Archive of Our Own

Eddie is walking away.

Buck is well-acquainted with the concept. Especially where Eddie is concerned. It’s raining again, soft and hazy like the day he left for Texas, the lines of his arms like the Artemision Bronze, exposed in his sleeveless shirt. A hysterical laugh bubbles up in Buck’s throat when he realizes it’s the same shirt. The scene repeats, distorted under the fluorescent airport lights: Buck, bereft, brittle and broken. They’ve done this before.

Except, this time, Eddie does not look back.

And it should be easy; Buck’s had years, decades, of practice in saying goodbye. But that was before Italy. Before Texas and the lab and the miracle, the baker’s dozen of moving parts that make up Buck’s life and their imminent reconfiguration.

Before Buck mapped out every curve on Eddie’s body, every star-splattered freckle on his skin, learned the taste of his spit instead of his blood and the wrecked noises that escape when Buck’s mouth meets the space between his thighs.

No complications. A pinkie, wrapped around his. No strings.

Because Eddie was always going to be the first to leave. And Buck—

Buck is someone who stays.

So he watches Eddie step out of LAX, out of Arrivals and into the maze of the pickup line, and unfurls his wretched hands.

They were never playing for keeps.

52 Days Earlier

Bobby announces his retirement seven minutes before Buck gets the email.

The subject line reads a cheery You’re Going to Italy!, and Buck, still reeling from the news, still reeling from Bobby’s near-miss with death, rolls his eyes and swipes it into the trash. He places it while they're packing up to leave.

The firehouse fundraiser. A questionably large sum of money he spent on raffle tickets.

In his defense, between canceling his family pass at the Los Angeles Zoo, an ordeal that surely scarred the poor intern who had watched him tear up as he selected the reason (Plan is no longer suitable), the shorter commute time from 4995 South Bedford, and the general loneliness that had overtaken his life in Eddie’s cavernous absence, he wasn’t quite sure where to put his money anymore. He’d thought, in some fanciful, naïve daydream, if he won, maybe there would be someone to accompany him come summertime.

But now it’s the first of May, and Buck finds himself perpetually braced for the worst, desperate to keep any of the moving parts of his life from shifting beyond his reach, and one all-expenses paid trip along the Italian coast for him (and a guest of his choice) richer.

There’s also the matter of his living situation, the specific slow torture of cohabitating with the person he’s currently in love with. Has been in love with, he presumes, long before his head caught up with his heart.

“Things will be strange,” Eddie ventures on the drive home, assuming the source of Buck’s silence, “without Bobby.”

Like when you were gone, Buck almost says. But it’s over now, and Eddie and Chris are back in LA, and he shouldn’t think about it anymore, really. Texas. It’s in the past, no matter how much his brain insists on rehashing the details.

A 118 without Bobby. A life without Bobby. Buck lived it in limbo. He’s encountered his fair share of bad calls in this line of work, but nothing had prepared him for the virus. The paramedics, careless compared to Hen and Chim, extracted Bobby’s lifeless form in a zippered black body bag, and Buck had pleaded with every possible force in the universe to wake up from his nightmare. For thirty-seven agonizing hours, the symptoms kept Bobby frozen in a state of clinical death, only to release its grip. A very panicked morgue worker declared the cause of life a miracle.

“He’s alive,” Buck says, because he likes to say it aloud, remind himself it’s like any objective fact. The sky is blue, Evan Buckley loves Eddie Diaz, and Robert Nash still walks this earth.

The thought of their captain cozied up in his newly finished home, repainting the sporadically selected shade of white in the sitting room, Athena there to greet him every morning—it fills him with more relief than he’d care to admit. Harry and May, fighting over the guest bedroom when they’re back home on the weekends because they know Bobby will do their laundry. Jee and the incoming Buckley-Han baby, bruising their shins on the wooden playground Bobby bought for the spacious backyard, the box tucked away in the garage last time Buck went for dinner. Mara and Denny and Chris, playing chess and shouting down the picture-lined hallways. The 118, filling the empty kitchen with their laughter.

Buck, who gets to visit a person instead of a pale grey stone engraved with details he could recite in his sleep.

No part of him desires a new captain. In his thirties, he’s still thirteen, desperate for things to remain as they are. He wants to put everyone he loves into containers lined with bubble-wrap and spare them any further harm, Bobby penciled in at the top of the list. The less thought he dedicates to the impending great upheaval of the 118, the less power he gives it. A summer spent in countdown, and Buck is determined to slow the clock.

So there’s no explicable reason why, all things considered, the universe has decided he’s supposed to begin said summer in Italy. A twisted command that will take him halfway across the world from everyone he’s vowed to watch over like a hawk. Luck is for fools, and Buck has bested the three thousand members of the LAFD, give or take, to end up with a prize in the palm of his hand. A sign set in motion months ago, though he’ll never admit it to Eddie.

“Do you have a passport?” Buck asks him. Muscle memory takes over as he flicks on the turn signal to their neighborhood.

Eddie’s eyebrows scrunch up, the resemblance to Chris so palpable, Buck narrows all his energy into feeling nothing about it. “Are we fleeing the country?”

“I’ve already buried the body.”

“And you didn’t ask for my help,” Eddie says with a sigh, drawing a laugh from him.

“Chris leaves for that robotics thing on June first, right?” A redundant question. Buck checks the free bank calendar tacked up on the kitchen corkboard at the start of every week. The tiny numbered squares contain scribbled notes of their respective shifts and dentist appointments they keep evading and Christopher’s sleepovers.

“Don’t remind me.” Eddie scrubs at his forehead, the exhaustion from their twenty-four hour shift pulling his shoulders taut. Adjusting back from Uber driving has meant copious amounts of black coffee and Buck egging him on at the gym. “I just got him back, we just got back. Now he’s leaving. Again.”

He reaches out to squeeze Eddie’s shoulder. “This isn’t like last time. It’s only a month, then we’ll all be in LA.” Together. “He’s going to learn to build things that will give you nightmares.”

“What does this have to do with my passport?” Eddie mumbles, leaning into the touch.

Smug, he says, “Start practicing your Italian.”

He lays out the details for Eddie over a new pasta dish, specifically concocted to push him in the right direction. Chris feigns disinterest as Buck runs through the itinerary—Cinque Terre, a day trip to Pompeii, a few nights on the Amalfi Coast—but he leans over his dad’s shoulder to look at the bright pictures on the PowerPoint presentation Buck meticulously assembled.

“You should go,” Eddie tells him when they’re doing the dishes, up to their elbows in soap and pan grease. Not a two-person job, but one neither lets the other do without company. “Take Maddie.”

“My pregnant sister?”

Eddie twists his lips. “Bobby? Maybe it would be good for both of you.”

Buck’s hands jerk against Eddie’s under the sudsy water. “What does that mean?”

“You just–” He makes a vague gesture, flicking bubbles onto the counter. “You haven’t been the same, since everything. You don’t talk about it.”

The talking. A new Eddie development. Buck has started a list. Pre-Texas Eddie and Post-Texas Eddie. He offers up thoughts unbidden now, things Buck used to pry out of him between breakfast in the morning and nights spent with Christopher sandwiched between them on the couch. It’s I wish I had been with you when Bobby was declared dead and I don’t think things will ever feel good with my parents and I want you living here with us, Buck. It’s the newfound ease between Eddie and his son, like they’re sharing a secret Buck isn’t privy to. Caught outside their orbit for the first time, Buck's not sure what to make of it.

Buck isn’t the same. What Eddie doesn’t know is this has just as much to do with him as it does Bobby. That every time Buck closes his eyes, he dreams of Eddie. A double-edged sword, visions of how they could take each other apart at the seams, palms pressed together. Then reality seeps in, a reminder of each way Eddie could die, a blur, a window into his subconscious. He wakes next to Eddie in a bed they now share with a strange lump in his throat he can’t swallow down.

But what Eddie doesn’t know won’t kill him. Eddie is here. Buck intends to keep it that way.

“I want Bobby on the ground,” is all he says. Eddie shifts so their shoulders press together.

“Hen?”

“Karen would kill me.”

“Okay. Ravi, then.”

Buck thinks of the bar, calculated kisses and the click of teeth in the dark, and shudders. “Bad things would happen.”

He shoots Buck a quizzical look, and, well, perhaps Buck has neglected to share the tiny detail of who he’d come home with mere weeks after Eddie’s departure. Not much room for debriefing regretful hookups with your ex when your best friend is going through a two-way parental crisis and making plans to fly back to the city he recently left for a funeral. Not much room, when Buck cyclically obsesses over how much would change if he let everything slip, if he indulged the tug in his chest when Eddie walks into a room. What Eddie doesn’t know won’t kill him.

Eddie doesn’t know a lot of things right now, and maybe it’s going to kill Buck first.

“I want to go with you,” Buck tells him. “C’mon, Eddie. Everything is paid. First class and five-star hotels. Chris won’t even be home, and we could both use a break. What’s the issue?”

Eddie stares down into the sink, thumbing over a chip in a thrifted plate. Despite their proximity, the routines they’ve settled back into, Buck’s starting to get the sense there are things Eddie isn’t telling him, either. But Buck’s been the pushy one, he is the pushy one, and he’ll be damned if it expels Eddie from his grasp again.

“I’ve never been,” Eddie says quietly, “to Italy.”

“Which is why you should come with me.”

“You could take anyone.”

Buck wants to shake him by the shoulders. “And I want you.”

A momentary illusion, a divine hallucination, Buck swears Eddie’s gaze flits down to his lips in the wash of the stove light, but then his eyes are back on the dishes, hands trembling as he arranges them on the drying rack.

“You’re lucky Bobby isn’t retiring until the end of the summer. No other captain would let us both leave for two weeks at the same time.”

Buck grins. “Familial privileges.”

Eddie shakes his head, smiles to himself, and Buck feels the jolt through his chest, a wire electrified.

Buck has another list. The nine pulse points. When Eddie is asleep next to him, Buck can access five.

He tends to start with the radial, the smooth skin inside Eddie’s wrist, presses a gentle thumb into his outstretched hand. A product of his anxiety and his army time, Eddie is a light sleeper, swears Buck is going to doze through a fire alarm someday. But here, in the bed Buck dares to call theirs, he’s all tranquility and periodic pulse, sound asleep under his touch.

The carotid is more difficult, the consequence of Eddie being a side sleeper. On lucky nights, one of Eddie’s legs creeps up into Buck’s space, or Buck will startle awake from a nightmare, Eddie his first sight as he returns back to earth, face lit by the dim glow of the moonlight through his threadbare curtains, features delicate and at ease. Buck slips two fingers to the side of his neck, a thumb along his jaw, counts the beats until he’s satisfied or fatigue takes him under, whichever comes first.

Now that the weather is warming, Buck no longer needs to peel back the duvet to press his hand flat against Eddie’s chest. The apical pulse point. Strong, warm, alive. Like Eddie. Tonight, he blinks awake as Buck is stowing his touch away and catches his fingers in a tangle.

“You okay?” Eddie asks, face pressed into the pillow. Buck’s own heart hammers against the cage of his ribs, images of a bloodied Eddie behind a thick plexiglass wall flashing with each blink.

“Y-Yeah,” he lies. Eddie hums, fingers still curled around Buck as he loses strength. “Go back to sleep.”

“Dreamed about you,” he mumbles, the corner of his mouth tilting up. Even if Buck wanted to know the details, Eddie won’t remember it in the morning. He never does. Buck could paint his own dreams in multicolor, scene-by-scene.

He stares up at the ceiling, the singular glow-in-the-dark star that has outlasted its cheap adhesive shining down on him, and tells the dark, “So did I.”

The shift is routine. A Memorial Day barbeque gone wrong. An unfortunate kitchen fire at Buck’s favorite bagel place that will surely halt business for the better part of the next few months (Bobby stares him down when he tries to steal a tub of cinnamon cream cheese from the dented refrigerator). There’s an overgrown teenager stuck in the baby seat of a shopping cart, an act of public indecency outside the same grocery store. A claim of a severed finger sticking out of the ground that turns out to be a rather skinny potato.

Athena, exasperated, bids them adieu after accepting a kiss from Bobby, and they pile back into the engine, debating which finger would be the least detrimental to lose.

“Ring,” Ravi argues.

“What if you get married?” Chim points out, pretending to flip him off with his silicone-banded finger.

“Or,” Hen chimes in, “you’re a lesbian.” He makes an exaggerated gagging noise, and she cackles.

“Lesbianism is allowed,” Ravi says. “Marriage is nothing more than a societal institution shaped by economic forces.”

Chim scoffs. “Okay, Karl Marx.”

“He would never be reincarnated as a landlord,” Buck points out, and Ravi reaches over Eddie to yank at his headset.

“Pinkie?” Eddie suggests, turning to Buck for backup. “It’s the smallest.”

“Actually, I read an article,” Buck begins, and a collective groan arises. Eddie’s still looking at him, eyes crinkled around the edges. “I’m trying to help you! What if you get kidnapped, and you have to pick a finger to sacrifice?”

Hen extends her legs, forcing Eddie to press against Buck to create space. “Let’s hear it.”

Before he can continue, Bobby’s voice comes through with a crackle. “Backup requested to Orange County. Ceiling collapse at an event hall with a growing fire. High school graduation. We’re looking at a mass casualty event.”

Bile rises up in Buck’s throat. A shift is routine until it's not.

Hen dares to ask: “What are the numbers?”

“Venue capacity is six hundred people, but the owner admitted to overselling tickets. Likely closer to eight hundred.” Bobby pauses. “Death toll is up to two hundred thirty-one. Over three hundred injured. We look for survivors and put out any fires we see.”

The change is immediate. Hen straightens up, Chim pops the lid on the med kit to replenish supplies, Ravi falls quiet. Next to him, Eddie reaches under the collar of his LAFD t-shirt, a size too loose—likely Buck’s, mixed up in the dresser drawer—to methodically run his thumb over the surface of his St. Christopher medallion. On the rare occasion they aren’t scheduled together, Eddie will unhook the clasp and put it around Buck’s neck. To keep you safe. He whispers something in Spanish before dropping it back out of sight.

The rubble appears endless as they approach the scene, the tires of the truck crunching over concrete debris. Buck’s hands shake as he gears up, unable to fasten his suspenders into place. Eddie catches the movement and silently takes over, adjusting the straps across his back. Buck indulges his anxiety, watches Bobby throw his turnout on, body visibly atrophied after prolonged weeks of recovery from early-stage organ failure.

“I’ll go with Cap,” Buck volunteers, ignoring the look Hen and Eddie throw each other in his periphery.

“One paramedic per firefighter,” Bobby instructs, oblivious or unwilling to humor Buck’s feeble attempt at control. “Hen, you’re with me, we take Alpha. Chim and Ravi go in through the Bravo entrance, Buck and Eddie, Charlie side.”

Buck frowns “But Eddie’s not–”

“I’ve got it,” he cuts in, exchanging a nod with Bobby.

“Parts of the Delta wing are still collapsing. Avoid the area. Let’s go, 118.”

“Cap–”

Eddie steers him away. “No time, Buck.”

They work in tandem, a foreign familiarity, slipping into well-worn shoes alongside the itch of a new shirt. It’s been months since they’ve worked a call of this severity together, but Eddie still takes the right side when extracting a survivor, and Buck falls into the habit of spotting their next few paces, catching Eddie before he can fall.

There are moments when their elbows bump more than before, when Eddie works quickly to bandage a wound without requesting backup, and Buck contends with the knowledge that he used to ask for an extra hand. Buck focuses on what’s in front of him: the white of an exposed bone, bloodied, scraped faces, rebar twisted through organs. Shoulders pulsating from exertion, he loses himself in the work. He’s always been adept at throwing himself in, headfirst.

Buck checks in with the team with increasing frequency. For each black tag placed, he pushes the sticky button on his radio. No one calls him on it, but Hen’s voice starts to strain after another mundane update, and Ravi’s response time develops a lag. They’re nearing their sixth hour on the scene, dusk starting to envelop the operation. Eddie makes arrangements for Pepa to take Chris for the night and lets Buck talk to him on the phone before they’re called back to assist.

At hour ten, well into overtime pay, they’re catching their breath against the side of the engine. Buck’s hands are blistered and numb, and Eddie’s cheek is scraped raw from a slide through wobbly flooring. Just as Buck is bargaining with his spasming limbs to cooperate, they’re told to call it.

A girl in a stained dress and billowing graduation gown comes around the front of the truck and clutches at Buck’s arm, sobbing. “My dad. He’s inside.” Lead floods his veins. “Please.”

“Let me clean your cut.” Eddie tries to steer her back toward the emptying field hospital, but she darts away, moving through the wreckage in nothing more than strappy silver heels. Buck jogs after her to grab her around the waist and nearly gets a fist to the head.

She thrashes in his arms, tears streaming down her face. “He’s inside!”

“Hey, hey, what’s your name?” Buck asks, wincing when her elbow connects with his side.

She calms when she realizes she’s being listened to, and Buck slowly releases her, Eddie approaching with a med kit. “Mel. My–My dad–”

“Okay, Mel, I need you to help me out here. Where was he at the time of the accident?” Buck ignores the way it makes Eddie narrow his eyes, knowing.

Sniffling, she taps on her cracked phone screen. “We were separated. He was going to get me water from the cafeteria. His–His name is David.”

“Delta wing,” Eddie informs him, a warning edge.

Buck shoves his helmet back on, frustrated when he can’t snap the buckle under his chin. “Last time you had contact?”

“He texted me not to go back for him a few minutes after they got me out, around one,” she says, chest beginning to heave anew. A full hour before the 118 arrived on the scene. “He–He told me it would be okay. That he–that he loved me.”

“Buck.” Eddie shakes his head, almost imperceptibly.

It’s gonna be okay, Buck. Remember that. I love you, kid.

“Have you heard from him since?” Mel doesn’t answer, and Buck already knows what it means, but the restless thing in his chest will spend a lifetime running in circles if he doesn’t do this.

Eddie seizes Buck’s wrist when he moves toward his radio. “You can’t fix this.”

Eddie wasn’t there.

“Thought you had my back,” he says, unable to keep his voice steady. There’s a flash of hurt, followed by confusion, concern. The dawn of an understanding; this runs deeper than the last ten hours.

“Why won’t you let this go?” Eddie whispers, careful, like he’s approaching a wounded animal. An apt assessment, Buck would admit.

“I’m not going to stand here and do nothing again. I–I can’t. I can’t live with myself.” The confession spills out, unbidden. “Let me do my job.”

Eddie clenches his jaw, turning his attention back to Mel. “You need to move back to the med tents. This area isn’t safe.” Defeated, he spares one last look toward Buck. “What you’re looking for isn’t buried under there, Buck.”

Buck shakes his head, pushing down on the overused radio button as Eddie guides Mel away, a protective hand on her elbow. “This is Buckley. Requesting backup to reenter the Delta corridor.”

Static, then Bobby. “The area has been surveyed. No survivors.”

“Who–”

“The 133. Backup generator under the cafeteria exploded on impact from the initial collapse. No survivors, Buck.”

He swallows hard, watching Eddie dab ointment on Mel’s face. “There–There was a man.”

The line goes silent, then Hen. “They extracted a single body. David Cordell, forty-six, according to ID. Black tag. They’re looking for his daughter–”

“Mel,” Buck finishes. Eddie says something that makes a fragile smile bloom on her face under the harsh fluorescent lighting, and Buck gags, gasping for air as his slick palms seek purchase against the side of the engine, and the sole meal he’s had in the last twelve hours comes back up.

“Do you know where she is?” Chim asks, Hen’s scolding audible in the background.

He turns his head, spitting, and Mel is laughing now, distracted by something on Eddie’s phone, his radio discarded on the cot next to them. This is what Eddie does best: takes all the hurt and transforms it into something more bearable, if only for a brief moment of respite.

“Buck,” Hen tries again, gentle tone a mimicry of Eddie’s. Why can’t you let this go? “They need to contact her.”

“Field hospital,” he chokes out, acid caking his throat. “She’s at–She’s with Eddie.”

“118, regroup at the field hospital,” Bobby says, and Buck slams his fist against the cold metal to stave off the burning pressure building behind his eyes.

“Someone–I can’t–” He should be the one to deliver the news, he knows this. Planted a seed of false hope and cultivated it with his own two hands. But he can’t. Unable to stop the collision course as he watches from the sidelines, he wants the impact to take him first.

Ravi and Bobby’s voices overlap through the speaker, frantic, and Buck watches Eddie turn toward the sound of the commotion. She can’t find out like this, she can’t. Buck reaches up to interfere, but Mel is gone.

“Be there in a minute,” he forces out. Eddie’s head snaps up, trying to find him through the dark.

“Buck, are you–” Hen begins, but he disconnects the line and throws the device into a random compartment in the engine.

He counts to three hundred and seventy-four before he works up the courage to face his team, standing a few paces to the side. Everyone is worse for wear. The dark circles under Chim’s eyes are exacerbated; Ravi’s hand is wrapped in a splint from a wrist injury; Hen is unable to stand from exhaustion. Eddie’s left a space open next to him in their broken circle, dirt smudged across his face, and Buck refuses to step into place at his side.

And there is Bobby, like an apparition, like he wasn’t the one with the black tag barely two months prior, and Buck questions if any of this is real at all.

“I know it was a difficult day and a long shift,” Bobby starts, and Buck sways on his feet, ignoring Eddie’s forlorn attempts to get his attention. “But you did excellent work. OCFD will take over from here. The casualty rate stayed below thirty-five percent, when initial estimates were over fifty–”

He’s cut off by a guttural, wounded scream from the other side of the tent.

Buck can’t hear over the ringing in his ears as he takes in the scene, Mel’s torn gown, her flailing limbs, catatonic. Her body going limp as a paramedic sedates her, another one smoothing the hair away from her face, sticky against her wet cheeks, a stand-in mother. He remembers the initial burst, everything engulfed in flames, a wall coming down, his throat hoarse from screaming in an abandoned hallway.

Buck knows it all too well. Sometimes a father doesn’t come home at the end of the day.

The sound of his own name is muffled like his head is submerged, and he’s wondering where all the lights came from when his head smacks the ground, followed by the taste of copper.

Hen comes into view, hazy. “He’s conscious.”

“Get him up!” Eddie’s voice cuts through, unusually sharp, and then he’s being rolled, lifted, deposited onto something stretchy and soft as gentle hands unzip his turnout. He’s beginning to succumb to the darkness at the edges of his vision when someone yanks at his eyelid, shining a beam of light into his retinas. The sensation is nothing short of scorching.

Pathetically, he tries to bat the offender away. “Don’t.”

“Pupils are slightly dilated,” Chim states, “whiny as usual.”

He throws an arm over his face, groaning when someone tugs it away to take his blood pressure. “Don't.”

“Likely a mild concussion,” Hen says, inflating the cuff. “Low blood pressure and elevated pulse. Dehydration.”

“The building was warm.” Eddie. Eddie is here. Buck tries to find him, grabbing the first hand he encounters.

“I’m being nice because you look like Frankenstein’s monster brought back to life,” Ravi says, “but I only have one good hand right now, and I’d like it back eventually.”

Scowling, Buck drops it and attempts to sit up, a chorus of protests ringing out. Ravi pushes him back down by the shoulder, taking Eddie out of sight. “I’m fine!” But the nausea never left, and a nasty headache is forming around his right temple.

“Any other symptoms?” Chim asks. “Dizziness? Feel like you might puke?”

“Did that already,” Buck mumbles, unthinking, and is met with another round of overlapping reprimands.

A crinkling noise, then Hen says, “Let’s start a drip. 1000 milliliters.”

Buck pulls the loose folds of his turnout together. “Don’t–Don’t want a needle.”

“Buck.” Bobby hovers over him. “As your captain, I’m telling you to listen to our paramedics.”

The discomfort is ludicrous after so many hospital visits, but he can’t help the tension that overtakes him, the way he holds his breath when Hen readies the tube.

“I’ll do it,” Eddie offers, softer than before. “That okay, Buck?”

“Yeah,” he breathes out, humiliated by his own relief. If there’s one person in this godforsaken world incapable of hurting him, it’s Eddie. Chim and Bobby help him sit up and remove his grimy outer layers. “You should go home to your families.”

