Reading Time: 107 Minutes

Title: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Buck
Author: Sunryder
Fandom: 9-1-1
Genre: Contemporary, Episode Related, Pre-Relationship, Slash
Relationship(s): Evan “Buck” Buckley/Eddie Diaz
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: On-Screen Panic Attacks, Minor Character Death
Author Note: Spoilers for Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Monsters Inc., WALL-E, Iron Man, Brave, Tangled, and – in case you couldn’t guess – The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.
Word Count: 50,383
Summary: Red is dying and Buck is fucked up about it. Not just about losing a friend, but about ending up like Red: dying alone without the people who used to be his team. Buck doesn’t want to go out like that. It might take him a few panic attacks, a road trip, and a book recommendation, but Buck is going to tidy his life up.
Artist: vMures

---

---

Chapter Seven

Buck was going to get Jill’s number and give it to Athena so she could recruit the woman to do interrogations.

After all the people at bars who thought Red was his grandfather, Buck had a speech prepared. That was all he planned on telling Jill… just, with the dead and ashes part that the post-dated the bar version of the speech.

But Jill sat there staring at him with eyes that might be bluer than Buck’s own and everything just kind of… spilled out.

Buck started the way he always did: he was LAFD, he went out to a bar one night when his team couldn’t join him, and then were was Red, only Red was dying of cancer. But the usual words about helping Red through his bucket list turned into admitting that Red had been dying alone, and until Buck saw Red living it, he hadn’t known that was his own worst fear.

“Don’t get me wrong, I liked Red. He was great. I didn’t spend all that time with him just to keep me from ending up that way.”

“I believe you, honey.”

And she… did. Like it was easy and there was nothing else it could be but Buck liking the old guy and wanting to make him happy at his end. “Yeah?”

“Of course. What else would it be?”

“My team thought—” ‘I was being a self-centered asshole’ didn’t sound right. “My team didn’t get it.”

“Your friendship?”

“Why I was upset about Red and his… situation.”

Jill hmm-ed. “Do they get it now?” The ‘as you’re driving his urn around for pie’ left unsaid.

“Yeah!”

Jill gave a pointed slurp on her straw.

“I think. I mean, they know it’s important to me, so they showed up to help. We had a big team dinner at my Cap’s house, and we all went to Red’s favorite bar, and Eddie took Red and me rock climbing, and Hen brought a cake for a little funeral at our firehouse, and they’re… yeah. I don’t think they get it, get it, because they’re all in happy relationships with people around them that they love and none of them are going to die alone, but they showed up.”

A wide, shallow bowl thunked down in front of him and a deep voice asked, “What’s the real problem, then?” Unlike Jill, Carl – presumably – absolutely looked like the kind of guy who dealt with pie all day. He was tall, broad, thicker in the belly than the shoulders, and Jill smiled up at him like he’d hung the moon. (Buck kind of wanted to ask about her skincare routine because there hadn’t been a single wrinkle on her face until she smiled.)

Along with Buck’s bowl – Buck had pseudo-ordered home-fried potato chunks mixed with veggies and topped with eggs – Carl set down another wide bowl filled with fruit, though he put it between Buck and Jill, handing her a small bowl of cottage cheese and a kiss before he sat down next to his wife.

Buck decided to roll with it. “I don’t have a…” Buck took a bite – more for the delicious smell than to put off having to answer that question, though it played a role. Only, Buck forgot he was supposed to be talking. “Holy shit.” He moaned. His perfectly cooked potatoes came with a bunch of vegetables right at that sautéed-but-not-soaked-with-butter stage that no one other than Bobby could manage. Just the right amount of perfectly melted Swiss cheese topped the mix, along with two poached eggs that broke like sauce the moment Buck tapped them. “This is amazing.”

“Thank you.” Carl raised his mug of tea. “Now: real problem.”

Buck took a few more bites, but Jill was happy with her cottage cheese and her share of the fruit, while Carl had that Zen thing that mean neither of them was going to cave. (Buck kind of wanted to know if Jill had learned the silence from Carl, or Carl had learned it from her. Though, he liked the idea that they’d gotten together because she was stubborn and he was chill.)

“I don’t have a problem.”

“Kid. People don’t road trip someplace with an urn unless there’s a problem.”

“There was a problem, but I fixed it. Well, I’m fixing it.”

Jill looked from Buck’s red eyes, to the urn, back to Buck’s smooshed curls. “Uh-huh. Story.”

“It’s really not—”

“Boy.”

“Right. Okay.” Buck dallied long enough that Carl’s eyebrow went up in Bobby’s ‘waiting dad’ way and Buck… didn’t quite know how to put it. He didn’t have a speech prepared for this part. “So… I’m not crazy.”

That made Jill set down her glass. “Noted.”

Buck had tried to figure out a way to tell the people in his life about what he’d ‘seen,’ but nothing he’d come up with to explain himself was better than just blurting out, “I’m seeing things. Not like, hallucinations,” he sped on, “just… dreams.”

Jill put her delicate hand on Carl’s thick forearm to stop him from the follow-up questions Buck could see on his face.

Context might make this clearer. “Have you ever been in a float pod?”

“The egg things?” Buck nodded through a mouthful. “No, but we know what you’re talking about.”

“Red’s doctor recommended one to help him deal with the pain, and I went with him. Only I didn’t…” Buck mulled through another bite. “My pain didn’t go away. I got in the pod and I had a dream, but not really? It was like looking in the future, where I was Red, but I was me, but I had turned out just like Red.”

“Well, that’s—”

This time it was Carl who stopped Jill. “Hold on. He’s not done yet.” Buck blushed and took a bite, which just made Carl narrow his eyes. “You did something stupid.” Buck choked. “Yeah, you were worried about turning into a lonely old man so you did something stupid. What was it?”

“I relapsed a little.” Both of their eyebrows went up. “Not like that. I used to be a sex addict. But I got better, or I thought I did. So yeah, after I saw myself like Red, I decided to date more, to have a real relationship, you know? Only,” Buck focused on spearing his fork with as many potato pieces as possible, “did you know that if you tell women you’re looking for a relationship, they will have sex with you on the first date? Before the first date?”

“Yes,” Jill said. Buck turned all his attention to that story, but she just waved her fork at him to go on. “No. We’re still hearing about your visions.”

“Not visions.”

“You have a better word?”

“Not-visions?”

“Hm.” She tried not to smile. That made the next part easier.

“I only had sex with one woman, but it was in the parking lot of the bar when Red was inside talking to someone about his cancer,” which, now that Buck said them together, was probably the reason he caved to that particular offer. “Red told my team, and they started to make the same jokes they did before I got better, and I just… I lost it.”

“You say anything you regret?” That wasn’t the question Buck was expecting.

“No. Eddie dragged me out before I could say too much and he took me home to talk me down, but then…” there was no convenient float pod to explain this one. “So, a couple of months ago Eddie almost drowned in a well when we were saving this kid.” Buck waited for the inevitable follow-up questions, but Jill and Carl just nodded. “Well, it turns out that after that, Eddie changed his Will so I’d get Christopher if he died. Uh, Chris is his kid, and my favorite person ever.”

Buck pulled out his phone and flicked to a text he’d gotten from Eddie that morning. No words, just Chris cackling on the swings at the park. This time, Jill and Carl did as they should and cooed over Chris’ picture. (Since Buck couldn’t help himself when it came to Chris, he might’ve flipped through a few more pictures of the Diazes from yesterday, just so they got the whole breadth of Chris’ awesomeness.

“So, Eddie made me Chris’ guardian, but he didn’t tell me about it until he took me home after almost yelling at everybody. ‘Cause Eddie, he gets why I was so upset about Red. He gets all of it. So, Eddie was talking me down, and promised that I didn’t have to worry about dying alone because I was going to have him and Chris.”

“I have a question.” Jill interrupted.

“He’s still talking,” Carl whispered.

She pushed Carl back with a single finger. “This is important. Did you kiss that handsome man after he promised he and his son would spend the rest of their lives with you?”

“No!” Buck’s brain shut down. “It’s not—It’s Eddie! I wouldn’t—that’s not what happened! I went to bed and I had another dream. One where I was—”

“Dating that handsome man,” Jill tossed out with a smirk.

Carl nudged her. “Leave him be.”

“I was dating not Eddie in the dream. It’s Eddie.”

“You weren’t dating Eddie.” Carl soothed. “Tell us what about the dream has you so wound up.”

Honestly, dating Eddie would’ve been less objectionable than what Dream!Buck got up to. “The person I was dating in the dream, they didn’t like Chris. So, the whole dream was Eddie and Chim helping me move out of her place.”

“But you were breaking up with her.”

“But not because she didn’t like Chris. I don’t know why I was breaking up with her, but Dream!me had dated her, and kept dating her, even though she didn’t like Chris.”

“Okay?” Carl said, like he didn’t quite understand why this had wound Buck up as much as nightmares about dying alone.

“I woke up at Eddie’s place,” Jill didn’t comment, “and I went back to my apartment to get ready for a shift. But when I got there, I realized that my place was full of stuff that my ex-girlfriend had picked.” They were still confused. “In the dream, I didn’t have a lot to move because it was her place and her stuff. Then I got to my real apartment and it was just the same, just a different girl and a different building. I looked around, and I could see becoming the kind of guy who was so scared about being alone that I ended up the kind of asshole who’d put a girl over Chris.”

Buck trailed off and went back to stabbing at his breakfast. Jill leaned in. “And?”

“And what? That’s it.” Buck shrugged. “I went to work, told my team that I needed to figure out how to buy stuff that was mine and not my girlfriend’s, Chim recommended this book, Red died, and yesterday I got off shift with the plan to spend my whole weekend figuring out what in my apartment sparks joy, but then Red’s lawyer called and offered to let me scatter his ashes.”

“That’s it? That’s the story?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, Red came here in the ‘80s for pie and said it was the best pie he’d ever had. He wanted to come back but we… didn’t make it. So, we came for pie before I… you know.”

Jill twisted around and glared at Carl like she wanted a refund. Carl held up a hand, stopping her before she got out whatever she was about to say. “Let me just check here: your plan is to redecorate your apartment.”

“Not redecorate. Go through everything and see what sparks joy. See, there’s this book—”

Carl held up a finger again. “We can come back to the book later. Your plan is to eat some pie, drive over to the beach, let your friend go, drive home, probably work a shift, and then go through your stuff and see what ‘sparks joy.’”

Buck took another bite. “Yup.”

“Sparks joy?” Jill hissed.

“Yeah.” Buck didn’t know what to do with the expressions on either of their faces. “Like I said, there’s this book called—”

“I don’t care about the book!” Jill snapped.

Carl patted her back. “Breathe, baby.”

Jill shrugged his hand off. “No, I will not breathe! The boy just told us he’s basically been having visions of the damn future where the universe tells him how miserable he’s going to be if he doesn’t change things, and what he decides to do with that is clean his damn apartment?”

“Tidy,” Buck said automatically.

Jill shrieked like a tea kettle.

“I’m not just… I mean—” Buck’s brain stalled out because, yes, that was pretty much exactly his plan and until it came out of someone else’s mouth in that ‘what the hell?’ tone, it had seemed like exactly what he was supposed to do. “Well, when you say it like that it sounds dumb.”

“How the hell else am I supposed to say it?”

“Hold on.” Carl stopped them both. “Let me ask: how are you saying it to yourself?”

“That I’m figuring out what I like and what makes me happy, without worrying about how to make my girlfriend stay.”

“That is better. See, Jill?” Carl had on the calm voice Athena used when car crash victims were screaming at one another. “His plan isn’t just to tidy his apartment. It’s to start asking himself about what really makes him happy with his stuff and his stuff. Then he’ll make changes. Right?”

“Yes?” Buck nodded.

Jill narrowed her eyes at him. “That sounds too much like a question.”

“I hadn’t thought about that part before.”

“About the part that comes after you clean your apartment?”

“No?”

“Jill, baby—”

“No, Carl. He just got me all worked up with this story and then he just stops halfway through. You don’t have damn visions of the future, have a friend die, and then just clean your damn apartment!”

Carl hushed Jill, tugging her out of her chair. Where they went or what they said, Buck didn’t know. It was like his brain had blanked out, just staring at their chairs in that same pale laminate that had been Red’s last door.

Buck had… well, he’d kind of thought this was the end of the story. He was Sully, just having to destroy the door before he changed Monstropolis or WALL-E about to use the plant to get everyone home. He just needed to let Red go, then he could do the part of the movie that always came after the big fight and right before the end. He’d learned his lesson. He could tidy his place while happy music played in the background, then the end credits would roll on his apartment full of stuff he’d picked, maybe on a night where he had Chris and Eddie over to watch a movie like they were going to do for the rest of forever. And if he and Eddie got married – to different people, Jill – and had more kids, great. And if not, that was good too. Because Buck had had his ‘vision’ and ‘the universe’ had warned him off the man he’d been becoming.

Buck being here – well, not here, but the beach he was headed to, ready to let Red go – that was fighting the purple snake dude, or the evil robot, or the bald guy who tried to kill Iron Man. Buck just needed to spread Red’s ashes and then stop making choices because he didn’t want to die alone.

That was it.

Maybe Jill didn’t like the ending, but that was it.

Buck had learned his lesson and he just needed to say goodbye to Red, goodbye to Red!Buck and Dream!Buck, then go home to tidy his apartment. Like Carl said: he’d go through all his stuff and figure out what made him happy, and then he’d… figure out what stuff made him happy. And it would all be fine.

And no, maybe Buck hadn’t thought about the stuff part of sparking joy yet, but it made sense, so he would’ve gotten there.

Yeah.

He totally would’ve.

His work made him happy. And Chris made him happy. (And sex made him happy, but maybe not for a while.) And…

And books made him happy! And cooking with Bobby made him happy. And… he’d liked having Abuela fuss over him? That was good. And rock climbing. They should do that more often. The team dinner was fun, though maybe they should do more of those and less going out drinking. And he, uh… he liked…

Uh…

Fuck.

Buck didn’t know what he wanted.

He had stuff that he wanted, but ‘more rock climbing’ and ‘to have dinner with both Abuela and Bobby’ wasn’t the same thing as stuff. Not wanting to die alone wasn’t the same thing as actually wanting… something. Something more for the rest of his life than just ‘not die alone.’

Like moving with a pulled muscle, Buck dragged his eyes away from the nothing he’d been staring at. “Hey Carl, can I get my pie—”

Carl set a dry ice box and a takeout container on the table. “The big one is for Chris and Eddie. It should still be good when you get home. The container is for you and Red.”

“Right.” Buck stumbled out of the chair, picking up the boxes and his backpack, only to stumble back halfway out of the restaurant to put everything down so he could put Red in his bag.

Buck stopped in the doorway to twist around and say, “Thank you.” The words weren’t enough, but he hoped his tone was.

Carl had his arm wrapped around Jill’s shoulders; her lips pressed tight like she had things to say but was letting Buck flail to his own conclusions. “Come back when you’ve figured it out?”

Buck thought he said yes, but his brain wasn’t all the way there to make sure.

He climbed in the Jeep, flicked off the radio, and rolled down his window with the plan to let all that stuff spiral out of his head while he drove.

But with Buck being Buck, somehow, he made it four hours up the coast and didn’t have any more idea about what came next than when he stumbled out the diner door. It was like he blinked and he was in Oregon. Buck wouldn’t have realized the passage of time at all if the landscape hadn’t changed, everything wilder and rougher the further north he got, greener trees with fuller branches, not nearly as scrubby. And somehow, the sky got bluer up against those trees.

Buck went on muscle memory all the way to the cliffs overlooking a narrow stretch of beach that only locals knew about – and Buck, because he’d had sex down there. Buck’s brain probably wouldn’t have kicked on at all if getting down to the beach hadn’t required finding a set of unmarked stairs that he used to think were great, but as a firefighter, he couldn’t imagine the number of drunk teenagers they had to save at this spot.

