Chapter Text
Eddie never put too much thought into interior decorating. Once Christopher’s room was decked out in accessible, kid-friendly furniture and wall hangings—enough so that he would begin to feel at home in LA—he’d mostly left the rest of the house to its own devices, slowly amassing a picture here or a frog soap dispenser there.
When he saw the Texas art print, framed and perfectly intact, left on a curb during one of his runs, he thought, why not? And brought it home. He didn’t have the fondest memories of Texas, but it was his and Chris’s roots. It was a nod to where they’d been, and how far they’d come, and how different their life was in California.
It was mocking him, now. He hated the stupid picture. He hated that it was hanging up right by the door like an omen, a looming inevitability. Every time he walked out the door it reminded him that he may be going to the station, to his favorite coffee shop, to Buck’s loft, but eventually, he’d be going out the door for the last time. To Texas.
So, he stood there, hating the flag, and his own bad decisions, and the car that struck Shannon, and the United States Army, and all of his son’s surgeries and milestones and birthday parties and chess tournaments that he’s missed, and the entire state of Texas, and—and that was where Buck found him.
“If you’d refer to my checklist,” Buck said, a little more gently than he probably normally would, had Eddie not been trying to light a piece of artwork on fire with his eyes, “you’d know that you can leave that one up, Eds.”
It was enough to break his concentration. Buck had come from Chris’s room, holding a box that Eddie knew contained things his son loved but left behind in his haste to flee his own father. Buck was packing it up for him, because he knew Eddie wouldn’t be able to. Buck was following the checklist he’d made to prepare Eddie for his move to Texas, because Buck knew that Eddie was making the right decision to be with his son. And Buck knew Eddie needed all the help he could get, because even though Christopher was a fucking good incentive—the only incentive that mattered—he knew it would be hard for Eddie to give up the life he’d built in LA and move back to the stifling city limits of El Paso.
It was hard for Eddie. So Buck did it.
Wasn’t that always the way?
As much as he needed Clipboard Buck and his relentless positivity, it rankled Eddie in a way he couldn’t pinpoint. Because Buck had thrown himself into the project of Eddie-Leaving-Possibly-Forever with gusto, from the moment Eddie confessed he was looking at homes in El Paso. There had been a split-second his face dropped—Eddie could tell, even if he couldn’t make eye contact—but then . . . nothing. No are you sure? No but you love your life here, Eddie. No you tried leaving the 118 before, remember how well that went? No I don’t want you to go. Not even I’m going to miss you.
The one singular sign of resistance Buck had shown was to convince Eddie to rent for six months instead of making an offer on one of the many perfectly passable houses the realtor had shown him, all of which Buck had found a problem with.
At first, something in Eddie had warmed at it, at the way Buck would shoot down every option the real estate agent had sent their way. With each complaint: “that’s too many stairs for Chris.” “One bathroom? You cannot share with a teenager.” “There’s no yard, Eddie, do you want Chris to never go outside?” Some small part of him had wanted to agree—you’re right, none of these will work. Guess I can’t go to El Paso and we’ll have to figure something else out.
But of course, the lack of a Buck-approved house wasn’t going to convince Chris to move back to LA. Eventually Buck had revealed the idea he’d been cooking up, working the numbers with his big, lightning-struck brain: “Rent in LA is so much higher than Texas Eddie. If you keep the house and rent it out while you rent in El Paso, in six months you’ll have enough for a 20% down payment, easy.”
Six months. It wasn’t a relief, it was just a reprieve. Because in six months, he’d have to make the decision he thought he’d already made—Texas or California. A small, soft part of him, the part that remembered the choreography to the Risky Business dance, wanted to hope. Wanted to think about it as serving time in El Paso and then getting to return to his life, his job, his . . .
But the larger part of him, the part which remembered every misstep, every time when life could have thrown him a bone but chose, instead, to kick him while he was down. Well, that part of him was a little more realistic. And that part knew that in six months from now, he was going to have to relive this hell all over again.
And would Buck even be there to help him, then? Sure, Buck had offered to be his acting landlord while he was gone. And Eddie knew, in his bones, that Buck would be there if he needed him.
But who would they be to each other when they lived 11 hours apart? What shape would their friendship take when it wasn’t sustained by beers on the couch and rope rescues and late nights sitting in the firehouse, shooting the shit? Their life was so intertwined that they knew each other’s schedules and what groceries their places were missing and when the other was about to pull a dangerous move on the job and needed someone to have their back.
