “You see, you can’t give in to that, because the next thing you know, it’s midnight and you’re begging the art supplies shop to let you in because he swears he didn’t know about the project until then.” Buck arches an eyebrow at her. “Not that Denny would ever do something like that, or that Karen or I would give in.”
“I always have extra poster board and markers.” Buck smirks, thinking of the bin of school supplies he keeps under his bed, just in case. “Always prepared. Like a boy scout.”
Bobby laughs. “You are not like a boy scout.”
“Why not? Oh, hey, is this like, an honor thing? Were you a boy scout?”
“Cap would have been a boy scout,” Chim says.
“Wait.” Lucy looks between them all. She has a half-smile, Buck is learning, that means she’s very confused but trying not to show it, but he doesn’t understand why he’s seeing it now. “What did I miss? Why is Eddie’s kid calling Buck?”
“What do you mean?” Buck asks. “Why wouldn’t he call me?”
“It just seems…” Lucy glances at Hen, and then Chimney, like she’s waiting for either of them to say something. “Parental?”
“Parental,” Buck repeats. Across from him, Eddie has gone silent.
“I don’t know. I’m not trying to judge.” She holds up her hands. “I mean, I’m close to my nieces and nephews, but this…” She shrugs. “Cupcakes feel like a parent thing.”
A parent thing.
It’s not like he hasn’t been mistaken for Christopher’s dad before. He takes it in stride—being Christopher’s dad would be an honor. He loves Christopher more than he knows how to put into words, in a way he didn’t know he could love. But at the end of the day, he’s not his dad. Eddie is. And these questions coming from a coworker sink something in his stomach, something he can’t quite name.
“I think it was a trying-not-to-get-in-trouble thing.” Buck forces a smile. “I mean, he knows if anyone understands getting out of a scrape, it’s me.”
“Buck.” Eddie sounds exasperated. The engine comes to a stop, and as Eddie’s getting out, he says over his shoulder, all casual, “You know it’s not that.”
Buck freezes.
He thinks, Do I?
He thinks, If it’s not that, then what?
Beside him, Lucy nudges his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to make things weird,” she says. “I just… you all are so close. I was just trying to understand.”
A lump rises in Buck’s throat. Me too.
Every time he thinks he knows what he wants his life to look like, the universe pulls his feet out from under him. People leave. Relationships change. And Buck can’t stop feeling like he’s missing something he should have and know.
He can’t have that conversation. Not without the water rushing in.
“Don’t think anything of it,” Buck says to Lucy, opening the engine door. “Coming?”
Mercifully, she lets it drop. “Right after you.”
Except when Buck’s feet hit the ground, he freezes.
He knows this street. This exact spot. The sun illuminates it in screaming color, and before he can stop himself, he’s looking for it.
The stain Eddie’s blood left when he was shot.
In the distance, Bobby’s shouting orders. Car accident, Buck registers. Nothing too serious, or at least nobody seriously hurt. Bobby’s voice bleeds into something sharper, a sound he heard in his nightmares. Buck tastes the memory, copper, and feels it staining his skin. He sees it, Eddie’s hand inching across pavement, the light leaving his eyes. Buck blinks and locates it, the spot where they stood, the bleached asphalt, too light, permanently changed because there’s no getting out a stain like that.
It’s forever.
Past and present run together.
A loud bang cuts through silent air, and Eddie, Buck needs to find Eddie, he needs to protect him, he needs to…
“Buck.” Bobby’s voice, closer. “Buck, the jaws?”
Buck blinks hard, fast. “There was…” His heart is a runaway, careening until the crash. “Bobby, I heard… I heard something loud, I heard…”
Understanding dawns too quickly over Bobby’s face as he gives the scene a once over. “It was just the car backfiring. Only the car.”
Only the car.
Buck peers over Bobby’s shoulder. Eddie has to remember, but he’s not showing it as he assesses one of the victims, all cool composure. You have no right to this feeling. Buck’s stomach turns. That day, Eddie was the victim. Buck was the first responder.