Buck didn’t come back to his body until the shock of smooth chocolate and tart raspberry hit his tongue. Buck couldn’t hold in the half-moan and closed his eyes. When he opened them, the world came back into focus.

Warm sand was beneath his bare toes, white waves licked near his feet with the incoming tide, and the ocean stretched out before him like silver. Somewhere along the way, Buck had shucked his shirt and shoes, and the salty breeze ran over him like it was scrubbing off the days of travel. Buck slouched back down into the sand, stretching out to get as much of the sun’s warmth as he could. He’d pay for it with sand everyplace for days, but it was worth it to feel the heat on his skin and chocolate on his tongue.

Buck didn’t think. Just ate and breathed until there was no more pie. Buck had to acknowledge that in his fugue he’d brought Red down with him, urn buried partway in the sand, leaning back at the same angle the man liked to have when he talked himself into stepping on the beach.

“You’re right. It’s the best pie I’ve ever had.” Buck scraped the tines over the last traces of chocolate. “It’s even better than Bobby’s. You lied to him.”

That… Buck shouldn’t have thought that, because it knocked something loose in his mind and tears started to gather. “You lied to me too. You weren’t happy.” Buck snorted. “Or maybe you were and I just can’t figure out how you could’ve been. But I don’t think you were.”

Buck closed the container and nudged it into the sand where it wouldn’t blow away. He curled over his knees and turned all his attention to the urn. “I think you felt like you were stuck there, and you thought your only choice was to be okay with it. Especially once you knew you were dying. After that, you thought your only options were to regret everything and be miserable, or to be okay. Like being okay would make everything worth it. Like that would make dying worth it. But it didn’t!”

A particularly big wave crashed and stretched up to lap at Buck’s toes. The chill made Buck look around and realize he was on a beach yelling at an urn.

“Right.” He sighed. “Or maybe you thought it did make it worth it. I don’t know. And I never got up the guts to ask you. And even if I did, I don’t know if you would’ve told me.

“I don’t know a lot about what I want to come next in my life, about what will make me all the way happy, make me okay on my deathbed. But I know that what you did won’t be enough for me. I don’t know what I want. I’ve got a 20-hour drive to think about it, but I know I don’t want… to be you.”

It felt like confessing a secret. Like he was at a sleepover at midnight, telling Petey Williams from down the road that he didn’t think his mom liked him. It was true, but it was still kind of a shitty thing to say, so Buck reached out and patted the top of the urn – skin warm in the sunshine. “I’m sorry. That was mean. But it’s true, and you probably would’ve told me to own it. I don’t know what I want, but I don’t want your life.”

Buck picked up the urn and climbed to his feet, wading into the water up to his calves. He held the urn in front of him, getting ready. “Athena told me that the right way to say goodbye was to do what you told me to do and spend time with the living, but I think she was wrong. I think the right way to say goodbye is to learn from your mistakes. I don’t know if you’d be proud of me for figuring out that you were lying, or if you really thought you were happy, but I couldn’t be happy being like you. I want something better.”

Buck gently thumbed the lid off the urn and into the water. “I hope that wherever we end up after this life, that you’re with your crew, and that they’re just as great as you remember. And I hope you’re happy now. Really happy.”

Buck gave the urn a squeeze, the closest they’d ever got to a hug. Holding his breath, Buck tossed the urn up and over, arcing into the ocean where it disappeared beneath silver waves.

Chapter Eight

After three days of almost nonstop driving, Buck walked into the station buzzed, over-caffeinated, and not at all prepared for the ambush waiting for him at the firehouse doors.

“Where were you?” Chim demanded, clearly channeling his Maddie-derived angst.

“Didn’t Eddie tell you?”

“He told us you were going to spread Red’s ashes. He also told us that he didn’t get any more than the ‘still alive’ text messages the rest of us got over the last two days.”

That was blatantly untrue. Yes, Buck had warned Eddie that he had some thinking to do over the drive home so he shouldn’t worry if Buck didn’t pick up. But Buck had still talked to the Diaz boys half a dozen times over the drive back.

“I drove up to Oregon to scatter Red’s ashes in the ocean at my favorite beach up there. Don’t worry,” Buck said before Bobby could open his mouth, “I stopped to sleep at actual hotels the entire way.”

“That’s progress, I suppose.”

“Seriously, you drove to Oregon and back in three days? Did you just go straight to the beach and back?” Buck wondered if Hen had ever been a road tripper before she had babies in the back seat.

“Yup. Oh!” Buck darted back to his Jeep and grabbed the sealed-for-travel box of pie. “I forgot.”

“What’s this?” Everyone but Bobby converged on the box, but Buck waved them off and headed for the kitchen.

“The pie guy said he packed it well enough for me to get it home, but I don’t know about just leaving it in my car the rest of the day.”

“What is it?” Chim leaned over Buck’s shoulder and started poking.

“I stopped at Red’s pie place, and Bobby, I’m sorry.” Bobby must’ve still been wound up about the road trip because he looked nervous about that. “Red lied. Carl made the best pie I’ve ever had.”

“Worth a 20-hour drive?” Chim kept poking like he’d ‘accidentally’ puncture the tape wrapped around the box and they’d have to eat it right then.

“Yes.” Buck hip-checked Chim out of the way and stuck the pie in the fridge. “And Carl said this pie was just for Chris and Eddie.” That made Chim pull back. Eddie’s food they’d eat without a care, but no one would steal from Chris.

“Who is Carl?” Hen asked.

“The guy who makes the best pie in the world.”

“At the place Red wanted to go but couldn’t handle the drive?”

“That’s him.”

Chim rolled his eyes. “Does he do this on purpose?”

Hen started telling him that Denny did the same thing when he didn’t want to talk about something, and Buck left her to distract Chim on his behalf. Instead, he slid in next to Bobby, who had probably left the half-chopped veg on the counter when Chim called out to everyone that Buck had finally arrived.

It only took half a pepper for Buck to lean into Bobby and ask if they could talk in private when he got a chance.

“Sure, kid.” Bobby paused his stirring. “You okay?” Which was Bobby’s way of asking if they needed to head to his office right now.

Buck couldn’t hold back his smile. “Yeah, Bobby. I am.”

Bobby took Buck at his word and didn’t nudge Buck into his office while the frittatas were baking. Instead, he poured a cup of coffee and handed out assignments in the fifteen minutes it took things to cook. Buck spent that time setting the table and answering Chim’s questions in the wrong order.

“Bobby, do you know how to do those chunky hash browns?”

“Home fries?”

“Is that where the potatoes are diced?”

“It is, and I do.”

“Great! I need you to teach me, because they had them at the diner, and Bobby, I want them every day.”

“You drove to Oregon for pie and the hash browns are the only things I can get you to talk about?”

“Chimney.” Buck set the fruit salad down in the middle of the table with a definitive thunk. “They were amazing. They had peppers, and mushrooms, and spinach, but not that spinach where it leaves a film on your teeth, and—”

Chim gave a grit-toothed groan and Hen couldn’t stop laughing. Chim pulled the, ‘your sister was worried about you’ card the second they sat down at the table, but Buck wasn’t caving. He knew he’d call Maddie eventually, but right now he wasn’t ready to talk about what he’d figured out on his drive back.

Well, to anyone except Bobby, and even then, Buck was only ready for certain details.

As breakfast finished, Bobby left Eddie to handle the dishes – the only thing he could reliably contribute to their meals without supervision – and waved Buck into his office without too much commentary from the team.

“Do you like being a captain?” Buck asked the second he closed the door. Bobby froze in a squat above his chair before his brain caught up.

“What?”

“Do you actually like being a captain?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Why do I like being a captain?” Bobby hadn’t sounded this hesitant since the first time Buck explained moving from Oregon to California via Peru.

“Yeah. You don’t get to do any of the fun stuff anymore, so, is it an age thing? Or was it after your injury? How’d you get to wanting to be a captain?” Buck pulled out his phone and flicked to the notes he’d been dictating all weekend, ready to add Bobby’s thoughts.

“How did I decide that I wanted to be a captain,” Bobby repeated.

“Yes.” Buck tried to sound sure since he couldn’t figure out what had Bobby so weirded out.

“Why are you asking me about whether or not I like my job, Buck?”

Oh, yeah. That might have been sudden. “I’m trying to figure out if being a captain is something I might want to shoot for.”

Buck could almost hear Bobby’s eyebrows pop when they shot up his forehead.

“Don’t worry, Bobby.” Buck leaned in. “It won’t be for a while if I even decide I want it. I just don’t want to shoot myself in the foot, you know? And maybe you’ll tell me about what it’s like to be a captain and I’ll hate it, like I hated being a fire marshal, and there won’t be any point. But I figured you’d be the best place to start asking so I can know if I should have it in mind.” Bobby didn’t answer. He just blinked. Buck thought he might’ve forgotten the question after that ramble and prodded, “So, why do you like being a captain?”

“Let me just—” Bobby closed his eyes and waved Buck silent. “You’re thinking about becoming a fire captain.”

“Maybe.” Buck shrugged because the easiest part of Buck’s car ride down from Oregon had been realizing that he loved his work and wanted to keep loving it.

About ten seconds after that, there’d been the nauseating realization that he’d gotten so afraid of being alone that he’d put his fear above his love for being a firefighter. If Buck’s head had been on straight, Bobby refusing to take him back while on blood thinners wouldn’t have been a ‘sue the department, burn your career down’ kind of a big deal. There were plenty of other great captains who would’ve taken Buck, but he’d been so afraid that changing houses would mean being alone that he’d been willing to ruin the career that lit him up inside.

Buck had spent the last week telling himself that he had the potential to make Dream!Buck’s dumb decisions. Realizing how bad it had gotten already? Buck had pulled over to vomit in some sagebrush.

Which was why Buck was here asking Bobby about why he liked being a Captain. Buck felt like he wasn’t going to get afraid and sacrifice the work again, but he also wanted to have a plan for the future.

“I have to tell you, Buck, if you’re still referring to the times where you’re risking your life as ‘the fun stuff,’ then you’re probably not ready to become a captain.”

Buck did not roll his eyes. “I know I’m not, Bobby. I like what I do right now, and I might like it forever, but I want to think more long-term so I’m… I don’t have another lawsuit incident because I’m not ready for work to change.” That wasn’t quite it, but Buck didn’t think saying, ‘I’m not as desperate to keep you guys as I was three weeks ago,’ would help this conversation.

“You’re planning.” Bobby stumbled over the word.

“Well, yeah.” Buck couldn’t really be insulted at Bobby’s shock. “Do you—do you think I’d be a bad captain?” Was that why Bobby wasn’t saying anything?

Bobby blinked a dozen times, and Buck didn’t know how he felt about Bobby having the same expression as that time they’d found an alligator in someone’s basement. Bobby caught up though. He took a long look at Buck, sitting there with his notes out, leaning in, elbows on his knees. Buck could see the moment Bobby accepted that Buck meant it. “No, Buck. I don’t think you’d be bad. You’ve got good instincts and you’re calm under pressure, but you…” Bobby trailed off, and Buck just waited, shoulders dropped so Bobby would know he could take it.

“You’re reckless. You’re the guy who charges in where angels fear to tread, and yes, that makes you a damn good firefighter, but I’m worried that it’s going to get you killed. And if I were the brass, it would keep me from trusting you with other people’s lives. If you want to become a captain, you’re going to need to fill your track record with more than great saves; you’re going to need a record of deliberate thinking. They need to see that you can make plans that save people without risking yourself or the rest of your crew, not just doing the first thing that pops into your head.”

Buck made a conscious choice not to take offense at the way Bobby saw him. And damn, was it a choice.

Buck had saved every member of their crew from something and his only major injury hadn’t been his fault. So, as mellow as he could keep his voice, Buck asked, “Can you give me an example?”

“The apartment fire a few weeks ago.”

“But we—” Buck stopped himself and apologized for snapping. He wanted to know if being a captain was for him, and this was how knowing happened. “What could I have done better?”

“Going up to do a rope rescue was a good idea. It was faster and less risky than sending the two of you up ten floors inside the building and hoping that nothing collapsed while you went. But you and Eddie jumped between buildings while wearing fifty pounds of turnout gear.”

“So… it would’ve been better to go up alone?” Bobby sighed like Buck was being deliberately obtuse. That hurt Buck’s feelings but he powered through. Leaving this conversation would be worse than sticking it out.

“No, because I could never send you into danger without Eddie on your tail and seriously expect him to stay away. But it would’ve been better to find a safer way across the buildings. And maybe to figure out how to get Eddie off the roof before it started caving in around him.”

“How?”

“The woman’s apartment was on the corner of the building. You could’ve done your swing and smash with the building next door as your base and come in through a different window.”

“What if it didn’t work? When Eddie and I got to the roof, we looked at the distance and knew we both could make it. And going straight down to the victim seemed like the best option because we knew that window was clear. Would going through a different window and hoping she could get to me be worth the risk?” Buck was genuinely curious and did his best to keep that in his voice instead of wondering why Bobby hadn’t pitched that idea when they were at the scene. Had he just expected Buck to know?

“I don’t know. And you don’t either. That’s the kind of choice a captain has to live with.”

Bobby wasn’t… that wasn’t his scolding voice. That was his worried voice. “What do you mean?”

Bobby scrubbed his hands over his face. “Your rope caught on fire, Buck. You and that woman might’ve fallen to your deaths in front of me and the building might’ve collapsed under Eddie’s feet. Part of that is on me. It would’ve been better if I’d set up the airbag as soon as you guys went up. It would’ve given Eddie a place to land if he couldn’t get off the roof in time and things wouldn’t have been quite as down to the wire when your rope started to burn. What’s more, I’m going to insist on more rappelling drills for the two of you, both with and without passengers, because it took you longer to get down than I would’ve liked.”

“Fair.”

“This isn’t a judgment on how you handled it, Buck. You did the best you could at the time. But after every rescue we run, I sit down and ask myself what we could’ve done better, and if I’m lucky, it’s just me asking that question and not my boss, and not someone’s widow.”

“Every call? Even the little ones?”

“Every call. Even with the car accidents that we’ve got down like clockwork. I may only think about them for a minute, but I do think about them.”

Buck grimaced. “Did you get a call from your boss about the apartment?”

“From one boss about how it was great PR for the department since everyone and their mother was out there with a cell phone, and a call from another boss wondering what in the hell I had my team out there doing.” Bobby grinned and fessed up. “That boss was the one who thought of coming in from the other building.”

“Really?” Buck laughed, relief hitting him that Bobby was willing to admit some mistakes too.

“Yeah. Didn’t cross my mind to use the other building for a base until she started yelling at me.”

“Because you were like me,” Buck smirked, thinking of how much fun he and 20-something Bobby could’ve had.

“No one was ever like you, Buck.”

That was the moment for Buck to smile and walk away. He’d gotten most of his answers and could go ask himself if he wanted a future career full of phone calls from the brass yelling about not handling calls the right way.

(Buck could barely take it when Bobby did the scolding; could he take it from someone else? And being indirectly responsible for other people’s lives instead of having the victim in his arms? Could he stand there watching a building go up in flames and just make the calls? He couldn’t do it now, but maybe in the future?)

Also, Bobby hadn’t explained why he decided to become a captain – which means that yes, the pills had forced him out of the fun stuff. That gave Buck enough information to walk away, but they were having a moment. A moment that gave Buck enough gumption to lean forward and murmur like he was sharing a secret. “Have you thought about the well?”

Bobby hesitated, then answered. “Yes.”

“Did you get yelled at about that?”

“No, thankfully. At that point, everyone was just happy Eddie survived. I’m sure it’ll come up at my annual review, but the well collapse was just a series of bad luck. No one can anticipate lightning strikes and gas explosions.”

“But on the call, would…” Buck trailed off, watching Bobby’s reaction.