That’s not the kind of dynamic that can be kept alive with text messages and phone calls. Eddie knew firsthand—he and Shannon had never been the same once he left for Afghanistan, and he’d gone through hell with his Army buddies and then hadn’t even bothered to stay in touch once they returned stateside. Sure, Eddie had never had a friend like Buck before. But he and Buck had never not been in each other’s pockets, 15 minutes down the road or a bunk away.
It's not that Eddie expected Buck to ask him to stay. If anyone understood how much he loved Christopher, it was Buck. It was just that he didn’t expect Buck to be so . . . fine.
He was more than fine, actually. He was chipper and organized and motivated in a way that made Eddie want to scream. There was something maddening in expecting someone to say I don’t want you go, and instead finding them in your house, packing up your stuff for you.
It made Eddie want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, see if he could get some real feelings to fall out.
But what if they weren’t there? What if Buck really believed that Eddie was making the best decision, and that he was happy for him to be reunited with Chris and hadn’t given it much thought beyond that?
When he worked at dispatch with May, she’d taught him the term ‘gaslighting.’ At the time, he’d added it to the pile of useless therapy terms he was learning against his will, but now it popped back into his mind unbidden, like a ridiculous accusation.
Because if Buck was so completely fine with losing what they had now, then . . . had it ever been that special in the first place? Outside of Chris, Buck was the most important person in Eddie’s life. Buck’s friendship had changed everything; the way Eddie thought about people, and partners, and himself. It wasn’t like any other relationship he’d ever had, and he had a gut feeling that he wouldn’t find it anywhere else. Especially not in El Paso.
And logically, logically, he knew Buck felt the same. Buck nagged him about his health and tried out new recipes on him and always, always answered the phone.
But—Buck also hassled Bobby about his health. Buck went to Hen for advice when he didn’t know what to do. And he would drop anything in a heartbeat for Maddie. Hell, he’d flown to Oklahoma just to spend a few hours with Taylor.
So what if their friendship was less about the Buck-and-Eddie of it all, and more about Buck’s big, golden heart? What if Buck loved everyone like this? And what Eddie had seen has huge, life-changing gestures, something akin to devotion – introducing him to Carla, surviving the tsunami with Christopher, pulling him out of his darkest moments – were just Buck being Buck?
After all, saving people . . . that was what Buck did best, wasn’t it? It was his nature. What if when Eddie left for Texas, Buck just resumed his normal life? Found another person whose life was a disaster and turned it around for them? Or just enjoyed not always having to clean up someone else’s messes?
After all, Buck wasn’t the one losing everything. Buck was staying with the 118 where he belonged, and soon he’d have a new niece or nephew to dote on, and his newfound bisexuality to explore. His future was unencumbered and Eddie . . . Eddie was returning to the one place he thought he’d finally escaped.
Buck was still looking at him, waiting for a response. Eddie stepped forward and lifted the stupid Texas flag print off the wall. Even though he absolutely did not believe in curses or jinxes or fate, he wished he’d never picked it up in the first place. Wished there were a million tiny choices he could undo.
“There’s no point in keeping it,” he said definitively. And he walked out the door—another exit in the countdown to his final one—and put it in the trash.
________
Buck had been crying.
Repeatedly. Not one big, therapeutic ugly sob-fest, like the night he found out about Daniel. But small, quick little cries—a tight throat here, an escaped tear there. He was getting used to red-rimmed eyes and the burning sensation behind his nose, because it kept. Fucking. Happening.
He got stuck at the stupidly long light halfway between his apartment and Eddie’s house, and thought, won’t be doing this drive again much longer, and before the light turned green his eyes were watering. Or his phone would light up with a text from Eddie and he’d think soon this will be the only way he talks to me and he would feel his bottom lip wobbling before he could press the heels of his palms into his eyes and pull himself together. It was like he was micro-dosing on grief and he fucking hated it.
Maddie was worried about him. He knew it, because she told him, constantly. Maddie, who was pregnant—you know, the thing that had previously sent her across the country into a mental health facility—and she was spending her best months of that (the second trimester, he’d learned on a research binge) stressing about him.