Hen rubs his back. “We’ll give you two some space. But once you’re rehydrated, we’re riding back. Together.”

Buck’s stomach rolls again at the smell of the antiseptic, cold against his skin. “It’s late. You don’t need to wait for me.”

“We arrive on scene together, and we leave together,” Bobby says, a hush settling over the five of them. What Buck wouldn’t give to make it remain true, for eternity.

“Besides,” Ravi says, “the ride back is too quiet if you’re not there.” On an ordinary day, it might send him spiraling, but Ravi’s smile is shaky at best, and, for the first time in a while, Buck feels needed. He stares down at his hands, nods, and accepts the small comfort of Hen’s one-armed hug.

“Which finger?” Eddie asks when the team is out of earshot.

“Mm?” His eyes catch on the needle, ready in Eddie’s gloved hand.

“Don’t look,” he says, and Buck fixes his gaze on Eddie’s face instead. “Lay back down for me.” Buck complies, trying not to tense when Eddie adjusts the angle for the venipuncture. “Which finger is the best to lose?”

He can’t help the incredulous laugh that escapes. “That’s what you’re thinking about right now?”

Eddie’s mouth twitches. “You’re holding out on me.”

“Pointer finger,” he says easily, shivering when Eddie swipes a thumb over the inside of his arm, soothing to follow the sting, a murmur of reassurance. “Your other fingers would compensate.”

“And not the pinkie, because?”

“Because it’s like your thumb,” Buck explains, watching Eddie fiddle with the drip. “You need it for grip strength. Holding a fork, writing with a pencil. Everything becomes ten times more difficult without it.”

“Good to know.”

“Planning on getting kidnapped soon?”

“Oh, yeah.” He grins, and Buck wants to look up at him like this forever. “There’s this crazy guy taking me to Italy next week. Might lose a few limbs.”

Buck flicks his bicep. “Tell him to leave your arms alone. I’d miss them too much.”

Underneath the layer of grime caked on his face, Eddie turns red. Or maybe Buck’s concussion is making him see colors. He should mention it to Hen.

“I’ll, uh,” he pauses, clears his throat. “I’ll be sure to let him know.” Buck hums, ready to drift off, when Eddie snaps his fingers. “Nope. Gotta stay awake, bud.”

“I’m tired,” he says plainly, like a kid, and the corner of Eddie’s mouth tugs down.

“I know. I’m sorry.” Yanking off his gloves, he leans forward, elbows resting on his knees. “We’ll go home soon.”

Tentative, like he expects Eddie to shove him away, Buck reaches up to touch his scraped skin. “Let me clean your face.”

Eddie’s eyelashes flutter, but he nods. “Whatever you want.”

While his depleted water levels are replenished, Eddie lets Buck perform a tedious one-handed cleanup on his superficial injuries, assisting Buck with the butterfly bandage for a particularly nasty cut on his cheekbone. Eddie catches sight of Buck’s split knuckles from his unprovoked altercation with the engine, of course he does, and insists on wrapping them up, scrubs them clean and applies a generous coat of antibacterial ointment. Eddie’s arm around his waist, they walk back to the engine where he’s carefully nestled between Eddie and Ravi for the journey back to the firehouse.

Buck tries to talk, to keep their spirits up, but the day has worn them all down. Eventually, the silence settles, and he tries to resist succumbing to his fatigue. No one dares to ask him about Mel, her father, but he can feel the question burning in every concerned glance from Chim, in the way Eddie makes sure there’s always a point of contact between them. They strip out of their gear and take record speed showers, desperate to leave this job behind for the night. Buck offers Ravi a ride home, since there's no way he can drive with his wrist. Hen snorts when Eddie confiscates the keys to the Jeep from Buck’s pocket instead.

“You are not driving,” Eddie argues on their way to the car, Ravi safely en route to the Wilson’s for the night. “Don’t fight me on this, Buck.”

“I’m fine, Eddie.”

He opens the passenger side door and gestures for Buck to get in with a sweep of his arm. “Mm. Don’t think you are.” Too guilty from the day’s events to drag it out further, Buck climbs in, lets Eddie snap the seatbelt into place. When they arrive, Buck shoves aside his petty remark and offers up a thanks for getting them back in one piece.

After the day they’ve had, sleep should come easily, but when Buck tries, it’s like his brain has flipped every On switch at its disposal. He picks at the edge of the dinosaur-patterned bandage Eddie had applied to the inside of his elbow, the ones he keeps in his pockets for kids, and debates driving across the city to pick up Christopher. The house is too silent, too still.

“We’ll get him in the morning,” Eddie says around a yawn, and Buck realizes he’s spoken aloud. "You should sleep."

Buck fumbles for his phone on the nightstand. Bobby hasn’t texted him back. The alternate avenue it is, then.

Is Bobby home yet?

The typing bubbles appear, disappear.

“Buck.”

“Hm?”

Athena

Please

They’ve talked about this over more than one dinner. The incessant texting. Or, as Buck has more fairly titled the behavior, checking in. Bobby indulges him; Athena’s trying to wean him off the life support line. Buck’s got a twelve-point argument of justification to keep up the habit.

It’s late

“Should I tattoo Taylor Kelly’s face on my forehead?”

“Yeah. Sounds good.”

Eddie tries to seize the device when it dings. “Sleep. Now.”

Ravi

hen and karen’s couch is so much better than yours

Insult Eddie’s couch to my face and see what happens.

wrist is doing great, thanks for asking

“Has Bobby texted you?” Buck asks, and Eddie gives him a look that makes him want to curl up into a ball in the new planter boxes Chris picked out for the backyard and die.

Athena

Home safe

Buck sighs, the tension in his limbs relaxing for the first time in hours. He lets Eddie take the phone from his loose grip, putting it next to his own. The buzz under his skin refuses to settle, and he kicks off the duvet, suffocated.

Eddie shifts toward him, says, softly, “Something good?”

There’s a game they play, one that’s slowly slid into a habit. Eddie discovered Buck’s lists, the product of a madman, when he moved back in. Stuffed in drawers, stuck between the pages of books, the tab he tends to leave open on his phone. The product of a late-night search, lonely and fighting down the muscle reflex to call Eddie, 800 miles away, he’d stumbled upon the article.

The Good Things List

Once he’d resolved to make the effort, to press back against the overwhelming barrage of sadness Eddie was no longer there to shield him from, it had come more easily. Happiness.

Jee running to hug him, a surprise visit from Maddie at the firehouse, a full punchcard and a free drink from his usual coffee spot. Bobby accidentally burning their lunch, a one-in-a-million phenomenon. Hen’s full-body laugh, the one that makes her shoulders curl in, and Karen’s touchy affection. Chim telling a stranger on a call: See him? That’s my brother-in-law. Ravi leaning on him, asking for advice, Buck reassured he hasn’t steered him completely wrong.

The twinkle of Eddie’s ringtone, his name at the top of Buck’s notifications. Eddie, here, now. Christopher pretending he’s annoyed when Buck crosses the threshold to his room and movie nights at the end of the week. A house that feels like home.

When there’s a particularly bad call, a particularly bad day, it helps to cling onto it, however grand or mundane it may be. Eddie had tucked the idea away, a weapon in his back pocket.

“I can go first,” he offers when Buck is at a loss. “Christopher left exactly one blueberry muffin for me after he ate the other ten. Managed to have it with my coffee this morning.”

Buck snorts. “He inherited your sweet tooth.”

“Well, he needs to give it back.”

“I’ll make you more,” Buck says, pleased that he no longer struggles to find someone to consume his baked goods. “We can hide them at the firehouse.”

“Can you make the banana chocolate chip ones? I like those better.”

“Whatever you want.” Buck can nearly make out his smile in the dark.

He hums, satisfied. “Now you go.”

“Saw a golden retriever on my run this morning,” he says. “The owner let me pet him.”

“Shit, that’s a good one.”

Buck tugs the duvet back up. “I win.”

“Is everything a competition to you?”

“Eddie, his name was Crouton.”

“Okay,” Eddie whispers, brushing Buck’s arm and leaving goosebumps behind. “You win.”

“When you’re out there, on your own,” Buck says, kneading the dough with marginally more force than necessary, “be careful.”

Christopher pushes up his glasses, exasperated. “I’m going to Massachusetts, not on a cruise through the Bermuda Triangle.”

“I–I know.”

He’s not sure how Eddie does this. Summer camp was one thing, a few hours drive away and no more than a week. Nightly phone calls and updates about the outdoor activities Chris would inevitably complain about once he was safely back in his room. Things are different now. Chris gets on planes that take him halfway across the country, to a different time zone, and Buck is expected not to freak out.

Whatever. He can be cool about this.

“You’re worse than dad,” Chris says, and Buck lets out a sputter of protest.

“Correct,” Eddie yells from the entryway, a thud when his gym duffel hits the floor. “About what?”

“Buck thinks I’m going to experience the ten biblical plagues in Cambridge!” he yells back.

He scowls. “There is a significant frog population–”

“Of course he–what are you doing to our kitchen?” Eddie freezes, taking in the scene, the remnants of dough sliding down the upper cabinets from when Buck forgot to put the cover on the mixer, the excessive flour spread out on the counter.

And worse, the fryer.

Buck smiles. “Don’t freak out.”

“Is that a fuc–” He clears his throat, and Chris stifles a laugh. “Hildy products are banned in this household.”

“Eddie, c’mon. It was on sale. You love things that are on sale.”

“I love things that don’t talk to me.” He shudders, sliding the box over it like a cage. “We’re taking this back.”

“Dad,” Chris says, pleading, “the cannoli!”

“All sales are final,” Buck mumbles, turning back to the task, not before he misses the frustrated spasm of Eddie’s hand.

“These better be good,” he says, stalking off.

“Satisfied?” Buck asks a few hours later, and Eddie rolls his eyes, snatching another cannoli off the plate before Christopher can take it.

“All packed?” Eddie asks, and Chris nods. “You can call us whenever you want. Don’t worry about the time difference.”

“I know, dad.” Chris taps something into his phone. “Buck is winning by a landslide.”

Buck leans over to look at the screen. “Winning what?”

reminders i can call at any time

dad: 3

buck: 8

“Give me that,” Eddie says, confiscating the device when Christopher cackles. “No phones at the table.”

“You’re just jealous because you can’t come,” Buck says, and Eddie sighs into his hands.

Chris screws up his face. “And hang out with you two instead of going to the biomimetic lab? No thanks.”

“Biomicwho?” Buck pauses. “Also, ouch.”

“Biomimetic,” Chris repeats, and this is one of Buck’s favorite things about teenage Chris; he gets to learn things from him, too. “Robots designed based on the real world. Like animals or nature.”

“Huh. Cool.” He files the information away to look it up on Wikipedia later.

“Yeah, just great,” Eddie deadpans. “We’re going to replace real, breathing dogs with robots soon.”

“Maybe then you’d let us get one,” Chris grumbles, leaning back in his chair.

“Hildy–Hildogs,” Buck says. “We could have two.” Chris reaches up to give him a hi-five, and Eddie pushes back from the table.

“I’m done with this conversation.”

“What if Chris brings one home?” Buck turns in his chair as Eddie starts collecting dirty dishes. They never did clean up the mess. “Are you going to leave it out in the cold?”

“I can’t make a robot dog, Buck,” Chris says.

“Trying to help you here, kid.” He pauses. “And of course you can. You’re the smartest person in the world.” Chris rolls his eyes, but Buck catches his smile as he ducks his head. “Did you know there’s a café in Tokyo with robot servers?” Eddie gives a violent shudder from the sink, back turned to the two of them.

“Can we go?” Chris asks, face lighting up.

“You do know where Japan is, don’t you?” Eddie twists around to look at his son. “Or did you stop doing your homework again?”

“Ha, ha.”

Buck wishes he could press nights like these between the pages of a book to preserve them forever. “We can go.”

“Buck–”

“When you graduate,” he corrects, “we can go.”

Chris groans, followed by a soft thump against the table. “That’s too far away.”

“Not far enough,” Eddie mumbles, and Buck hates himself a little for bringing it up. “A place like that shouldn’t exist. What happened to human servers? To people?”

“Actually, the robots are controlled by people,” Buck informs him, standing up to help with the dishes. “They hire workers with disabilities who have a more difficult time getting jobs. Since they operate remotely, the staff come from all over the world. Maybe someday Chris’ wild inventions will end up in a place like that.”

Eddie gives him a look, then, one Buck will store away and pull out just before he loses consciousness every night. One that makes him think, perhaps, his most far fetched delusions aren’t entirely unfounded. Wide-eyed and earnest, only broken by Chris’ voice, now reunited with his phone.

“Dad, tickets to Tokyo are only seven hundred dollars.”

He points an accusatory finger at Buck. “You’re paying.”

Buck is turning the living room upside down trying to locate Jee’s missing stuffed rabbit—Chim has sent a very frazzled message about its whereabouts—when Chris walks in, crutches clicking gently against the floor.

“Buck?”

“Hm?” He emerges from under the coffee table, biting down a swear when he hits his head on the edge. Eddie has got to let him replace it. Surely it’s a safety hazard.

To his credit, Chris doesn’t laugh, mouth only betraying a momentary twitch. “I forgot to buy more pens. Do you have any?”

“Your dad bought you some. Didn't he tell you?” Chris shakes his head. “I’ll bring them to your room.”

Chris is fiddling with the edge of a blanket when Buck walks with the box. “Here you go. Made sure they were blue.”

“Thanks.” He shoves them into his overstuffed backpack without so much as a glance, gaze cast on the floor.

“Got everything?” He nods, wordless. “Sorry I can’t go to the airport with you. I’ll make sure your dad is loaded up on coffee so he gets you there in one piece.”

As if on cue, Eddie’s voice rings out from where he’s singing in the shower, loud and off key. Through a mutual agreement, Buck and Chris have decided to pretend the walls are soundproof enough they can’t hear it. Mostly, Buck doesn’t want him to stop.

“Am I making him sad?” Chris asks, so hushed Buck nearly misses it. “I’m leaving again.”

“Hey, no.” Buck sits down on the bed next to him, relieved when Chris allows himself to be pulled into a hug. “It’s only a month, and then you’ll be back in LA. Both of you.”

His hand curls around the edge of Buck’s shirt like when he was a kid. “And you’ll be here too, right? With us.”

“‘Course I will,” Buck says, closing his eyes as he rests his cheek on top of Chris’ curls. “As long as you’ll have me.”

“When you’re back,” Chris says slowly, “maybe we could go somewhere together. The three of us.”

“Hate to break it to you, but you gotta let me save up for Japan.”

Chris scoffs, the tension draining from his body. “Not Japan. Just… a family trip.”

“Oh.” Buck clears his throat, blinking away his hazy vision before Chris catches on. “Of course. We could… I’ll drive us somewhere. Up the coast, or to Yosemite. Or–have you ever seen the Grand Canyon?” Chris shakes his head. “Okay, I’ll take us. It’s way better than Massachusetts.”

“Buck.”

“I know, I know.” He laughs, giving Chris a final squeeze for good measure. “Your dad is so, so proud of you. So am I.”

Chris extracts himself from the hug. “Don’t make me start another tally.”

After Buck has helped him zip up his suitcase, Eddie popping his head in to remind Chris it’s late, that they have to be up early, Buck presses a kiss into Chris’ curls before he can protest. He clicks off the lamp and starts to close the door.

“Buck,” Chris calls out, and he pauses. “Be safe. Promise?”

He forces his voice steady when he says, “Promise.”

“Eat lots of pasta,” Maddie says, switching off the playlist of Italian music Buck spent hours curating the night before. He kicks the back of her seat in retaliation, but she puts on the radio, undeterred. A pop hit Eddie normally pretends to hate, but sings along to just to make Chris huff and pretend to be embarrassed, blares through the speakers. “And pizza.”

“Can’t go too heavy on the pizza,” Buck informs her. “Eddie is lactose intolerant. And we have to share a bathroom.”

Eddie glares, and Maddie shoots him a knowing look in the rearview mirror. Buck rolls his eyes. The Eddie Factoid Jar. Maddie is going to bankrupt him. One dollar per unnecessary tidbit of information, though Buck would argue everything about Eddie is important knowledge.

Eddie’s chewing his lower lip raw as he strains to calculate their distance to the airport exit. They’re bordering on a two-and-a-half pre-flight arrival, but Buck isn’t worried. If it were up to him, they would have left an hour later, but between Eddie’s frazzled expression at the suggestion and Maddie’s honking in the driveway, they’d left the house a responsible four hours early. The city always has other ideas, though.

“Relax,” Buck tells him, which is somewhat like telling a fish to seal its gills and walk on land. “We have time.”

“We have to check our backpacks,” Eddie informs him, like he doesn’t know. Buck was the one who’d bought the damn things. The European cobblestones are no joke, Eddie. “Get our boarding passes. Go through security, find the gate.”

“We have access to the first-class lounge,” he says, mostly to rile Maddie up. She’d broken down crying about being pregnant when Buck had announced his early summer adventure, about never being able to accompany him when he’d backpacked through Latin America in his early twenties. Chim has now committed to a very expensive, very belated post-baby honeymoon. Buck is strategizing on how to turn it into a Buckley-Han family trip. No way is he missing out on Fiji.

“Ten dollars they kick him out within the first half hour,” she says, directing the bet toward Eddie, who slaps her outstretched palm.

“I give him fifteen minutes.”

Buck elbows his side. “Assholes.”

The last time Buck found himself here, he was weaving through the crowd at Arrivals, a glittery sign Jee helped him make tucked under his arm. Chris had rolled his eyes at the blocky DIAZ FAMILY lettering, but Buck saw him slip it behind his bookshelf when they arrived home. And then there was Eddie, face pushed into the crook of Buck’s neck, their goodbye in reverse, a silent promise fulfilled. Then, now, always, Buck wills it to be true. He came back, Buck reminds himself as LAX comes into view. It has to count for something.

Maddie brings them to the drop-off point, her eyes shining like Buck is embarking on a yearslong voyage. “Have the best time.”

Something sticks in his chest as he leans down to hug her. “I–If anything happens. To you, Jee, the baby–”

“You will be informed,” she says with a smile Buck can’t comprehend, running her hands down his arms. “We’re okay here, Buck. We have each other.”

“I-I know.” Still, he stands, unmoving, listening to the angry traffic controller direct cars along. “Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this. Bobby–”

“Is safe.” She clasps his face between her hands, an unshakable habit. “You’re going to go, with Eddie, and you’ll talk. About everything.”

“Maddie.”

“Locking it away won’t make it disappear,” she says, and Buck was a fool to believe she’d forget their one-off conversation in the midst of the chaos. “He’s your best friend.”

“And I need it to stay that way–”

“Buck!” Eddie stands by the sliding glass doors, one oversized backpack slung over each shoulder. “We gotta go!”

She stands on tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek. “I love you. And I expect a postcard.”

“Of course.” Buck waits for her to get in the car with a final wave, one hand settled protectively on her round stomach, before he turns around to ease the burden on Eddie’s shoulders.

When they’re sitting in the first class lounge, plates piled high with unrespectable amounts of free food, Buck texts her: Love you too.

Boarding is a smooth process. Los Angeles to Frankfurt. Eleven hours. Eddie settles in, legs sprawled out in front of him. Buck presses every button on the wide seat until a flight attendant has to help him lower the partition between them, and Eddie hides his laugh in the sleeve of a hoodie he most definitely stole from Buck’s side of the closet.

They talk about nothing important, sip dry champagne, pretend they know what to do with hot towels handed to them, and start a movie at the same time to complain about the mediocre acting together. Buck wakes with Eddie leaning toward him in a way that will surely give him a neck ache, and he requests an extra pillow to reposition his head. He snaps a picture, texting it to Chris over the spotty in-flight Wi-Fi. A message from Bobby slowly loads as he’s reclining his seat for another few hours of rest.

Bobby

Bon voyage! Athena recommends Sciacchetrà wine in Cinque Terre.

Thanks, Cap! Will report back vis-à-vis the wine

He sends the photo of Eddie to the 118 group chat for good measure and slips his complementary eye mask down.

Body caught between time zones, Buck stumbles behind an all-too-alert Eddie as they disembark, simply nodding along to whatever explanation he gives the stern-faced border control agent for their travel purpose. When they’re settled in for their short flight to Pisa, Eddie crashes, drooling onto Buck’s sweatshirt while he sips a burnt black coffee. One of them needs to be awake, and he’ll be damned if Eddie exhausts himself on this trip.

When they begin their initial descent, Buck resolves to make this the best two weeks of Eddie’s life. No stress, no unnecessary decision-making on his part. Buck will take the reins because it’s what Eddie deserves. Relaxation. Joy. The chance to indulge himself without worrying about the consequences. He’s been through so much over the past year. Buck can give him this small thing, wholeheartedly.

Staying awake proves to be a challenge when they’ve landed just before noon. Crammed in the back of a taxi, a bleary-eyed Eddie typing out a message to Chris and Buck trying to take in the unfamiliar surroundings, it’s obvious they won’t last.

“Get up,” Eddie tells him when he collapses onto the double bed, the singular bed in the room, which, in his fatigue, he doesn’t have the energy to freak out about. Besides, he and Eddie have shared a bed before. They currently share one, for fuck’s sake. Never mind that it’s twice the size of this one. A bed is a bed; Buck will find a way to make it work.

“Don’t want to.”

“We can’t sleep now.” Eddie tugs at his arm, and Buck groans as he’s pulled toward the edge. “We’ll never overcome the jet lag.” Buck gives a grunt of assent, a deadweight as Eddie sits down next to him. A hand comes up to brush away his unstyled curls, flat from the travel. He can’t help the honest-to-God whine that escapes when Eddie stops petting his hair, and Eddie snorts, resuming the contact. Buck will always be the dog at his feet, begging for more.

Damn you, he thinks toward no one in particular. Maybe whoever decided to set Los Angeles clocks nine hours behind Italian ones.

“You have to get up,” Eddie tries again, more gently, and Buck remembers where they are.

He shoots upright. “Our train to Cinque Terre is tomorrow morning.”

“Yes?”

“We have half a day here.”

“I know, Buck. You made me memorize the itinerary.”

He stands up, yanking articles of clothing from his backpack to find something more appropriate for the weather. “We have to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa.”

Eddie sighs from the bed, the telltale sound of him flopping against the pillows close behind. “I was hoping you’d forgotten about that.”

“It’s a World Heritage Site! It took 199 years to complete, Eddie.”

“And they couldn’t fix the foundation?”

“Be nice. It survived four earthquakes.”

“With our luck, the fifth is about to start,” he says from where he’s nestled in the pillows. Absently, Buck hopes they smell of his cologne later. He shakes his head to clear the thought. It’s the jet lag making him feel so deranged at the sight of Eddie’s bare calves, surely.

“None of that. No–No negative Eddie in Italy.”

“Someone has to do it,” he says, but laughs when Buck flings a t-shirt into his face.

At Buck’s insistence, they stop for a sandwich at a place he’d vowed to try based on recommendations from online forums. Eddie orders for both of them, his Italian pronunciation tinged with Spanish vowels. They sit in a nearby park, the sunlight warming their faces, and trade bites of their lunch, pecorino and pear and honey bursting on Buck’s tongue. Swarms of tourists make their way to the tower, laden with bags from overpriced boutiques and mass-printed I <3 ITALY shirts.

“Don’t even think about it,” Eddie says when Buck spots a street vendor, grabbing his wrist to steer him toward their destination.

Eddie provides Buck a grand total of four photos, three of which aren’t lined up correctly with the tower, before he forces Buck to keep walking. He takes approximately seventeen of Eddie, two of them posed before he gets embarrassed trying to hold his arms up, most of them when he’s walking a few feet ahead, a blur as he turns back to make sure Buck hasn’t fallen behind.

“I want one of both of us,” Buck says, flagging down a pair of girls with a selfie stick.

“I’m sure Ravi can photoshop us together,” Eddie says around a yawn. “Let’s go up the tower before more people come.”

“But I… I want to remember I was here,” Buck says. “With you.”

Eddie’s expression softens, and he nods, positioning himself at his side, an arm coming up to rest across Buck’s shoulders as they smile for the strangers.