Something passed over Bobby’s face and he leaned forward, elbows on the desk while he actively listened with a seriousness he hadn’t had before. “Would it have been better to have signal where Eddie could let us know that he needed more time instead of using a hard time limit like I did? Yes.”

“Like, tugging him back ten feet, waiting thirty seconds to see if he could get a clear radio signal for an update, then another ten feet?”

“That could’ve worked. If Eddie had known he was only going to get dragged out a recoverable distance, he probably wouldn’t have cut the line and we could’ve gotten them both out of there sooner. Also, we could’ve backed up the rigs and the lights so there was less weight on the ground surrounding the hole when the rain started to pour. We also could’ve set up a second line and sent that down with Chim. We still would’ve had to take them up one at a time, but we would’ve at least known exactly where to start digging for Eddie.”

That was more than Bobby had ever said to Buck about how one of their calls could’ve or had gone wrong. “Geeze, Bobby. Thinking about this stuff already keeps me up at night.”

“It should. If you’re the kind of captain who doesn’t worry about protecting his team and the people we save, you shouldn’t be doing it. You’ve got the skill, Buck. And you’ve got the heart. It’s just a matter of reducing risk and deciding how many lives you want in your hands.”

“How do you know?”

“I can’t answer that for you, Buck. Only you can.”

With that, Bobby sent Buck out to go help Eddie with rolling hoses. (Buck was pretty sure part of being a good captain also included knowing when the people on your team needed to ramble and giving them the space to do it because he and Eddie always got paired up on the mind-numbing tasks when one of them had something to talk about.)

“You okay?”

Buck ignored Hen and Chim inventorying the ambulance from the outside, both in perfect eavesdropping position. “Yeah. I was just asking Bobby about why he decided to become a captain.”

Eddie very deliberately didn’t pause in hose rolling. “Okay?”

“I’m just trying to think about what my career might look like in ten years.”

“And you want to be a captain?”

“Not really. And based on what Bobby was saying about it, I don’t know if I’ll ever want it, but I want to know what my options are, you know? I don’t want to just shut it down because I hate the thought of getting yelled at by my bosses all the time.”

“But Bobby already yells at you all the time,” Chim pitched in from where he and Hen were supposed to be organizing.

“Yeah, and I don’t like it.”

“But you are thinking about becoming a captain?” Hen asked since privacy had gone out the window.

“I’m thinking about everything. Right now, I can’t imagine not doing what I do, but I don’t think Bobby could imagine himself being a captain before he got there either.”

“What are your other options?” Hen’s question was sincere, and so was Chim’s face.

“There’s the heavy rescue squad out of Silverlake, or if I want to stay here but do less jumping off buildings, I could become a paramedic.” Buck shrugged. “I’m not going anywhere or doing anything right now; I just want to make sure I have the right tools in case the time comes when I do want to switch”

“That’s a very mature response, Buck,” Chim said, without the tone that meant he was making fun. He was definitely surprised and would probably start texting Maddie the second Buck turned his back, but that was progress.

“Thanks, Chim.”

“Is that how you spent your drive? Pie eating and thoughts about work?”

“Mostly.” Buck shrugged, though the real answer was ‘No.’ Buck had spent his drive with Jill’s voice in his head asking him what he actually wanted from his life. But Buck wasn’t ready to say it out loud because he wasn’t ready for jokes about ‘sparking joy’ and blowjobs. But Buck wouldn’t get away with not sharing at all, and he did want to share something. The follow-up thought to side-of-the-road vomiting had been that he wanted a better relationship than the one that he had with the 118. In furtherance of that, Buck sat down on the side of the rig and said, “I don’t want to be Red.”

Before Buck could get any more out, Chim joked, “Is this going end up with you having sex in a parking lot again?”

Buck shot up and got right back to rolling hoses.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Chim laughed. “It’s a reflex. But last time you were trying not to be him you had accidental anonymous sex, which is a thing I didn’t even know people could do!”

This was what he didn’t want in his relationship anymore. “What if it did?” Buck snapped.

The three of them looked stunned.

“What if I like sex in parking lots and bar bathrooms? What if I like wanting someone so much that we can’t keep our hands off each other long enough to make it home?”

The three looked like they had no idea how they got here and didn’t know what to do with it. Hen edged forward like Buck was a bomb about to go off. “You know I believe in passion, Buck, but we all know from my mistakes that it’s not as important as communication.”

“Uh, Hen, the last time we all drank together you gave me a speech about how great Karen’s boobs are and I couldn’t leave until I said three nice things about them. Eddie fell into bed with Shannon the day she came back. I’ve walked in on Bobby and Athena making out in his office half a dozen times. And Chim, I don’t even want to know because she’s my sister and it’s gross.”

“Buck, thinking your wife’s breasts are great is different than stealing a firetruck.”

“That was three years ago!”

“You’re right. It was.” Hen’s pacifying voice wasn’t what Buck was looking for here.

“I don’t know if there’s a statute of limitations on stealing government property to get laid.” Chim tried to lighten Buck’s irritation.

“The statute actually is three years, but that’s not the point!”

“What’s the point, Buck?” Eddie asked.

“Yes, taking the fire truck was wrong and I shouldn’t have done it, but what if I like having sex in the middle of the day? What if I like having sex in the back of my car?”

“Buck, I sit there.” Chim was horrified.

“It’s my car.”

“And it’s illegal.”

“Maybe that’s part of the fun! And what’s wrong with it? I like sex. And kissing. What’s wrong with that!”

Their panicked, ‘Buck is about to do something stupid’ looks had all changed to those humoring ones they gave him when they thought he was too young to understand. “Nothing, Buck.” Hen said. “But that’s what happens at the beginning of a relationship. You’ve got to be ready for the relationship to cool down into something else. That doesn’t mean you don’t still want them; it just means things are progressing.”

“Progressing to not sex?”

“To not getting arrested,” Chim said.

They didn’t get it. It was like they didn’t think Buck’s relationship with Abby counted at all, and this was damn big talk from three people who’d made almost life-destroying decisions because of sex. At least Buck was willing to say it was important. But he didn’t want to snap that Hen had almost ruined her marriage, Eddie had almost gotten re-married, and Chim had basically faked a personality – there would be no coming back from saying that shit out loud – so he turned on his heel and stormed out the bay doors to calm the hell down.

Of course, Eddie was ten seconds behind him, mouth shut and hands in his pockets.

“It’s okay that I like sex!”

“It is. You want to tell me what else happened on your drive back?”

No, Buck did not.

“You asked me not to call so much so you could have quiet time to figure some things out. Did you get them figured out?”

“I figured enough.”

“You want to tell me what you figured out?”

“I love my job.”

“Good. I’d think you hit your head if you didn’t.”

“I just…” Buck trailed off because he’d figured out some things about Eddie and had no idea how to say them.

“I’d ask if you’re worried because the job was all Red had, but I don’t think that would make you come in asking about promotion.”

“It’s not about promotion.”

“Then explain it to me.”

“I just… I don’t know exactly what I want, but I know some of it.”

Eddie furrowed and with that quiet observation that he used on everybody but himself, he got it. “You want to make sure that you can always be happy with work.”

“Yes.” Buck sighed in relief. Somehow, Eddie had managed to put it into better words than Buck had achieved after two days of constant thought.

“Was that what you were trying to tell us when Chim fumbled it?”

“Mostly.” Eddie’s eyebrow went up.

“Because I would think that part of you not wanting to be Red is me reminding you that you’re not going to die alone.”

Buck stopped pacing. “That’s not it, Eds.” Eddie just tilted his head and forced Buck to keep looking him in the eyes. “Mostly.”

“And the part that’s not the most?”

A car ride full of thinking, and the first thing that Buck had known he wanted was good sex. Yes, Buck had thought about that a little harder and realized it wasn’t just about the sex. He wanted a partner. And in that kind of vague way that he couldn’t say for sure, he thought he wanted kids and grandkids. Honestly, it was easier for Buck to think about having a house with a pool for those kids to play in than to be sure about the kids. He wanted a place with room for his friends – which included the 118, but also meant friends outside the firehouse – and then he’d gone, ‘oh, I don’t want my own place. I want my own house.’

Now that he’d talked with Bobby the daydream might take a different shape, but in the car ride, Buck had thought about being Bobby’s age, a captain, with a team who called Bobby Gran-Cap which made Athena laugh every time. Buck didn’t want dinner parties like his parents had. He wanted parties like Bobby and Athena, with stuff Buck cooked and kids jumping into the pool. He wanted to be the cool house where the teenagers came.

All of that Buck could say to Eddie, no problem, but it was the part that came next Buck didn’t quite… know what to do with.

He’d been driving along, daydreaming about pool parties, and in his mind’s eye Buck had looked across the pool for the woman who was supposed to be there with him, and all Buck saw was Eddie. (Buck could never go back for more pie because Jill would see it all over his face.) With the sixth sense of a daydream, Buck had known that Eddie had become a paramedic and gone with Buck to the new station, the Lieutenant to Buck’s Captain. Daydream Eddie had salt and pepper at his temples and a bright smile for Christopher and the hoard of kids.

From there, the whole thing just kind of collapsed. Buck thought about his nice house with a library, and Eddie was there reading the science fiction he pretended he didn’t like. The kitchen? Induction stove, glass-doored shelves, and twinkle lights like the Nigella Lawson videos Buck would never admit to watching because people would think Buck liked her for her breasts and not her Zen. In that kitchen? Special tools to help Chris cook all the recipes Abuela had taught them. The TV? Massive, every gaming system and streaming service known to man, game nights with his and Eddie’s friends from the climbing gym, movie nights for the three of them. The pool? Chris in a water fight with a hoard of little kids because he was the best, Eddie drinking daiquiris while he pretended to help grill, and no one calling him on it because he was Eddie.

Eddie usually had no problem figuring out the words Buck couldn’t find, but Buck had to say something out loud for him to get there. And right now, Buck couldn’t figure out anything that wasn’t: I want to fuck a bunch of different women and then come home to you in the house that we share and the kid that we raise.

Thank fuck, Eddie could tell when Buck didn’t really have an answer. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay. You’ll tell me when you’ve figured it out.”

“I promise.”

Eddie shrugged like everything was fine, but he still looked a little… something.

He wouldn’t be upset that Buck hadn’t told him, because Eddie always knew when Buck wasn’t ready to talk and seldom pushed. Eddie knew this wasn’t about work, because Buck had already talked about sorting that part out. So, really, the only thing it could be was, “I still believe you,” Buck said to Eddie’s back, walking into the building.

Eddie paused.

“Whatever the ‘not most’ is, I know I want you and Chris there with me. It’s everything else that I’m trying to figure out.”

Eddie heaved a sigh and turned back to put his hands on Buck’s shoulders, the right hand half-curled around Buck’s neck and fingers in the soft hairs at the nape of his neck. “Sex isn’t everything.”

That… was not what Buck was expecting. “Dude.”

“No, it’s great. I know. And I probably love sex as much as you do, I just keep my mouth shut about it and I like sex with certain people more than I like the act. It’s just… sex is all Shannon and I had. It was awesome, but eventually, it doesn’t paper over the cracks. So maybe,” Eddie’s hands clenched on Buck’s skin, “find yourself a partner that you can learn to have great sex with instead of trying to make a sex buddy into a partner.”

This might be the moment to tell Eddie that Buck was pretty sure he wanted to marry him and that they could have sex with occasional women to get it out of their systems when they needed to. But that was still not the right way to say it. Buck stood there staring for longer than he should’ve, Eddie’s thumb accidentally brushing at the hinge of his jaw. If it was anyone other than Eddie, they would’ve been two breaths away from kissing.

But because it was Eddie, and they were standing outside the firehouse at the beginning of a shift, the clatter of someone’s high heels stumbling to a stop interrupted their moment of mistaken sexual tension.

Eddie didn’t drop Buck like he was on fire, but it was close.

They leaped apart and there was Ms. Glade, pressed pantsuit, and eyes big like she was shocked. Buck didn’t think lawyers could be shocked. “I apologize.” She said, hands raised and looking at Eddie, who blushed, which Buck didn’t think he’d ever seen before. “So sorry.”

“What can we do for you, Ms. Glade?” Eddie said like he wasn’t still blushing.

Ms. Glade straightened out faster than they did. “I apologize for interrupting, but the last I heard from Mr. Buckley was a picture of Mr. Delacroix’s urn outside a diner. Then no response for two days. I was… concerned.”

Ms. Glade didn’t have the crazy eyes Bobby used to get when Buck would go on road trips and not tell him. In fact, she looked just as put together as Buck assumed she always did – maybe even more – but there was something in the stiff lines of her suit that said she’d been worried.

“I’m sorry.” Buck apologized, stepping forward about to hug her, but she didn’t really seem open to hugs at the moment, so he put a hand on her elbow. “Really, I’m sorry. I was in my head and I stopped texting everybody. I promise I threw Red in the ocean. I didn’t take a picture though. I can sign an affidavit or something if you need me to, but I did.”

“I believe you, Buck.” She patted his hand.

“Buck, who’s this?” And there was the team, standing at the loft railing, watching them all.

“This is Ms. Glade, she’s Red’s lawyer!”

“Buck stopped texting her too!” Eddie called up, voice a little thready but his blush had gone away.

“This is what happens when you don’t text us back, Buckley. We worry!” Chim shouted, joking like usual, but an apology in his tone.

“I traveled the country alone for years, Chim. I can make it to Oregon and back.”

“Argue about it over lunch!” Bobby stepped away from the railing, then paused, turned back, and looked at Buck’s hand still on Ms. Glade’s elbow. “Feel free to join us, Ms. Glade.”

“Oh, I—” Ms. Glade looked at Eddie, who gestured her towards the stairs like a gentleman.

“Come on up. Everyone should have the chance to eat Cap’s cooking.”

Chapter Nine

Buck didn’t know how long he’d been sitting in his Jeep, staring at nothing while his brain repeatedly clicked over, ‘did that really just happen?’ It was like his mind couldn’t process that Abby hadn’t apologized. It was so impossible that his head thought they must’ve forgotten something so it just kept playing, trying to remember where the implication of an apology must’ve been.

Buck probably would’ve sat there all day, saying, ‘wait, what?’ to himself if his phone hadn’t beeped. He tapped it open on instinct, expecting Bobby to be calling him back in because someone needed to know about last night’s train rescue. (Or Eddie, because he had a sixth sense for when Buck was staring at a wall, hurting over Abby. He hadn’t had to use it for a while, but the sense should be on overdrive this morning.) Instead, it was a text from Ms. Glade.

From: My assistant was up most of the night watching the news broadcast of your daring rescue.

From: I didn’t tell her that your plan for your day off was tidying your apartment.

From: I thought it would ruin the mystique.

On autopilot, Buck tapped out a reply.

To: How’d you know it was me?

From: Your name is in big letters on your coat.

To: Right.

Buck should’ve answered with an emoji because he didn’t get three dots back, he got a phone call. Her, “Mr. Buckley?” was worried.

“Hey, Ms. Glade.”

“Are… I know ‘are you okay’ is the wrong question, but I don’t know what the right question is after something like last night.”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

Buck really wasn’t.

They hadn’t talked a lot, but Buck it only took Buck two minutes back in Red’s apartment to realize that Ms. Glade was a master of the silent pause. She used it like other people used whole paragraphs. Which meant that Glade didn’t need to say more, but she was trying not to let the silence break him. “I don’t like it when people press me when I’m not in the mood to discuss something, so I won’t do that to you. Instead, consider this an open-ended offer to listen to whatever has you hurting.”

“Why?” Buck’s voice broke like a damn teenager.

“Because we’re something like friends, Mr. Buckley.”

“Are we?”

“Yes. That special kind of friend you can trust to keep their mouth shut, but who doesn’t know enough about you to judge. It’s the comfort of strangers with none of the risk, a foul-weather friend instead of a fair.”