He’d tried telling her not to worry. That studies suggest heightened anxiety during pregnancy can affect the baby’s development, and even if that wasn’t scientifically true, it felt wrong for her to be worrying about her fully adult brother when all of her energy was going into, like, creating a human life. ("Oh no," Maddie had said, rolling her eyes at him, “what if my baby develops the ability to care about their sibling in utero?”)
But that didn’t stop her from texting to check in, or inviting him over for zero-proof wine nights, or even asking him to join her for a pre-natal yoga class that she said anyone was welcome to (after the last time he was in one of those, he said he’d pass on that one).
So even though he was trying to exercise restraint in how many of her offers he took her up on, he knew she wouldn’t mind if he dropped by the call center with his latest batch of baked goods.
What had started as a post-Tommy-leaving coping mechanism had turned into a pre-Eddie-leaving distraction tactic. Suddenly, cookies and scones weren’t cutting it anymore, and he was looking up increasingly complicated recipes for macarons and baklava and dasik, recipes that required him to order ingredients online and read through recipe blogs—long, rambling interludes and all—in order to pull them off.
After checking in the rearview mirror that his face didn’t show any signs of the quick cry he’d had on the drive over—the route took him past the zoo, where he hadn’t been with Christopher in almost two years—he grabbed the basket and made his way up to the call center.
Buck offered Gary the security guard his pick from the basket before he was waved on to the elevator, and he reminded himself that he still had this. He’d been visiting Maddie at the call center for years, and this comfortable routine wasn’t going to be ripped out from under him. His sister had set down roots so firmly in LA that, well, she actually had more reason to stay in LA then he did, and wow, that train of thought was not as helpful as he thought it was going to be.
He pulled out his phone to distract himself in the elevator—no notifications—and hastily shoved it back in his pocket when the door slid open. The sight of 9-1-1 operators taking calls from people at what was probably the worst possible moment of their life reminded Buck to stop being so dramatic. At this very minute, people were losing loved ones to things much worse than Texas. He guessed.
Maddie was nowhere to be seen on the floor, but he found her in the breakroom, where she was talking to a woman whose posture radiated cop energy.
“I can’t believe that no one—Buck!” said Maddie, changing tact at top speed when she spotted him in the doorway. “I didn’t know you were stopping by today.”
He eyed the other woman before stepping in and closing the door behind him. “Yeah, I-I don’t want to interrupt.”
“You’re not,” she assured him, waving him in closer. “This is Detective Jess Newlen, she stopped by for something about a case. I was just showing her where we keep the coffee.” She peered at the basket in his hands, and then looked over at the detective. “Looks like you’re in luck—my brother’s been on a baking kick, if you want a pastry too.”
Buck set the basket on the counter and gave a small wave. “Buck,” he introduced. She was eyeing him in some sort of way—it felt like a combination of Athena’s most appraising glare and the look he’d gotten from that girl in the bar during his and Tommy’s disastrous six-month anniversary dinner. He hadn’t been noticing anyone like that recently, for obvious reasons, but if there was anything Buck knew, it was the look of a person who was interested.
“Jess,” she said back, after a second. “Are those home-made croissants?”
“Yeah,” said Buck. He looked at Maddie and explained, “I remembered Josh talking about that pastry class he took on his Europe trip and how good they were, so I thought I’d give them a whirl. You should save him one.”
Maddie gave him a smile that was just a shade too knowing, so Buck switched to looking at Jess instead.
“Are you some kind of professional baker?” she asked, peeking into the basket curiously.
Maddie let out a snort. “No, he’s a firefighter with really specific coping mechanisms.”
Buck sighed. He wasn’t interested in trying to impress Jess, but that didn’t mean he was keen on every single person he interacted with knowing how pathetic he was. But whatever; he put so much effort into keeping up a front for Eddie these days, he didn’t have any energy left to do it elsewhere. “I started baking when I got dumped,” he explained, and Jess looked up in surprise. “And then I kept baking when I found out my best friend is abandoning me.”
“Moving to be closer to his son,” Maddie corrected.
“Right,” said Buck, giving what he knew was a pretty pitiful smile. “And since I can’t do anything about any of that, I bake.”
By now, Jess had taken a bite of a croissant and gave an appreciative moan. Idly, Buck registered that it was the kind of thing women do when flirting. She swallowed. “Not to be callous, but your loss is definitely my gain.”
