Chapter Text
Buck’s been (not) sleeping in his new place for two weeks when he drafts the first letter. Drafts, not writes, because writes would imply he ever intends to send it, and he definitely doesn’t. It’s mostly just a way to get his feelings out without bothering Maddie (he worries he’s been doing that too much anyway, and anyway, she’d only bring up the ‘are you in love with him?’ Thing again, and he doesn’t want to have to litigate all the reasons he can’t be in love with Eddie all over again). So, the letter. It’s kind of a therapy thing, he’s pretty sure he’s heard of people doing that to cope with break ups and stuff. He waits until it’s late enough at night that he’s too tired to really be embarrassed, and he writes:
“Eddie Diaz,
I should apologise for not calling you. If this was a real letter, that’s what I’d do. I’d tell you that Hen, Chim, Bobby and Maddie all say I should’ve done it weeks ago, that they’re probably right, and that they miss you. That I miss you.
It’d be true, too, mostly. Maddie asks about you a lot, at the moment (she thinks I’m in love with you, which is ridiculous because you’re straight and even if you weren’t, you wouldn’t) and we all miss you at work, obviously. You were a vital part of the team. You still are, even though you’re in Texas and haven’t called or texted any of us since you left. (I keep telling them you’re busy- that’s what it is, right? Chim says that’s no excuse, and you should reply to the memes he sends you anyway. But I get it, I think. It’s hard to get used to being with your family again when you’ve spent most of your adult life running away from them). It would only be mostly true, though, because I wouldn’t have told you that I don’t miss you.
I know how that sounds, I promise, so before you get upset, let me explain.
I don’t miss you, Eddie, because ‘miss’ is too small a word. I miss the cheap coke knock offs they used to sell at the store near my old place. I miss my old car. Missing is small and nostalgic. If I miss you, it’s in the same way an amputee misses their arm.
That’s dramatic. And probably insensitive, but it’s true. I hadn’t realised how many of the structures of my life I’d built around you until they all collapsed when you left. All of our other friends are married and have their own lives, or I don’t know them as well as I knew you, or they’re annoyed with me cause even though you’re gone you’re all I can talk about. You’re all I can think about, if I’m being honest. Which is the whole point of this. And everywhere I go is haunted by you. You’re at the station, obviously, and on calls where I turn and expect to find you at my back and instead there’s just…. Nothing.
And God, you linger in the house. I keep expecting to see you on the sofa, watching a kid’s movie with Chris and pretending you don’t secretly love it. I keep expecting to find you in the Kitchen, asking me to grab you a drink if I’m grabbing myself one. I keep expecting to find you in the bedroom. Anyway, yeah, I should probably call you. Or rather, I should have called you weeks ago and now it’s more like I need to call you, but I just… I can’t.
I’m worried that if I call you, you won’t pick up. Or you will, but only to tell me not to call again. That you’re staying in Texas. That you’ve forgotten to miss us already.
You wouldn’t do that, right? But I still can’t call you. I just… sit here, in LA, and more-than-miss you.
Need you, maybe.
Yours, Evan Buckley. Buck.”
He’d been trying a formal sign-off, but it felt wrong, and it didn’t need to be formal anyway, he was the only one who’d ever see it.
It becomes a habit after that. He writes to Eddie almost every night, a growing pile of ripped-out paper stuffed a box he keeps shoved under the bed like a kid because seeing them hurts. Even once they start actually talking on the phone, the long rambling conversations that flow so easily it feels like the distance between them shrinks from miles to inches. Especially then, as he figures Eddie has enough going on, between his new job in Texas and trying to earn Chris’ trust and fighting constantly with his parents, and Buck doesn’t want to bother him with this stuff, because it seems so small in comparison. So he writes:
“I think I should get a dog, maybe. The loneliness is starting to get to me. When I told Maddie that, she suggested a Dalmation, but Chim and I agree that that’s too stereotypical.”
And he writes:
“Do you miss me like I miss you? Does it hurt like this for you? Like a weight on your chest?”
“I’m trying to date more, but I can’t stop comparing them to you in my head, which is dumb because you’ll never~”
(He doesn’t finish that one). Night after night he tells the paper:
“Maddie keeps asking about you.”