Buck snorted. He’d never heard that before and it was a perfect description for some of the people in his life. “Why? We’ve talked like, twice.”

“Because you only wanted Mr. Delacroix’s pictures. Even when you were in his apartment having a breakdown and demanding things, you only demanded photo albums full of people you’d never met, not the signed baseballs.”

“I don’t like baseball.”

“That wasn’t my point and you know it. But we can tangent onto baseball as the great American pastime if that would help.”

She would too, even though Buck doubted she cared any more about baseball than he did. Instead, Buck tried to put on his flirting voice, though it was too wet to work. “You want to be my friend because you know I get emotionally attached to people after a day?”

Glade refused to play along. “Estate law is a bloodbath, Mr. Buckley. The kindest, most giving people in the world morph into the worst versions of themselves the moment the slightest bit of money is on the line. They start demanding things from grandparents they never visited or children they abused. But your ‘worst version,’ Evan Buckley? It was wanting the things Red loved to keep on being loved. You are the third beneficiary I have ever dealt with who didn’t make me despair over humanity.”

Thank fuck Buck had started carrying a box of Kleenex in his car for Chris because he didn’t want to wipe snot and tears over the back of his hand. Glade just let him try and quietly cry at the nice things a lawyer he barely knew had to say about him while Abby, the woman he’d loved, couldn’t bother to apologize for ghosting him.

Glade waited for Buck to get the sniffling under control before she asked, “Tell me what’s wrong?”

And really, it was a question, not a demand. But Glade’s soft voice and Buck’s certainty that she wouldn’t press if he didn’t want to speak made him spill out, “The guy I saved last night? He’s my ex’s fiancée.”

“Well, fuck.” Buck giggled at her unexpected curse. “Do you still want to spend your day cleaning the apartment after that?”

“Not really.”

“Great. I have no meetings today. You pick the place; I’ll bring the alcohol.”

“What?”

“Saving the life of your unrequited lover’s new partner calls for day drinking. My place or yours?”

@@@@@

“You remind me of her. But not the real Abby, the one I thought she was.” Buck said more to Glade’s ceiling than her.

“Because I’m so much older than you?”

“No. Because you’ve both got that put-together thing, but your put-together is real, and Abby’s wasn’t.”

They’d gone to Glade’s apartment for the day drinking, a nice place that was all glass and white walls. Not modern or industrial, but… French? Buck felt like he’d heard about it when he was watching HGTV in the hospital, but he was too drunk to Google the word. Either way, the place made Buck wonder how much money there was in estate law because Glade’s apartment was fancy.

Glade’s bar cart was better stocked than some of the actual bars where Buck had worked, so he’d used it to make them drinks from his mixology days. Now, they were both buzzed but not hammered because Glade was on top of snacks and hydration. She said she was so old the hangover would last for days and she didn’t want to deal with that shit. She handed Buck a water bottle in between every drink, made them pancakes for brunch, and ordered Italian for dinner.

See: put together. And not just because Buck had sprawled on Glade’s floor while she stretched out on one of those sofas with one arm, looking down at Buck with a martini in her hand like she was in one of the movies Chim kept trying to make him watch.

“Her ‘put together’ wasn’t real?” Glade prodded because Buck was staring again. (Glade was nice to stare at. She had freckles.)

“No. But like, that’s okay, because her mom was dying, and she spent every day talking to people who were freaking out and in the worst moment of their lives, then she went home to be with her mom in her worst moment, and it was all Abby’s worst moment, and it just, it must have all sucked.”

“And I remind you of her?”

“Not in that you don’t have your shit together, but you do. And I thought Abby had her shit together. So, like, not Abby,” Buck tapped his heart, “but like, Abby,” he waved his hand in front of his face, trying to convey the aura and presentation of Abby-ness.

“Right.” Glade gracefully leaned over and plucked Buck’s drink from his hand and replaced it with a refillable water bottle that came with a straw. (She’d trusted Buck with a glass earlier in the day, but he’d missed his mouth and spilled down his shirt, which had seemed worth crying over at the time, but now he was shirtless on Glade’s fluffy rug, and that was nice. He’d spent all day drinking with a beautiful woman and his pants were still on, so, progress.)

Buck didn’t think he’d been talking that much about Abby, and Eddie, and Maddie, and the bombing, and the rehab, and the clots, and the tsunami, and the lawsuit, and Red, and Athena, but his voice was raspy and he’d looped back around to Abby, and how he’d loved her, and he’d held onto this vision of her in his head like the kind of relationship he was shooting for, but he hadn’t wholly admitted to himself that she’d ghosted him. That she’d run off to another country and just stopped talking to him. And now, her apology wasn’t even an apology. It was the best relationship Buck had ever had, but it hasn’t been for Abby, she hadn’t even felt like herself. She didn’t even consider Buck a stepping stone to help her get healthy so she could be engaged to Sam. Buck was just… there, another thing Abby used to hurt herself.

So, yeah, Buck might have been verbally bleeding all over this nice, soft carpet.

Maybe. Maybe?

“Or maybe,” Glade added – and oh, Buck had been saying some of that stuff out loud, “she ran away from her life and ghosted her boyfriend, but it’s easier to say to just say that she ‘was grieving,’ and ‘wasn’t herself’ than it is to admit that she treated you like shit.”

Buck rolled over, his head accidentally finding the pillow Glade had tossed to him after Buck moved to the floor.

“It’s always more difficult to own up to our mistakes than it is to excuse them.”

“But I loved her. When I think about a future, it’s not with her, but it’s like it’s with her, you know?”

Glade hmm-ed, then set aside her drink and floated off the sofa and laid down next to Buck on the fluffy rug, looking down at him from her elbows. It was the most intimate thing that had happened to Buck for ages, which said some pretty shitty things about his sex.

“I was engaged.”

Buck blinked. Glade waited. Oh, he’d heard her right. “Yeah?”

“We wanted this big, elaborate wedding, which takes at least 18 months to come together, so we had the deposits down on everything and were just waiting for the day. I’d bought us this charming, 1920s bungalow with this great yard, for when we decided it was time for kids. And she was from Kansas, so even though she couldn’t keep a cactus alive, she dedicated this corner of the yard to vegetables. We spent every weekend getting that stupid garden set up.”

Glade’s gaze had drifted off Buck and to the wall, off in the memory. “Then one day, I came home from work. I tossed my keys in this old bowl by the door that we’d bought at a flea market. I called out hello because she wasn’t in the kitchen like she always was when I got home from work. Maggie loved to make dinner. And even when she didn’t, she believed it was important to sit down as our family of two and eat together. And she always had these specific playlists. Not just ‘cooking,’ but ‘pasta night,’ and ‘experimental baking,’ and ‘my grandmother’s recipe book.’

“But that night, there was no music. So, I went to find her, but Maggie wasn’t in the kitchen. And she wasn’t in the living room watching TV, and she wasn’t in the bedroom. But what was in the bedroom, taped to the mirror of the vanity I’d bought for her at that same flea market – the vanity I took to have professionally restored and gave to her for our anniversary – taped to that mirror was a note.” In the air, Glade traced the outline of a post-it that only she could see. “She said she was sorry, but she’d woken up that morning and realized she didn’t recognize the person she’d turned into.”

“Fuck.”

Glade hmm-ed. “She really didn’t. I went through all her things when I sold the house and I think she just walked out the door with nothing but the clothes on her back.”

“I’m so sorry.” Buck reached out and wrapped his hand around Glade’s elbow, not wanting to touch her hands. She’d been telling the story with sweet little gestures like she could see the house in her mind’s eye while she pointed out the invisible details to Buck.

Glade cleared her throat and straightened her spine, back to her fancy, somehow-French apartment, and the half-naked man on her rug. “Here’s the thing: she went back to Kansas. She got back together with her high school sweetheart and their third child is on the way.”

“What the—” Buck couldn’t even do the math on that. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Glade leaned in like she was telling a secret, her hand on Buck’s chest. “I have my assistant check on them once a month. Not to tell me things – though she does, because she thinks Kansas is ridiculous – but because I think that one morning, Maggie is going to wake up and leave her pretty husband and those sweet children, and I want to get him the best divorce attorney in the world.”

“What?” Buck snorted a laugh, but Glade didn’t.

“My ex is fucked up, Buck. Maybe she’s found herself a good therapist and gotten her head screwed on right, and if she did, I’m happy for her, but I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because she didn’t apologize. She woke up one morning and just left and has never once said: I’m sorry. That tells me that her leaving wasn’t about me. And her going to that handsome farmer isn’t about him. There’s a hole in her and she can’t fill it up with people, or babies, or corn, or whatever the hell it is they grow in Kansas. She can’t fill it with travel, or a new job, or a fiancé, or a ready-made family. You don’t fill the hole from the outside, and until she figures that out, she’ll just keep looking.”

Buck’s mostly-drunk brain took a beat to realize what Glade meant. “You think Abby’s gonna leave him?”

“Maybe. Or maybe she’ll shove the pain down and ignore it for another twenty years until he dies and she’ll go traveling again. Despite that, what I do know is that if she can’t apologize to you, the problem is with her, not you.”

Every person Buck loved had said something like that to him before, but, “Why do I believe it when you say that and I don’t believe other people?”

“Because, Evan Buckley, I don’t love you. Which means I have no reason to lie.”

Buck felt that truth in his bones. “You don’t, do you.”

“No.”

Buck reached out and ran the back of his fingers over the freckles on her tan cheek. “And you’re not going to.”

“I could. I could love you so easily that scares the hell out of me.” Glade wrapped her fingers around Buck’s and pulled him away from her face. “And I think we could be happy, but we would be happy living a life that we wanted with other people.”

Buck wasn’t sober enough for the nuance some part of him could feel in those words. “I’m not in love with Abby anymore.”

“I know.” Glade brushed Buck’s curls off his forehead.

“Then I don’t get it.”

“You will.”

@@@@@

Buck only had 36 hours off after the train wreck and he spent 24 of them at Glade’s place.

Buck’s first thought was that it had been a while since he’d gone to work straight from someone else’s apartment – and even longer since he’d come from someone’s bed when they hadn’t had sex in it – but… Eddie. Half the time Buck turned up at work he was coming from Eddie’s place. And depending on the kind of shift they’d had, he might be coming from Eddie’s bed too. Honestly, the weird part was having an emotional breakdown and getting drunk with someone who wasn’t Eddie.

Like the universe wanted to right itself after Buck vented to someone other than his best friend, Buck turned up at work and found Eddie already dressed and waiting for him. (If Eddie ever wanted to do the calendar again, he should use a photo of him just leaning against the back of a fire truck. He looked good that way.

(Though, he probably shouldn’t use the face he was pulling right now. Eddie raising an eyebrow like he’d just caught Buck and Chris trying to run a mildly explosive experiment in his kitchen wasn’t sexy.

(Nah, still sexy. Just probably not calendar sexy.)

Buck’s brain poked at him in a reminder that they’d been staring at each other for a bit too long. “What?”

“Go get dressed. We’re on the coffee run.”

Apparently by, “go,” Eddie meant, ‘I’m going to follow you into the locker room and stare at you so hard that you’re going to forget how buttons work.’ Soon enough, they were back out on the sidewalk, heading for the decent coffee place instead of the close one, all with Eddie still not talking and Buck too frazzled with what was going on with Eddie’s face to ramble.

Eventually, Buck was the one that broke, like always. “There’s coffee upstairs, you know.” Eddie gave him the, ‘that’s really what you’re going with?’ look, and Buck didn’t know what they were talking about. “Eds?”

“Anything you’d like to tell me, Buckley?”

“Why are you full-naming me?”

“You went off to meet Abby after a full night shift then didn’t pick up your phone, Buckley.” Oh, Eddie had the clenched jaw that meant he was trying not to be pissed.

“I texted you!”

The jaw got worse. “And do you remember what you texted me, Buckley?”

“That it went fine!”

Eddie snorted. And not the good one where he was trying not to laugh. It was the bad one. “You went to re-break up with the ex you were strung out on for a year and then told me it went fine by sending me a drunk, shirtless selfie from your girlfriend’s place.”

“Woah, woah,” Buck dug his heels in and grabbed Eddie’s arm. Eddie didn’t shake him off. Thank fuck. Buck could talk Eddie down from angry jaw, but angry jaw/no-touch took some doing. “Glade isn’t my girlfriend.”

“Really?” Sarcasm was not a good look on Eddie.

“She’s just a friend.”

“I feel like you’ve used that line before.”

“Hey.” Buck stepped out in front of Eddie and, in clear view of god and everybody roaming past on the street, took Eddie by the shoulders. “You’re my best friend.”

Eddie’s eyebrow went back up. “You’re making my point, Buck.”

Buck gave him a little shake “You’re my best friend and you’re on my team. I can lose my mind and sue the department, and you’ll still be on my team. Sometimes, you need to hear from somebody who isn’t.”

Eddie furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“Abby ghosting me isn’t about me. It’s about her.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said like this was a universally accepted fact.

“Sometimes you have to hear that from someone who isn’t on your team.”

Eddie traced his narrow eyes over Buck’s face, looking for something that only he and Maddie could ever find. “You’re really okay?”

“I’m really okay.”

Eddie puffed out a breath and started walking. “Let’s get coffee then. And maybe next time send me more than a two-word drunk text?”

“I don’t know if you want that. I get rambly when I’m drunk.”

“Why do you think I was so worried?”

Buck laughed and spent their walk to and from the coffee shop giving Eddie the rundown on everything he’d spewed at Glade – all details Eddie had heard before. Somehow, they ended with Eddie leading Buck up the firehouse stairs, all the coffees in his hands while he gave Buck a blow-by-blow of Chris’ reaction to Brave. Eddie twisted around at the top of the stairs, miming how Chris hid behind the couch cushions every time Mor’du came on screen, and “Surprise!” rang through the loft.

“What the—” The whole shift was there in their blue button-ups, cheering and laughing.

Eddie handed the coffees off to the probie and nudged a dumbstruck Buck to Bobby and Deputy Chief Brandon, who were both standing at the center of the group in their dress uniforms.

Eddie’s steady hands on Buck’s shoulders were the only thing that got him across the loft and in front of the two men. He kind of wanted Eddie to stay right there so Buck could ne sure this was happening, but with a squeeze, Eddie stepped away and scooped Chris into his arms – oh, hey, Chris and Abuela were here. But their presence didn’t stop the high-pitched, ‘what the hell?’ repeating in Buck’s head.

“Firefighter Buckley,” Deputy Chief Brandon’s deep voice interrupted Buck’s spiral, “we are here today to present you with a commendation for honor.” The big man uncrossed his wrists and flipped around a frame, just like the one with Red’s name on it that was hanging in Buck’s apartment. “These commendations are presented to firefighters who perform an act of conspicuous heroism which furthers the highest tradition of the service. This act must be in the performance of duty while on call and under extremely hazardous conditions. The firefighter must also be confronted with imminent personal risk and possesses full knowledge of that risk.”

With his professional face on, Bobby continued. “This commendation is not for bravery, because you’re always brave. Even when you shouldn’t be.” Bobby cracked a smile and something in Buck unclenched. The shift laughed, Hen and Chimney behind Bobby and the Chief, Maddie next to Chim, her hand in his. “This commendation is because you saved the lives of two people while protecting the lives of three firefighters. You weren’t just brave, Buck, you were brilliant.” Bobby clapped a hand on Buck’s shoulder. “There’s hope for you yet, kid.”

Everyone broke into cheers and applause while Buck held up his shiny new commendation in between Bobby and the Deputy Chief for a department. Bobby plucked the frame out of Buck’s hands in time for the entire shift to mob him with congratulatory hugs and, ‘you’re all grown up’ praise. He got kisses from Abuela and Carla, and an ‘I’m proud of you, baby’ from Athena. Eventually, he ended up with Chris in his arms. Chris, who did the important work of pointing out that they had pie. “It’s not from your special place,” Chris whispered, “but Daddy and I still have some at home for you.”