“Mine too,” concurred Maddie, rooting around for her own croissant. “Weight gain, more like.”
“You’re eating for two,” Buck reminded her.
“Yeah, and the two of us,” Maddie said, gesturing to her stomach, “are going to wind up with gestational diabetes if you keep this up.”
“That’s not how that works. And there’s like, no sugar in croissants,” Buck protested. “Baking is literally all I have left, Maddie, you can’t take this away from me.”
Jess gave him an indulgent smile at that, as if he was joking.
“You could always, you know, talk to Eddie,” said Maddie, for what was probably the thousandth time since she found out he was leaving.
That night, he’d driven straight from Eddie’s house to hers after the realtor call, letting himself in when he saw there were no lights on. He also helped himself to their liquor cabinet, so that by the time she, Chimney, and a sleeping Jee-Yun returned from a day at the Lee’s, it was to a drunk Buck lying face down on the couch, while Bruce Springsteen sang about going down to the river and diving in. Chim had taken one look at the scene and fled, presumably taking Jee to her room. He never came back.
After Maddie had gotten it out of him—he’s leaving me, Mads. Why does everyone leave me? You said it yourself, I make people want to flee the state—she had asked, “What did Eddie say?”
“About what?” He ignored the water Maddie placed in front of him and reached again for the bottle of whatever he’d been drinking.
“About how you feel?”
If Buck could have told which of the two Maddies he was seeing was the right one, he would have pinned her with an incredulous stare. “What about how I feel? This isn’t about me.”
“Buck,” said Maddie, with a pained note in her voice that probably meant she was sick of his shit. She probably wanted to go to bed. Pregnant people needed a lot of sleep, he’d read about that. “You guys are best friends. Did you talk about how hard this move will be? On both of you? How you’ll stay in touch, and what the long-term plan is?”
He was too drunk for this. How was he supposed to explain to Maddie that the only thing that mattered was the Eddie-and-Chris of it all? Eddie was about to uproot his entire life and restart in the place that nearly suffocated him the first time around. And Buck was supposed to—what? Ask him to set up a schedule of when they could FaceTime?
Buck had a fleeting image of himself hearing a phone ring into voicemail, hearing Eddie Diaz, leave a message, while Eddie hopped on a firetruck in some stupid El Paso fire station. Of himself texting Eddie something inane like how is Chris liking school? And receiving something equally horrible like about the same as always.
When he met Maddie’s eyes again, he realized there was a chance he had said all of that out loud. “Evan,” she said softly, pulling the bottle out of his hand and pushing the water glass back into it. “You and Eddie will figure this out, but only if you talk about it.”
Buck wouldn’t bet his life on it, but he was moderately sure he was crying at this point. “You know me, the clinger,” he laughed but it sounded more like a hiccup. “Can’t pull that shit here. What am I supposed to say? Stay? I know your son needs you but have-have you thought about me?” The hiccups were still going on. They might be sobs, come to think of it. “Everyone-everyone leaves, Mads,” he said. “But I thought Eddie would stay. Eddie’s always stayed, you know? He stays. I fix things, and he stays, you know? But I couldn’t—I couldn’t fix this.”
That must have been the point Maddie gave up on trying to talk to him and just tucked him under blankets on their couch. He couldn’t remember much after that, and tries not to remember any of it at all, actually. But ever since that night, Maddie has been convinced that he and Eddie need to have some sort of talk.
As if that’s going to help anything.
So he does what he always does when she harps on him about it—he leaves.
“And that’s my cue,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Jess, enjoy the croissant,” he called out, waving to Maddie and exiting the break room. It wasn’t the healthiest tactic, fleeing his sister every time she brought up things like feelings and communication. But she just didn’t get it; she was a runner herself, and as much as she tried to understand, there was something fundamentally different about leaving and being left.
Dr. Copeland had traced their terrible childhoods directly to their disastrous romantic lives: Maddie, saddled with so much responsibility at a young age, married a man who offered her an escape, to take care of her, to oversee every minute detail of her life. And Buck, tired of being invisible, had jumped into bed with anyone who looked his way. The only difference was that Maddie had broken her pattern and created her own happy family, and Buck continued to be. Well. Buck.