The exhaustion from their travel day is starting to creep into Eddie’s expression, but he nudges Buck’s shoulder and says, “Send them to me too.” Buck scrolls through them, sends a better one to Maddie with a caption of Made it in one piece! for her to see in the morning.

In an instance of neglectful planning from Buck, certainly not the last on this trip, he’s forgotten the suggestion to pre-book tickets to enter the tower, and the remaining times are sold out for the day. Eddie takes it in stride with a comment about how it’s likely a tourist trap anyway, and Buck feels so pent up with the history lesson he was prepared to recite that he ends up giving Eddie a rundown of the main highlights on the Wikipedia page.

“It was built with stolen money?” Eddie’s face scrunches up.

“From Sicily,” Buck confirms. “They decided it was time to build the Piazza dei Miracoli.”

“Please stop trying to speak Italian–” his complaint cuts off with a gasp. He grabs the back of Buck’s shirt to get him to stop meandering. They’re walking nowhere, Buck’s phone battery dangerously low and Eddie insistent that they stay out for a few more hours, knowing they’ll both fall asleep if they go back to the hotel. “Tiramisu!”

Buck practically disintegrates at the sight of him, lit up like a kid receiving a puppy as he takes in the delicately arranged desserts. “Want some?”

“Share one with me?”

They find a table out on the patio, and Buck stabs a fork into the dessert, eliciting a garbled sound of protest from Eddie. “I didn’t take a picture!”

“Oh, now you want a photo.” Buck rolls his eyes, trying to smooth over the tiny holes in the cocoa powder. “Not one with your best friend. The whole reason you’re on this trip, by the way–” Click.

“Didn’t take a picture of you and the tiramisu.” Buck blinks as Eddie happily scoops up the first bite, more awake than he’s been all day at the prospect of some sugar. And Eddie fucking moans around it, the sound traveling straight down south along Buck’s spine.

It dawns on him, then: he’s not going to survive two weeks of this. What was he thinking, bringing Eddie along?

“Probably tastes like shit,” he says, voice strained. “Tiramisu isn’t even from this region.”

Eddie holds a bite out for Buck. “Stop talking.” When Buck keeps his mouth closed, he waves the fork around. “Do I have to make the noises like I used to for Christopher?”

“Fuck off.” Buck leans forward, hoping he can blame the flush he feels creeping up his neck on the direct sunlight. If he’s lucky, he’ll be sunburned by the end of the day, and it’ll cover up the multitude of ways his body betrays him in Eddie’s presence. Expectant, Eddie waits for his reaction. “Nice.”

“Nice?” he scoffs. “I’ve never tasted anything this good in my life.”

Jealousy stings Buck’s chest. He curses the fancy Italian chef who’d smiled at them when Eddie asked for the biggest slice available. Fucking flirts. Given the right ingredients and a free afternoon, he’s sure he could replicate it. Hell, he could make the world’s best tiramisu. For Eddie. He could make anything in the world for Eddie.

“—better than your snickerdoodle cookies.”

“Huh?”

“I said,” Eddie repeats, cream caught on the corner of his mouth. Buck aches to lick it away. “Nothing is better than your snickerdoodle cookies.”

Smirking, Buck crosses his arms over his shoulders. “Bet they’ve never tasted something like that here.” Eddie hums, distracted by scraping up every crumb of the coffee-soaked ladyfingers stuck to the bottom of the plastic container. Buck watches him eat, leaving most of it for him.

They continue walking into the early evening, until their conversation dies off along with their depleted energy. Back at the hotel, Buck drifts in and out of consciousness as Eddie pulls off his shirt, emptying half his backpack to find a clean pair of boxers. Neither of them packed with any tact, it seems.

He’s debating the health risks of sleeping with whatever germs he’s picked up on the plane when Eddie pokes his head out of the bathroom. “You coming?”

“Hm?”

“It’s faster if we shower together,” Eddie explains, like he hasn’t just upheaved Buck’s world on its axis. “We can both sleep after. Like at work.” Buck blinks at him, wondering if he’s already dreaming. This would be a new one, though he’s had a few vivid daydreams about the storage closet at the 118. “C’mon, man, don’t make it weird.”

Man. Definitively reality. Dream Eddie likes other names—mi vida, sweetheart.

Evan.

Buck clears his throat. “Be right there.”

He gives himself a minute to calm his racing heart, grateful he’s too exhausted to pop a boner at the prospect of this, and strips to join Eddie. Terrible hotel water pressure seems to be a universal trait. He tries to wet his hair under the weak jet stream. Buck keeps his eyes fixed on a crack in the tile, fiddling with his travel sized curl products while Eddie lathers the complimentary shampoo into his hair without a second thought, the smell of citrus filling the air.

They’ve done this before; they’ve done this countless times before. Except Buck’s life has been split into a clear before and after: the person he was before he realized he’d like Eddie’s hands on him, all the time, that he’d like to wake up next to him in the morning forever, make him sugary coffee from the Keurig, know exactly which products he puts into his hair and in what order, and whoever that makes him now, in its unbearable wake.

Eddie tugs the bottle out of his hand. “This one first?”

“Eddie–”

“Isn’t this like, thirty dollars?” He lets out a low whistle. “No wonder your credit score is so bad.”

“Says the guy who used to buy 3-in-1 shampoo,” Buck retorts, his voice tapering off when Eddie’s hands massage along his scalp.

“Used to.”

“We’ll see who goes bald first.”

Eddie yanks at his hair, and Buck lets out an exaggerated yelp. “Better hope it’s not you, Buckley. Your head is too round to pull it off.”

“Stop cheating.” He tries to retaliate, but Eddie makes a displeased noise and tilts his head back.

“Stop moving while I rinse this out, or you’re going to be waterboarded.”

“I should send you back home.”

The edge of Eddie’s bemused look is visible from the odd angle. “You’d miss me too much.”

Yeah, Buck thinks as Eddie works the conditioner into his curls, I would.

They try to arrange themselves in the bed, oversized limbs and overgrown muscles tangling, two incongruent puzzle pieces until Eddie turns on his side, minty breath fanning Buck’s face. He thinks about how easy it would be to hold him, to slot themselves together.

Eddie breaks the silence with a small, “Something good?”

“The plane didn’t crash.” Buck turns to mirror his position. “You?”

He groans. “That is such a low bar.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m glad our loved ones didn’t perish in a violent accident while we were stuck in a metal tube in the sky.” The half-hearted attempt at a joke dies somewhere near the middle, Eddie sucking in a sharp breath next to him.

Ask me, Buck wants to beg. Extract it from me.

“Your turn,” he says instead.

“This entire day,” Eddie whispers through the dark, like he’s sharing something forbidden, “was something good.”

Buck works around the lump in his throat, the pressure of relief building behind his eyes at Eddie’s quiet contentment, and tries to be brave. “I’m really glad you’re here.” Now, tomorrow, always. It’s not enough, there’s nothing he could construct in any language that would be enough to tell Eddie how important he is to him, but it’s a start.

“Me too, Buck.”

For Buck, pain starts in the hip.

Realistically, he doesn’t remember it. The bone marrow transplant. He was a baby, and whatever incision the 20-gauge needle made has long healed over. Buck stood in front of the mirror after he stormed out of Maddie’s apartment the day it came to light, spine twisted so violently he could hear every joint pop, feeling over his skin for any sign of damaged tissue. Of all the scars on his body, this is one that no longer lingers on the surface. But he understands it now, the slight tremor that passes through his limbs at the sight of a butterfly needle, the jagged punch of air through his lungs when it slips into his vein at the biannual firehouse blood drive.

There are other things he has trouble recalling. The color of Christopher’s shirt the day on the pier—striped or solid yellow? How he found Maddie in the woods, if the trees were yet bare of their leaves. The length of Eddie’s hair, plastered against his forehead after he swam up from the depths of the well. The blur of thirty-seven hours without Bobby, someone moving him from point A to point B and back again.

He read a study once about memory recall. A telephone, a chain command. The possibility that each time these days cross his mind, he’s simply recalling the last time the memory dredged up to the surface, all the minute details swapped out and fuzzy.

But there are things he can’t forget. The taste of the first cookies he made with Christopher. Maddie’s electric blue nail polish on the dresser, lid still ajar, the day she moved out from their house in Hershey. Bobby, curled into himself in a barebones apartment. How it felt for Eddie to go cold beneath his hands, blood still warm as Buck desperately tried to stop its flow.

The prick of a needle, real or imagined.

What starts in the hip spreads to his left knee, the old awakened injury. Buck’s not sure what does it this time—the jet lag, the weight on his back, the sun or the plane. All he knows when he’s pulled to consciousness at 3 a.m., Central European Time, Eddie snoring and their limbs knotted together in a sweaty tangle, is he will not make it through the day.

Buck is trying to work out a cramp forming in his calf when Eddie’s eyes snap open, the damn bloodhound. He manages to drop his hands and lean forward under the pretense of talking to him to cover it up. They’re crammed into a six-person train compartment, fifty-two minutes into a delay on the tracks. Buck’s shirt is stuck to his back, and if the woman next to him doesn’t stop hitting him with her elbow every time she speaks, they’re going to have a problem. If he weren’t dealing with his leg, he’d have half a mind to get out and walk the final fifteen minutes of the journey.

“Want a coffee?”

Eddie smiles, a bead of sweat trickling down the side of his neck. “More of the shitty packet stuff you made me this morning?” He lets out a tsk. “That’s not allowed in Italy.”

“We were in a hurry because someone overslept. I’ll buy you all the fancy espresso you want if we can escape this–” Elbow to the side. “This box.”

Eddie’s eyebrow twitches in that way it does when he’s caught onto something, and Buck tries to smooth out his grimace at the dull throb spreading up the back of his thigh. “You okay?”

And fuck. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Eddie’s not supposed to worry. About him, or the trip, or their safety, or Chris’ safety, six thousand kilometers away. Buck’s going to ruin it; he always ruins it.

“Just-Just tired,” Buck says, and it’s not even a lie, really. A partial obfuscation of the entire truth. Never mind that Eddie likely had the foresight to pack paracetamol so he doesn’t set off his naproxen allergy. Buck’s solved a simple equation. One request for painkillers to stave this off plus one Eddie Diaz and his overt concern for Buck’s wellbeing equals a total derailment of their Cinque Terre hiking plans.

He doesn’t like it.

Charged up on a solid nine-and-a-half hours of sleep (Buck had counted each minute after Ravi stopped replying to his jet-lagged text messages), Eddie’s reserved excitement about the trip is now uncorked. Earlier at the station, Buck scarfing down a cornetto, making a mess of the pastry flakes in his lap, Eddie had scrolled through the hikes Buck had compiled into a neat chart—arranged by distance, difficulty, and daylight—talking up a storm about which one to start with, if they could walk along the coast, Monterosso to Corniglia, stop in Vernazza on the way.

Buck has decided: what Eddie wants, Eddie gets. An axiom long-solidified.

The train jerks forward, their knees knocking together like they’re in the engine. Eddie braces a hand on his bad leg, like he knows, somehow, like he can feel the cyclical buzz settled under his skin.

But then he’s distracted by something out the window, the glass smudged with a child’s handprint, his brown eyes turned liquid gold in the sun, and they let it go.

At the five kilometer marker of what’s meant to be the best hike of Eddie’s entire goddamn life, Buck’s leg buckles under its own weight. He should have seen it coming. Eddie certainly did.

“You’re in pain,” he says with a grunt as he catches Buck’s weight. Not a question.

Buck sits on a nearby ledge, stretching out the ache. If he weren’t currently attempting to pause his pain receptors’ function through sheer will, he’d be able to appreciate the view. The vast cerulean sea, the cloudless sky, the place where Eddie’s shirt has ridden up along his stomach, exposing the hard, tan dips of his abdomen.

“It's fine.” He lies, wincing when Eddie’s practiced hands find the source. “Happens.”

“We need to turn back.”

He shoots up, ignoring both Eddie and his body’s protests. “I’ll walk it off.” Except the next step is excruciating, and he’s not exactly sure how he’d manage the remaining distance, let alone the trip back to the hotel. He hobbles a few steps toward the base of the next staircase. Elevation gain. Lovely.

“Where are you going?”

“Corniglia,” Buck tells him, channeling his best impression of Jee-Yun’s duh voice. “You picked the route.”

He blows out a long breath, reminiscent of when he’s trying to be patient with Christopher. “No. We are going to find the next available taxi to get you back to Monterosso.”

“No can do. Cinque Terre is car free.”

“What?”

“One of the many fun facts you will learn as we walk the Blue Trail.” Buck attempts half-hearted jazz hands, which only seems to deepen Eddie's concern. “Let’s go.”

Eddie steps forward, stares at him for a blink, and, before Buck can react, he finds himself caught up in a fireman’s carry, stomach pressed against the hard muscle of Eddie’s upper back.

“Up you go, cowboy.”

“E-Eddie. Put me down.” He readjusts slightly to tug Buck’s arm across his chest as he walks back the way they came. “Eddie.”

He winces. “Gotta use your indoor voice, bud. Your mouth is way too close to my ear.”

Buck attempts to thrash out of his hold, feeling a bit like a beached whale, strung out across Eddie’s shoulders. “I can walk.”

“Hasn’t Bobby told you lying is a sin?”

Buck switches tactics, attempting some sort of one-armed chokehold. He relinquishes when an elderly German couple openly gapes at them. Eddie offers them a nod, and Buck hopes a sinkhole opens beneath their feet. Wouldn’t be improbable with their joint lack of luck in life.

“Eddie-Eddie stop.” The catch in his voice is enough to make Eddie listen to him, slowly leaning down to get Buck upright. “You can’t carry me.”

“Watch me,” he says with a scowl.

Buck has to grab his arms before he’s picked up again. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“You’re in pain, Buck, I can see it.” He purses his lips. “I don’t know how I couldn’t see it.”

“This isn’t on you.” Attempting to hide something from Eddie backfires comically quickly; Buck should know by now.

“I made us come up here.”

Buck snorts. “Says the guy who stole today’s activity off my itinerary.”

“Buck–”

“I can’t walk,” he concedes. Anything to erase the dejected guilt from Eddie’s face. “Hurts. So I’ll let you carry me–on your back–and the second you feel tired, we stop.”

Unable to meet Buck’s gaze, he turns around and gestures for Buck to climb on. They’ve done this before—a firehouse family day relay race, drunkenly trying to reach Hen’s last bottle of tequila, placed out of reach from the Wilson kids. Buck stuck to his back like a koala when they’re bored in between calls, a desperate vie for Eddie’s attention. He’s seen Eddie carry people out of endless burning buildings, seen him bench press twice his body weight, shove concrete debris around at a call like it’s nothing, but the way he navigates the tricky descent remains a marvel. Buck wills his body not to betray him. More than it already has, at least.

“What were the fun facts?” Eddie asks after the first kilometer, just as Buck is nearing a breaking point with the stabbing sensation in his leg, nothing to divert his brain from it.

He tries to laugh. “You don’t want to hear those.”

“I always want to hear what you have to say,” Eddie says, sounding remarkably unfazed for someone with a Buck-sized human bearing down on them.

“It’s, um, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 1997.”

“Saw that on the sign. What else?”

“The region became Italy’s first national park in 1999. And the name means ‘five lands’ in Italian.”

“Cinco tierras in Spanish. Could’ve guessed that one.”

Buck scoffs. “Show off.”

“C’mon, Buckley.” He squeezes one of Buck’s calves—the one that doesn’t feel like it’s on fire. “Give me something niche.”

He flips through his mental notes. “The Monterosso Lemon Festival.” Arms flying away from where they’re draped across Eddie’s shoulders, he begins to gesture. “There was this Italian poet, Eugenio Montale, who loved the fruit. Won the 1975 Nobel Prize in literature, and he only wrote five volumes of poetry in his fifty year career. Strange.”

“It would take you that long to write a single decent poem,” Eddie interrupts, and Buck slaps his chest.

“Shut up.” A light breeze ruffles his hair, the smell of the sea and the bright yellow fruit that lines their path and something distinctly Eddie floating along. “Anyway. Montale. Obsessed with lemons. Hence the festival.”

“Knew you had it in you,” Eddie says, the smile audible in his voice, and Buck finds his next exhale a little less painful.

They stop for gelato on the way back, both of them craving the melted lemon flavor displayed in the window. Buck manages to stand, Eddie’s arm firmly planted on his waist as they hobble up to the counter. It’s here Buck’s day slides from bad to worse.

Eddie’s a beautiful person. A beautiful man. Buck isn’t blind. He hasn’t been since the first day Eddie walked into the 118, the world narrowing in on him, the peripheral tunnel that has remained ever since. So Buck gets it. If his status as best friend and nothing more weren’t so firmly cemented, along with Eddie’s sexuality, he’d shoot his shot too.

But does it have to happen in front of him?

The sourness bursts on his tongue as he watches Eddie pay. The employee, a guy with a square jaw and dark eyebrows, has been infatuated with Eddie since the moment he walked in. Buck’s never been the victim of such poor customer service, not a glance his way as his gelato was shoved against his waiting hands. The worker slides over a dish with a significantly larger portion of gelato than Buck received.

“An extra scoop,” he says with a wink for Eddie, “for the handsome customer.”

“Oh.” Eddie accepts it, cheeks turning the color of overripe peaches. Buck prays for the sinkhole again. “I–Thank you. Grazie.”

“Sei bello. And polite.”

Something cold and sticky drips down his hand, and Buck tries to uncrush his little paper bowl before Eddie’s seven euro go to waste. Anyone who spends a minute talking to Eddie could recognize this. Because he is polite. Polite and beautiful and kind and strong. Caring toward every person they aid, anyone he meets, an innate ability to look at someone and know exactly what they need to diminish their hurt. Eddie and his gentleness. Eddie and his silver star.

Buck has a primordial desire to keep it all to himself, the first tier on his hierarchy of needs.

He contemplates the notion a few hours later, two paracetamol deep as he sips flat sparkling water from a lukewarm bottle. Sprawled out across the bathroom floor, the tile serves as a mediocre replacement for an ice pack; a dull ache remains, a bruise you can feel when you know exactly where to press.

Eddie opens the door without warning—god, Christopher’s got to hate that—and stares down at Buck. “Are you alive?”

“Ever heard of knocking?” Buck shifts before he’s decapitated. “What if I had explosive diarrhea?”

He raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Is that something I should be worried about?”

Buck rolls his eyes. “No. So you can cool it with the first aid kit, Doctor Diaz.”

“Maybe Doctor Diaz wants to check on his best friend. Make sure he’s okay.”

“Yeah. Well.” Buck presses the bottle into his chest. “Shitty day. Exactly what your shitty best friend deserves.”

Eddie lowers himself down next to Buck, propping his feet up on the edge of the ornate bathtub. “If negative Eddie is banned from Italy, so is self-deprecating Buck.”

“I’m ruining the trip,” Buck says, the traitorous prick of tears taking shape.

“Ah. Here we go.”

“What does that mean?”

He turns his head, their faces far too close, a cherry on top of Buck’s disaster of a day. “The trials and tribulations of Evan Buckley. On the free vacation of a lifetime and still throwing a pity party.”

“Asshole,” Buck says, but there’s no malice behind it. “Excuse me for wanting something to go right after the last few months.” He can’t soften out the edge in his voice in time for Eddie not to catch it. “And you–after the year you’ve had.” Shaking his head, he tries to play it off. “I wanted it to be easy. Good. I thought, maybe, it could…that it would…” He trails off, letting Eddie fill in the gap.

I thought it could fix things. Because he can’t be the only one who feels it. The breach, the ever-growing rift between them. The unnamable, incomprehensible thing that he feels spinning out of his grasp, powerless to halt its trajectory. A problem he wants to fix and can’t identify.

Eddie goes quiet, staring up at the ceiling. “That’s a lot to put on one trip.” And any one person.

Buck gives a helpless shrug. He wants to talk about it. He does. Especially with Eddie. The problem is, he’s not sure how to begin, where Eddie needs to tug to unravel the knot. He’s holding on to the pipe dream that, eventually, the clock will reset, and things will return to how they once were. Pre-Texas Eddie. Pre-lab Buck. But he feels marred, like all the cracked, glued together fragments that compose him now lack a fundamental piece.

But Bobby is here, and so is Eddie, so how is he supposed to explain it? What right does he have to his grief, when there has been no calculable loss?

Buck wants to reach for Eddie’s wrist. To count each beat of his heart. To assure himself it’s not an illusion conjured up to cope. He wants to go home, break the speed limit twice over to stand on Bobby’s doorstep. He wants out of this labyrinth, and he doesn’t know how he got so turned around in the first place.

“I want you to have a good time,” Buck offers.

Eddie squints at him. “Is this why you’ve been acting so strange?”

“I–what?” Buck returns a glare. “I have not.”

“You have,” Eddie accuses, wincing when his head bumps the tile. “Since we landed, you’ve been so obsessed with every detail of this. You asked me if I was having fun yesterday, like, five separate times.”

“Are you?” Buck asks, voice barely a whisper.

“Jesus, Buck.” Eddie shakes his head, incredulous. “Of course I am.” He pushes up on his forearms, almost leaning over Buck, the silver chain of his necklace peeking out from under his shirt collar. “We’re together. How could I not?”

“You had to carry me down the foot of a mountain.”

He tilts his head. “Kinda my one skill in life.”

Buck tries again. “We were trapped on a train with no air conditioning. For almost as long as the original train journey.”

“I grew up in Texas,” he says, flat. “These are rookie temperatures.”

“Stop being so positive about everything.”

“Stop blaming yourself for your pain,” Eddie retorts, and, yeah, Buck doesn’t have a good defense. “You’ve had a debilitating injury. Several, actually.” Buck lets out a huff. “Some days are going to suck, and we’ll deal with it.”

We. “Thanks for carrying me.”

“Anytime, man.” He clears his throat, rolling out of Buck’s space so quickly he doesn’t have time to mourn the loss. The tips of his ears are pink, and Buck makes a mental note to make him wear sunscreen tomorrow. “Okay, now for the important part. Something good?”

“Seriously? On the bathroom floor?”

“No time like the present.”

“You and your old man phrases.” Buck scrubs a hand down his face, fishing for an answer that doesn’t involve having been pressed up against Eddie for several hours, followed by his undivided medical attention. “I don’t know.”

Eddie turns to look at him again, an inch closer than before, their arms practically overlapping. “You can’t think of a single thing?”

You, Buck thinks. Being next to you.

He clears his throat. “The, uh, the pastry I had this morning. Pretty good.” Eddie makes a vague noise of assent, and Buck tries not to overanalyze it. “You?”

He’s quiet for a moment, then: “You let me take care of you.”

The air leaves Buck’s lungs in a great rush. “And that–that made you happy?”

Eddie sits up, his back to Buck, the sunburn he’d noticed before now visible along the back of his neck. “I like taking care of people.”

“Oh.” Buck pushes up on his elbows. “That’s true. I like taking care of yo–”

“Wanna call Christopher?” Eddie blurts, hands fumbling for his phone. “He should be awake now.”

“God, yeah, I miss that kid.”

When Chris picks up the call, nothing more than half a screen of curly hair, he asks, “Is there a toilet behind you?”

Buck begins to explain and tries to remind himself Eddie’s prolonged gaze is nothing more than medically-induced concern.

They go to the beach the next day, staking out their claim with striped blue towels and a crooked umbrella, courtesy of the hotel.

Buck is punished for a karmic debt he seems to have forgotten about, forced to run his hands along the vast expanse of Eddie’s back as they cover each other in sunscreen. They have a picnic of overpriced olives and meat and cheese, accompanied by the Sciacchetrà wine and a smiling selfie to Athena, who sends a disgruntled reply from the night shift. Or, rather, Buck has the olives, Eddie scrunching up his nose every time Buck tries to force him to eat one. Buck finishes the book Chim lent him and swaps it with whatever Eddie has started, pausing to read his loopy annotations in the margins more than the text itself. Stretched out under the sun and watching Eddie float in the choppy waves from his place on the shore, the ache of his damaged limb lessens.