The whole thing was a mess in the best possible way. Somewhere after the hugs and kisses, Buck found himself alone in a chair with two seconds to breathe and let his brain catch up to the fact that he’d just gotten a commendation. He’d done brave shit before, but he’d never gotten a commendation for it.

Bobby dropped into the chair next to him. “Is it as good as your place?”

Oh, Buck had a half-eaten piece of pie in front of him. He took another bite and paid attention this time. No, it wasn’t, but Buck said, “I can’t taste it.”

Bobby laughed. He got the shock. “You did good, kid.”

“Were you the one—”

“The second we got off shift.” Bobby grinned.

“Why?”

“It was your plan, Buck. You figured out how to get both of our patients out of an impossible situation and you did it without putting anyone in more danger.”

Buck’s first thought had been to climb up the outside of the train carriage and cut through to the patient, but the idea had barely formed before he knew Bobby would say no. And, after he let the plan percolate for more than five seconds, he knew it was the kind of dangerous that Bobby had warned him about.

Though, Bobby still said no when Buck pitched that their ladder truck should be able to reach the patient. “The ground isn’t level enough for the ladder, Buck.”

“The tracks are.” Buck remembered bracing against those first-class seats, gesturing out the train’s windows at the corner of rail he could see below. “We can pull the truck up on the tracks and extend the ladder to the girl so I can cut her out.”

“If the train falls, it’ll crush the truck with you on it.”

Buck had side-stepped over to the window, looking down to make sure his memory was right. “The rest of the train is right there, Bobby. If the ladder starts to go, I can jump onto the other car. It’s only four feet.”

“Four feet over and twenty feet down.”

Eddie should probably be getting a commendation too because it was his plan to put an airbag out of the way for Buck to jump clear.

Bobby had given Eddie the, ‘do not support him in this madness’ glower. “And if the train falls with you inside of it and lands on the ladder truck?”

“I’ll break some bones, Cap, but I’ll survive.”

“Oh! We can put another bag between the train and the truck. If the train goes, the bag will slow the impact and give Eddie enough time to slide down.” Bobby had just stared at him, the angle of Eddie’s flashlight and the dirt clouds floating through the air making Bobby look carved from stone before he caved to Buck’s plan.

Now, sitting there with all the people he loved – Chris was over there reenacting Brave for the whole team, and Glade was laughing along with everyone else like she belonged with them – Buck wasn’t sure how he’d ended up here. “I, uh, I thought you didn’t like my plan.”

“It was damn good, Buck. You figured out how to save everybody and how to keep you and Eddie as safe as you could. The only thing they yelled at me for was putting a million-dollar piece of equipment at risk.”

“Assholes.”

“Yeah.” Bobby put his hand on the back of Buck’s neck and gave him a little shake. “I didn’t know if you were really listening to me when we had our talk. But you did. And you didn’t just listen, you changed.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it every time.” Buck leaned in because Bobby deserved the truth. “My first plan was to climb up with ropes.”

“I would’ve said no.”

“I would’ve talked you into it.”

Bobby snorted. “Probably. I’m just glad you used that brain of yours to figure out a safer way instead of figuring out how to talk me into insanity.”

And really, half of Buck’s elation right now wasn’t just that he’d gotten a commendation, but that he’d gotten the commendation while still being himself. He hadn’t caved when Bobby said no the first time, and he hadn’t done the practical thing. He’d still been Buck, just better. And now, he had a room full of people he loved all there celebrating him for being himself.

Chapter Ten

Buck made it home after maybe the best day ever with half a leftover pie, a decent night’s sleep, and the will to finally get his tidying done. Pie safely in the fridge, Buck started by shuffling around Red’s memorabilia on the kitchen shelf so their commendations could sit together. Though, things were a little crowded up there with Red’s photos, so Buck started taking down the random Ally candles from the shelf below.

Only, candles were supposed to be step four and there was still a pile of clothes on Buck’s bedroom floor that he needed to start with. Buck had managed to pile up all his clothes and make decent headway before he spent three days driving to Oregon. Since then, he’d been on a few shifts with almost nothing but emotional upheaval in between. When Buck finally got back to his own bed, he’d just shoved everything to the floor and hadn’t been in a place to joyfully tidy ever since.

But today, Buck felt damn good. Today was the day. High on the bliss of his last shift, Buck could tidy.

Buck left the candles where they were and went up to his loft and gathered all the clothes from where they’d puddled around his room and put them back into a mountain on his bed. A mountain that wasn’t that difficult to get through since most of Buck’s clothes were useful but not happy. There was even more stuff that didn’t make him not happy, but Buck had flagged all the quotes about clothes sorting and made a playlist of YouTube clips to re-watch and keep him from losing his way.

Firehouse stuff came first: both useful and joyful, especially after yesterday. Then workout gear, that was easy too. The clothes clothes were a little more difficult, lots of stuff that Buck had bought to make himself look mature but didn’t give him that zing when he touched them. (Buck learned he didn’t like ties, except for the one Bobby had given him for his first date with Abby.) Buck didn’t feel like he’d kept much from his travels, but it was nice to come across the occasional piece of flannel from his ranch hand days, or the pooka shells that turned up every time he tended bar near a beach.

Honestly, the clothes that surprised Buck most were Eddie’s.

Somehow, two whole drawers’ worth of Eddie’s stuff had made their way into Buck’s pile. Even more, there were clothes Buck knew he owned that weren’t here and weren’t at the firehouse, which meant they had to be at Eddie’s place.

Buck would never get rid of Eddie’s clothes without his permission, but even if he would, sparking joy wasn’t a problem. Every ratty pair of Eddie’s sweats that were too short in the leg and every t-shirt that didn’t fit across Buck’s shoulders still sparked joy because it was proof positive that Eddie had been here and he meant to come back. Eddie wasn’t that forgetful and Buck wasn’t a thief, but stuff accumulated after “just wear one of mine home, Buck.” Then there was stuff that Eddie and Chris left here so they’d have something for sleepovers, Eddie’s dirty clothes that stuck around for laundry and never quite made it home, and deliberate things like the battered Army t-shirt in Buck’s hands right now.

Chris getting into his pajamas early was one of the most surefire ways to know he was having a rough day, and if those pajamas were one of Eddie’s old shirts, it was a major red flag. Eddie kept around a bunch of shirts that were too small for him and too big for Chris, but Chris had whispered once that they felt like being wrapped in his Daddy’s hugs. That was how the first of Eddie’s clothes had ended up at Buck’s place: Chris snaking it to Buck after the bombing so it could make him feel better.

The latest worn-thin t-shirt was so fresh from Eddie’s house that it still smelled like the Diaz’s laundry. No, wait – Buck buried his face in the fabric and took a long draw – Eddie had worn the shirt and left it for Buck’s laundry day. There was Eddie’s cologne, Chris’ no-more-tears shampoo, a hint of garlic from Abuela’s cooking, and that little bit of sweat that stuck to everything they owned because they worked in a firehouse and California was warm. It was the Diaz family wrapped up in a scent, a smell that hit Buck with the sense memory of dozing in Eddie’s sheets after his bar breakdown two weeks ago.

It was the comfort of home without the price of exhaustion.

But without the exhaustion, the scent was also a clench in Buck’s belly and a burn in his blood that said he was two minutes away from getting hard and stupid.

Buck’s eyes snapped open and he dropped the shirt like it was on fucking fire. He scrambled back and crashed into the shelves along the loft rail, hitting the back of his knees and thumping down to a seat. He’d flailed back three feet just to stare at the shirt that was still there, staring at him in discarded proof that Buck had just gotten aroused at Eddie.

Motherfucker. Buck didn’t just want Eddie around, he wanted Eddie.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

Long before Buck had the car ride of destiny where he’d forced himself to turn off the radio and do nothing but think about what he wanted for his life, he’d know that he’d happily spend forever with Chris and Eddie. The problem he’d worked out while driving home hadn’t even been about keeping the Diazes since Buck had accepted they weren’t going anyplace. The problem had been finding a way to keep them as his most important people but still have sex.

But now, Buck’s driving daydream came back to him in technicolor and mixed with the fresh horror of arousal at his best friend. Pool party. Buck’s own team in his backyard. Calling Bobby Gran-cap. Eddie by the gill, smiling at Christopher and the kids. Wives someplace off-screen.

Wives that Buck couldn’t even conjure up an image for someplace off-screen.

And Eddie, who he could picture perfectly. Eddie, a little softer, but somehow broader, hair still thick and fluffy with grey at the temples, and wrinkles coming in around his eyes from all the smiling he’d been doing these last years, but not as many wrinkles as there could have been because Buck finally bullied him into skincare.

Just the sight of Eddie twisted Buck’s belly in a way as familiar as breathing, so accustomed to the thrum of want that daydream Buck’s expression didn’t even change while he watched Eddie smile at the kids. It was just part of his existence. The sky was blue, fire trucks were red, and Daydream!Buck loved Eddie even when they were both married to other people.

Just like Buck could see how he ended up being Dream!Buck, the guy so afraid of being alone that he’d settle for someone who didn’t like Chris, he could see the fear of losing Eddie as a best friend drowning out the want, keeping it from hitting him until after they were both married, a baby in Eddie’s arms. It would be so fucking easy for Buck to become the kind of guy who was too scared to admit that everything he ever wanted was in that little house with Eddie and Chris.

Fuck. Buck didn’t even have to become that guy. He was there already. Buck loved Eddie. And not just in the, ‘I’ve got your back’ way that they’d had since their third shift. But in the, ‘I want to have sex with you then make you breakfast forever’ kind of way.

Buck bluescreened.

It was too much. His poor brain was a mess of: Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. mixed with, ‘What do I do?’ ‘I can’t—‘ ‘What do I do?’ and ‘I have to make it stop.’

Buck’s first coherent thought wasn’t that he’d curled up in the corner of his bedroom, hyperventilating while he nearly pulled out his hair. It was, ‘I can’t lose him. And this—this will make me lose him.’

That thought… that was worse than the want realization.

Because now that Buck knew, he wasn’t going to be able to hide it. He was going to start accidentally flirting with Eddie – fuck. Accidentally flirting with Eddie more than he probably already did. And Eddie was going to pick up on it.

But Buck was dating somebody. He could hide it. Better than he had been.

But fuck, Buck wasn’t dating Glade. They were… friends? Was Buck friends with a beautiful woman now? (Problem for later.) Buck couldn’t date her, wouldn’t fake-date someone at all, let alone a woman whose fiancée had abandoned her. Maybe Buck could explain? Glade would get it. She even thought they could get somewhere after Buck figured…

Oh.

Double-fuck.

Glade hadn’t been talking about Buck figuring out Abby. She’d meant this.

Buck scrambled on hands and knees for his phone. Because Glade had looked at Buck and known, and still Buck didn’t know a damn thing other than panic.

Glade answered with a dry, “Mr. Buckley.”

Buck dropped, “I’m in love with Eddie,” like a bomb instead of hello.

Glade didn’t even flinch. “Yes, you are.”

Buck groaned and faceplanted in a pile of non-joyful clothes on his floor.

“You don’t sound like you’re taking that well.”

“You knew.”

“I thought he was your partner the first time I saw you two at Red’s house.”

“He is my partner.”

“You know I meant the other kind.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I know.” Buck could hear her smiling and this wasn’t the time for it.

“No, I mean, I didn’t know then. I wouldn’t have hit on you if I’d known. I’m not that kind of asshole.”

“I know, Buck.”

“If you knew, why did you…” ‘go out with me’ wasn’t what he was looking for, because they hadn’t done that.

“Because you’re a good man who was mourning someone he loved.”

“But you said we could be good together.”

“We could. And if I’ve completely misinterpreted how much Eddie loves you back, then I think you and I could grow to love one another and live a very happy life. But I don’t think either one of us is ready to settle for that kind of happy.”

Buck didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but that wasn’t it. He rolled himself out of the faceplant, back still on the floor. “But… you barely know Eddie.”

“I also didn’t have to look at the sky twice to know it was blue.” Well, that was… Glade could probably see Buck’s blush down the phone line. “That being said, would you rather call up one of your fire friends who know Eddie better than I do and talk to them about it?”

“No.” Buck squeaked.

“All right. I don’t think more day drinking would help your situation, so let’s be direct: What do you want?”

“I want…”

“Hm. Let me rephrase: Do you want Eddie as a romantic life partner?”

“Yes, but—”

“Just yes or no, Buck.”

It took a hell of a lot to say out loud, but Buck finally managed, “Yes.”

“All right. And if you can’t have Eddie as a romantic partner, are you going to need to walk away from him entirely?”

“No! I’ve had to not talk to Eddie before. I’m not doing that again.”

“What does ‘talking’ mean to you? If you only see him at work, will that be enough?”

“It would have to be, wouldn’t it?”

Glade hmm-ed again. Buck swore he was answering her questions as best he could, but it sounded like he was missing something. “Let’s try it this way: where’s your line?”

“My what?”

“You said that you can’t go without talking to Eddie, so you know that the line is further back than that. Would you be happy with just talking to him when you’re on shift? Friendly co-workers? Work husbands? Or do you need to hang out with him where it’s just the two of you, non-work best friends? What are you unwilling to give up in this relationship?”

“All of it. I don’t—I like what we have now and I don’t want to lose it.”

“Okay. You want to preserve your friendship with Eddie. What price are you willing to pay to keep things exactly as they are? Would you be all right watching Eddie marry someone else so long as you stayed his best friend? Have someone else be Christopher’s other parent?”

Buck was nauseous at the thought, but he could survive it. “I could handle that.” The crack in his voice wasn’t believable.

“It’s not about handle, Buck. It’s about what you want.”

“I want Eddie.”

“Romantically, and as a best friend, but what about as just a regular friend, or work partner, or work acquaintance?”

“I don’t… I don’t think I could go back to being a regular friend. And that’s what I’ll get if I don’t get this under control.”

“Or you might become that anyway if his wife becomes his new best friend. Would that be okay?”

“If they’re happy.” Buck really needed to have a conversation with his voice, because he didn’t buy that one either.

“What makes you happy, Buck?”

“Them! I want them! Okay? I want to wake up next to Eddie and read next to Christopher, and I want my sheets to smell like Eddie’s t-shirts, and to not worry every time some woman flirts with him on a call that this is going to be the one who shoves me out! I want to know that I’m not a placeholder! And Eddie has told me 100 times that they’re going to keep me, and I believe him, but I want to stop worrying that some woman is going to turn up and ruin everything!” Somehow Buck had made it to his feet and was yelling at the poor t-shirt on his bed. “That’s what I want. And I’m not going to get that.”

“You’ll never know until you try.”

Buck’s snort was ugly and bitter. “So, what? You want me to just walk up and tell him that I’m in love with him?”

“Based on my observations of the two of you, that would be the most effective method. But I think saying that to him might make you spontaneously combust, so maybe start by telling him that you’re bisexual and see what Eddie confides in return.”

“He won’t.”

“At least if Eddie confirms he’s as straight as you think he is, you can know his rejection isn’t about you as a person but about the way Eddie is wired and you can start moving on.”

“I guess.”

“And maybe think about what Eddie would say if Chim confessed that he had a crush on Eddie.”

“Chim loves Maddie.”

“You know what I mean. How would Eddie respond?”

“He’d be kind. But he wouldn’t love Chim back.”

“Would he pull away from Chim? Be weird about it?”

“He’d probably apologize to Chim and ask what he needed to do to make it okay.”

“And why wouldn’t he do the same for you?” Eddie turning the sad eyes on Buck and acting like his world hadn’t just upended might be worse than Eddie not loving him back. “And maybe, if you’re not ready to go that far, you could tell your best friend, the man who keeps telling you that you’ll be part of his family forever, that you’re scared of him finding a girlfriend who’ll kick you out of his and Christopher’s lives and you’d like a plan to handle that.”