Jess caught up with him at the elevator bank. She doesn’t have the croissant anymore—maybe they weren’t as good as she said. He should probably say something while they waited together, but he figured they’d established that he was pathetic and thus he was excused from pretending to care about small talk conversation like weather.
The elevator arrived and they stepped in, and when Jess pushed the button for the lobby, she also leaned forward to catch his eye. “Hey, I know this is kind of out of the blue,” she said, “but do you want to grab a drink?”
Despite the signs, Buck was still caught off guard. Though he guessed it was nice to know that people thought he was attractive enough to pursue. Even if no one got around to the other thing.
He turned to meet her eyes. They were pretty, dark brown. Her cop stance was relaxed now, and she was doing a half-smile that showed off a dimple. “I appreciate the offer,” he said. “But I’m not really in the right headspace for going out right now.”
“Yeah, I got that memo from your sad baking and your sister’s puppy dog eyes,” she said, and there was something so unexpected about it that Buck laughed. “But the thing is,” she continued, “I’m not really in the best headspace either. You think you have it bad? I’ve been trying and failing to catch a serial killer for six months.”
The elevator door dinged open and Buck turned to look at her in surprise. “You think it’s bleak getting broken up with?" she went on, "my current bedfellows are crime scene photographs.” They both crossed the lobby and headed for the exit. “It would honestly be nice to go out with someone and not have to like, put on a show, you know? We could just get drunk and be lame. And if we have sex about it, that’s fine, and if not, whatever.”
Inside the front doors of the call center, Buck stopped and turned to look at her. She didn’t twirl her hair or cock her hip, or any other move he’d seen done a million times, she just stared up at him with those steady brown eyes. Seeing him. “Detective Jess Newlen, you are not what I was expecting today.”
“You either, Baker Buck,” she said. “What do you say? Doherty’s Pub?”
Buck checked his watch. It was 5 pm, and he actually didn’t have anywhere to be until his shift in the morning. One of many long, uninterrupted stretches of time that he was going to have to get used to. Why shouldn’t he go get a drink?
“You know what, I'm in,” he said, with a shrug. “Right now?”
“Yeah,” she said, “it’s just around the block. I’ll meet you there, I just have to grab my bag from my car. Order me a whiskey and ginger?”
And with that, she headed to the parking lot, while Buck kept walking down the street.
Which is all anyone would be able to see from the security footage.
__________
Detective Jess Newlen knew that the best serial killers were the meticulous ones. The type A planners. The ones who staked out their victims until they knew their routine, planned for all contingencies, made a plan and stuck to it. It was only when they deviated from their plan—when they got swept up in emotion or opportunity and made careless risks—that they got caught.
She knew all this. And still, she couldn’t resist.
She’d had her sights on Maddie Han for three weeks now, ever since she spotted her across the call center floor when she stopped by to pick up the transcripts of an emergency call that claimed to have seen Celia Van Wyck the night she was abducted from Santa Monica (a dead end, as she could have told her boss, but due process and all that).
Maddie Han was exactly her type: short brown hair, oval face, big brown eyes, short stature. She was even a mother, which was ideal, though she was pregnant, which wasn’t. Not a dealbreaker, though. She was actually sort of coming around to the idea of it; like when you had a new recipe you weren’t confident in but still wanted to try out. Would it feel the same? Better? There was only one way to find out.
She’d placed a tracker on Maddie Han’s car, so now she knew her work schedule and her address and once she found the house, it was easy as pie to place her husband and track his car, too. Something about him being a firefighter was so deliciously fitting—not to mention convenient. While he was on a 48-hour shift saving other people, she’d be watching the life slowly drain from his wife’s eyes.
It wasn’t the smartest move, objectively, to visit Maddie’s workplace the day of the plan. But that was what gave her the biggest thrill—the innocuous interaction that she knew would pay off later, when Maddie recognized her, far too late.
And if she hadn’t gone today, she never would have seen him. Buck.
It wasn’t smart to add him to the plan, either. But she had been smart enough to get away with it five times already, and smart enough to get herself assigned lead detective on the case, and what was the point of all those smarts if she couldn’t give in and let herself have fun once in a while, huh?
The moment she saw him and his uncanny resemblance—the blue eyes, the hulking build, a birthmark that wasn’t in the same place but had the same splotchy red look—she knew she had to have him. And by the time she’d followed him into the elevator, she had a plan.