Sun-drunk and sun-kissed, hair in soft waves from the saltwater, Eddie’s nothing short of a wet dream. Consumed by it, Buck orders half the room service menu when they return to the hotel. They sit on the bed, Buck, shirtless, Eddie, his deepening tan a stark contrast against his fluffy white bathrobe, and sample the assortment of plates until they feel their stomachs may burst, opening the second wine bottle of the day to top it off. The sun begins to bleed into the horizon, and they watch the sky turn pastel colored through the open terrace doors.

There’s a third bottle, a complimentary Monterossina cake the receptionist drops off at their door, the delighted noises that escape Eddie’s lips when he takes the first bite. The alcohol makes the world go balmy as the evening stretches, or maybe that’s just Eddie’s laughter, the boyish giddiness rippling from his every movement.

Eddie wipes his eyes as he flops back onto the mattress, and Buck’s trying not to projectile vomit from laughing so much, when he says, “I missed this.”

“I missed you,” Buck says, because his brain-to-mouth filter is already questionable on a good day. “I mean–”

“I miss you all the time,” Eddie breathes out, eyes fluttering closed. “There’s… there’s so much I want to tell you. About Texas. About… about me.” The last part is nothing more than a whisper.

Buck straightens up, staring down at Eddie. “What do you mean?” They avoid talking about Texas as much as they avoid everything else these days; he makes blatant attempts to change the topic of conversation every time Eddie tries to broach the subject, the wound still bleeding too much to scar over.

His heavy-lidded gaze settles on Buck. “Being there… I hated it.” The word comes out with more venom than Buck thought possible from Eddie. Before he can overthink it, he reaches out to brush soft strands of hair from his face. Eddie sighs against the touch. “Wasn’t home anymore. M’not sure it ever was.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Buck says. “Your home is in LA. With the 118.” With me.

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees easily, and Buck feels a brief pang of vindication.

“But it made me think about a lot of things,” he continues, voice growing stronger, more assured. “Things I’d wanted to ignore for a long time. Maybe forever. I've done things, said things, I can't take back anymore.”

Buck senses the addendum. “Like what?”

“Like,” he says, “who I am. What… who I like.” Briefly, he wonders if the alcohol is making Eddie speak in riddles, if that’s what’s making his own heart rate accelerate as Eddie sits up and squares his shoulders like he’s bracing for impact. “What I want for my future. Things are changing.”

“Um, y-yeah.” Eddie’s face falls slightly, and Buck feels like he’s failed a rather elementary test. It’s simple: Eddie wants to date again. He’ll find a nice girl, and Buck will make his Irish exit from South Bedford to yearn for all eternity, in this lifetime and the next, because it’s been well established they’d find each other in any string of the universe. “You should do it.” He punches Eddie’s shoulder, something like bile rising up. “Start dating again.”

Eddie fixes his attention on the wainscotting. “Hen warned me I’d have to spell this out for you.”

“Spell-Spell what out, exactly?” Buck’s head whirls. “Did you get someone pregnant while you were in El Paso?”

“No!” His head snaps toward Buck, alarmed. “I’m gay!”

“Oh.” The world screeches to a halt. “What?”

Clearing his throat, Eddie tries again, unable to look at him. “I’m gay.”

Hen warned me–“Why didn’t you tell me?” Buck slaps a hand to his forehead. “I mean. Fuck. That’s not–fuck–I’m not supposed to say that–”

Shoulders sagging, Eddie lets out a relieved laugh. “It’s okay. I wanted to tell you. It was just–” He makes a vague gesture. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Buck echoes, and Eddie shoves him with a bashful smile. “You know I wouldn’t–I’d never react badly, Eddie. Not in a million years.”

“I know that,” he says, with a smidge of forced levity, “but I was in El Paso. Didn’t feel like a phone conversation.” Buck hums, bites back the protest, and lets him continue. “And then everything happened with Bobby, and the move. There was never a good time.”

“Well, now was the perfect time.” Buck nudges his side, tamping down the part of him that knows, somewhere between Los Angeles to El Paso, they’ve lost the ability to talk to each other. “Because you chose it.” Eddie’s eyes go glassy as he nods, leaning back into Buck, and things feel less disjointed for a split second. “Thank you for telling me. I’m really happy for you, Eddie.”

“Yeah?” He swipes a finger under his eye, and Buck pretends not to notice.

“Of course. Pretty huge thing to realize about yourself.”

Eddie stares down at his hands. “I feel so… so clumsy about it. I mean. I’m thirty-three.”

“There’s no age limit to learn something new about yourself.”

“Hen said the same thing,” Eddie tells him, casual, fond.

“So, um. Hen. She knows. Anyone else?”

“Christopher. We talked about it before we moved back.”

“Did he take it okay?” He smiles, nodding, and Buck swears his heart expands three sizes. “‘Course he did. Best kid in the world.”

“He is,” Eddie agrees. “Told Bobby the other week. Ravi accidentally walked in, so I guess he knows too. And Karen was there, when I talked about it with Hen.”

Number six. Buck didn’t even make it onto the first hand. Rationally, he knows it’s wrong to think about himself when it has, evidently, taken Eddie several rounds of discussion to work up to this. Hell, Buck went straight to Maddie when things started to get muddled in his head. But Eddie was always there, at the forefront, the end goal of untangling the mystery.

Why not Buck?

“I wanted to talk to you about it,” Eddie says when Buck’s silence stretches too long. “But we don’t–since Bobby died–”

“Eddie,” he cuts in, because the d-word has now become as notorious as the q-word. Bobby’s name is banned from preceding the d-word. But Eddie wouldn’t know that. Eddie wasn’t there. Eddie does not dream of shutdown protocols and smashed glass, of screaming his throat raw in a metal hallway, the shape of a body you know like a father, reduced to an outline through thin black polyethylene.

Buck’s wandering mind settles on Bobby, the forty-eight he’s working back in Los Angeles, the myriad of ways it could go wrong. An ocean of distance and Buck, here, tipsy and soaking up Eddie’s company like a sponge, powerless to be at his side. Alive, alive, alive.

“You told me, in your own time,” Buck reassures him, even though the ticking time bomb above his head feels like it’s speeding up lately, one wrong move and the entire thing is blown. Time has felt so unending at Eddie’s side, conversations about the future merely far-off dreams they’d grow into. It feels foolish, now, how Buck has managed to burn through it like an infinite resource.

“And now,” Buck pushes on, “you have the best wingman in the city.”

Eddie lets out a choked noise. “Wingman. Right.” There’s a disappointed edge to his voice, and Buck mentally curses himself for fucking this up so much. Astronomically. Worst Best Friend of the Year award goes straight to him, no competition.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” he tacks on in a rush. “But, if you wanted to, y’know, explore. Italy isn’t a bad place to do it.” Eddie stares at him intently, lower lip caught between his teeth, and Buck gets a strange swooping sensation in his gut, like he’s missed the final step on a flight of stairs. “Summer of self-discovery, and all that.”

“What, just find a guy to hook up with on the street?”

“Ideally not.” Eddie gives him a pointed look. “Buck 1.0, which, as you were not here to witness, is no concern of yours.”

“So why did I have to hear all the stories from Chimney?”

“Because Chim has nothing interesting to share,” Buck retorts, and Eddie laughs at the blatant lie.

“He’s more interesting than you.”

“Ouch. Trying to give you sage advice here.”

He nods. “Right. Go on.”

“Find someone who makes you feel safe,” Buck tells him, because, more often than not, he wasn’t offered the same privilege, and the thought of Eddie, hands shaking, trying to figure himself out with someone who doesn’t have the patience or care he deserves—well. The thought alone makes Buck's insides feel torn apart, like someone’s flayed him. “A person you trust.”

“Great advice and all,” Eddie says flatly, “if I knew how to talk to guys.”

“The guy at the gelato place was flirting with you,” Buck points out, because he has to know. Even if the answer kills him.

A small, pleased curve forms on Eddie’s lips, and Buck contemplates drowning himself in the Mediterranean. “I thought it was in my head.”

“Nope.” Buck searches the bed for any remaining alcohol. Where’s a cheap six-pack from the corner store when you need it? “Flirting. Loud and clear.”

His cheeks tinge a shade of pink so lovely Buck wants to dip his fingers into it and smear it onto a canvas, preserved forever in a hallowed hall. “I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know anything, and that’s the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“How was it for you?” Eddie asks, flips the question on its head. “Exploring.”

Buck considers the trajectory. Guys he met in his twenties in Peru, bored and lonely, uncaring when a touch was a touch. A redirect, a basketball game. Misplaced affection for Tommy, meant for Eddie, back to Tommy, set on Eddie, evermore. Maybe Eddie was right to go to Hen about this.

“The only guy I’ve done anything more than a blowjob with is Tommy,” Buck admits, a small sliver of glee slicing through him when Eddie pulls a face at the name. “You really stopped talking to him after we broke up? He didn’t even know you had moved.”

The crease between his eyebrows grows, and Buck can hear the rant queueing up—he heard plenty when Taylor left the picture—but he freezes. “How do you know that?”

Buck wonders if he could pay someone to put a curse on Ravi. “K-Know what?”

“You saw him again?”

“It’s Ravi’s fault,” he protests, and Eddie’s eyes blow wide.

“You slept with him. Oh my god.”

“Why are you assuming that?” he asks, the crack in his voice an immediate betrayal.

“Because Ravi told me you ditched him at a bar for some guy!”

“He ditched me first! That’s the entire reason Tommy came over in the first place.” Eddie puts his head in his hands, and Buck casts his gaze to the ceiling, prays for whatever powers may be to intervene before this conversation further derails. “Before you get mad, it’s not happening again. Ever.”

Unless you leave, and Ravi leaves me so drunk and adrift that I’d take the next person who so much as glanced in my direction.

Eddie doesn’t look up at him. “I’m not mad.”

“You really hate the guy that much?” Buck asks, because the timeline from basketball games and helicopter rides to ghosting is full of gaps he’ll never fill in.

Taking a deep breath, Eddie lowers his hands, turns toward him, knees touching, and says, “You deserve so much more than someone who tolerates you.” He frowns, and Buck aches to reach out and brush out the distress under his fingertips. “That’s not… that isn’t love, Buck.”

“Guess I have some exploring to do, too,” Buck says softly, and Eddie’s gaze snaps back up from where it had settled somewhere near Buck’s chin. “But, gelato guy?”

“He was, uh.” Eddie clears his throat, still not leaning out of his space. “Not really my type.”

“You already have a type?”

“Yes. No.” Eddie flushes and ducks his head, somehow small, despite himself. “It’s stupid.”

“Nothing you say is stupid.” He raises an eyebrow, and Buck laughs, daring to place a hand on Eddie’s bare thigh, his thumb caught on the edge of the robe. Physical reassurance and all that jazz. Eddie melts into it. “Maybe it’s stupid. Tell me anyway?”

“I’m thirty-three, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” he whispers, a secret shared in the darkening room. “And if I was already fucked up before–” He shushes Buck when he begins to protest. “If I was already bringing so much baggage into a relationship before, who’s going to want me now, when it feels like I’m starting from scratch?” He swallows hard. “So maybe I didn’t want to go home with that guy. But it was… it was nice. To be flirted with.” He pauses, slides a hand over Buck’s knee as he releases a shaky breath. “Reassuring, maybe. To think a man could find me attractive.”

“Jesus, Eddie.” Buck lets his head drop against Eddie’s shoulder. He inhales, coconut aftersun lotion and artificial hotel laundry detergent and Eddie's aftershave. “You can’t be serious.”

“I told you it was stupid.”

Buck grabs the collar of the robe before he can pull back. “Any guy in the world would be lucky to have you. You–You’re so fucking beautiful.” Eddie’s chest rises and falls in rapid succession, the small silver medallion glinting in the wash of the dim lamplight. The red light starts going off in Buck’s head. He’s too close to the line, too close to dragging them into the strange grey area they’ve never cared to define.

“You mean that?” Eddie asks, barely audible.

“I’d lose my mind if a guy like you looked my way,” he confesses, ready to kneel.

The first time Buck fell out of a tree, the one he could climb out onto from his bedroom window, he’d landed flat on his back. Concussed, inevitably, but he remembers the sensation around his ribs. All the air squeezed out of him in a too-tight embrace, unable to refill his lungs.

The kiss is a bit like that—a gut punch, a rush, a crash, every molecule of oxygen dissipated. Perhaps the chastest attempt Buck has ever received, but the only first kiss in the tumultuous trajectory of his existence that leaves him wanting another.

By the time Buck reacts, Eddie is pulling away with overflowing apologies.

“Buck, I–”

“Eddie,” Buck says in a hoarse whisper, tracing a shaking hand up Eddie’s forearm as he watches, something close to a whimper escaping on an exhale. “Please.”

And it’s Eddie, beautiful, brave Eddie, who leans back in.

The second time, their second try, is nothing remarkable. No fireworks or freeze of time, no ubiquitous literary turns of phrase. But Eddie’s lips are on his like they’ve done this a million times before, no hesitation as they slide together, and Buck feels it everywhere, every atom of his being reignited after months of stagnation. He feels it everywhere, like he has been brought back to his own body.

The two of them, alone, in the middle of the world. A rightness no one else could replicate.

Eddie’s hands turn frantic along Buck’s bare torso, like he’s not quite sure where he’s supposed to place them. Buck parts his mouth, inviting, and swipes over his lower lip. Eddie tilts his head in turn, their noses catching as he deepens the kiss.

Buck has imagined more variations of this moment than he’d like to admit. Caught outside in a rainstorm, Eddie patching him up in the back of the ambulance, after dinner, sipping decaf coffee before they head off to bed.

Every instance is a failure; nothing could have come close to the real thing. Their lips mismatching, falling out of rhythm when Buck tries to pull back for air and Eddie overcompensates, surging forward and clacking their teeth together. The breathy laugh Eddie lets out at the mishap, the burn in Buck’s lungs when he leans in again, testing the limit, wishing he could keep their mouths together for half a second longer. How Eddie can’t seem to stop finding places to touch him, lines up his arms, cradling his jaw, fingers curled into the waistband of his sweatpants.

Unthinking, Buck runs a hand up the soft inside of his thigh, force of habit from one too many nights out, ghosting the edge of his boxers as Eddie’s hand slides into his hair.

Eddie’s grip tightens. “Fuck.”

“Sorry.” He retracts his wandering touch. “I’m sorry. I didn’t–”

Eddie tugs at the loose tie on his robe, shrugging it off. It crumples to a heap on the marbled floor. With a callused touch Buck could identify blindfolded, he guides Buck’s hand back up. The lines of his muscle tense underneath, and Buck slowly runs a thumb back and forth until they relax, Eddie growing visibly hard. Buck doubts he’s doing much better.

This is the precipice now. A kiss, several, they could come back from, he thinks. Laugh them off, chalk it up to the hazy Italian night and mild sun sickness. But this—Buck moving his hand higher to palm him over the fabric of his boxers, Eddie’s fingernails embedding crescent moons into Buck’s shoulder as he shifts his hips against the pressure, chasing more, is a point of no return.

“We can stop,” Buck says, even as Eddie’s mouth finds the side of his neck, hard enough that it may bruise. “Just–Just tell me.”

“Don’t want you to stop,” he says, breath hot and heavy as he fits his mouth to Buck’s jaw again. “Want you to touch me.”

His chest heaves, concave, when Buck pushes him back against the pillows, a trail of goosebumps erupting down his skin.

“Yeah?” Buck gives him a tilted smile, heart beating so hard against the cage of his ribs he fears Eddie may feel it in the space between their bodies, the pulsing shift in the air as he resolves to give Eddie his all. “I can do that.”

He pushes Eddie’s legs apart and positions himself between them. Leaning down to kiss him, chests flush, Buck nearly loses it right then and there. Eddie weaves his fingers into the notches of his spine, relishing the content noise Buck lets out when he sinks lower, down to the curve of his ass.

He indulges himself, pressing wet, open-mouthed kisses along his neck, down his chest, fingers slipping under the elastic waistband of Eddie’s underwear to tease along the base of his cock. Eddie arches up to seek friction, letting out a strained noise he tries to muffle into the nearest object. Buck soothes the movement with a press against his stomach and removes his hands until Eddie looks back at him.

“Why did you stop?” he asks, dazed, almost petulant, and Buck runs a thumb along his spit-slick bottom lip, watching Eddie’s eyes flutter closed. A miracle, a revelation, to see him like this, flung out and open, all because of Buck.

Too caught up in it all to remember this is for Eddie’s sake, not because Eddie wants him, not because Buck is allowed to have him beyond this stolen pocket of night, a blip in the space-time continuum, he presses a kiss to the tip of Eddie’s nose.

Because he wants to. Because, if only once, he can.

“Wanna make you feel good,” Buck says, unable to stop the raw desire bleeding through his voice. “Will you let me?”

“You always make me feel good,” he says, and Buck uses the last of his dwindling clarity to kiss him, press him deeper into the mattress, grinding their hips together.

Tugging at his waistband, he asks, “Can I take these off now?”

“Yeah. Yes. Please. Yes, please.”

Buck tuts. “You could be a little more polite about it.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie says with a familiar scowl. Buck runs a loose hand down his length and gets a litany of profanity in response. “You–fuck–you too. Everything. Off.” Eddie pulls at Buck’s sweatpants, laughing when they get tangled around Buck’s ankles and he has to stand up to free himself. When he takes too long ogling Eddie on the bed, flushed and pink and waiting, he waves a floppy hand for Buck to come back.

“Patience,” Buck says around a sigh, and Eddie yanks him back into bed by the wrist, a twin groan when Buck collapses on top of him, the pressure too much and not enough. He resumes his path down Eddie’s body with his mouth, a man on a mission, pausing when he reaches the tip, looking up at Eddie through his eyelashes. “What do you like?”

Eddie gives a slight shake of his head. “I… I don’t know.” He adjusts, Buck bracketed between his legs. “I don’t–no one’s ever–” Clearing his throat, he tries to smile, but his earlier confidence has vanished, collapsed into resignation. “Just. Do whatever you want. Whatever you like.”

Buck guides him back down, gentle. “Mm. No.”

“No?”

“This is the fun part, isn’t it?” He presses a kiss to the tip, smug when Eddie’s thighs twitch at the light contact. “We get to figure out what you like now.”

Eddie stares at him for a prolonged beat, eyes shining, before he breaks into a laugh, the real thing. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess we do.”

Turns out Eddie likes a lot of things. Buck’s hands and his mouth and his tongue. All three in some ecstatic combination. Eddie likes twisting a hand in his hair, likes it when Buck takes him to the back of his throat, all the way down, grips his hips with a bruising force and makes him come with a singular focus. Likes it when Buck swallows, the military instinct ingrained into Eddie a lifetime ago drowned out in his cacophony of moans. A fragile whimper floats through the room when Buck releases him, jaw aching and used.

“You’re so pretty like this.” Buck maps the path back up to Eddie with his mouth, covering Eddie’s body with his own. He grinds down on Eddie’s thigh to relieve himself. “So loud.”

Eddie shifts his leg, almost cruel as he watches Buck groan at the loss. “Don’t. Wanna get you off.”

“God.”

“Nope.” Hands around Buck’s waist, Eddie flips them on their sides, two parenthesis curling toward each other. “Still just me.” Spitting into his palm, Eddie wraps a hand around him, calloused and assured. Buck’s insult is cut off with a lewd moan that reverberates off the walls. He hopes no one on this floor has their balcony doors open.

“Now who’s being loud?” he whispers against Buck’s ear, picking up the pace with a twist of his wrist.

If Buck was on the edge before, if he could’ve come from the sounds Eddie was making alone, it’s nothing compared to now. He tries to stave it off. Tries to draw it out, bargaining with his own body. If he lasts, it means Eddie will keep touching him, will stay pressed against him in a dozen points of uncharted contact, a knee shoved between Buck’s, breathing into each other’s mouths. It means Buck gets to exist at this juncture before he’s cast from it. But it’s a one-sided game, and Eddie is the inevitable victor.

Eddie leans in to kiss him, sucks Buck’s bottom lip into his mouth, holds it between his teeth like a challenge, and Buck is spilling into his hand. And Eddie—Eddie works him through it until there’s nothing left to give, until the pinprick bursts of light have cleared, the roaring of blood in his ears faded, and Buck’s hips move in a stutter. Like a sixth sense, like he knows Buck craves a release he can’t articulate, the kind of thing that has no end, Eddie doesn’t relent. Reluctant, it’s Buck who rolls away, out of Eddie’s grasp, on the brink of overstimulation and fighting to loosen the knot in his throat.

Now, in the aftermath, is the hairpin turn.

A study in Eddie, Buck has witnessed him in multitudes over the years. On the line between life and death, golf club puncturing a wall, in more compromising positions than any of their team has been privy to. A privilege, a right.

But Buck’s never seen him quite like this: a thin sheen of sweat coating his face, turning him into a watercolor, the kind of thing an impressionist could never replicate, not in any of their boldest attempts. Careful composure wrecked and unraveled, he offers Buck a tiny smile when he works up the courage to turn back toward him.

Buck tries to reach into the ether, to find adequate words, but his life appears less real the longer he lives it—how could he begin to actualize this?

Eddie likes a lot of things. More than anything they’ve done to each other tonight, he seems to like it when Buck cradles him in his arms, as much a self-serving act as it is for Eddie’s sake, drawing nonsensical patterns against his bare skin. Nestled close, Eddie presses a featherlight kiss against his bare chest. Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, Buck longs to ask for another.

Eddie’s breathing grows even. The warning bell rings again, a terrible foreboding.

But Eddie’s in his arms, and, for a moment, it’s enough.

They don’t speak of it.

Not in the morning, when Buck wakes to find Eddie already showered and dressed, back turned toward him as he sits out on the balcony, bathed in distorted fractals of morning sun. Not when Buck trips over his discarded clothes, untouched like a relic, and almost shatters the Venetian glass lamp on the nightstand in his haste to right himself. Not when Eddie greets him like it’s nothing, shoves a tepid cup of coffee into Buck’s empty, desolate hands, and asks if he slept okay.

Of course he did. Of course he fucking did.

They head out for the day, and when Buck collides with Eddie’s shoulder, unable to walk without encroaching on his path, Eddie opens a healthy distance between them. Buck’s inability to pretend leads him straight into a hell of his own making. Maddie told him, once, that everything he feels shows on his face, an open book. He doesn’t have the same practice in erasing it that Eddie does. Unable to mask the hurt that surely embeds itself across his features, he watches Eddie’s eyebrow twitch, guilty.

“I wanted to walk in the shade,” he offers as an explanation. “The UV index is high today.”

“Right.”

His mouth opens and closes. “Did you know there’s a gap in the ozone layer?”

Buck scoffs; he may as well have ghostwritten Christopher’s school report on it. “Did you know it’s positioned over Antarctica, and it won’t even open until September?”

“Smartass.” Eddie pauses, eyes wide and pleading and unsure. “Tell me about it?”

So Buck does. What more can he do than indulge Eddie’s every whim?

The one-sided conversation carries them to a café, their usual companionable silence over a meal resembling something closer to a hostage situation. Neither of them dare make the first move. And to think, it’s only day four of the trip. Buck fears he might do something drastic if this carries on for more than twenty-four hours. He gulps down a scalding espresso and hopes it’s enough to curb the churning in his stomach.

Eddie’s not a loud person by any means. Well. That is, the statement held true until last night. Buck focuses on balancing on the edge of the pedestrian walkway, mimicking the child a few paces in front of them, to keep from careening back into the memory. But he’s replayed it in this silence, in every stolen glance he catches Eddie throwing in his general direction, and the craving to experience it again grows more dire.

Eddie’s not loud, but he’s chatty, especially around Buck, and he doesn’t know how to get it back. How to get him, them, back. Everything in its right place. If Buck has sacrificed something sacred between them to get his mouth on Eddie, he’ll live and die with the regret.

That’s the crux of the problem; he doesn’t regret it. In fact, he’d very much like for it to happen again.

If Buck took a shot each time Eddie reels back from an accidental touch, a mere brush of their fingers, he supposes the alcohol poisoning might be enough to get him through the day. After Eddie drops and shatters a mug in a tourist-trap store, alarmed when Buck places a casual hand on his waist to slip past him and twenty-six euro lighter for his crimes, Buck is about ready to book the first flight out of the country.