Buck belly-flopped on his bed and groaned – careful not to touch the t-shirt of doom.

“Buck?”

“That’s doable,” he said more to the mattress than Glade.

“Excellent. So: step one, tell Eddie you’re bisexual. Step two: confide in Eddie that you’re worried about the platonic part of ‘platonic life partners’ eventually ruining the life part. Step three: tell Eddie you’re in love with him and don’t want to lose him. Stop after each step and see if you need to progress.”

Buck whined into the pile of joyous, non-Eddie-smelling clothes. “Why are you so practical?”

“Estate law is very specific.”

Buck groaned again.

“I suppose there’s also a step zero: keep lying on your bedroom floor, pining for a man who doesn’t even know you like men, let alone that you love him and want to spend your life with him, whatever shape that relationship may take.”

“I like that one. It’s the easiest.”

“It also ends with you sad on the floor instead of happy in Eddie’s bed.”

“I’m in my bed.”

“Yes, alone in your bed instead of well-fucked in Eddie’s.”

That… was not a thought Buck needed in his imagination.

“You’re daydreaming about him fucking you, aren’t you?”

“I plead the fifth.”

“You know, that means you decline to answer a question on the grounds that it might incriminate you. Which means, yes, you were daydreaming about having sex with Eddie and don’t want me to comment on it.”

“Still pleading.”

“Get out of bed, Buck, and go pick your pain. Your heart can hurt now, or it can hurt for twenty years because you ignored the problem.”

Because Buck’s brain was a bastard, he thought about Daydream!Eddie across that perfect backyard, salt at his temples, holding a baby he’d had with someone else, and Buck permanently sick with the knowledge that he’d never even tried.

“I’m glad Red hired you.”

“I’m glad Red bought you a drink.”

Buck reached out and like a magnet, his hand hit on the t-shirt that had started this whole mess. “We…” he had to say it before he blew up his life, “we could be good together.”

“We could. But I know this nice boy who got drunk on my carpet and told me you should fill your life with things that bring you joy. Good isn’t the same thing.”

Chapter Eleven

It took Buck as much effort as walking in his first physical therapy appointment, but Buck got up. He thought about ignoring the problem and going back to sorting through clothes, but he still had Eddie’s t-shirt clenched in his hand. He had to seize every muscle in his entire arm to keep from lifting the shirt to his face and starting the whole mess all over again.

Right.

No clothes sorting.

Buck honestly didn’t know if he could feel joy about anything at this moment or if he was stuck feeling panic.

Know what didn’t need joy? Stuffing already-sorted clothes into a garbage bag that he could put by the door and drop off at Good Will. (Though, his hands were shaking so bad he probably shouldn’t drive.)

Unfortunately, that only took two minutes and Buck was nowhere near calm, so Buck decided it was time to start sorting things into categories.

Was that what the book recommended? No.

Did Buck care? Not right now.

Because if Buck didn’t do something he was going to curl back up in a ball. (And if he left his apartment for a run, he was going to end up at Eddie’s.)

‘We could just skip to Step Two and tell Eddie we’re freaking out?’ Buck’s brain pointed out.

‘Or we could accidentally word vomit that we’re in love with him.’ Buck countered.

And holy fuck, he needed to figure something out because he was talking to himself, and the last time he’d tried to shut himself up when he panicked, there’d been alcohol and accidental parking lot sex, which wouldn’t help any of Buck’s steps.

So: sorting into categories.

Buck plugged his phone into the speakers and pumped out the most distracting playlist he had, the one for days when he didn’t want to do cardio but it had to be done. Books were supposed to come after clothes, so Buck went hunting through all the hidey holes around his apartment and piled them up on the kitchen table. Buck had a minor panic about how he’d been so scared of losing Ally that he’d been willing to store all his books in his two closets instead of his bookshelves because Ally said it looked ‘cluttered’ and ‘unbalanced’ to have them all out.

That panic meant the music wasn’t loud enough to drown out his thoughts. Only, the volume Buck would need to shut off his brain would also get the cops called – and Athena probably had his address flagged, which meant she’d turn up, take one look at Buck, and just know.

Of course, because the universe wanted to fuck with him today, Buck picked up his phone to change the playlist and found a text notification from Eddie.

Buck didn’t read it.

The guilt of maybe blowing off Christopher choked him, but if Buck heard Eddie’s voice right now, he was going to break down and spill out the truth – which shouldn’t come out at all, let alone over the phone.

And fuck, even seeing Eddie’s name had Buck wound back up like the last twenty minutes of sorting hadn’t happened.

So, Buck swallowed the guilt and put his phone on do not disturb. He switched to headphones and cranked the sound to just below eardrum-damaging levels and got to work.

Between the music and the effort, Buck hit his flow state. He didn’t quite realize how deep he’d gotten in the tidying until he twisted around to put something in the ‘random girlfriend décor’ pile on the kitchen island and tripped over a stack of towels. He flailed to keep from faceplanting and knocked out his headphones, leaving him with nothing but the sound of his panting.

Buck had divided everything he owned into categories and stacked them on every flat surface in the apartment, floor included. DVDs, CDs, and games were on the coffee table; all his different kinds of exercise equipment were over by the weights – and how did he own five yoga mats?; kitchen equipment – each in their own subcategories – was on the counter; sheets, spare blankets, a whole mountain of pillows piled at the base of the stairs; and so on. Getting from one place to another was like leapfrogging through a maze with paths Buck hadn’t properly planned while he was dragging everything out. Which was probably why the book said to do things one category at a time.

Now that his brain was back in his body, Buck’s stomach grumbled. He’d had enough sense to leave his food in the fridge, though all his cupboards were cleared out and spread over the kitchen counter. (Buck didn’t remember doing that part.) Despite being an adult with good adult food, Buck tracked down where he’d stuck his pots – the floor behind the counter. He was ashamed of himself – and made himself the ultimate comfort food: mac and cheese from a box. Just like Maddie used to make him when she babysat. (Was Bobby’s three-cheese mac with actual cheese better? Yes. Did Buck care right now? No.)

Since there was stuff all over Buck’s chairs, he nudged open a space on the counter where he could sit and observe his little kingdom of apocalyptic tidiness.

That lasted two minutes before Buck remembered that Eddie’s favorite comfort food was vanilla pudding. (“Not pudding, Buck. Budyn.” Buck had Googled. They were the same thing.) While Buck liked boxed macaroni and cheese because it meant he and Maddie would be alone all night, Eddie liked pudding for the opposite reason. To Eddie, pudding meant his mom sitting with him at the kitchen table, listening to him complain about school. Eddie didn’t know how to make budyn, and no matter the recipes Buck Googled, he couldn’t get it quite the same as Eddie’s mom.

Buck’s brain spun to thoughts of calling Helena Diaz for her budyn recipe, to a Facetime session with step-by-step instructions like Abuela gave when she was teaching him something. Then Buck’s brain leaped to explaining to Helena and Ramon Diaz, they of the ableism and toxic masculinity, why their son’s male work partner needed Eddie’s comfort food recipe. He could make Eddie ask, but Helena would probably say that Eddie didn’t need to know because she could make it for him when she came to town. It was special for the two of them. And Eddie wouldn’t pick a fight because he already had enough things to fight with his mom about and Buck cooking for him wasn’t worth it. Buck wasn’t going to be worth it.

Then Buck’s brain went to imagining Eddie telling his parents he was bisexual now.

Buck grimaced through his mac and cheese. It would be a bloodbath. Guilt would be induced; lawsuits would be filed. Eddie would panic, and placate, and Buck would never see them again, and Buck put his headphones back in before his brain could say anything else.

Only, Buck’s brain wasn’t having it. It felt like his head had been patiently waiting for the tiniest bit of space so it could make all the thoughts he’d been ignoring come roaring back, snapping out like a spring wound too tight for too long. Between the sound in his ears and the thunder in his head, Buck’s head got so loud that he ripped out his headphones and tried to breathe, slow and steady like Iris had coached him forever ago after he’d thrown himself out of the float pod to stop seeing himself as Red and accidentally started this whole thing.

Honestly, so much had happened since then that Buck had almost forgotten the float pod panic attack. Buck snorted. All these weeks and all these changes later, and here he was, still panicking that he was going to end up alone. Buck could do what Glade suggested: rip off the Band-Aid and just tell Eddie that he was in love with him. And Eddie could nicely reject him because that’s what straight best friends did. It would be awkward for a couple of days – Eddie would immediately get a girlfriend, just because – and Buck would tell Glade it had all gone wrong, so they’d date each other, and that… would be the rest of his life.

Buck wasn’t quite sure how he’d ended up on the kitchen floor yanking on his hair, but he forced himself to stand back up and stop panicking. He and Glade had made a plan. Buck would tell Eddie he was bi and go from there. Yes, Buck was terrified about all the ways ‘go from there’ could turn out, but fear of ending up alone had led Buck to a bunch of stupid choices already and he didn’t want to make any more. Buck didn’t have to be afraid that Eddie would walk out on him. Eddie wouldn’t love him back, but Eddie would take it with grace. He’d be stupidly supportive and wingman the hell out of Buck at enough bars to eventually make the whole thing hilarious.

He would.

He would.

No. Stop panicking.

Buck was standing up. The floor was cold beneath his bare feet, and he didn’t want to blank out and end up back down there. What Buck needed was to sit down, no music, no panic, no stacks of stuff mounded as a massive to-do list, and just think it through. Just think.

What Buck needed was the float pod.

Though, the thought of going back to that place and locking himself in an egg for another sobbing panic attack made Buck want to vomit up his macaroni.

So, no float pod.

But Buck had a tub.

In a matter of minutes, Buck was submerged in his hot bathtub. Then he got right back out because this wasn’t going to work with the lights on. Buck went in and out half a dozen times, trying to get the atmosphere as close to pod-like as possible. When there was nothing left to fix, Buck pulled a washcloth over his eyes and sank into the tub as far as the dimensions would let him. (Then there was a whole thing about bent knees, legs up the wall, and so on before Buck mentally swore at himself about deliberately putting this off and forced himself to deal with the situation as it was.)

Just breathe.

In and out, like the meditation videos and the yoga girlfriends all said. In and out.

Don’t think about ending up like Red.

But when Buck shoved those thoughts aside, their place was filled with Glade’s voice saying Eddie wanted him back. The panic that ripped through him was so shocking that Buck nearly shot out of the tub.

Panic? That couldn’t be panic.

It was… no, Buck stayed in the water while he chewed over the sensation. Yes, it was definitely panic.

But why the fuck was Buck panicking? Life with Eddie would be great.

(Now that Buck had opened the mental door, daydreams of life with Eddie flooded in. Thoughts of waking up in bed next to Eddie and his floofy hair, a thousand mornings where Eddie was half-asleep before his first mug of coffee, kissing Eddie awake, Eddie wearing Buck’s t-shirts around and not just out of the loft and back to his place.

Buck wanted that. Of course, he wanted that. So why the fuck did Buck’s brain feel like it wanted to claw its way out of his skull and never think these things again?

Buck’s brain answered with a leap to the worst nightmare of Buck telling Eddie that he had feelings for him, only for Eddie to pull away in disgust, telling Buck he was so damn needy that he couldn’t even have a friend.

The rational part of Buck pointed out what the rest of him already knew: that wouldn’t happen. Eddie wouldn’t do that. Eddie wouldn’t be disgusted. He was too good a man for that and they were too good of friends for that.

Just as clear as Buck could envision Eddie in the morning, he could see Eddie’s sad eyes after Buck’s confession. Could see the way Eddie would go to pull Buck into a hug and stop to make sure that was still okay. The last thing Eddie would want to do was hurt him. Buck would pull away, and Eddie would do that thing he did, one hand on Buck’s shoulder the other on the curve of his neck, tilting Buck’s head so he had to keep looking Eddie in the eyes. Then Eddie would apologize and Buck would want to lay down right there and die just to end the conversation. Eddie would say he loved Buck; Buck was his best friend. He wouldn’t say that he couldn’t love Buck like that; he’d let his furrow do the talking.

And Buck would tell him it was okay, that he might need to be Buck 1.0 for a minute to get over it, but he wouldn’t stop seeing Christopher, and Eddie would shut up anybody who teased Buck for it, and Buck would… survive.

And their friendship would survive. It would be weird as fuck, and awkward, and painful while Buck figured out how to be not in love with Eddie, but they would survive.

The certainty of it filled Buck like a balloon and pulled him out of the water. He opened his eyes and stared up at the bathroom ceiling. He’d be okay. He repeated the words to himself, in disbelief that they could feel so right.

Yes, it would hurt, but he and Eddie would survive. Eddie wouldn’t take Christopher away. Eddie might be softer with Buck, trying to be more sensitive, but they’d be okay.

Holy fuck. Buck floated there in the lukewarm water and actually believed that they’d be okay.

Buck could tell Eddie that he was in love with him because, no matter what, they’d be okay.

Chapter Twelve

Buck accepted that he could tell Eddie that he was in love with him because, no matter what, they’d be okay.

Of course, the universe chose that moment to decide that Buck shouldn’t be left to panic his way out of that realization.

From the safety of his bathtub, Buck heard Eddie call out, “Uh, Buck? You here?”

Buck scrambled out of the tub and grabbed a towel before he skidded out the bathroom door. Eddie stood with two pizzas in hand, staring around at the carnage of Buck’s apartment. He looked up the stairs at a mostly-naked Buck, blinked, blushed, and said, “You, uh, didn’t pick up your phone all day. I was worried.”

Despite the weird circumstances, Eddie’s brain caught up quick. He glanced at Buck’s knee for signs it was hurting – usually the only time Buck took baths – saw it wasn’t, then tracked his eyes over Buck’s body with none of the lingering his physique deserved and settled on Buck’s red eyes. Eddie immediately knew something was wrong. “Buck?”

Buck was going to get to keep this. No matter what else, he and Eddie were going to be okay.

Buck wanted it on the record that he didn’t burst into tears and collapse on the stairs, but he might have blubbered and sunk a bit. Eddie dropped the pizza on top of a pile of girlfriend debris and scrambled up the stairs. “What happened? Are you okay?” Eddie ran his steady hands over Buck in the same pattern he always followed after one of the team made it out of trouble. Buck let his head drop to Eddie’s chest, relieved at the comfort of it. The comfort he was going to get to keep.

“Buck?” Eddie stopped the check and wound his arms around Buck. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Buck?” And now Eddie was panicking.

But he didn’t need to, because they were going to be okay. Eddie didn’t need to be scared and Buck didn’t need to keep his mouth shut. Buck could… Buck could tell him. Buck could tell him and they’d both survive, and their friendship would survive.

Some part of Buck wondered if Red had a moment like this. Some chance to be brave after the woman he loved walked away and he didn’t chase her, after he wasn’t willing to be better to keep her, or willing to let go of her all the way so he could find someone else. Red did the job and he did it well, but he never put himself on the line like that. He made safe decisions over and over again, only to end up with a life that came out of Buck’s worst nightmares.

Buck… needed to tell Eddie. Eddie was going to say no, and they were going to be fine after he did, so it wasn’t about that. Buck just needed to know that he tried. He needed to be the kind of man who made decisions because they would make him happy, not decisions because he was afraid.

“Buck?” Eddie gripped at Buck’s back like he did with Christopher when he wasn’t calm enough to properly soothe. “Buck?”

“I’m in love with you.”

“What?” Eddie’s hands clenched and his voice cracked.

Buck pulled away because he had to look Eddie in the eye for this. “I’m sorry to dump this on you. I freaked out about it, but you’re Eddie, and you don’t panic and you don’t walk away. I can tell you, and you’ll still be my best friend. And I know you don’t feel that way about me, and you can have whatever time you need to be cool with it, but I had to tell you. I don’t want to be the guy who doesn’t do things just because he’s scared.”