Not even that.
He was the bystander, not even in uniform.
Bobby doesn’t ask if he’s okay. He doesn’t berate him for becoming distracted. He simply grips Buck’s shoulder, centering him, and says, “Your partner’s waiting on the jaws.”
So Buck shuts down, and fuck, if it isn’t easy to just. Put it away. Pretend it never happened. To tell himself that was another man who watched his partner take a bullet to the chest. To keep moving, keep moving, keep moving, moving to Eddie to hand him the jaws, moving so nobody can look him in the eye long enough to see what he’s pushing back, moving so memory doesn’t catch him.
He only stops once they’re in the engine, sirens off, heading back to the house. It was a normal call—as normal as these things can be—and nobody was hurt, but Buck’s all pent-up energy, and there’s a weird vibe in the cab. He bounces his leg, keeping his head bowed.
Buck can’t bring himself to look at Eddie for fear of what he may see.
“That street,” Hen eventually says. “Why did it seem familiar?”
For a long moment, everyone thinks. “I can’t remember any calls there,” Chim says.
Across from Buck, Eddie exhales, then says, “It was where I was shot.”
Silence falls. Buck hears noise anyway—a quiet ringing, a pulsing tinnitus, the ocean rising and water flooding his lungs. He doesn’t think he could speak now if he wanted to. If he opened his mouth, Eddie’s blood would come rushing out.
Lucy gives a low whistle. “Dude, you were the first one shot, weren’t you?”
“Yeah.” Eddie inhales—Buck’s listening if he’s on the verge of panicking. “I was.”
“You got lucky.”
“Lucky,” Buck scoffs, and the dam in his mouth breaks. He’s still looking down, but he senses everyone’s head swivel toward him. Maybe they see the blood. “He was shot in the middle of the street.” The last word turns to a growl, surprising him. He thought his anger drowned long ago, but it still has lungs. “Doesn’t seem very lucky to me.”
“He’s lucky to have survived,” Bobby says, even.
“It wasn’t just luck.” Eddie speaks softly but surely. “Buck crawled under the ladder track and pulled me out of the line of fire. Got me into the cab, too.”
Silence.
Complete, all-encompassing silence.
Buck dares to look up. He hates it, the shock and pity and confusion in their expressions, the way they’re reacting like something broke that day. It didn’t. Buck isn’t broken. Sure, he had one slip up when he told Christopher, but he was strong. He remained whole.
Didn’t he?
Even when the others turn away, Bobby and Eddie watch. “You didn’t tell me all that,” Bobby says.
I was too busy rinsing Eddie’s blood out of my mouth. “Yeah,” he says. “It didn’t seem important when I was rushing him to the hospital.”
Buck looks out the window, pretending not to notice Eddie’s eyes burning into him.
***
When they arrive back, Bobby nods to Buck. “Why don’t you help me with dinner?”
Buck frowns. “Cap, I—”
“Not a suggestion, Buck.”
His entire body tingles, like his nerves are alight. It’s been a long time since he’s got into it with Bobby—he thinks he could now. He was fine today. Fine. He did his job.
Except you needed to be reminded.
“Onions aren’t gonna chop themselves,” Bobby calls over his shoulder.
Buck scowls, but jogs up the stairs. “Am I in trouble?”
“Not in trouble.” Bobby moves around the kitchen with easing, rounding up ingredients. “I could just use a hand. We haven’t cooked together in awhile.”
Buck has a hard time believing him. “If this is about the call—”
“I said you weren’t in trouble.” Bobby shakes his head, a hint of a smile in his expression. “Come on. Christopher will like this recipe.”
“Ah, I doubt it. Nothing competes with Isabel’s cooking. Eddie’s gotten good, too.”
“Well, the kid needs to eat, and I don’t think Isabel’s coming all the way from Texas.”