“Do you want to go kayaking?” Eddie asks, cheeks bright red as they exit the seaside shop. “I saw a rental place around the corner.”

“Sure,” Buck says, even though his choice of activity was leaning more toward falling off a very tall cliff.

Buck tunes out the safety instruction speech in favor of watching a couple on the beach, their hands intertwined. The taller girl grins and shoves her girlfriend into the shallow waves, only to fall in after her. With a shriek and a kiss of apology, they continue their walk with clasped hands. Buck stares down at his palm, the arch of his life line. The world could be so simple.

He scrawls his name on a liability form, half-hoping Eddie will tease him for his handwriting. They steady the light kayaks into the water. He lets Eddie set the course and follows him on a loop between the villages, wishing he knew how to be less inwardly punishing and enjoy the scene in front of him, the crystalline water, the sun bleached houses dotted along the cliffside. Maddie would have his head if she knew he was verging on bored right now. Buck’s mind has a singular focus on a good day, and, right now, the entirety of it is firmly fixated on Eddie.

Distracted, Buck’s paddle hits a cluster of rocks, and he’s knocked off-balance, tipping into the water before he can right himself. Cool and heavy, he lets himself sink down, the pressure around him greater than the one in his chest. He’s contemplating the operational safety of the rental stand when they failed to provide so much as a life vest, that he should read up on Italian law when they’re back at the hotel, when a vice-like grip wraps around his arm and yanks him back toward the light.

Eddie.

“Are you hurt?” he asks.

Buck blinks against the brightness. “Uh.”

Eddie’s hands grip the side of his face. “Did you hit your head?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Then why didn’t you swim back up?” he demands.

Buck shrugs. “Felt nice.”

“It what?”

Horrified, Buck shakes his head. “Not–Not like that! It’s just–it’s hot–the water was nice. Cool. I didn’t mean–”

As if remembering himself, Eddie jerks back and retrieves Buck’s paddle before it can float to an irretrievable location. “Need help getting back up?”

“I–I got it.”

Once he’s safely back in the kayak, phone spared from where it had fallen into the bottom of the boat before he fell out, Eddie tells him, “Go ahead of me, in case you tip over again.”

“Eddie–”

“Do it, Buck.”

Eddie’s gaze bores into his skull as they return. If the Olympic kayak team is looking for a new member, Buck’s certain he has a fair shot. The owner raises his eyebrows when he sees them, waterlogged and shoes squelching, and tells them to be more careful next time. They return to the hotel, back to the scene of the crime and, through an unspoken treatise, maintain the distance.

This is what Eddie wants, he reasons as he sits out on the balcony. Eddie remains inside, and Buck pretends to read until the words are nothing more than black blobs. He tries to text Maddie. Bobby. Ravi. Hen. Chimney. Anyone other than the person six feet away from him. Zero notifications appear, and Buck curses his entire friend circle for holding jobs in the same field. He thinks about texting Christopher, but, nauseatingly, he feels like he should ask Eddie’s permission. If this is Eddie trying to let him down easy, Buck will spare Chris as much hurt as possible.

The fear sinks back in, and he’s back at square one. Eddie is an intelligent person; maybe he had sensed it, this illicit love Buck is harboring, cultivating like a weed in his chest. Perhaps he had felt it imbued in Buck’s every touch, everything he was trying to hold back. He's given too much, more than Eddie wanted.

Buck has never been careful.

“Should we get dinner?” he asks as he ducks back inside, voice pitched two octaves too loud.

Eddie startles. “Oh. I’m not really hungry.”

“Do you–Come with me?” The request comes out more like a plea, and Eddie shrinks into his chair.

“I’m tired,” he says. “Sorry.”

Eddie kissed him. Kissed him first. Asked Buck to touch him, if he could lay his hands on Buck, too. If he wants to forget it—fine. Fantastic. Buck can find a way to be okay with that. But he won’t even look Buck in the face, and that’s the part he can’t accept.

“Tired of me?” Buck asks, poking the bear, so to speak. He means for it to come out like a joke, but it’s flat and pathetic and loaded with every other emotion he's felt over the last twelve hours. When Eddie’s face falls, Buck waves a hand. “Forget it. Get some rest.”

“Hey,” Eddie calls out weakly, but he doesn’t move to stop him from leaving, so Buck goes.

The petulance descends into irritation, and Buck stops at the first pizza place he finds—clearly targeted toward tourists, if the prices are any indication—and orders a slice of the four cheese and veggie. He takes it to a bench by the water, snapping a petty photo and sending it to the 118 group chat. Eddie and his lactose intolerance can suck it.

Eddie. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. Everything returns to him, somehow.

Chimney’s contact photo flashes on screen, and Buck wipes a greasy hand down his shirt to answer the video call.

“I’ll have you know Cap is making stir fry. With the spicy tofu you like.” Buck scowls. Bobby swore he wouldn’t make any of his favorites while he was gone.

“How’s the coffee pot situation?” He knows Maddie has been sharing his daily espresso photos with Chim.

He plasters on a smile that looks more like he’s being held at gunpoint. “I like it when the grounds are inside. It adds texture.”

Hen comes into view, a soothing hand across his shoulders. “The new one arrives tomorrow.”

“Thank God.” Buck picks a chunk of tomato off the pizza and flings it into the grass. Eddie eats the tomatoes, Buck eats the mushrooms. They’ve worked out a system. “I can’t go back to drinking that garbage.”

“I knew Italy would make you even more insufferable,” Ravi says from somewhere behind the camera.

“And I know someone who will not be receiving a magnet!”

“Oh no,” Ravi deadpans. “Whatever will I do?”

A seagull begins to peck at Buck’s discarded tomatoes, squawking at him like it’s displeased with the selection. “I’m not giving you more.”

“Is that Eddie?” Hen asks, and Ravi slides into view, the three of them squished together in the small frame.

“Uh–no.” Buck flips the camera. “Made a new friend.”

“Buck the bird whisperer,” Chim says. “You’re going to be that old man in the park feeding them stale bread.”

“Bread isn’t good for them,” he says around a mouthful of pizza.

Hen wrinkles her nose. “Chew your food before you speak.”

He takes another bite for good measure. “You’re not the boss of me.”

Ravi leans in. “At least show us Eddie instead of your face.”

“He’s, uh, he’s not here.”

“In Italy?” Ravi asks, horrified. “What did you do to him?”

Buck rolls his eyes. “He’s at the hotel.”

“Fought already, huh?” Chim asks.

“N–No.” Buck clears his throat, tries again. “No.”

“Very believable,” Ravi mutters, and Buck wishes technology were developed enough to strangle him through the screen.

“Everything okay?” Hen asks, her genuine concern almost prying everything loose from where Buck has buried it deep, deep down.

“Of course it is,” he says with a smile. “He was just. Tired. I wanted to go out since it’s our last night in Cinque Terre.”

Based on the three-way look they exchange, Buck knows they don’t buy it, but they don’t press the issue further. As the sky grows dark, Buck rambles on about what they’ve gotten up to—excluding one particular activity—and listens to the firehouse updates. Hen’s thinking about enrolling in Spanish classes because she misses going to school and wants to better communicate with their patients; Chim has started playing Vivaldi concertos for the baby (Maddie has texted Buck about it, swearing she’s going to destroy the speaker if she has to listen to “The Four Seasons” again); Ravi hit a new personal best on the bench press. They take the call from the bunkroom to the kitchen, where Bobby greets him with a cheery wave. Buck misses him with a tangible ache. Bobby must catch it through the pixelated screen, somehow.

“I’ve got a new recipe to try with you,” he says, taking the phone from Chim and propping it up so Buck can watch him toss vegetables into the wok. “I expect you to come back with some new ideas, too.” Buck rambles on for ten minutes about the flakiness of Italian pastries before the alarm goes off, and Bobby bids him farewell.

Buck lets go of his vengeance on the walk back, stopping to pick up a container of strawberries and store-bought tiramisu. He imagines Eddie eating them in the middle of the night like he does on shift, forking a few bites of a blueberry pie from Bobby's bake or Buck’s ever-evolving chocolate cake recipe. Maybe he’ll look at Buck, thank him, and they can move on.

It’s when Buck is standing outside their room that he realizes he’d forgotten to grab the key. Eddie tends to take it, better at keeping track of their belongings. A part of him was holding out hope to sneak inside and let Eddie discover the bribe on his own. He knocks on the door, and Eddie opens it in a heartbeat, like it’s any ordinary day at South Bedford.

“I don’t have beer.” Buck reveals his purchase from behind his back. “But I do have these.” When Eddie says nothing, only chews his lower lip with the same complicated expression on his face from earlier, Buck forfeits the act. “Do–Do you regret it?”

His eyes widen, and he bunches a fist in the front of Buck’s shirt to drag him inside. “Not in the hallway.”

“I-I’m sorry,” Buck says, shaken. “I didn’t–if I did something wrong–I never meant to–”

“You didn’t,” Eddie cuts in, sinking down on the edge of the bed, arms folded across his stomach, a physical restraint. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t be sorry.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Buck asks, haphazardly stacking the containers on the cramped table next to Eddie’s room temperature juice. “You won’t–you won’t even look at me. So just tell me–”

“Because! Every time I look at you, I think about it,” he hisses, and Buck’s mouth snaps shut. “I can’t stop thinking about it.” His eyelashes flutter. “What we did. All the things I still want to do.”

Buck stops breathing. “Like… Like what?”

“Like–” Eddie shakes his head, curling inward like he might be sick. “Buck.”

Buck takes a step forward to slide a hand up the side of Eddie’s neck and forces his jaw up. “Hey. It’s okay.” When Eddie doesn’t offer an answer, Buck thumbs at his bottom lip, feeling his staccato inhale. “Tell me.”

For a split second, Buck thinks he might listen, but then he’s pushing up the excess fabric of Buck’s oversized t-shirt to pop the button on his pants.

“I could show you,” he says.

Eddie sinks to his knees.

They try to speak of it.

“Stop thinking so hard.” Buck says. They’ve migrated to the bed in the aftermath, naked, on their backs, nothing more than the thin sheet to offer a modicum of privacy. It's become a foreign concept. At this point, Buck may as well walk around without so much as a stitch of clothing.

“I’m not.”

“I can hear your thoughts.”

“You can’t hear shit.”

Eddie rubs at his knees, bruised from the hard tile after he insisted he didn’t need the pillow Buck had offered him. There was too much spit, Eddie trying to take him too far and gagging, a syncopated rhythm that lent itself more to accidental edging than anything, and Buck would still rank it the best blowjob of his life. Sue him.

A part of him wonders if it could last this way—easy, uncomplicated. But he knows, deep down, this is a terrible idea, despite what the mess of hormones told him that first night, one that will be made exponentially worse if he refuses to talk about it. He’s fucking around, and he’s going to find out.

“This doesn’t have to be a big deal,” Buck finds himself saying before he thinks better of it. It is a big deal. Maybe the biggest in the world. This won’t soothe Eddie though, won’t calm whatever is racing through his head.

He grows silent, then, “It doesn’t?”

Buck forces himself to turn on his side and face Eddie, which turns out to be a grave miscalculation. Hair a mess from where Buck had held onto it, cheeks flushed, lips swollen and pink, there’s no way he can have a rational conversation about this. If Eddie asked him to elope right now, looking like that, who would he be to say no?

“We could do this,” Buck says, lying through his teeth. “No… No complications.”

“Complications,” Eddie echoes, and Buck wonders if he’s projecting the disappointment in his tone.

“Pinkie promise.” For good measure, he extends his little finger, and Eddie rolls his eyes before he seals the oath. “C’mon, tell me what you’re thinking. I’m your best friend, you–you’re supposed to talk to me about these things.”

Eddie huffs at the spotty logic, but says, “Okay.” Pushing himself up on an elbow, the sheet slips to expose his right hip. Buck forces himself not to look down. “I’m thinking that… that I like…” He makes a vague gesture between them, and Buck can't help but take the opening.

“I mean. I would hope so,” he says, pleased when it makes Eddie laugh and shake his head like he can’t quite believe it. “What do you want from this?”

“I, um…” The flush spreads from the tips of his ears to the base of his neck, and his gaze flits from Buck’s lips to his bare stomach to the dark little trail of hair that disappears into the white sheets. “I would–if it was something you were also interested in–I–I want, or, I’d like…” He trails off, eyes pleading like he expects Buck to fill in the gaps.

“You just had my dick in your mouth, and this is what you’re getting shy about?” Eddie groans, yanking the pillow out from underneath Buck’s head to bury his face in it. Buck pokes at his arm. A nice, muscled arm. One that feels quite good when it’s around his waist. “Hey. Eddie.”

Whatever he says is muffled into the pillow, but he peeks out at Buck, the look he gives him all wide and soft and wanting, and—oh. Buck blinks a few times. He can’t lose himself in this. Not now, not ever. Whatever Eddie agrees to will be casual, will be cut off the second they’re back in LA.

Buck is good at casual. An expert, really. He’d had a fuckbuddy in college for, like, five months until she'd fallen for someone else and politely broken things off, and Buck had gotten kicked out anyway, and she’d been kind enough to invite him to her engagement party a year later. Everything was fine. Completely and utterly fine.

So he’s been there. Done that. He came out unscathed. He can do it again.

“I want to suck you off again,” Eddie lets out in a rush, somehow polite and saccharine and so, so unaware that Buck has wanted this to be a habit for as long as he can remember.

Buck dares to brush a strand of hair from his face, the gesture far too affectionate for what they’re discussing. “Lucky for you, you give above average head.”

“‘Above average,’ hm?” Smiling, already reaching for Buck, he nods. “I’ll take it.”

“Rating is subject to change,” he continues, trying to calm the euphoria that overtakes him when Eddie moves to straddle him, the sheet the sole barrier between their bodies. “Based on performance.”

He leans down under the pretense of a kiss, drawing a whine from Buck when he taps his nose instead. “Thought you’d be less of a nerd in bed, to be honest.”

“You love it.” He bucks his hips in a half-hearted attempt to shove Eddie off.

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, like it’s nothing, like this whole thing is nothing, and Buck feels his insides shrivel.

It’s not. It’s not nothing.

“Are you sure this is okay?” Eddie asks, idly tracing the lines of Buck’s inky black tattoos.

“More than okay.” Buck wonders how many lies he can get away with in the span of a single conversation. “I mean, I’m having fun.” Buck pauses. “Are you?”

“Was that not obvious?”

“Right. I think… if we’re both having fun. And this feels good—” a nod “—it just makes sense.” Methodical, he runs through the list, hit with the mortifying realization that he has crafted an argument for this, anticipating the conversation he was too cowardly to start. “We understand each other’s situations.” Intimately. “We’re on this trip together, alone.” Proximity. Privacy. “And we’re friends. Best friends. We’re, like, the ideal candidates for each other.”

Eddie hums. “Guess we are.”

“And we… we both need this.” Eddie shoots him an odd look he can’t decipher at that, but he powers through. “What happens in Italy stays in Italy, right?”

“Pretty sure that’s Vegas,” he argues, voice breathy when Buck’s hand starts to drag down his torso.

He pulls Eddie down by the chain of his silver medallion, pausing before their mouths meet. “You were saying?”

Eddie presses him down into the mattress, and Buck wonders who he’s trying to fool.

It happens again, and again, and again.

After hours on another train, a short flight down to Naples en-route to the Amalfi Coast portion of the itinerary, Buck feels the buildup start deep in his solar plexus.

Consumed by an animal, hedonistic want, Eddie, on his knees in front of him, Buck tries to commit the frame to memory, wills himself not to let go of the important details when he reruns it—Eddie’s nails seeking purchase along his thighs as he drinks him down, his drawn-out gasps when Buck returns the favor, the slide of their lips, slick with sweat and spit and come, desperate and aching as the high releases its hold.

The limerence is strongest in the aftermath, Buck finds. Harder to avoid, when Eddie curls into him, a magnetic pull. Harder to write off, when Eddie continues to stamp butterfly kisses along his jaw, mouth pressed against the hollow underside. Harder to shove down, when Buck can feel the shape of Eddie’s smile like a brand on his skin.

Harder to erase, when Buck reaches out for quiet confirmation in the dark, asks him, “Good?”

Impossible to overcome, when Eddie tells him, earnest and hard-won, “Everything is good with you,” and Buck can bask in the bright illusion of a world where he almost believes it.

“So I ate one of the cookies because I wanted to be friendly, and there was a lot of blood–I mean, it was gushing from her head–and I was thinking, really, how bad could they be?” Buck slaps a palm on the table. Eddie startles, reaching out to steady his limoncello. They’ve gone for an early morning aperitivo. When in Rome. Or, in their case, Sorrento. “Crunchy peanut butter. The psychopath used crunchy peanut butter.”

“You could have, you know, not accepted food from a stranger on a call.”

“That’s not the point,” Buck stresses as he swirls the straw in his Aperol spritz. “He demolished the integrity of the entire cookie.”

Eddie leans back in his chair, tilting his head at an odd angle. “Uh huh.”

“And, get this, he didn’t even want to ride in the ambulance with his girlfriend, even though it was his idea to try and do a backflip in the kitchen, and–” He pauses, takes in the sight of Eddie, relaxed and obscured by his oversized sunglasses, the little gasp he lets out when the women at the table behind them start talking over each other.

“Stava dormendo con la sorella di suo marito!”

"Coglione!”

“Eddie!”

He sits up straight and clears his throat. “Yes. Sorry. Continue.”

“You’re not listening to me,” Buck whines and hooks a foot around Eddie’s ankle. The brief slide of their bare skin is enough to send sparks up in his gut.

He spares a glance over his shoulder before he’s gesturing for Buck to lean in. “You wouldn’t believe the things those two are talking about.”

“Tell me right now.”

“Better start working on your Spanish again.” Grinning, he steals a sip of Buck’s drink. “Great language for eavesdropping.” Buck starts to retract his leg, and Eddie sandwiches Buck’s ankle between his own to trap him in place.

Things have always been this way. Eddie’s constant touch, taking food from each other’s plates without asking, a comfortable silence and knowing when they need the very opposite. In the midst of whatever it is they’re doing, these things remain, and Buck takes a certain pride in their unerring rhythm. But now he gets to have more, this content, satiated Eddie, who often needs a reminder he can be loud when Buck’s going down on him, who clings onto him in the aftermath, their skin tacky and their shapes blurred into one. Now that they’ve mutually stumbled into this, Buck has been granted another way to try and make him happy.

“You’re so nosy,” Buck says, in lieu of everything he'd like to share.

Unspoken rule number one: the sex is sex, nothing more.

Cheeks rosy, Eddie flicks at his wrist. “So are you. Why do you know so much about our neighbors?”

“If I had moved in sooner, maybe Meth Lab Jim would have been apprehended more quickly!”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Athena.”

“Because she has good gossip.”

Eddie’s jaw drops. “You haven’t told me anything.”

“Translate for me, and I’ll tell you about the guy with the illegal in-ground pool in his backyard.”

“So it all started after Giovanni’s second marriage…”

The morning passes, the two of them tucked under an umbrella in the quotidian hustle and bustle of Piazza Tasso, and Buck’s attention hinged on Eddie’s every word.

Buck rides him for the first time that evening.

He blames the hotel, the lavish, high-ceilinged hotel that puts them up in the king suite. The LAFD surely shares some of the fault, doling out Buck’s winnings like they’re billionaires and giving him excuses to stick his tongue in Eddie's mouth along various parts of the western Italian coast. Eddie reaches for the bottle of white wine on the bed, surrounded by rose petals and a note. While he inspects the label, Buck flips the thick cardstock.

Dear Mr. and Mr. Buckley-Diaz,

“This looks dry,” Eddie interrupts, nose wrinkled. “You can have it.”

Buckley. Diaz. Hyphenated. Buckley-Diaz. Mr. and Mr., in fact. Which would make him—

“Evan Buckley-Diaz,” Eddie says, reading over his shoulder. Buck nearly jumps out of his skin. “Why is your surname first?”

“That’s what you're focusing on? They think we’re married!”

“So?” Eddie plucks the card from his hand. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Buck’s not responsible for what happens next.

Eddie’s leaning back against the headboard, the rose petals already sticking to his thighs, naked and hard and fixated on Buck’s slick fingers as he opens himself up. In an attempt at halfhearted control, Eddie’s own hands are twisted in the silken sheets.

“You can–” Buck lets out a shaky moan when he manages a third finger, and Eddie knocks his head back so hard it must hurt, swearing. “Touch me.”

Eddie reaches for the lube he’d purchased in secret before Buck had woken up that morning, the fucker, and works a hand down Buck’s cock, the whole thing too wet and warm and reminiscent of Eddie’s mouth the night before for him to last.

“Shit, fuck, Eddie.” Bracing a hand on the headboard, he sucks in a deep breath. “Not so–Not yet. I–I’ll come.”

“Sounds like a you problem.”

“Fuck you.”

Eddie smiles. “That could be arranged.”

Buck thinks he might black out.

He fumbles for a condom, the one he’d torn off the strip earlier now lost in the mess of sheets, and Eddie slides their palms together to stop him.

“So. I’m clean, if you…”

“Me too,” Buck says quickly. “Got tested after–yeah. But, you know. Whatever you prefer.”

A muscle works in Eddie’s jaw, and he shrinks back into the pillows with a shrug, noncommittal.

For all of Eddie’s hidden boldness in the bedroom, Buck marvels at the occasional timidness, the odd things that seem to draw it out. The evidence he’s gathered circles back to the same point of origin: Eddie wants, and he doesn’t seem to understand how to ask, completely unaware that Buck would give him anything. There’s no point between heaven and earth that Buck wouldn’t traverse to fulfill his every wish.

“Tell me,” Buck says and strokes Eddie a few times. He can venture a guess where this is headed, but he wants Eddie to say it. Needs him to confirm, to know he’s allowed to ask.

“Wanna feel you,” Eddie says. “Could we… just like this?”

Buck presses a kiss to his forehead in answer before he lines himself up. “Remember, I like it when you’re loud.”

“I am not–” When Buck sinks down, Eddie’s hips jerk up to chase the feeling, and they release a moan in tandem. Eddie scrambles for purchase, nails trailing lines into pale flesh.

“Okay?” Buck whispers, though he should direct the question inward. Inward. Inside. Eddie is inside of him; they’re closer than they’ve ever been. Buck wants to exist in it forever.

Eddie manages an aborted nod. “Yeah. You?”

“You feel so good,” he says, leaning forward to kiss Eddie. The telltale sting of tears builds, so he focuses on the strain in his thighs as he starts to move.

“Yeah, yeah, just like that,” Eddie says, and the words go straight to Buck’s dick. A bead of sweat trickles down the side of his neck, and Eddie licks it up, followed by the sharp nip of his teeth against Buck’s clavicle, the mark soothed into place with his tongue. “Doin’–Doin’ so good for me.” Eddie grips at his hair, their bodies forced closer, and his kisses turn sloppy and open-mouthed.

“M’not gonna last.”

“Haven’t touched you,” Eddie says. “You could come like this?”

As if to prove his point, Buck’s dick begins to leak in earnest. “It’s your fault.”

Eddie lets out a light, breathy laugh, incredulous. “Me?”

“No one’s ever felt as good as you,” Buck admits. He doesn’t have time to overthink the confession, because Eddie’s letting out a jumbled, incoherent stream of praise, his grip going slack as Buck rides him through it, tumbling over the edge to follow a moment later, untouched.

They’ve slid down in their haze, Eddie at an awkward angle and Buck half-collapsed on top of him, Eddie still inside. Buck manages to pull off, pressing an apologetic kiss against Eddie’s lips when he hisses at the sensation. One last kiss for the road, he reasons, before it becomes unacceptable for the remainder of the day.

Eddie doesn’t seem to like it. He rolls on his side to kiss Buck in earnest, uncaring when the mess between them smears across their chests. Buck decides to ignore the state of the duvet until it’s time to check out. He lets Eddie have his way with him, happy to make out like teenagers at a first sleepover until they can’t catch their breath. Satisfied, Eddie props himself up on an elbow, a hand supporting his head.