Buck ran out of words and trailed off to Eddie staring at Buck like he’d just suggested they jump off a building – which he’d never done, thank you very much.

Then Eddie just kept staring, so maybe Buck hadn’t made sense? “It’s okay that you don’t love me back. We’ll be okay. Someday this is going to be a funny story about that time I was in love with you, but I do kind of need you to say some—”

Eddie kissed him.

Eddie’s kiss was tentative, like teenagers who had no idea what they were doing. Buck’s brain bluescreened because Eddie’s lips were soft, which he had never daydreamed about. Eddie pulled back, not separating but enough to signal he was going to, and fuck that, Buck’s brain turned back on. He didn’t lunge, because stairs, but he threaded his hands through Eddie’s soft hair and yanked him back in. Eddie’s breath was minty, like he’d prepped before he came over, and as Buck melted against Eddie, he could feel the scratch of Eddie’s jeans along his legs and Eddie’s Henley over his front so Buck wasn’t even cold.

Eddie pressed Buck back, half climbing on top of him and Buck kissed ‘ow’ into Eddie’s mouth when the edge of his stairs hit rib. Fuck, that made Eddie pull back, eyes closed, his forehead pressed to Buck’s. Buck shuffled down a bit, hips pressed tighter against the burn of Eddie’s jeans and the stair in a better spot. “There.” He kissed Eddie again, who kissed back for a split second before he twisted away.

“No, Eds. I’m good.”

“Go put pants on,” Eddie said and started to get up.

“What?” Buck’s stomach bottomed out.

“No, not—” Eddie darted back in and kissed him again, all but planking on the stairs to keep from touching. “We’re not having sex on the stairs.”

“Well, then—” Buck grabbed Eddie’s shirt to haul him up to bed, but Eddie wriggled away.

“No. We’re waiting.”

“We’re what?”

Eddie stood up, then froze for a second because Buck was naked on the stairs, sprawled out and waiting. Eddie blinked a couple of times, then picked up the towel and held it between them like a curtain. “We have to talk about things first.”

“What do we have to talk about? We’ve been best friends for three years.”

“Yeah, but we’ve been dating for two minutes.”

“Eds.” Buck did not whine. Eddie swallowed like he was ready to chuck the towel and make Buck do that noise on purpose. But Eddie was the most stubborn man Buck had ever met, so he tossed the towel over Buck and went back down to the kitchen.

Eddie was right, but that didn’t mean Buck had to take it with grace. He dressed in sweats that rode low on his hips and Eddie’s tight t-shirt that had started today’s panic spiral. Eddie’s look when Buck made it downstairs was hungry, but there was more glare mixed in than Buck would’ve liked. Eddie had used Buck’s dressing time to put two stools on opposite sides of a cleared-off chunk of the counter. He’d also put slices of the pizza on plates and poured them glasses of milk.

“Fancy.”

“More stuff on the counter means…” Eddie trailed off, the ‘more stuff in between us having sex on the counter’ implied.

Buck blushed, and Eddie’s look shifted to plain hunger. For a solid ten seconds, Buck thought Eddie was just going to screw it and jump over the island. Instead, he released a long breath and dropped to the stool like he’d cut his own strings. Buck may or may not have slung his leg over the stool like he was mounting up to ride something, to which Eddie just chugged his glass of milk like he was downing a beer.

Milk was not sexy. And Eddie was clear that he wanted to at least eat dinner so they could tell themselves they’d had an official date before they got into bed. Buck tended to prefer dinner after sex, but Eddie’s response to Buck’s declaration of love had been wanting to talk about their feelings, which was a damn good sign.

“Did you know that the reason it’s so hard to drink an entire gallon of milk isn’t just that it’s a whole gallon? The fat and protein in the milk keep the body from digesting milk as fast as water or another drink. Then, the milk reacts to the stomach acid and gets gloopy, like slime, which makes it even harder to drink more.”

Eddie stared at Buck the entire ramble, not at all grossed out by the way Buck had devoured an entire piece of pizza while he talked. “What?”

“I love you.”

Buck smiled so hard it hurt. “Yeah?”

“I love you so much that I like hearing you telling me about milk curdling.”

“Gross.” Buck puckered.

“Yeah, it was, Buckley. But I like listening to you.”

“Not a lot of people do.”

“Then they’re missing out. But we do have to talk about this first. And not just milk.”

“Talking is good.” Or so Buck had heard. He’d thought he and Abby had talked before they slept together, but apparently, he’d missed some big details.

Buck didn’t know what he expected Eddie to lead with, but, “I’ve never been with a guy,” wasn’t it.

Buck’s eyebrows rocketed up because that was some damn good making out for Eddie’s first time.

“I mean, I’ve been with a guy, I just haven’t been in a relationship with one. Shannon was my only long-term relationship and we saw how that turned out.”

“Are you bi, like me?”

“I’ve never really thought about it.” Eddie twisted his glass awkwardly.

“What would you call you?”

“I’d call myself straight because hand jobs with the shortstop and blowjobs with the staff sergeant in the next unit don’t really count as bisexual. I prefer women.” Eddie shrugged.

Buck’s stomach curdled like he’d drunk too much milk. “But?”

“But you’re Buck. It’s not about you being a man, or being beautiful, you’re Buck.”

Buck had to blink back tears. “That’s the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me.”

“It’s true.” Eddie reached out and took Buck’s left hand in his. “It took me a while to figure out that these weren’t just best friend feelings or nice ass feelings.”

“I do have a nice ass.”

“You do,” Eddie said it like it was a fact, not a compliment, and Buck’s face went red. “You gonna do that every time?”

“Maybe.” Buck knew that if there hadn’t been a counter between them, Eddie would’ve been nudging Buck’s foot to tell him it was his turn to talk. “I have more experience with sex with men than I do with healthy relationships with anybody.”

“Shannon is my only relationship. You’ve got Abby, Ally…”

“There was Cassandra in Virginia Beach and…” Buck licked his lips. “Cody in Oregon.”

“Cody?”

“Cody.”

Eddie squeezed Buck’s hand. “Tell me about him.” And Buck did. They covered Buck’s three-month, post-cowboy love affair with Cody, ate two pizzas, and covered all the gory details of Abby that station gossip had distorted. Eddie confessed that Shannon had gotten pregnant by accident, and Eddie had been young enough to think that was a sign from God that this woman and the life that came with her were his purpose.

After pizza came Chris’ leftover pie, one tin and two forks. “Since we’re telling each other our deep, dark secrets, you want to tell me what really happened on your road trip?” Eddie took another forkful of perfect pie. “Or was it just being around Red when he was dying that got to you?”

Buck hesitated. Cody and Abby were one thing, visions of the future were another.

“I’m grateful for whatever happened, because I don’t know if we would’ve gotten here without it, but it feels like something bigger than tidying happened.”

Bigger than tidying was making choices, and was Buck going to go forever without telling Eddie what he’d seen? Being okay with not telling him? No.

“Okay.” Buck went to the fridge and pulled out a beer.

“I thought we weren’t drinking for this conversation.”

“Trust me: you’ll need a beer. Because this sounds insane, but I promise it happened.”

Eddie flicked off the top and Buck got talking. He backed it all the way up and explained that while he knew Red’s ending upset him, it was kind of about him, just like Bobby had scolded, but Buck hadn’t understood why. Not yet.

“I really did take Red to all that stuff because I wanted him to have fun. I didn’t want him to be alone at the end. It wasn’t just about me.”

“I know, Buck. We all did.”

“Not at the beginning.” Bobby scolding him for making Red’s dying all about himself still hurt.

“No. But they got there.”

“Because you got them there.”

“Because I’m the one who first spent any time with the two of you. I know what they were confused about, but after we went rock climbing it all made sense.” Eddie traced the tines of his fork through the leftover whipped cream like he was someplace else. “I watched you two together on that wall and I knew it was going to end up hurting you, and I knew you were going to do it anyway.”

Buck had to kiss Eddie for that. Eddie’s understanding that Buck had been hurting made it easier for him to explain the float pod, the relapse into Buck 1.0, and the nightmare where Dream!Buck was so desperate not to end up alone that he’d dated someone who didn’t love Chris.

Eddie was the one who kissed Buck after that.

“Eds.” Buck tried to pull away because cutting out Chris wasn’t something that deserved to be soothed by kisses.

“Buck. Even in your worst nightmare the worst you did to my kid was not have him over to help you move because your ex didn’t like him.”

“But I still dated her, Eddie. And I wasn’t breaking up with her for being an ass to Chris.”

“And I was still talking to you.”

“What?” Buck hadn’t gone down that tangent before.

“In this nightmare of yours, however much it is you think you hurt Chris, I was still talking to you, which means that you hadn’t abandoned Chris. You hadn’t run off with this woman and cut us out of your life. You just didn’t bring her over for movie night.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. So yes, that the worst you could manage was missing movie night for your girlfriend means kisses. Honestly,” Eddie stroked one of Buck’s curls out of his eyes, “you were healthier about it than I was.”

“Eds,” Buck was ready to cut off Eddie’s descent into, ‘I was a bad dad.’

Only, that wasn’t what was worrying Eddie. Apparently, Eddie had done a lot of deep breathing to get himself through Buck’s relapse into 1.0. “I wanted to shake you and say, ‘You’re looking for a family and we’re right here!’ But I…”

“Didn’t know I was bi.”

“And I didn’t know if it would stick. I didn’t want to tell you I love you and have it all turn out to be part of the Red-dying crisis.”

“You didn’t think I’d be okay with you loving me?”

“I think there’s not a damn thing in the world you wouldn’t do for the people you love, Evan. But I wanted you to want us.”

That had called for a minor pause for making out, which turned into a major pause, which turned into trying to relocate to the sofa, which turned into tripping over a stack of DVDs and Eddie saying, “This is not what Marie told you to do, Buck.”

That led to Eddie fessing up that he hadn’t read the tidying book, but he’d listened to the audiobook so Buck could have someone to talk with about this thing that was important to him.

That meant giving Eddie a blowjob right there in the detritus of Buck’s living room, which meant stumbling naked up to Buck’s bathroom and telling Eddie why there were wet towels all over the place. “I panicked a little.”

“And took a bath?”

“I tried to do the float pod thing.”

“You tried to fix a panic attack by doing something that caused another panic attack?”

“Hey, it worked.”

“How?”

“We’re not there yet.”

Next was drawing another bath because Eddie was determined to put his clothes back on – like that was going to stop either of them – and Buck wasn’t having that.

Eddie had defanged the nightmare about failing Chris, but it still explained why Buck had tried so hard to get his life in order afterward, and what was on his mind when he road-tripped Red to Oregon to spread his ashes.

“Was the beach important to you and Cody?” Eddie asked, tracing hot fingertips over Buck’s forearms. (Eddie had insisted on being the bathtub big spoon, giving his hands space to freely and softly roam over naked Buck.)

“No. The beach came after Cody.”

“You still had sex on it, right?” Buck rolled his eyes. “Red would be disappointed if you hadn’t.”

“Shut up, Eddie.” Which meant yes.

But before the beach, there had been pie and life advice from Jill and Carl. “Which is so weird, now that I think about it.”

Eddie snorted, which Buck could feel across his back. “It shouldn’t be. People take one look at you and decide to fuss over you all the time.”

“They do not!”

“Red was trying to sneak out of life before last call and something about you made him start talking.”

That… was pretty much exactly how Jill had put it. “Comfort of strangers.”

“And you’re the most comforting stranger most people will ever meet. You traveled the country for years and every story you tell features some new friend you made. You get involved with people, Buck. Even when you know you’re never going to see someone again. So no, it’s not weird that some lady at a diner in the middle of nowhere decided to fuss over you.”

“Well…” Buck didn’t know what to do with that, so he moved on, certain Eddie would bring it up later. “Like I said, Jill got blunt that me cleaning my apartment wasn’t really going to change things, so I spent the whole drive back trying to figure out what I wanted. That came easy for work, but in my personal life, I could only figure out that I wanted you and Chris.”

“This is probably the moment to point out that half the calls when you were gone weren’t really from Chris, I just blamed them on him.”

“I’ll always take a call from you, Eds.”

Eddie ran his fingertips up the inside of Buck’s palm, tracing along the inside of his fingers, rolling them out and back in again. “I kept telling myself that you were done running. You wouldn’t leave us like that.”

“Hey.” Buck twisted around and dropped a sweet kiss to Eddie’s lips. “I wouldn’t. And I’m sorry I didn’t call for two days.”

“You were going through some stuff. And I’m the only one you texted back.”

“Like I said: pretty much all I knew was that I wanted you and Chris. But I also like sex, which meant I was trying to figure out how to basically live with you guys but have sex with other people.”

Eddie sighed. “I’d laugh, but I was pretty much having the same thoughts. Though, I don’t do sex in parking lots.”

With Buck’s thighs over Eddie’s and nothing between them but bathwater, that seemed manageable. “You’ll have to figure out how to make it up to me.”

That meant another pause for hand jobs and getting water all over Buck’s floor. Buck swept the clothes off his bed so they had room to collapse. The rest of the story came quickly since Eddie had been there for almost everything, from career planning with Bobby, to getting drunk with Glade.

“She wasn’t your option for sex with other people?”

“Comfort of strangers.”

Eddie made an inquisitive noise against Buck’s hair.

“Her assistant watched the news coverage of the train and Glade texted to make this joke about how she felt the need to call me a brave idiot on behalf of Red. She just happened to text while I was sitting in the car after talking to Abby.”

“Ah.” Eddie didn’t sound jealous, but something in his chest unclenched beneath Buck’s cheek.

“I just kind of vomited my emotions all over her. I apologized, but she said she was good with it because…”

“You’re good.”

“Yeah. Did I tell you, Glade got ghosted by her fiancée?”

Eddie snorted. “We should make a club. I probably should’ve asked this earlier, but—”

“We’re not dating. Not even a little. Glade just—sometimes I feel bad that I don’t want to tell Maddie stuff. Because whatever I tell her is telling Chim, and then it’s telling everybody.”

“I get that.”

“You’re the only one I can talk to and know that it will just be between you and me.” Eddie lifted Buck’s hand from his chest and kissed his palm. “But I couldn’t talk to you about you, so when I was sorting my clothes this morning and I got hard smelling one of your shirts, I freaked out and called her.” Under other circumstances, Buck would’ve been mortified to say that out loud. But everything seemed doable with his head pillowed on Eddie’s chest, Eddie’s callused fingers trailing up and down Buck’s spine.

“What was her advice?”

“To tell you that I’m bi. And she thought, well… I might owe her flowers.”

“I think we both might.”

“Oh?” Buck rolled up to look him in the eye and Eddie was blushing. “What happened?”

“Glade and I may have had a conversation at your commendation ceremony.”

“You may have?”

“I was watching you and Chris do your you-and-Chris thing, and she came up next to me and said that she’d been ghosted by her fiancé.”

Buck blinked. “That’s what she led off with?”

“Yeah. I think shock might’ve been the point because I’d kind of been avoiding her.”

“Why?”

“Buck.”

“Oh, right. We weren’t dating.”

“I know that now. I also knew that by the end of the conversation because she said it was nice to have that shared experience with a fellow bisexual.”

“Did you think she was talking about you?”

“Yes. And based on her smirk, she knew I’d misinterpreted because she enjoyed deadpan saying, ‘Oh no, did I out Buck?’”

Buck snorted. “Really?”

“Yup. Then, in case I missed it, in that same tone of voice she said that she was sure that I’d never use this information to hurt you because she didn’t like it when people hurt her friends. “‘And we will always be friends, no matter where life might take the both of us.’”

“That was… surprisingly not subtle for her.”

“Since I probably would’ve missed it if she’d been subtle, I’m grateful.”

“We owe her double flowers, then.”

Eddie ran his fingers through Buck’s curls, looking up at him with soft eyes. “I don’t think flowers are enough.”

“We’ll come up with something. We’ve got time.”