Buck peels and dices a white onion, the pieces uneven. It’s been a long time since he cooked entirely from scratch—he and Taylor got into a bad takeout habit that ended in lots of stomachaches and a bit of lingering resentment toward the burger place down the street from his apartment (and, of course, a break-up—he doesn’t know what it says about him that he’s mostly upset that he can’t go get burgers without feeling weird).
“Chiles, too.” Bobby places green chiles on the cutting board.
Buck gives a mock salute. “Yes, Chef.”
After Buck passes Bobby the chiles, the only sound is the sizzling pan. Bobby gives him a block of cheese to grate and a searching look. Buck doesn’t know what he’s looking for—or what he expects to find.
“So,” Bobby eventually says. “You never told me about the ladder truck.”
Buck could have predicted that was coming. He curls his shoulders in, focusing entirely on the cheddar he’s grating.
“In fact,” Bobby continues. “You never told me much of anything about that day.”
“Don’t know what there was to tell,” Buck says. “Eddie was shot.”
That’s all, he tells himself. One bullet. Eddie lived. That’s all that matters now.
Bobby pushes the contents of the pan around with a spatula, glancing at Buck. “Captain Mehata told me you reacted well under pressure.”
“Was that what it was?” Buck asks. “Pressure?”
“Well, what would you call it?”
For starters, a waking nightmare. Buck hadn’t believed it real until his body slammed against the pavement, Mehta’s hand curled over the top of his head. Then it hadn’t stopped feeling real. Eddie was everywhere: his weight in Buck’s arms as he hauled him into the truck; his skin under Buck’s hands as he put pressure on the wound; his blood in Buck’s hair and under his nails and in his mouth; his words, are you hurt?, ringing in Buck’s ears.
“Buck?” Bobby asks.
“I don’t know, Bobby.” Buck grounds himself in the easy motion of grating cheese. “It’s not important. It was over a year ago and Eddie’s fine. You said it yourself.”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you.” Bobby gives him a sidelong glance, hesitant in a way Buck hasn’t seen him in a long time. “Did you talk to your therapist about that day?”
Buck’s stomach drops. Maybe a few years ago, he would have lied. Now, Bobby knows him well enough to see through it, so he says, “I stopped going.”
He knew Dr. Copeland would know about the shooting. He knew he would have to talk about it. So he simply… canceled. Then kept canceling. Finally, after months, she stopped calling, and it was a relief and a blow all at once.
“Buck,” Bobby says, and what he means is, what the hell are you thinking?
“I promise, Bobby, I’m really okay.”
“I don’t know if I believe you. The past year hasn’t been…” Bobby lets out a long breath, taking the pan off the heat. “It hasn’t been easy for any of us, kid. I know it hasn’t been easy for you to watch Eddie hurt.”
“It’s his PTSD.”
“He was shot right in front of you.”
“Yeah, he was shot.”
Anger pools in his gut, hot, familiar. He’s not really sure why it’s here now, or if it’s even Bobby he’s really mad at. But it’s here, he’s mad, and it’s the same feeling that sent him careening down Hershey streets, first on a bike, then on a motorcycle. It’s the same feeling that has him afraid to get behind a wheel, whether it’s the Jeep or Eddie’s truck or the engine, because a part of him whispers that the crash always made it hurt less.
He can’t.
He can’t hurt anyone more than they’ve already been hurt.
“He was shot,” Buck repeats. “Not me.”
“Buck.” This time, his name is a gentle admonishment. “It happened to you, too.”
And Buck can’t be here any longer.
He pushes the cutting board away. “I think you’ve got this, Bobby.”
Before he makes it around the island, though, Bobby says, “You started seeing Taylor right after, didn’t you?”
Buck freezes.
He could say Eddie was far from his mind when he kissed her. He could say he thought he was doing something right, by seizing the day and starting something new because he’d been reminded of life’s fragility. He could lie.
The truth winds up on his lips.
“All I could taste was his blood,” Buck says. “I had to get it out.”