He takes one look at Buck and bursts into a laugh.

Buck blinks at the break in his usual composure. “What the fuck?”

“Sorry.” Eddie bites his lip. “You–Your hair.” He makes a little noise as he runs a hand through Buck’s curls.

“You were playing tug-of-war with it,” he grumbles, secretly pleased.

Sheepish, Eddie runs a fingertip over his birthmark. “Shower? I’ll wash it for you.”

“You don’t have to,” Buck says on instinct.

“I want to,” he says, all traces of his earlier amusement vanished. “Let me?”

Powerless to deny him, Buck nods and follows him to the bathroom on legs that feel like jello. He lets Eddie perform the simple ritual and revels in the nascent ache in his lower back, the one that’s somehow spread to his chest, like a piece of shrapnel wedged between his ribs. They’re silent, but Eddie touches him everywhere, like he wants to make sure Buck is really standing before him.

“Thank you,” Eddie says eventually, ever-gentle as he rinses the excess soap down the drain.

Confused, Buck turns to face him. “For what?”

“You always ask me what I want.”

“Jesus, Eddie. You don’t have to thank me for that.”

“You never make me feel bad about it.” He shakes his head. “Sometimes I’m terrified to let myself enjoy it. To want it. Sex.” He tries to laugh, but it rings hollow, an echo against the tiled walls, swallowed up in the stream of hot water. “It’s like there’s this voice in the back of my head that tells me I’m not allowed. So it makes me afraid to ask for what I want. What I... need.” He scrubs at his hands. “But it didn’t feel that way with you today.”

“Whatever you want,” Buck says, slow and steady, “whatever you need, take it. It’s yours.”

“You’re the best friend with benefits I’ve ever had,” he jokes, even though they both know Buck’s the sole person to ever hold this title. He falters, features softening as he takes Buck in. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

“You’re my best friend in the world,” Buck says, because it’s the only thing he can say.

While Eddie dresses, Buck deals in scraps and pieces. He wants Eddie; he wants to shove him away. The ache is too much. Buck had thought, no, hoped this would be enough to minimize whatever tangled mess of longing he harbors toward him. One more fix before he promises to relent.

Except now, he sees the two of them as they could be—beautiful and golden, everything heavy, made light. To have and to hold, and Buck is granted access to neither.

If Buck could build a time machine, he’d use it to stop himself from slipping a handful of pale green tickets into the raffle bucket.

Buck rises before Eddie—a rarity—and the more conceited part of him would like to chalk it up to the incredible sex, but the part susceptible to defeatism wins out. Eddie is likely exhausted from their rapid pace, a decade of missed sleep, and, worst of all, the emotional turmoil of Buck clinging to him like a leech. He knows he’s doing it.

They’ve neglected to establish any actual rules around their summer affair, but Buck knows from his limited experience that it normally doesn’t include cuddling and showers and making out. But Eddie gets clingy and soft after sex, all flushed and warm and glued to Buck’s side; he doesn’t know how to enforce the lines in these moments. Not when Eddie seems so incandescently happy in a way Buck would die, and die, and die to ensure he continues to experience it.

He brews a flavorless instant coffee with the electric kettle since Eddie isn’t awake to chastise him and steps out onto the balcony, scrolling aimlessly through his contacts for a victim to listen to his woes. Maddie is out of the question. For any call. She would sniff him out in an instant, and he can’t tell his sister about this. Chimney is crossed off the list too, both because of his inability to keep a secret and because Maddie would wheedle it out of him anyway. Briefly, he considers Hen, but she would be far too rational about it. No, what he needs is an enabler, someone tight-lipped and imbued with a healthy amount of fearful respect for Buck.

He needs Ravi Panikkar.

“Hey, man, I’m glad you called,” Ravi says when he picks up the video call, rather frazzled for someone who should be enjoying his forty-eight off.

“You are?” Buck asks.

“I know. This may be the day pigs fly.”

“I’m hanging up.”

“You called me first!” he points out as he runs a hand through his hair. “But I need us to talk about me for a minute.”

“Everything okay?” Buck asks, his own predicament momentarily cast aside.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, tone delicate, and Buck immediately dislikes wherever this is headed. “Eddie’s back at the 118. Bobby’s leaving. Everything is falling back into place. And, like, where is my place?”

“Okay,” he says slowly, losing the thread of Ravi’s spiral. “What are you saying?”

“The, uh, B-shift has an opening,” he says with a nervous laugh, but the smile drops from his face. “I was going to put in a transfer request.”

“You want to go back to B-shift? They suck!”

“Pretty sure you shouldn't talk about our coworkers that way.”

“Ravi. What’s this really about?”

He props his phone up, the twinkling Los Angeles skyline visible over his shoulder. “I don’t know, man. Sometimes I think about the lab. What happened.” He pauses, and Buck fights to keep his expression neutral so he’ll go on. “If there had been someone with more experience inside, someone like Eddie–” Buck flinches and prays the pixelation covers it. “Maybe it never would have happened.”

“You–You can’t think like that.” Buck swallows down his hypocrisy. “There’s no end to it.”

“I know,” he says, quiet in the emptiness of his apartment, “but I don’t think anyone on this team needs me. Not really.”

“What, and B-shift does?”

“Will you please complete my coworker recommendation?”

“No,” Buck says, blunt. “So shut up, and listen very closely. You are not transferring. You are not leaving this team.”

“Buck–”

“I’ve never met anyone who can end the day with a smile like you can,” he interrupts. “When we have some of our worst calls, I can always count on you to boost our morale. No matter how terrible things are, you find a way to see some good. I’ve never met anyone like that.”

“Just tell me I’m naïve.”

“Not at all. You’re smart and a quick thinker. Assured. I trust you, and I would trust you to take care of anyone on our team. That includes Bobby.”

Ravi freezes, and Buck thinks the connection has dropped before he asks, “Even now?”

“You’re a good firefighter, Ravi. I said it weeks ago, and I meant it. I still do.” Buck shakes his head, determined to get this across. “I don’t care how long you’ve been a firefighter; you’re still my probie. And you–you always will be. If you don’t realize how valuable you are to this team, how much we all need and want you with us, how much I value you and our friendship, then I’ve–I’ve failed as your mentor. I’m grateful to have had you at the 118. Anyone would be so lucky.”

Ravi makes a sound suspiciously close to a sniffle. “I’m not giving you a discount on rent.”

“Asshole.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s not like you’re ever leaving Eddie’s place.”

“Eddie?" Buck coughs. "Who said anything about Eddie?” There’s a weighted pause, and he knows he’s in for it.

“Does he have something to do with why you called me?”

From inside, Buck hears the telltale clack of porcelain. “Nope.”

“Liar.”

“Don’t change the subject. You’re not going to transfer.”

With an exaggerated sigh, Ravi confirms, “I’m not going to transfer.”

“Good.”

The door slides open, and a sleep-rumpled Eddie appears. Buck sends up silent gratitude to whatever powers may be that he’s had the foresight to put his boxers and a shirt back on. He’s not sure how they would’ve been able to talk themselves out of such an incriminating picture.

“Who are you talking to out here?” He leans down to look at Buck’s screen. “Oh, hey, Rav.”

“Eddie! You leave him alone for ten minutes, and he calls me. Don’t let it happen again.”

“Okay, screw you,” Buck says, and Ravi laughs.

Eddie hums around the rim of his mug. “Noted.”

“But seriously, Buck, thank you,” he says, shy. “Means a lot for you to say that.”

Heat creeps up Buck’s neck at Eddie’s raised eyebrow. “Anytime.”

“And you know you can talk to me too?” he says, knowing full well Eddie is still there, leaning against the balcony as he stares at Buck and not the city view behind him. “About anything.”

“I will not take you up on that.”

“Whatever. I’m going to bed now.”

“Good. You need it.”

Ravi ends the call. A text comes in a moment later, but Buck swipes it away to address Eddie’s curiosity.

“Everything okay?” Eddie asks, careful.

Buck forces a smile and ignores the purplish mark peeking out from underneath the collar of Eddie’s shirt. “Everything is great.”

Eddie regards him for a prolonged moment before he gives a slow nod, squeezing Buck's shoulder before he walks back inside. Buck scrambles to unlock his phone.

Ravi

be honest dude

was that a hickey i saw on our dear edmundo?

He ignores the swirling in his gut, the horrid mixture of pleasure and guilt at the mark, and blames it on the coffee.

On an adventure to explore the city, they end up at Basilica Sant’Antonino, Buck in awe of the architecture and Eddie with enough tension to fuel a reasonably large sized city. Eddie crosses himself when they step over the threshold, spine straight. In hindsight, it’s not one of Buck’s best ideas.

“Do you want a picture?” Buck asks after he’s taken a few. Karen will appreciate them, he thinks. She always lets him flip through the architecture book on her coffee table.

“Do I want a picture,” Eddie says slowly, “in a church?”

“Y-Yeah.” The hickey is visible from where his shirt has slipped. Buck’s no expert, but he feels he’s committing a sort of sacrilege when he stares at it for too long. At least while in this building. “Is it like, a Catholic thing? No pictures?”

“Could we go?” he asks instead of answering, and Buck snaps out of his stupor enough to notice how pale he is, the irregular cadence of his breathing.

Wordless, Buck places a gentle hand on his elbow and guides them out. He forces Eddie to sit on a nearby bench and hands over what remains of his water bottle.

“Sorry,” Eddie says eventually. “Got a little warm in there.”

Buck reaches out to massage the back of his neck. “Nothing to be sorry about.” Eddie sinks into the touch, eyes squeezed shut and face screwed up. Not in pleasure or pain, but something closer to a wish to disappear. Buck hates it. “You okay?”

He nods and scrubs a hand down his face. “Let’s do something else.”

Buck files through his mental list, a constant on standby to appease Eddie’s every whim. “Should we go to the water?”

They settle on Bagni Regina Giovanna, an easy walk from where they’re staying. As they make their way, Buck yanks Eddie into a corner store to pick up a few picnic essentials—braided Sorrento mozzarella and walnuts, San Marzano tomatoes, hearty bread, white peaches, salty prosciutto, and a tangy delizie al limone, for Eddie’s sake. He makes no additions to Buck’s basket, silent as he trails him through the store.

The cove is rather secluded, but they manage to find the signs that lead through the ruins to the swimming hole. After locating a spot shaded by sweeping trees, they lay out their striped towels on the uneven rocks. Eddie, shirt and sunglasses on, takes an awkward seat.

“Hungry?” Buck asks. He shoves a peach into Eddie’s hands and bites off a chunk of bread to fuel him while he makes an open-faced sandwich. “Gotta tell Cap about these tomatoes. They grow them in the volcanic soil around this region.” Unable to wash the produce, Buck gives one a good scrub with his shirt and takes a bite, the seeds and juice dripping off his chin. “Fuck. That’s good. Want some?”

Eddie doesn’t offer a reply, his fingers indenting bruises on the peach and his attention fixed on nothing. From above their heads, someone yells as they perform an elaborate cliff dive. Buck watches the person slip into the water like a bullet, weightless.

“There’s a rumor,” Buck starts, unable to sit in the silence. He’s rambling now; he's aware. Somewhere in Eddie’s distant expression, he must hear it, too. “That Queen Giovanna II of Naples used to meet her lovers here. A–And when the villa was still standing, you could see Vesuvius. Based on materials found in the ruins, they think it was built with marble. Long columns that sloped down toward the sea.”

He watches Eddie bite his lower lip raw, unmoving.

“H-Hey. Eddie.” Buck nudges his calf, and he jumps, the delicate fruit rolling back toward Buck. “Maybe you should eat something? You were–earlier, you seemed kinda shaky.”

“I’m fine.” He clears his throat. “I’ll watch our stuff if you want to swim.”

“You can go first,” Buck offers, desperate to provoke a reaction, but Eddie merely shrugs. “Don’t you want to cliff dive?”

He shoots Buck a look, then. There it is. “Neither of us need to wind up in an Italian hospital because we cracked our head open like a watermelon.”

“Brutal. What if I want to do a cool trick?”

“Don’t even think about it, Buckley.”

“I, uh, bought this for you.” He hands Eddie the lemon dessert and a fork. “Sorrento specialty.”

Eddie stares down at the bright package. “You should have it.”

“Nope, all yours.” Buck adds a generous piece of mozzarella to the bread. “Along with this.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“Eddie.” He tries to catch his eye. “Please?”

He tries to shove the sandwich back toward Buck and ends up spilling half the ingredients. “Will you let it go?”

“Fine.” Irritated, concerned, too in love to untangle it, Buck yanks off his shirt and leaves.

“Buck!”

In a brief bout of borderline insanity, Buck considers the cliff. Eddie would rescue him, hell or high water. But he remembers his pinched expression and goes for a leisurely float in the cerulean water instead. Content to let the light waves move him about, he lets his limbs go, belly up, until he can feel a burn forming across his cheeks. He never did put on sunscreen. To indulge the masochistic part of himself that craves Eddie’s reprimand, he maneuvers back up the rocks to where he’d left him.

Eddie’s shirtless now, medallion gleaming like a brand in the hot sunlight. He doesn’t move when Buck approaches, so he shakes his wet hair out like a dog, pleased when Eddie scowls.

“Ever heard of a towel?”

“You’re laying on both,” Buck points out. Eddie’s cheeks flush, but he moves to let Buck grab one. “Relax. The sun will dry me off.”

Eddie sits up and slings a towel around Buck’s shoulders. “You’re burned.”

“Didn’t have someone to slather me in sunscreen.” He takes a large bite of Eddie’s discarded peach. “Y’know, you’re really missing out with this whole hunger strike you have going on.”

Miffed, Eddie tugs his knees against his chest, impossibly small for someone of his size, and blurts, “Do you ever think about hell?”

“Like, conceptually?”

Eddie shoots him a withering look. “Forget it.”

“Hey–Hey, no.” Buck moves to sit beside him and tugs at his arm until Eddie lifts his head. “I’m here. I’m listening. I want to understand.”

He blows out a long breath. “It’s a lot.”

“Try me.”

“My parents,” he begins, and Buck resists the urge to curse. If he never sees Helena and Ramon again, it’ll be too soon. “They used to take us to confession. My sisters and I.” He lets out a bitter laugh. “I was five the first time.”

Buck conjures up an image of tiny Eddie, forced to kneel, to internalize a kind of shame he may die trying unlearn, and fights to keep his meager lunch in his stomach. “That’s–you were a kid.”

He clears his throat. “I was five, and I had a friend from my class over. We were playing in the front yard, and I think–my mom must have been watching from the window. But I… I kissed his cheek.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, a rueful smile on his face. “She knew, somehow. Way back then. When my dad got home, they put me and Sophia in the car, and we went straight to the church. And they… they made me…” His gaze flickers toward Buck, the guilt written all over his face.

Buck places a hand on his arm when he falls silent. “You–You don’t have to talk about this.”

“I think maybe I should,” he says, so quiet it’s nearly swallowed up in the shrieks of two siblings splashing each other. Buck cups his other hand around Eddie’s ankle and waits for him to continue. “They made me confess what I had done. And it took hours, because I was a kid, and I didn’t understand what was so wrong about it.”

“And after?”

“Became a habit. Any time I so much as glanced in a guy’s direction for too long, I was expected to go.” Eddie releases the remnants of a weed he’s torn to shreds. “You know they never let me have anyone over after that? I could never understand it, why everyone was allowed to have sleepovers with their friends and why I was only allowed to join the baseball team on away games if my dad was around to chaperone. It finally clicked when I went back to El Paso. Chris had a friend over.” He lets out a humorless laugh. “Their perfect do-over son. A chance to raise real man.”

He thinks he might be sick. “They had no right.”

“I know that now. The rational part of me does.” Eddie sighs. “But there are some days I can’t shake the feeling that I’m just. Wrong. And being in that church earlier–”

“Made you feel that way,” Buck finishes, and Eddie gives him a jerky nod. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” He shoves at Buck’s shoulder, eyes beginning to water. “Just let me win the shitty parent contest today?”

“Eddie.”

“It’s not–” He swipes a rough hand across his cheeks. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Eddie. Hey. Hey. You’re okay.” Buck wraps him into a sideways hug, ear pressed against the crook of his neck, until the sniffles subside. “It’s okay.”

“To answer your question, I do think about hell,” he says. “More than conceptually.”

“But it’s–you–there’s so much we don’t understand about the world. Religion. Any of this. People twist their belief systems to try and project their own fear onto you.”

“God must hate me,” he says softly as if Buck’s words haven’t registered at all, hair tousled by the breeze.

“No,” Buck insists, because he would fight anyone, any being on any plane of existence who doesn't like Eddie Diaz. “He doesn’t.”

Eddie scoffs, not unkindly. “Like you would know.”

“I–I do know.” He extracts himself from Eddie’s loose hold to look him in the eye. “I was Episcopalian. Ish.”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, one of the, uh, very few things I remember,” he says, which earns him an unimpressed look from Eddie, “is they teach that god made everyone exactly the way they’re supposed to be, that he knew who you would be before you were even born. Right?”

Skeptical, he says, “You’re not incorrect.”

“So, logically, god can’t hate you.” Buck nudges his side. “You’re exactly the person you were made to be. What god made you. If everything was created, including you and me, according to this greater plan, how could you ever be wrong, Eddie?”

Sure, if someone questioned whether Buck believes a word of what he’s spewed, he would be powerless against the accusation. He’s incapable of grasping it. He never has understood it, this belief in a greater force that dictates who suffers and who rejoices in a hypothetical afterlife. Who gets to enjoy their time here, now, without fear or judgement. A belief system that has spiraled into an unrecognizable tool of hurt. He’s never liked it.

Bobby had invited him to mass once, and though his church had been significantly more open-minded than he assumes Eddie’s home environment was, it was enough to know it wasn’t for him. But he loves Bobby. And he loves Eddie. Sees how much it means to them, this system, this reassurance of something greater than their time on a spinning blue ball in the jellylike suspension of the atmosphere, so he can sure as hell try to understand this.

This is important to Eddie, so it’s important to Buck.

He thinks Eddie may call him on his bullshit, this shoddy chain of thought he can barely comprehend, but then Eddie’s face contorts like he might cry again, and Buck sinks into the relief of it. He places a hand on the side of Buck’s neck, eyes shining as he swipes a thumb over his cheekbone. Before Buck has time to overanalyze the fact that they’re outside, that this is not happening in a bed, in a darkened room, in a void, Eddie leans forward to kiss him, delicate and sweet and sure. Buck kisses him back, an inevitable occurrence, lips sticky with juice. Like a bookend, Eddie pulls back first.

“Sorry,” he says, face a shade of red Buck thought impossible for him. “I know it’s just–we said sex, but–”

Buck kisses him to snuff out the conjecture. “Whatever you want. It’s us, isn’t it? We don’t have to follow everyone else’s rules.”

Dazed, Eddie curls a hand against his hip. “It’s us.”

The subsequent kiss is broken apart by a whooping shout from a cliff diver’s friends. Eddie frowns when they hit the water with a resounding smack, and Buck takes the excuse to kiss away his concern.

“So,” Buck says, extracting a plastic fork that should have been recycled four hotel sink washes ago, “this picnic isn’t going to eat itself.”

For the remainder of the afternoon, visibly lightweight after the pseudo-confession, Eddie indulges himself, kisses and food and sunlight. Buck does his hardest to shove down the fear that arises alongside the slide of Eddie’s lips and lets himself dissolve into it, as if there were nothing more to existence than Eddie in his arms and the Italian sky, open and expansive.

Head resting against Buck’s stomach, fingers sticky from a peach and lips reddened to match, Eddie looks up and tells him, “Thanks for saying that.”

“You know I–I may not understand, but we can always talk about these things,” he reassures him. “You can tell me anything.”

Eddie’s wrinkles his nose. “But I hate talking.”

“Yeah,” he says around an exhaled laugh. “Been working on that for a few years.” Eddie gives Buck’s jaw a good-natured shove before he leans up to peck it.

Daylight has long faded when they make their way back into town. They stop for overpriced seafood pasta, mostly because Eddie’s been dying to try it. Buck has learned he’s rather susceptible to tourist advertisements and indulges him regardless. Pressed against cracked houses in alleyways and under dim lampposts, Eddie keeps his mouth on him on the entire journey back to their accommodation, tasting like dry white wine and Buck’s organic beeswax lip balm.

“You know,” Buck says when they’re shoulder-to-shoulder in the king-sized bed, “this is basically a sleepover.”

Eddie laughs. “Are you trying to make up for my pathetic adolescence?”

“It wasn’t pathetic.”

“You weren’t there.”

“I think that’s a good thing,” Buck says. “I was insufferable.”

“Like you aren’t now?” he asks, cackling when Buck elbows him.

“Shut up. You would’ve hated me.”

Eddie sucks in a sharp breath, all trace of amusement gone when he says, “You’re wrong.”

“Am I?”

He turns on his side, a hand snaking up to cradle Buck’s face, thumb on his birthmark. “I could never hate you.”

Eddie meets him for a kiss halfway, careful and soft, the tangle of Buck’s open linen shirt between their chests, pressed flush. There’s a strange innocence to it, a deliberate regression, but Buck doesn’t mind. Not when Eddie’s making content sounds that he can feel from where they’re pressed together.

“Now what do we do?” Eddie whispers, pressed so close he's a blur in Buck's vision. "If this is a sleepover."

Buck hums, running a hand down the side of his arm. “We can do whatever you want.”

Eddie leans back in. Buck forgets the rest.

Rose-colored and hazy, Buck imagines them in something of a bubble.

Eddie’s face, alight as he takes in the vast expanse of cerulean sea. A sharp gasp as he peeks over the edge of Vesuvius’ crater in the sunrise, a hand wrapped around Buck’s arm like he’s afraid the breeze will blow them both down into the hollow center. The brush of their fingertips as the tour guide leads them around the ruins of Pompeii, the shared smile of harboring a secret no one in the crowd is privy to.

But it’s fragile, as most good things in his life are, and Buck isn’t prepared to patch up the places it threatens to burst.

They’re wandering the Garden of the Fugitives when Buck gets the call.

“Kinda busy, Rav,” he says, and Eddie mouths be nice.

“Uh, hey.” An awkward cough. “Is Eddie there with you?”

Buck halts in the middle of the walkway. The world spins out, out, out. “Who is it?”

“No one,” he says in a rush. “Buck, it’s not like that.”

There’s a noise like a wounded animal, and it takes Buck a moment to register it came from him. Eddie pries the phone from his iron grasp and puts it on speaker.

“What’s up?” he asks while Buck tries to keep his airway from collapsing.

“We had a call to an old building this morning. Small fire, a lot of preexisting structural damage. The floor was rotted." The facts come through as a report, clinical. Bobby fell through.” The knife sinks in.

Bobby. Of course it was Bobby. And Buck wasn’t there.

“But–listen to me, Buck–he is okay,” Ravi continues. “Banged up, obviously, but the doctors weren't concerned about his recovery.” A pause. “You… You know the lab took a toll. He’s going to take some time off, and Hen will lead us. I’m not trying to ruin your trip, man, we just wanted to tell you.”

Buck shakes his head, and Eddie takes over. “Thanks, Ravi. Give Cap our best, okay? And be careful. All of you.”

“Always are.” There’s a sound of papers shuffled, a muffled remark from Chimney. “Buck, Athena is with him. She took him home, so he can rest. He’s okay. We all are.”

Eddie says something—Buck’s not sure if it’s directed at him or Ravi—but everything narrows into tunnel vision. An omen, a sign he's too superstitious to ignore, Buck thinks about an eruption, an encasing. Soft tissues decomposed, hollow spaces sustained in hardening ash. Stuck on the carousel of remembering, he imagines Bobby buried beneath, six feet under and food for worms.

Buck takes Eddie’s phone from his pocket, his own still in use, types in Christopher’s birthday to unlock it, and searches for the first flight back to Los Angeles. Departing from Naples, one-way. Seventeen hours of travel, over a thousand dollars.

Frantic, Buck expands the search, watches the prices tick up. “Fuck.”

"Hey." Eddie grabs his wrist. “Look at me.”