Buck snuggled back down, waiting for whatever question Eddie still had on his face. He absently traced one finger around Eddie’s nipple, not quite winding him up, but thinking about it.

“Hey, Buck?”

“Yeah, Eds?”

“What made you decide to tell me this morning?”

“The panic attack bath.”

“Buck?” Eddie pushed himself upright, taking Buck with him. “Did I walk in on you in a panic attack?”

“No, Eds. That was done.”

“Ah. What did you see this time?”

“Telling you that I love you and the world not falling apart.”

“That caused a panic attack?”

“No.” Buck shimmied up to seated, unconcerned with being naked. “All the options I could think of before that made me panic, but Glade kept saying to think about what you’d say to Chim if he said he loved you.”

“I’d beat him up on Maddie’s behalf.”

“You know what I mean. You’d be kind to him. So, I kept telling myself that the world would end when you told me no, but Glade’s voice kept saying, ‘that doesn’t sound like Eddie,’ and I realized that I’d be okay if you didn’t love me like I love you.”

“I do, though.” Eddie cupped his cheek.

“I know. And I’m so fucking happy to have it, but for the first time in my life, it won’t break me. Then I realized that I’d be okay no matter what you said. It was more important to me to be honest and brave than it was to be scared of being alone.”

“You’re a braver man than I am.”

Buck scoffed. “I was just going to tell you I’m bi and let the chips fall.”

“And my big plan was slow and steady seduction.”

“What?” Did Eddie even know how seduction worked?

“I was going to bribe you over today with Chris and pie.”

“Ooh. I would’ve come.”

“Yeah.” Eddie gave him a sad smile. “My whole plan was just to wait.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe for you to wake up one day and be the brave one.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Buck said with all the certainty in the world.

“Yes, I would’ve, Buck. That’s all the plan I had.”

“No, Eds. You’ve been telling me that you love me for months. You were just waiting for me to hear it.”

Eddie leaned in and kissed him, soft and slow with no intent behind it other than to say, ‘I love you’ without words. “Hey, Eds?” Buck murmured against his lips.

“Yeah?”

“Let’s go home.”

The taste of Eddie’s smile was even better than pie.

Epilogue

Buck blinked away the fuzz that only came with an unplanned afternoon nap. He buried his face back in the pillow and sighed, tempted to go right back to sleep. This was the problem with finding the world’s most perfect chair: they kept accidentally napping in it.

Eyes half-closed, Buck grasped for his coffee mug tucked away on the shelf behind the chair. His drink was cold and gross, which probably did more to wake him up than the actual caffeine.

All right. They had places to be. Time to get up.

With a slow, full-body stretch, Buck rolled off the chair before he gave in to temptation. Eddie and Chris would let him stay right here and sleep away the evening because no one in their house was looking forward to dinner. He’d say it was tragic that his accidental nap in the world’s best chair was probably going to be the best part of his night, but… it was a damn good chair.

The first piece of real furniture Buck had bought for himself was the corner of a sectional. Some designer had done away with the rest of the couch and just made a chair out of the comfortable intersection. Buck loved it. (Was it too big for Eddie’s living room? Yes. Did any of them care? No. When asked, he and Eddie said the chair would be perfect in their new place, which distracted the questioners into a whole other, not-sofa-related conversation.)

They’d tucked the chair in the front corner of Eddie’s living room, where he used to have his sad TV precariously perched on an end table. High on Buck’s list of requirements for moving in had been donating Eddie’s brick so Buck’s own, excellent TV could sit in pride of place above the fireplace. (Maddie had rolled her eyes and called it ‘man decorating.’ Buck had pointedly looked at his boyfriend and son because… yeah. What else did she think they were going to do?)

Along with the corner TV, they’d also gotten rid of the weird, Helena-gifted armoire that both Eddie and Chris had used as a dumping ground for random crap. They’d replaced it with an entire wall of square bookshelves that the three of them filled with a rotating display of things that sparked joy. (Other than the shelf behind the chair in perfect reaching range. That was dedicated to coffee mugs, whatever Buck was reading at the time, and Chris’ unplugged Switch. Though the number of times Buck had curled up there with one of his Diazes made the stuff joyful enough.)

The rest of the shelves were filled with things like Chris’ science fair project (fire-related and done at the station on Buck and Eddie’s day off); the small painting they’d bought at the boardwalk (Buck had been so proud of his first artwork purchase. His former girlfriends had made it look so easy); and the refillable popcorn bucket from their local movie theater (because they lost it every time they tried to keep it in the kitchen). Red’s memorabilia got a shelf of its own, while Red’s commendation was tucked away on a separate shelf, next to Buck’s commendation and Eddie’s Silver Star.

At Chris’ eye level was the shelf dedicated to Shannon. (Easy to see when they came in the front door, but not where it could lurk and hurt him when the memories hit by surprise.) Front and center was an 8×10 of the three Diazes in front of the Christmas tree from their last year together. All around it were snaps of Shannon cuddling Chris as he grew, and one of Shannon and Eddie on their wedding day.

Though they hadn’t talked about it yet, each of them left Shannon their own little devotionals. Chris liked to leave seashells and Happy Meal toys. (He also liked to linger. Not quite talking, but something passing between Chris and his mother. Eddie hadn’t said anything about it, but he’d moved a chair right next to the shelf so Chris could be comfortable.) Buck’s remembrance was more that he lingered out of hearing range when Chris did his communing, ready with hugs and time in case Chris wanted to talk. (Though he did leave her flowers – sometimes gratitude for helping make Chris, sometimes an apology for how much he’d disliked her in life.) Eddie never left things, but he made a habit of tapping the shelf on their way out the door, saying ‘hi’ before their day started.

Of all the assortment of stuff, Buck’s favorite was a trio of photos tucked together on one shelf. It held a tiny, gap-toothed Chris next to a photo of buzz-cut Eddie from basic training, and baby-faced Buck learning to surf on Virginia Beach. (They were Buck and Eddie’s favorite picture of Chris, Chris and Buck’s favorite of Eddie, and the Diaz boys’ favorite of Buck).

The shelf next that hosted their growing collection of seashells and a photo from last month’s trip to Oregon. Chris was a cackling blur in the foreground, with wide-eyed, flour-covered Eddie in the back. (Chris had insisted that the first long weekend they had off was to be spent in Oregon tasting magic pie. They’d gone, and Chris was so charming that Carl had invited them into the diner’s kitchen so he could teach Chris how to make raspberry chocolate pudding pie. Jill had shut down the shop and perched on a counter where she could drink sweet tea and make double-entendres about Eddie being handsome and her being right. Buck had never met anybody who could out-sex-talk him before. It was awesome. They had a Facetime scheduled with Carl next week so they could get his lemon meringue right for Abuela’s birthday.)

Ironically, the only thing their shelves lacked was enough book space. Buck had been worried about it until Chris pointed out that every house they looked at online came with a dining room, which they weren’t going to need with the kitchen and backyard Buck had planned. Thus, all prospective dining rooms were reviewed for their potential library criteria.

For the time being, they’d put the IKEA shelf from Buck’s loft bedroom in Eddie’s dining room where they’d stuffed it full of books like level 10 Tetris. But there were still books crammed onto Chris’ shelves and mounded up on Buck’s nightstand. Eddie had to put his foot down about how many books they could keep in the living room, otherwise, all their pretty shelves would’ve been taken over too. As it was, they had two whole shelves filled up with photo albums – arranged by Buck after the Diaz family tidy – and a singular book-specific shelf that held their favorites from Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Dune, plus an Abuela-gifted Bible, and Buck’s highlighted copy of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

Smack dab in the center of the shelves was Eddie’s Army t-shirt folded up in a picture frame so the logo was visible. Chim was the only one who’d ever asked why that was the t-shirt they wanted to display, but there was no arguing with Buck’s smile when he said the shirt made him realize he was in love with Eddie. The team was torn over whether it was Eddie’s muscles in the shirt or Buck realizing something about mortality that brought about the realization. (Nobody but Eddie needed to know it wasn’t so much the shirt as it was getting hard from Eddie’s scent.)

Today, Buck stood there, cold coffee in his hands, staring at a whole wall filled with things that he loved. Filled with things his family loved. “The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past,” Marie said. Every time he looked at these shelves – so different than Red!Buck’s mausoleum, or Dream!Buck’s fear, or the chic nothingness of his loft – Buck’s heart was so full it skipped a beat.

Sure, life wasn’t perfect. Bobby was still a little wound up about Buck and Eddie reporting their relationship to the union rep before him, and Buck was pretty sure ‘in a relationship with a fellow male firefighter’ was a red mark in his file someplace and would be the thing that kept him from becoming a captain. But if Buck decided he wanted it someday, he’d be willing to pick that fight. And Eddie would be right there with him. (Glade enjoyed shit-stirring and kept mentioning the lawyers she knew who specialized in employment and discrimination law. Ones who’d be happy to remind the LAFD that stalling out a hero’s career because he liked dick wasn’t okay.)

As for the rest of their family, Abuela and Pepa had kissed his cheeks while Eddie’s cousins complained about Buck being the favorite. Helena and Ramon were following the ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ school of acceptance, which was better than Buck’s parents, who didn’t care. Hen had to give Chim a lecture that making bisexual promiscuity jokes wasn’t okay. Chim had rebounded nicely, not joking at all because he didn’t know which ‘Buck is young and slutty’ jokes he could make now. (Honestly, the lack of jokes meant he and Chim were having real conversations now. This was the best their friendship had ever been.) Maddie still looked at him like she thought Buck might be settling for his best friend instead of the love of his life, but she’d get there.

At work, Bobby’s paranoia had split Buck and Eddie up to different shifts half the time, and they’d accidentally made new friends. (It took a few weeks for them to gel with the other shifts because, apparently, B and C considered A shift a little cliquey and co-dependent. Which, now that Buck was out of it… he could see.)

It was like getting away from A shift opened a relationship door, and he and Eddie got to know a bunch of people beyond those they worked with. Most of them were the vet friends Eddie made at the gym where he’d gotten back into MMA. (The moment Eddie had put his old hand wraps in the ‘mementos’ tidying pile instead of ‘clothing,’ Buck had known something was up. Then, when the time had come to keep the wraps or let them go, Eddie had just stood there. Buck’d had to peel the wraps out of Eddie’s clenched hands and hug him until he agreed that maybe he should talk it out with Frank. Frank, who’d argued that, so long as Eddie was also healthily dealing with his emotions, he didn’t have to give up something he loved just because he’d hurt himself with it before.) Buck liked to go with Eddie to the gym, though he’d tried fighting a whole thrice before he accepted the inevitable and found his own friends in the yoga class. (Yes, the yoga class in the MMA gym. Buck hadn’t expected it either.)

The real friendship champion was Karen, who adopted newly-out and mostly-exiled Buck and Eddie like they were stray puppies she’d found by the side of the road. To Buck’s great surprise, Karen had a bunch of friends outside the 118 and had dragged Hen into her healthy, non-first-responder relationships. Karen added Eddie and Buck to the twice-monthly dinners with the group of professors, scientists, and fucking astronauts that she hung out with. Even better, Eddie had joined their science fiction book club. (Best part? They all thought Buck and Eddie were the cool ones.)

“Babe?” Eddie entered the living room on silent feet and wrapped his arms around Buck’s waist. “You okay?”

“Just thinking.”

Eddie hmm-ed, certain of where Buck’s brain had wandered while he stared at their shelves. “Remember, Chris said he’d be happy to fake sick so we can get out of going.”

Buck snorted. “I don’t want him lying for me.”

“Well, he loves you. And if he hears Bobby call us ‘reckless’ for being in a relationship one more time, he’s going to lose his temper.”

Buck leaned back against Eddie’s chest, letting him carry the weight. “Is it bad that I kind of want to see him scolding Bobby?”

“No. Chris’d win.”

“Yeah,” Buck sighed. There wasn’t much to say. They both knew they were going to the team dinner no matter what, but it was nice to pretend they could stay home.

“What about me? I can fake sick.”

“Since you won’t admit to being sick when you actually are, that would be hella suspicious. We can do this, Eds.”

“Can isn’t really the problem.”

Buck twisted around Eddie’s arms and tugged him into a kiss. “We need to do this. We can’t keep going with this passive-aggressive bullshit.”

“Hey.” Eddie threaded his fingers through Buck’s hair. “We can put off the decision as long as we need to. B and C aren’t going anywhere.”

“It isn’t about B and C. The plan was to give Bobby time to wrap his head around us, but he hasn’t even tried. Seriously, Eds. He’s so dug in that I don’t think he’s realized that HR and the union keep calling because they’re upset with him, not us. And he’s said some stuff…” Bobby had never been outright cruel about their relationship or unexpected sexuality, but he’d sure as hell implied a lot of disappointment. Buck dropped his head to Eddie’s shoulder. “I don’t know if I want to work with him anymore, Eds.”

Eddie held him tight. “Maybe that’s what we need: Bobby as our friend instead of Bobby as our Cap.”

“I’m worried we won’t want him as either if he keeps up like this.”

“Hey.” Eddie pressed their foreheads together. “We’ll figure it out.” Buck teared up. “Babe?”

“Sor—” Buck cut himself off, his therapist’s voice in his head reminding him that he didn’t have to apologize for feeling. “I never thought I’d be here. I’m actually planning on going to a different crew. And I’m a little excited about it. Even more, I’m okay with someone else being your partner because I’ve worked with them a bunch and I trust them to watch your back.” Buck peeled back so he could look at Eddie properly. “You, the love of my life. I didn’t think I’d ever get to be this happy.”

Eddie reached over Buck’s shoulder to the center shelf. Tucked behind the framed Army t-shirt was a little rock, plain and boring, and found in one of Eddie’s pockets when the hospital gave him back his clothes after the well. Somewhere in scraping his way through flooded tunnels, all kinds of debris had made their way into the nooks and crannies of Eddie’s clothes. But that particular rock, Eddie had been staring at it and contemplating his mortality when Buck and Chris caught him trying to do his laundry the day after he came home. He’d been forcibly relocated to the sofa where Chris talked a mile a minute and Buck handled the washing where Eddie couldn’t see.

But the rock had stayed clenched in Eddie’s fist, a tether to reality when Buck and Chris finally drifted off to sleep and the world went dark and quiet around him.

Eddie held that rock in his hand while he stared at Chris tucked safely against Buck’s bulk, sleeping the sleep of the safe. He held it while he looked at their curly blond heads and he realized that they looked more like father and son than he and Chris. The rock was there while the lanterns drifted by on the television and made them glow, like a gift from the universe that they’d found each other.

Even with the realization gift wrapped for him like that, Eddie didn’t get it until cartoon -Flynn started singing that at last, he’d seen the light and now he knew where he was supposed to be.

Eddie spiraled for about ten seconds, then the prick of the rock in his hand reminded him that he’d almost died yesterday. There were worse things than being in love with his best friend.

Buck hadn’t asked about the rock when Eddie put it in his keep pile. (Didn’t ask when Eddie kept glancing at it to remind himself what the spark of joy was supposed to feel like.) Eddie waited to speak until they were wrapped up together in the sheets Buck had insisted on buying because, “How in the hell do you sleep on these, Eds?” Eddie had told Buck that’s when he’d known he was in love, and Buck had kissed him while something in Buck had settled, some worry that Eddie didn’t think Buck even knew he’d been carrying.

The next day, Buck had taken Eddie by the hand and asked if maybe he wanted to put the rock on the shelf. On their shelf. Buck didn’t have to say it, but it was the shelf where someday they were going to put their wedding picture, put the pictures of Chris’ siblings, of their grandchildren. Eddie had moved the rock, then made out with Buck right there in the living room, in full view of the front window and not afraid at all

And now, he took it off the shelf and held it between them as a reminder that they’d both gone through hell to be here together. “I didn’t think I’d get to be this happy either, but we are. And we’re keeping it.”

---