“Are you seeing anyone? Chim (by which I mean Maddie, except I told her that if she kept bringing you up I’d stop talking to her, which we both know is any empty threat) wants me to ask, and I promised I would, but he never specified I had to ask the real you. Is it bad that I hope you’re not and I don’t even know why?”
“I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“I’ve started buying you things for when you get home. So that means you have to come home.”
He genuinely doesn’t intend to send them. When Eddie gets home, Buck will probably bin them (burn them, maybe? He’s pretty sure that’s what you’re supposed to do with letters like these, long and dramatic and overly emotional as they are).
Gradually, things change. He forges a shelter for himself in the space that Eddie and Chris left behind, builds friendships outside the station crew and goes on dates. First dates only, mostly, with men and women who tell him, an endless litany, in voices that range from jealous to gentle, that they don’t think it will work. A few suggest he gets over his ex, and when his mind flashes to Eddie, it takes him a second to remember that that’s wrong.
“Maybe it’s time to accept it,” Maddie says, her voice pointed over the phone. She’d called to ask how the date had gone (badly) and to offer reassurances. Buck had left her on speaker while he made dinner, and so she sits, perched, on the shelf over his stove.
“There’s nothing to accept, he’s-”
“I don’t mean him. I mean you,” she sighs, “that’s the only argument you ever give.”
“Because there’s no point discussing it further,” he doesn’t want to examine the question, is the thing.
“You can’t hide from it forever,” she says, in the soft tone that reminds him of when they were young and she was as much his mom as his sister, “You’ll only hurt yourself more.”
“How would I even know?” he asks, knowing he sounds petulant.
“Well for one thing, if everyone you know thinks you’re in love with him, that’s a bit of a giveaway,” He rolls his eyes.
“That’s not evidence.”
“Well tell me how you do feel about him, and we’ll figure it out.”
He frowns at the food he’s been making, thinking of the letters he’s been keeping tucked away, of the things he’s confessed in ballpoint ink that he’d never let himself say aloud. “I felt safer when he was here. Like I knew who I was. Everything was so messed up, after Ab- when he showed up,” the sting of the name is strong in a way it hasn’t been in years “Eddie made being the new me easier.”
“Okay,” Maddie draws the vowels out carefully “That’s an interesting start,” she pauses, the silence hangs heavy, interrupted by a tapping on her end of the line “Can you imagine your future without him?”
“I- what- did you google that?”
“I found a list on how to tell if you're in love with someone. Answer the question.”
“You’re married, shouldn’t you already know?”
“Answer the question, Buck.”
He doesn’t. He lets the quiet stretch out, long enough that she finally asks “Are you still there, or did the line drop?”
“I’m here,” he confirms “I think maybe I’m scared to know.”
“Isn’t that kind of an answer itself?”
“I can’t be in love with him,” Buck says “I don’t even know that he’s coming back.”
He is in love, though. That’s the problem, and once he opens that metaphorical Pandora's box, it refuses to let him shut the lid. The evidence is literally all around him, in the house that Eddie rents and that he sublet to have some proof that Eddie has to come back eventually. Even if only to say goodbye. It is in the FaceTime calls they set up, in the way that whenever he has Eddie’s voice in his ear as he moves around the house he feels easier, more grounded.
It ends up in a letter, of course. It ends up in several, actually. He only stops writing it when he stops writing them at all, and he only stops doing that because:
“I’m coming back,” Eddie’s voice is distant over the phone speaker, it’s the third time he’s said it. Buck knows he’ll have set it up so that he can balance the phone while he packs, in a bedroom in Texas he can never picture right. “It’s official, two weeks. I know it’s kinda short notice,” he adds, apologetic.
“I’ll sort something out,” Buck assures him “Don’t even worry about it. Focus on getting you and Chris home,” he can’t stop smiling. The grin that had started when Eddie had first told him has become a living being, made its home on his face and refused to die. He feels as though his veins are singing with it. He’s coming home, he’s coming home, he’s coming home.
“I can barely think of anything else,” Eddie laughs “I’ve missed you.”
(It’s Maddie’s fault, Buck decides, that his heart leaps at Eddie’s tone, sweet, sincere, lowered like this is something precious just for the two of them. It never used to happen before. Did it?).
“I’ve missed you too,” he answers, matching the softness.
“Two more weeks,” It sounds like a promise.