“We–We have to go,” he says, this thing with Eddie slipping from his grasp like water through a sieve. “Home. I can’t–” A strange, choked noise escapes his parted lips. “This was wrong–this–this whole thing. I should never have left–”

“Buck!” Face clasped between Eddie’s warm palms, the black around his vision retreats. “Breathe.”

“Bobby–”

“Is okay,” he says, steady and sure.

He twists out of the touch, ignores the flash of hurt across Eddie’s face. “I want to go home.”

Eddie waits for Buck to face him before speaking again. “We decide in the morning, when you can be rational about it. Not now.”

“I am being perfectly rational–”

“You’re exhausted.” He takes a step forward, presses his thumb into the divot of Buck’s neck so he can’t turn away. “I hear you when you wake up in the middle of the night. Every single time.” His gaze bounces around Buck's face, like he’s trying to put the pieces together, searching for an answer Buck has obscured. “What do you dream about? What aren't you telling me?”

Buck decides—they are not having this conversation here, out in the open, before he’s had the chance to ready a paltry excuse. “I swore to myself, Eddie. I swore I wouldn’t let him get hurt again.”

He deflates. “I know.” Gentle, he forces Buck to put one foot in front of the other, a light hand situated on his waist. Like he’s been doused in a bucket of ice water, the picture comes together; Eddie’s always trying to touch him when he’s hurt. Hysterically, he wonders what Eddie would do if he tried to fling himself off the mountain.

“But–you don’t,” he says, before he thinks better of it. “You don’t know. Not really.”

Blood on a silver screen. A picture he can't click off. An unsolicited rerun when he tries to rock himself to sleep.

“You don’t think this is hard for me?” Eddie asks, takes the bait, hook, line, and sinker. “You don’t think it hurt me too, even a little bit? Maybe I don't know what it was like that day. I don't. I wasn't there." He turns away. "But do you know what it's like to get a call—from a stranger, of all people—at three in the morning? Sitting, alone, in the dark, trying to be quiet, so you don't scare the crap out of your kid? You're not the only one who lost him that day. Stop acting like it.”

"I didn't know," Buck says. He pulls back from the edge, too afraid to continue, too afraid of what he’ll say if Eddie begins to unravel everything he’s worked so hard to compartmentalize into neat little boxes, tied up with ribbons so he can shove them to the deepest crevices of his mind. "You never told me."

"Thought you would ask," he says, unable to smooth over the crack in his voice. "You always used to ask."

“I’m sorry." Buck finds he means it. “I’m-I don't want to fight.”

“No.” Eddie sighs and scrubs a hand down his face. He looks fifty years older, subjected to a Sisyphean torture under the hot glare of the sun as he tries to pacify Buck. "I think you did."

Buck can’t touch Eddie how he’d like to. Can’t tell him he’s terrified of what happens when they’re back in Los Angeles, when this all falls apart, no foreign country to set the stage for their masquerade ball. He has to leave this part of himself behind, leave this version of Eddie he’s been privileged enough to have and never forget what it was like. But he can’t keep Eddie here with him, trap him here, too, metaphorically or literally. The inevitable end is this: Eddie will be sucked down into his vortex, hurricane Buck, this oceanic trench he tries to claw out of, day by day.

This grief that consumes him is nothing but a spiral staircase, and he always finds himself at the bottom. It would be so nice, he thinks, to follow Eddie to the top. To let everything spill out into the light and not consider the pollution.

“Let’s go back to the city,” Eddie suggests, playing the mediator when Buck doesn’t want him to. A nebulous avoidance, when Eddie’s never had trouble riling Buck up until he coughs up honesty. But it lingers, threatening to reach a boiling point under the surface.

Buck shakes his head a few times. “I–I’ll stop. I’ll be good, and I won’t bring this up anymore. Promise.” Eddie’s face twists like he might be sick. “It’s all in the past now.” When he says nothing, Buck ventures, “Isn’t it?”

Eddie doesn’t dignify the rhetorical with a response.

On the train back to Sorrento, exhausted and empty, Buck admits, “I don’t want to leave. Not yet.”

The sunlight cuts into the planes of Eddie’s face, geometric. “So we’ll stay.”

Slowly, the dome deflates above them, a waxy thing that threatens to suffocate. Buck looks to the hologram sky and tries to calculate the minutes until they have to run.

They have time. Buck wants to believe there is still time.

Buck calls Bobby until the pain medication takes him under, lingering out on the balcony, adrift. If Eddie’s the one who can’t ask for things, Buck’s borrowed the habit for the night.

In the muggy darkness, straining to hear the sea and met with nothing more than an occasional drunk pedestrian, Buck tries to summon his courage. Give it the old college try. But it’s all been used up, a candle burned down to the wick, sputtering and failing to catch a spark.

“Buck.” Eddie. Eddie is here. Here and there and everywhere. “Come back inside.”

Mechanical, he gives himself simple tasks—stretch out your right leg, then the left, now you stand—and aims to follow the command, a dog at Eddie’s heels. His limbs fail him, a disconnect of his synapses. In his periphery, Eddie disappears. Buck’s unsure what the rules are now, where they stand. There were none to begin with, but he suspects there’s a recent draft in Eddie’s head.

Just as he thinks Eddie’s deigned to leave him outside for the night, he returns with a dripping washcloth in his hands, wincing at the harsh scrape of the metal chair as he drags it to sit across from Buck. Silent, he wrings out the small, square towel and brings it to Buck’s face, wiping off the day with a care Buck feels is unearned. Move your right arm, bend at the elbow, take it from his hand. Buck sits, unmoving, and lets Eddie have his way with him. He’ll have to give Eddie up, give him back to the world, but not tonight. Not just yet.

“Is Bobby okay?” Eddie asks, wiping at something on Buck's chin with his thumb.

“Yeah. Just tired.”

He tugs at a loose thread in the towel. “And you?”

Buck laughs, ignoring the creak in his knees when he stands up, stumbling over Eddie’s long limbs. “Can’t you see? I’m fantastic.”

“You want to fight, Buck?” Eddie follows him inside, flinging the damp towel in the direction of the bathroom. “Let’s fight. At least you’ll talk to me.”

“We talk all the time–”

“Then tell me what’s wrong!”

“I’m here, Eddie!” The words burst out; he feels volatile, a fizzy bottle shaken up, the cork popped off. “That’s the whole problem! I–I was never supposed to be.” The great swirl of loss that lies dormant in Buck’s very marrow seeps back into his bloodstream. A life for a life, and he’s not there to make the exchange for Bobby. “It should never have been Bobby in the lab. I don’t-I don't understand why it’s never me.”

It would be a little easier to live with himself, Buck thinks, if he were not the one on the sidelines, incapable of keeping anyone as safe as life as his perpetual miracle of a life has kept him.

Eddie stares at him, wide-eyed, unsure in a way Buck’s never seen directed at him. “What are you saying?” 

Buck slumps down against the headboard, distantly waiting for Eddie to reprimand him for sitting on the bed with his outside clothes on, but it doesn’t come. Instead Eddie walks over, sits down, reaches for his belt.

"Really not in the mood," Buck says, but makes no move to deter him.

His hands fly away, back into his lap. "I wasn't going to-sorry. Just." He folds his arms across his stomach with a sigh. "Sometimes when Chris gets upset, he feels better when he changes into something more comfortable. I tried it once. It helps."

The tag rubbing against Buck's side, the blister forming on his heel, the pants that don't quite fit right. "Okay."

"Hm?"

"Go ahead," he tells Eddie. "I trust you."

Slowly, Eddie reaches forward again, undoes the buckle and helps him shrug out of the constricting clothing. "Lift your arms." Buck complies and lets Eddie slip a worn hoodie over his head. "Better?"

Buck manages a nod, curling up on his side. “Thanks.”

Eddie strips, devoid of anything sexual, and mirrors Buck’s position in the bed, the glint of his medallion against his chest.

“Bobby’s alive,” he says, voice barely a hush. “And we’re still here. We’re together. Can’t that be enough?”

Buck wants it to be; he’s not quite sure how to live with it yet.

Eddie scrubs a hand down his face. “I’m not as good at talking as you are–” The gibe earns a small scoff from Buck, enough to make the pinched corner of Eddie’s mouth relax. “But I was reading one of the signs at the museum today, about two people they found encased in the lava. They were hugging. Historians used to claim they were maidens, but, after recent DNA analysis, they found out it was actually two men.”

“Look at you,” Buck says, closing his eyes, “learning your gay history.”

“It reminded me of a school project Chris did about fossils,” he continues, ignoring Buck’s interjection with little more than a gentle poke against his ribs. “Have you heard of the Triassic cuddle?”

Buck’s familiar with the story; the Wikipedia page had kept him company on one of the many nights Eddie was unreachable in Texas. “Never heard of it.” He hopes Eddie never stops telling him things.

“It’s a 250 million year old fossil of a mammal and an amphibian. The amphibian was injured and crawled in with the mammal, probably so it could heal. But there was a flood, and they ended up being killed together. Encased.”

“You really need to work on your bedtime stories.”

“You have my back, Buck,” he says with such conviction Buck dares to look at him. “You keep me safe, you keep my kid safe. So stop acting like everything you do isn’t enough. Stop acting like you’re not right where you’re supposed to be.”

He swallows around the lump in his throat. “Which is?”

“Here,” Eddie says, more assured than Buck's ever heard him, “with me.”

Drowsy, he reiterates, “I’ll always have your back.”

“I know.” The lamp clicks off. “I don’t know shit, but I know that much.”

“I’m not trying to ruin this,” Buck says, overwhelmed by the day, betrayed by the shakiness of his own voice. “I do want to be here.”

Eddie squeezes his arm. “Who said you ruined anything?”

“Just want everyone back home in one piece soon,” he mumbles into his pillow, unsure and uncaring if Eddie picks it up. "Wanna feel safe."

Real or imagined, on the cusp of a dream state, someone tells him, “I’ll keep you safe,” and he sinks into the warmth of it.

Buck’s palms are one big scar.

Skin cells regenerate in children roughly every twenty-eight days; he’s lived infinite lifetimes since the outer layer of himself touched the walls of a house he would no longer recognize.

When he was seven, vying for his parents’ attention, their affection, all his brain could compute was that an injury led to a glance his way, a two plus two equals four equation. He’d laid his hands flat against the steaming cooktop surface, which Margaret Buckley had left unattended after she finished making dinner. Maddie had been the one to scream.

The pain had slammed into him a moment later, in the form of his father’s harsh, “Are you stupid?” Maddie had held him in her lap in the back of the car, on the way to the emergency room. Their mother hadn’t bothered to go along. What Buck had never divulged was the twisted thrill of it, the full knowledge he was doing something that would damage him, leave something behind to show for it.

They’re on a boat to Capri for the day, Eddie peering over the edge, hair ruffling in the breeze. Buck feels it again, the zenith before the plunge. He’s attuned to the signs, these days.

Eddie’s knee knocks his, then: “Would you fuck me if I asked?”

“I’d do anything you ask,” Buck says like he’s taken a vow, raised his right hand and sworn it.

He’s touching it all now—the stove, a megawatt lightbulb, an open flame, the very face of the sun. Then, just as now, he doesn’t know how to quit.

Then, just as now, no one tells him to stop.

“I have a surprise,” Eddie declares the following night.

Buck looks up from his phone; he’s having a heated conversation with Maddie about the right shade of yellow for the nursery.

You’re going to burn my nephew’s retinas, he types in response to her latest paint swatches and tosses the device onto the bed. He ignores the buzz that follows.

“If it involves the thing you did with your tongue the other night,” Buck says, “I’m in.”

Eddie scrunches up his face, shy and impossibly sweet. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Buckley.”

You’re hot, Buck mouths, and the color on Eddie’s face sinks into something more sincere.

“Close your eyes,” he says in response to Buck’s blatant flirting, and he obeys.

Something rough covers the upper half of his face, Eddie’s hands at the back of his head. “Y’know, this isn’t usually how you ask someone to explore your kinks.”

“Maybe I should have gagged you instead,” Eddie says, mouth pressed against the shell of his ear, and Buck can’t stifle the choked noise he makes. “Okay. Noted.”

“Shut up.” Buck flails an arm in the dark, trying to smack Eddie and getting nothing but air. “What’s the surprise?”

Strong arms encircle him, guiding him somewhere. “You’ll see.”

The world narrows to two things: Eddie’s hands on his waist and the cacophony of noise as he walks Buck through the lobby, down a cobbled road he can feel through his cheap flip-flops.

“Elevator now,” Eddie tells him after a few minutes, and Buck grips his arm in a panic. “Hey. I won’t let you fall.”

They’re not alone—there’s someone speaking in a language he can’t understand, a giggle that could only belong to a child—but Eddie slips his hand into Buck’s squeezing. Eddie drags him out of the elevator like that, linked. Buck is debating how pissed Eddie will be if he peeks out from under the blindfold when he's turned by the shoulders, the obstruction removed.

The gasp that slips out is involuntary. They’re on an elongated balcony, jutted out over the bay, the sun sinking into the watery horizon and painting the sky a deep, vibrant orange. Vesuvius is faintly visible to the right, shrouded in the mist, the little houses embedded into the cliffside are beginning to light up. Buck whirls around to point them out to Eddie and finds him a few steps back, phone raised and smiling.

“Do you like it?” he asks.

Buck extends a hand and pulls him back into place at his side. “You’ve effectively ruined LA sunsets for life.”

“Bummer,” he says around a laugh. “You didn’t answer my question.”

He takes in the sight of Eddie, the sharp lines of his side profile softened under the picturesque glow, and says, “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life.”

“Took a walk last night. Found a random staircase and followed it up here.”

“Without me?”

“Didn’t want to interrupt your wallowing.”

Buck scowls and folds his arms across his chest. “I was not wallowing.”

“You were,” Eddie says, because they both know Buck derailed the schedule, ignored Eddie’s every attempt to cheer him up because he likes to sit in the hurt of everything for a bit. There’s been an excess of it lately. “I think everyone is more worried about you than Bobby right now.”

When he musters nothing better than, “Sorry,” Eddie waves him off.

“You could just say thanks, you know. For the best surprise of your life.”

“Thank you,” he says, sincere, “for the best surprise of my life.”

Eddie scoffs. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do,” he says fiercely. Eddie turns to look at him. “I do mean it. And–And being here with you–”

When he can’t finish, Eddie fills in the gaps. “Thanks for choosing me to come with you.”

“Thanks for coming along,” he says, tucking his head against Eddie’s shoulder.

“Always.” Eddie's hand makes itself at home against Buck's hipbone, thumb slipping under his shirt to trace circles against his skin. A beat, followed by a peal of laughter.

"What is it?"

"I think I'm getting old."

"C'mon," Buck jabs his side, regretting it when Eddie jerks away. Magnetic, a boomerang, he presses back against Buck's side. "I think we can make it to ninety."

"Ninety?"

"At least."

He hums, amused. "What are we going to do with all that life?"

"Hang out. Have a beer." Buck waves at the view in front of them. "Watch the sunset."

"I'd like that," he says, almost wistful. Buck is working up the courage to tell him they could do it, they could have that, when Eddie sniffles.

"You okay?"

"I'm getting old," he says with a groan, "because I'm tearing up over a sunset. I'm not even sad."

"Maybe it's because you're happy," Buck suggests.

"Oh." He swipes a hand across his cheeks, stares at the moisture on his wrist with a faint smile. "I think I am. Didn't know it was possible to be this happy."

Intertwined, sewn together, Buck tells him, “Neither did I.”

When their hotel room door clicks shut behind them, Eddie kisses him in a way that feels deliberate, slow and deep, hands cradling his face. Buck sinks into it, drifts away in the unhurried slide of their mouths, Eddie’s careful hold. He feels wanted like this. Cared for in a way he can’t articulate.

Eddie breaks away first, stretched out and languid on the bed. “Buck.”

Mouth curving up, he asks, “What do you want?” It’s there, written all over his face. But he wants Eddie to say it, wants him to voice the desire aloud.

“Who says I want something?” He lets out a breathy laugh when Buck nudges their noses together. “What do you want?”

“To make you feel good.”

“Thought we’d established you always do that.”

He moves to kiss the underside of Eddie’s jaw, the space behind his ear that makes him shiver. “Tell me what you want.”

A hand comes up to fist his hair. “I want… I want you to fuck me.”

“There.” Buck pushes up on his forearms, half on top of Eddie. “Was that so hard?”

What Eddie doesn’t know—Buck’s thought about this. Extensively. The ways in which he’d unravel Eddie, this thing between them, this moment they’d share, made sacrosanct under his touch. Mostly, he’s thought about how it might feel to have Eddie laid bare in front of him, giving up this part of himself to Buck, trusting him with it.

He’s had dreams about this, too. Things begin the same way. Eddie, kissing him. Eddie, undressing him, undressing himself, their clothes tangling around their overly long limbs. There’s new details tonight: Eddie’s knuckles knocking against the headboard when he tries to pull Buck’s shirt over his head, a blooming bruise on his hip from where he’d bumped into the glass table in their room, unaccustomed to navigating the space in the dark.

The scene plays out the way it does in dreams. Eddie’s lips are on his, a leg shoved between Buck’s thighs, moving to meet the downward grind of his hips. Their twin exhales, labored and hot. But Buck knows where this goes next, the moment the hazy yellow light fades out into darkness.

Buck’s dreams are haunted, soured and wilted by the end. Eddie, laid crimson in a pool of his own blood. Buck, his hands stained the same color.

In every version of this scenario Buck’s imagined, the parallel universes of variants, he didn’t think he would be so afraid. There’s a predetermined loss lurking around the corner, a chance Eddie will never come back from this. A certainty Buck will not.

“I can see it when you’re worried,” Eddie says in between kisses, every point of contact soft and scarred, calloused and warm. “Right here.” He presses his finger into the downward dip of Buck’s eyebrow. “Did you know that?”

He braces his arms on either side of Eddie’s head, caging his body. “Eddie.”

“Hi,” he whispers, tracing Buck’s lips with a trembling fingertip, and—oh—Eddie feels it, too. The charge, like someone’s about to pull a trigger. The snap of electricity before a storm. “It’s only me.”

“It’s you,” Buck corrects, brushing the flyaway strands of Eddie’s hair out of his eyes. “A–And I don’t–I can’t hurt you.” I can’t live with myself.

Eddie cradles Buck’s face in his hands. “You won’t. I’m safe with you.”

Find someone you feel safe with. Eddie has taken his advice after all.

“I can’t keep anyone safe.” He touches the oval of Eddie’s scar, the marred surface that will never smooth over. “Exhibit A.” Faltering, he admits, “I–I’ve had–dreams. They don’t end well.”

“I’m right here.” Eddie fumbles for his hand, squeezing like he’s trying to tether Buck back to him, a double-check of his harness before he’s rappelling down a crumbling edifice. “Right now. With you.”

Buck needs this to be real. Desperately. He’s not sure he could wake up, otherwise.

He tries to smile, but his voice is rough when he says, “How do I know you’re real?”

“Check,” Eddie says. “Make sure I’m alive.” His expression crumples, cracked open. “Like you always do.”

Buck can access all nine pulse points now. Eddie watches him sit up and move to the edge of the bed to perform his ritual.

The dorsalis pedis. The tops of Eddie’s feet, tanned a summer shade from their beach days. Buck runs his thumbs over each one, noting the way Eddie grips the sheets when he pushes against the tendon. The pulse is weak without a stethoscope, but it’s there. He moves on to press the insides of Eddie’s ankles, the posterior tibial, the lithe line of his Achilles exposed, where Buck could do anything to it. To Eddie. He must realize at the same time as Buck, giving him a small nod to continue.

Buck pins his gaze on Eddie, moving his touch up the backs of his calves, featherlight over hard muscle. He settles on the popliteal, tucked away behind his knees. Digging into Eddie’s flesh until he can feel it, Buck pulls his legs apart further to settle between them, the whimper Eddie releases going straight down the center of him. And Eddie—Eddie’s getting harder from the touch alone, fixated on Buck exploring his body, every motion so careful and calculated.

Then follows the femoral. Buck maps the path up Eddie’s thighs with his mouth, Eddie’s cock hard against his cheek when Buck pushes his nose deep into his groin, teasing, feeling for the steady beat like he could taste it.

“Buck.” Involuntary, Eddie curls forward, trying to bracket Buck between his legs, to keep him there. “Buck, please.”

Buck grabs his wrists, the radial, and pins his arms to the mattress, slides up to the insides of his elbows to push down on the brachial. He kisses Eddie until he’s writhing out of the hold, hips jerking up to chase whatever friction he can find, until Buck can feel the apical, his heartbeat, where their chests are pressed together. The force echoes around the hollows of Buck’s ribs, his lungs, fast and strong. Stronger than Buck has ever felt it.

He bites against the carotid, the side of Eddie’s neck, relishing the broken moan it elicits. Licking over the mark to soothe it, he runs his tongue against the rhythm. For good measure, he paints another mark into his delicate flesh, presses his lips to Eddie’s scar and collects it as evidence that this is happening. Eddie’s murmuring praises into his ear through it all, a hand petting Buck’s hair, an arm across his back to draw him closer.

Buck cradles Eddie’s face in a hand, thumb pressed against his temporal pulse, and the memory of him shatters through, pale and unfocused in the back of an engine with a busted door, the metallic taste of him slipping between the crevices of Buck’s teeth. When he blinks, it’s gone, and Eddie is staring up at him, awed, reverent, eyes alight and alive.

“What’s the verdict?” Eddie asks, wrecked before they’ve even begun.

Buck strokes him once, twice, slips a hand lower to tease a finger around his rim. He catalogues every minute expression it puts on Eddie’s face. The twitch of his brow and the flutter shut of his left eye. The slight parting of his lips coupled with a sharp inhale.

“Buck,” he says, like he’s begging.

Buck flicks open the lube. “I’m here.” He warms it up on his fingers, pressing a chase kiss to Eddie’s lips before he starts to slide one inside. “And you’re here.” Blinking to clear his vision, he takes in the smile that breaks out across Eddie’s face, the tear caught on his lower lash line. “And I’m going to keep you safe.”

Eddie closes his eyes, nods, and says, “Like you always do.”

Buck takes his time, ignores the own unyielding pressure in his gut to take care of Eddie. For once, Eddie lets him. Pliant and open, two, three fingers later, the pretense of muffling the sounds he’s making long gone. Eddie reaches out for him, and Buck goes, willing.

“Can we–” Eddie breaks off to kiss him, stomach clenching as he tries to hold off. He’s been teetering on the edge for a while now, Buck having discovered a new layer of all the little things Eddie likes in bed. “Like this. On my back.”

“Are you sure? It’s better on your front the first time–”

“It’s what I want,” Eddie cuts in, laughing as he wraps a hand around Buck. “I want to look at you.”

Buck grabs a pillow and works it under Eddie’s hips. “Tell me if it hurts. O–Or if it feels bad.”

“You too,” Eddie says, adjusting with a smile. “I'm going to last all of three seconds.”

“Then I’ve done my job.”

Breathless, reaching for Buck’s hand through the mess of sheets. “I…” Something shutters across his face. “Buck, I…”

“Eddie?”

“Want you.”

“Okay.” Buck lines himself up, hands braced on Eddie's hips, and starts starts to push in, slow. “Whatever you want.” He’d give Eddie whatever he wants.

He blinks out of consciousness for a beat, his brain supplying warm and tight and Eddie, and it’s all he can do to keep still, to not chase his own high.

“As good as this feels,” Eddie says, strained, beginning to leak in earnest. “I was expecting a little more from you.” Buck starts to move, the most torturous drag he can manage, and Eddie moans like it’s been punched out of him. “Fuck.”

“Up to your standard now?” Buck asks, trying to goad him on, but it’s weak, and his head is spinning. Being inside Eddie is like floating, like gravity no longer exists. His pace picks up as he finds the right rhythm, the right angle to keep Eddie composing a symphony from all the sounds he’s making.

“You–” Eddie gasps. “Buck–Evan–” Buck’s hips stutter at the nomenclature, and Eddie grasps at whatever piece of Buck he can so hard it hurts. “You’re so–so good. You feel so–” He hiccups. “Good. So good to me.” Through the haze, cheeks damp hair a mess, Buck watches his face screw up, the fresh pearls of tears that spill over and carve tiny trails of light. Buck can count on one hand the number of times he himself has cried during sex, but it’s a close thing looking down at Eddie.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, kissing Eddie’s nose, his forehead, the round apples of his cheeks. “Everything about you. And–And everything you feel–” He slides his hands into Eddie’s hair, gripping, arms shaking from holding himself up. “Everything you feel is good. Just let yourself.”

Eddie’s body tenses, a reflex to resist, but he manages a jerky nod. “Please.”

“I got you.” Buck slides a hand down to Eddie’s cock. “I got you, baby.”

Eddie falls apart, chest heaving as he comes, and Buck swallows up the sound, working him through it. A three letter phrase slips unuttered into the insubstantial space between them, but it’s not enough to stop Buck from wanting to speak it aloud, to imbue it into Eddie’s skin. When the muscles of Eddie’s thighs, his stomach, start to protest from the overstimulation, Buck begins to slide out.

“No,” Eddie says, voice rough. “Inside. In me.”

“Eddie–”

“It’s what I want,” he says, half a laugh, half a sob.

Buck loses himself in assuredness of Eddie’s touch, the knowledge he’s giving Eddie something he desires, wholeheartedly, if only for a night. And then he’s coming too, the last of his strength drained as he sinks down into the warmth of Eddie beneath him. A thousand filaments lace together in his chest, each inhale and exhale sustained by the sheer, utter peace that washes over him. Eddie reaches up to pet his hair, trembling, and presses his lips against Buck’s birthmark. When Buck finally pulls out, reluctant, he shifts to tug Eddie against his chest.

There’s a newfound quiet in the aftermath, Eddie awake and lucid and thinking so hard Buck swears he’s going to develop a sympathy headache. But there’s a chasmal absence of panic—Eddie still lets Buck hold him, accepts water from the shared glass on the nightstand and eats some of the bright green grapes Buck left within arms reach. Breathing slow and deep, he traces words Buck can’t decipher against his stomach.

“The article was wrong,” is the first thing Eddie says, tranquil, and Buck’s mind ping-pongs to try and place what the hell he’s on about. “Your pointer finger would be one of the worst to lose. Yours, specifically.”

Buck gently flicks at his forehead. “That’s what you’re thinking about?”

Eddie grabs his finger before Buck can do it again. “I’m thinking about a lot of things.”

“Like?”

“Like.” He resettles against Buck’s chest, an arm around his waist. “That was the best sex of my life. And I didn’t know it could feel like this. And there’s the fucked up part of me that wishes I hadn’t enjoyed it so much. The part of me that feels wrong because I did.” Buck holds him impossibly closer. “But. It’ll pass, I think.” He pauses, the curve of his smile bunched against Buck’s heart. “Even if it’s always there, I’d do it again.”

He runs a hand through Eddie’s sweaty hair. “Would’ve done this a long time ago if I knew you would get so talkative after.” Eddie tries to shove away, but Buck cages him in his arms. “Nope. You’re stuck with me.” Eddie laughs, struggling, legs tangled up in the sheets.

When Buck rolls on top of him, starfished, Eddie lets out an exaggerated yelp. “You’re going to kill me.”

“You seem to like it when I’m on top of you.”

“Shut up.” The tension drains from his body. “Was it good for you?”

“For someone so smart, you ask ridiculous questions sometimes.” Buck moves to mirror his body toward Eddie, two parentheses with a million unspoken words caught between. “You’re going to ruin my reputation. I used to have stamina.”

“So you’re saying I’m hot.”

“I’m saying,” Buck leans in to kiss the freckle high on Eddie’s cheekbone. “It was also the best sex of my life.”

Content, Eddie reaches out to tug at a curl. “You didn’t have to be sneaky about it, you know.” When Buck doesn’t follow, he tacks on, “My pulse.”

“You–You knew about that?”

“Thought you knew by now; I’m a light sleeper.” He sighs, looking at Buck like he’s not quite sure what to do with him. “You’re not, though.”

“I’m not,” Buck confirms, thinking of every alarm he’s missed. The calls Chimney has forced him awake to handle. The days Maddie spent in an apartment that didn’t belong to either of them, when she’d drag herself out to the living room in the middle of the night, falling asleep on the edge of the couch. Buck would wake up to find her neck bent at an unnatural angle, pillow clutched to her chest to try and feel safe.

All the times Eddie has left him in bed, alone.

“You never woke up when I did it to you,” Eddie continues. “In the bunk room, on my couch.” His face scrunches up. “Never was as thorough as you, though. Just wanted to feel your heartbeat. Make sure it was still there.”

“Wha–When was this?”

He shrugs. “After the lightning. You would stay over all the time, and I’d put my hand on your chest and count.” He swallows hard, gaze flicking up to meet Buck’s. “Three minutes and seventeen seconds.”

Buck thumbs over the mark he’s left on Eddie’s carotid. “Long time to count.”

“Yeah.” Eddie’s hand slides over his heart. “It was a long time to die, Buck.”

“But–hey. I’m here.”

“You are,” he says with a newfound conviction. “We both are.”

Buck burns the next few minutes tracing every line on Eddie’s face—the slope of his nose, the curve of his lips, the shell of his ear. Eddie lets him, subject of a portrait created under Buck’s touch, struggling to keep his eyes open.

“Let’s shower in the morning,” Eddie says, smushing his face against the pillow. “Don’t wanna move.”

Amused, Buck tells him, “Don’t complain when you feel gross.”

“S’your fault,” he retorts, voice sleep laden.

“You told me to come insi–”

“Shhhh.” Eddie closes his eyes. “M’sleeping now. You should too.” He smiles to himself. “Maybe you’ll have another dream about me. A good one this time.”

“Go to sleep,” Buck tells him, but it sounds a lot more like I love you.

Buck doesn’t dream of Eddie. He dreams of nothing at all. It doesn’t matter, though.

Not when Eddie is there in the morning, lit up golden, their limbs tangled together and impossible to unknit.

Positano greets them with barely two days left before their departure and a cloudless blue sky.

Their energy begins to dwindle after a few hours of roaming the cobblestone streets. Eddie takes dozens of photos of him—arguing with a vespa rental place to let him drive even though his international license expired a decade ago, crouched over to pet a street cat, his side profile stark against the blue of the sea—and sends them all to the group chat. While Eddie peruses tacky souvenir figurines, Buck scrolls through his own photos, the ones from their first days.

There’s one he’ll never show anyone. Eddie with his toothbrush sticking out of his mouth, dressed in an oversized t-shirt of Buck’s from some odd running event. His arms are flailed out to the sides, mid-slide across the floor. He’s smiling, and Buck was laughing, watching him dance around to “La Bamba”—it’s a classic, Buck!—as he got ready for the day. Worst of all, Buck remembers how Eddie had kissed him after. How much he’d wished for it to mean something real.

He thinks about it when Eddie’s fucking him later, pointed and frantic, like he’s trying to tell Buck something through every snap of his hips. Their mouths don't touch, this time; Eddie tilts his head back when Buck tries. The aftermath is cold, laid parallel on the bed. For once, they’re not touching. Eddie’s not snuggled up next to him. This feels more—clinical. A separation. Redrawing the line.

“Maybe we could–” Eddie clears his throat. “When we’re back home, maybe we could talk about this.” He steals a quick glance at Buck. “Talk about… us.”

We. Us. “You. You wanna keep going?” Buck’s brain whirs into overdrive, juxtaposed against Eddie's odd restraint. “We could keep hooking up?” Eddie’s face falls, ever so slightly, and Buck rushes to rectify it. “Of course we can! It’s–it’s summer, y’know. Something fun. No need to–talk about it.”

Buck’s pretty sure it’s mostly Eddie’s post-sex cocktail of hormones talking. Vacation Eddie. The versions of themselves that are nine time zones removed from reality. But he is not going to bring that up. Not now. Not when he’s been given a scrap of Eddie to hold on to. He can’t let Eddie talk them, himself, out of it. Buck’s not ready to let go of it. The prospect of a plural pronoun. If this is all Buck ever gets, he could learn to live with it, force his body to adapt. Love’s a scarce resource in his world as it is, and he’s survived the malnourishment for this long.

“Something fun,” Eddie echoes faintly.

Minutes or hours later, Buck ventures the question, “You’re still having fun. Right?”

It’s a strange sort of inquiry. Barely a week ago, he would have known the answer.

“Yeah, Buck.” He tries to smile, the one that starts at his mouth and never makes it to his eyes. “I’m having fun.”

Eddie’s good at a lot of things, but he’s a bad liar.

They never do explore the Amalfi Coast.

On their final day, they forgo the excursion to Ravello to lock themselves away in their hotel room. Buck’s lost count of how many beds they’ve defiled. He hopes the reason behind any extraneous cleaning fees don’t make it back to the LAFD.

After a meal on the beach and one too many L'Albertissimo cocktails, Eddie lets Buck tie his hands to the ornate headboard and fuck him again, bringing him to the brink once, twice, before he lets go, shrugging out of the loose restraints to get his hands back on Buck. They make out while they wait for their bodies to cooperate again, and Buck can’t get enough of him—his hands, his mouth—thinks he might die if he’s forced to live without this. Eventually Eddie’s fingers slip inside, his free hand toying with Buck’s nipples until he comes, untouched.

The day comes and goes, wrapped up in each other. The sun goes down, and Los Angeles sinks into the workday, and suddenly Buck’s getting emails about updated schedules, a text about switching with someone on B-shift for a day, weekly apartment listings he forgot to unsubscribe from. Ravi wants to know if they’re still on for trivia night this weekend. Maddie asks if he can babysit Jee after their forty-eight on Thursday.

Eddie’s on the phone with Chris for a long, long, time, pacing in nothing more than Buck’s boxers as he shoots Buck frantic looks, mouths something about his crutches. Eddie’s got emails of his own. A bill he forgot to pay, enrollment for Christopher’s upcoming school year, dinner at Pepa’s, because she refuses to communicate by text when she can help it.

“Chris tried to modify his crutches in the robotics lab–” When Buck perks up, Eddie holds out a finger. “Don’t ask me for the details. I have to order him a new pair.” He sinks back down onto the bed, scrubbing his hands over his face. “The neighborhood association is harassing me because I missed the monthly meeting, even though I already sent six separate complaints about the pothole issue.” Groaning, he flops his head onto Buck’s stomach. “Can we stay here forever?”

“You’d miss Chris too much.”

“Feels like there’s a hole in my chest every time we’re apart. Like someone's ripped out a vital organ.” He blows out a long breath. “But I want to be supportive. I’m trying. I want him to know I believe in him. No matter what he’s doing out there in the world.”

“But he’s your kid,” Buck says, “and you’re allowed to miss him.”

“Miss him all the time.”

“Hey, you’ll both be back home soon,” Buck reassures him, like he did with Chris the night before he left. “And–he knows you’d do anything for him, Eddie. You’re a good dad. The best. You went to Texas for him.” The lead weight of reality seeps back into Buck’s veins. “You–You left.” And now they’ll return to the real world, where Buck will wait with a sick, inevitable anticipation for Eddie to leave again.

“I came back,” he says, moving out of Buck’s reach. “And we’ll all be back in home soon. The three of us.”

“For how long, Eddie?” He doesn’t mean to say it, but there’s a strange, sharp panic slicing through his arteries, everything spilling out.

Eddie’s face does something complicated. “I’m not going anywhere.” As if to prove his point, he shifts closer. “I know things are going to change. They are changing. Bobby, the 118. And I know it’s hard for you, Buck, but it's not going to go away just because we don't talk about it.”

Buck’s stomach rolls. This–This can’t start now. He has to keep it together, repair all the frayed filaments of his life. Eddie’s wrong. Maybe things are changing, but they don’t have to. Buck has defied the universe countless times. Firetrucks and waves against the shore, wells and bullets and lightning bolts. He can defy it again.

“I want you to trust me,” Eddie says softly.

“I do,” he insists.

But there’s two cut lines now, and Buck is the one gripping the knife.

Buck wakes the way he did the day of Bobby’s death, like his body knows something the rest of him doesn’t, every cell poised and braced for impact. He’s overslept; it’s well into the afternoon, but Eddie didn’t bother to wake him. Guilty, he wonders if Eddie had heard him tossing and turning for most of the night. But then Eddie’s there, calling him sleepyhead and offering to order him room service. Buck tries to keep the noxious miasma of his emotions from spreading, but it chases him well into the evening.

“Hen said she’d pick us up,” Eddie informs him as he collects their strew belongings from around the room. “Said she’s excited to hear about our ‘adventures’.”

There’s a joke there, if he could stand to take it. “That’s nice of her.”

“You mind keeping an eye on my messages while I shower?” He grabs a clean towel. “Christopher was supposed to text me back about which crutches he wanted. I need to confirm with him before he gets busy again.”

“Aye-aye, captain.”

Eddie huffs a laugh. “Thanks.”

Buck busies himself with repacking his clothes, recharging his portable battery and sending Maddie their flight details so she doesn’t worry. If he keeps moving, he doesn’t have to think about how Eddie hasn’t touched him today. Hasn’t kissed him. Hasn’t so much looked in his direction unless they're speaking. As if on cue, his terrible falsetto rings out from the shower, and Buck has half a mind to go join him. He wonders if Eddie would wash his hair if he asked.

He’s cracking open the windows to let in the breeze when Eddie’s phone chimes from the bed, the notification sound overlapping as a myriad of messages trickle in. When he types in the password, he expects Chris' notification to be at the top, but it’s a group chat he doesn’t recognize and separate messages from Bobby and Ravi.

Wee-Woo Wagon

Chim, Eddie, Hen

Chim

Cap told us the news!!!!

Parameddie in the houseee

Hen

Congrats, Eddie!! I’m so glad to know my position will go to you.

Chim

This is serious business, Diaz. Prepare yourself accordingly.

Hen

Don’t scare him

Karen says hi and that she’s proud of you

And is also wondering if you got the limoncello she requested?

Chim

I didn’t know we were allowed to place limoncello orders!

Can’t believe you’re leaving me for a stupid promotion, Hen.

Hen

That’s Captain Wilson to you.

Chim

Cold.

Eddie. Eddie is going to take Hen’s old paramedic spot. Because Bobby is going to retire. And Hen is going to be captain. Which means Buck—

Will no longer be Eddie's partner.

Good news! Bobby has written. The department will cover your training course fees. We’ll pair you with Chim for the practical portion. Based on your experience, you should be certified in about a year. Congrats, Eddie.

Ravi has sent one line: Have you told Buck yet?

“I was thinking,” Eddie says when he walks out of the bathroom, face scrubbed pink. Buck drops his phone like it’s on fire. “When Chris is back, we should go to the beach. Can’t remember the last time we took him.” The ringing in Buck’s ears pitches higher, drowning out Eddie’s voice. He watches Eddie move about the room, oblivious, going on about the movie theater and summer plans and everything he wants to do with Chris to make up for their lost time.

Paramedics are in high demand in Los Angeles. El Paso. Most of the country, really. Buck had looked through the job listings, wondering whether Eddie had considered it before, whether Eddie’s mortgage, his bills, the ever-present medical debt would be enough to push him in a diverging direction. He could go anywhere with qualifications like that. Somewhere with a lower cost of living, a place that isn’t haunted by dead ex-wives and latent breakdowns and a house he watched his son leave. A place he’d take Christopher, too, where Buck isn’t sure he’d be able to follow.

Eddie will go, and Buck will stay. Years and years later, when they’re no more than distant acquaintances, online friends who message on birthdays and holidays, Buck will piece together his life through a screen. Eddie will meet a nice guy, one who doesn’t wake up with his heart pounding in his throat every night, who doesn’t dig his claws into whoever has the misfortune of meeting him. Eddie will become another Abby. An Ali or Taylor or Natalia. Someone Tommy-shaped, not a first or a last, but an in-between.

And Buck will just. Be. Remain. Like he always has. A ghost in places which have long outgrown his presence.

“Congrats,” Buck says, unable to stand and listen to Eddie chatter like he’s not in the process of destroying everything they’ve built over the last eight years. “You’ll make a great paramedic.”

It’s almost comical how Eddie freezes. “Who–”

“Nice of everyone to talk about it behind my back.” Buck nods toward Eddie’s discarded phone. “Were you just going to show up to work one day and let me know I’m on my own again?”

He falters, looking between the phone and Buck as if he could reverse time. “I wanted to tell you.”

Buck laughs, the sound hollow and too loud in the fragile space between them. “Sure you did.”

“This is why I didn’t bring it up.” Eddie tosses aside the shirt he was folding, jaw hardening. “Because I knew how you would take it.”

“Sorry I’m sad that my best friend, my partner, decided, after barely a month of being back home, he can’t stand to work with me anymore.”

“How long are you going to keep punishing me for Texas?” he demands, seeing right through the petty provocation. “Thought you would’ve learned by now, Buck. Not everything is about you.”

“So what is it about, Eddie?”

When his thin veneer of composure cracks into something like hurt, Buck’s at a loss. “You really don’t know?”

“You’re leaving.” He’s leaving Buck. Again and again and again. “You always leave. What more is there to it?”

Eddie walks around the side of the bed, eye contact unbreaking. “I’m always leaving, Buck? Everyone’s always walking away? Maybe you’re the one who refuses the invitation to come with us.”

What the hell is he supposed to do with that? “You left–”

“And I am here, in front of you.” Eddie shakes his head, hands squeezing and releasing in frustration. “I just want you to be here. With me. Move forward from all of this with me.”

“I am.” He’s trying. He’s trying so fucking hard it may destroy him in the end, this great, hollowing rot expanding in his chest.

“No.” Eddie shakes his head, so hard it must hurt. “No, you’re not. You’re so desperate for everything to stay the same. Everyone inside their little glass cages, exactly where you want them.” He pauses, tilting his head. “Is that what you’re chasing, Buck? Control?”

“Screw you, Eddie.”

“Things are going to change. They are changing.” He runs a hand through his hair, makes a useless gesture, the bravado disheveling. “Why can’t you accept that?”

The problem, Buck thinks, with knowing someone this well, is you know exactly which nerve to press to trigger the implosion.

“Because!” He takes a step forward into Eddie’s space. “Because you don’t–you have no idea. About any of it. You just–You–You come back, throw yourself into the job, into your life again like it’s nothing a–and… judge me because I can’t do the same.” When Eddie opens his mouth to protest, Buck barrels on. “So get off your high horse when you don’t know–”

“You never told me what it was like,” Eddie cuts in, tense, “because you don’t talk to me anymore, Buck. Not in a way that matters.”

“Difficult to have a conversation when all you’ve wanted to do lately is fuck me.”

The words are out before he can stop them, nothing short of an admission of his own insecurity. He’s taken control of the runaway train and further derailed its course. It all comes back to this, in the end. Buck, the vision of a life he cannot have, the inability to stop the fragments of it from being wrenched out of his possession. Love comes hand-in-hand with an ache, a constant terror of loss. The problem is simple—Buck had wanted to fuck Eddie too, had wanted a house and a kid and a lifetime, to love him in any form allowed.

But, like everything else, he can’t talk about it. So he’s given up trying at all.

Eddie jolts back like he’s been slapped. “Is that what this was to you?”

Defeated, small and shameful in a way he hasn’t felt since long before Eddie walked into his life, he asks, “What more could it ever be?”

He wraps his arms around his torso, gripping the fabric of his—no, Buck’s—sweatshirt. “Right. What more could it ever be.”

With that, he turns away, shoving his clothes back into his backpack with an alien carelessness.

“Eddie.” Buck’s not sure what he wants to say, just that he wants Eddie to turn around. He wants to undo whatever curse he’s just written into existence. To tell him that it did matter, it does. More than he’ll ever comprehend.

Perhaps it was always meant to reach this conclusion: the enormity of his longing obliterating Eddie alongside him, collateral damage.

“You don’t–” He whirls back around to face Buck, finger raised, his face crumpling and smoothing back out in a matter of seconds. “Don’t. I can’t.” He tries to steady his ragged breathing before it turns into something uncontrollable. “I can’t do this with you anymore. I can’t take it.”

And, oh. There it is.

“Sorry I’m sad I had to watch Bobby die, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it,” Buck says, watching the words slice like a blade through Eddie’s gut, clean and thorough. Die. Bobby died. It’s the first time he’s managed to say the word aloud.

“Sorry I’m still sad that you left,” he continues, because Eddie hasn't looked away. Buck can perform his tragedy, all ninety-seven acts, as long as it keeps Eddie’s attention on him. “Sorry I–I don’t remember what it’s like to go a night without worrying that everyone I love may not be there in the morning.” His voice is rising. His voice is rising, and Eddie’s tilting his chin up to stare him down, even as his eyes turn glassy. “Sorry I’m trying to make something, anything, feel normal again. I’m–I’m sorry you don’t know what that’s like because you–you weren’t–you weren’t there.” A sob works its way up his throat. “And this… whatever happened between us here. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it.”

“Yeah, Buck.” Eddie blinks back his tears, shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry too.”

Eddie brushes past him, the first touch of the day, and slams the door behind him. 

When Eddie returns, Buck doesn't recognize him.

Buck spends the rest of the night sidestepping around him, glaring so Eddie knows he’s pissed, frustrated when Eddie resists his attempt to pick up the fight where they left off. Eddie’s his number one sparring partner. Somehow, this is worse. The total defeat. A strange, resigned acceptance Buck can’t comprehend.

Did you think it would end this way? he wants to ask. Was it ever going to be something more? Could it have been something more?

An answer won’t come. What he gets is Eddie’s back turned toward him in a bed they’re forced to share.

“Something good?” Buck tries, a wobbly shot in the dark.

Eddie yanks the blanket toward his side of the bed, wordless, Buck left out in the cold.

Buck is a creature born from grief.

He can trace it back, right up the family tree, the tangled web of his loved ones. This goes beyond Eddie. Beyond Bobby. Farther back than any failed relationship he tried to preserve past its expiry date and strings of one-night stands scattered across the globe. If he sits and thinks about it, the people he’s composed of, he finds it doesn’t stop with them. Not Maddie or Daniel. Not even his parents, in the end.

It started with Buck. The cell. The lifeform. His mutated DNA, the preemptive loss imbued into him, infused into his being, predisposing him to this. And maybe they took something from him—his parents, the neglectors, Daniel, the stranger, Maddie, his friend—but Buck knows, if he’d had a say, he would’ve given it regardless. So he had no choice but to grow up with it. Grow into it. Never stood a chance, really.

He’s grieved for a lot of things over the years. But now, thirty-five thousand feet in the air, the person he loves in such an incomprehensible, all-consuming way just outside his reach, he mostly grieves for himself. The world could have looked so different. Buck could have been so much more. A person without this burden. This pervasive fear. Someone who could know love without a constant terror of loss.

But Buck only ever knows what it’s like to have something when he’s finally lost it.

They touch down at LAX on the longest day of the year, the first real day of summer. Ironic, Buck thinks, that it’s over before it really began.

It’s close to midnight now, thanks to a delay with their connection, but the airport is bustling, the west coast’s city that never sleeps. Eddie stumbles along toward baggage claim, Buck trailing a safe distance behind him. He can’t go home with Eddie. Not now. Probably not ever again.

“Maddie can pick me up,” Buck lies while they watch the luggage carousel spin, an artificial distance between them. Maddie is at work, and his phone is dead in his pocket.

Maybe he could take the first flight back out of the country. Buck had looked up Los Angeles' antipodes once. Saint-Paul, France, if he’s looking for a smaller population. Quaint, quiet. Antananarivo, Madagascar, if he wants to disappear into the simulation swarm, a place with more people than the city he’s standing in. Surely Eddie wouldn’t follow him.

“What do I tell Hen?” Eddie asks, his exhaustion audible. It’s the most he’s said to him since they left Italy. When Buck doesn’t answer, he turns to face him, eyes rimmed red and swollen.

Buck yanks his backpack off the moving belt, the plastic keychain he and Christopher got on the pier years ago clacking against the tiled floors. “Whatever you want, Eddie.”

“Whatever I want.” He laughs, loud enough for a stern-faced woman with an abrasively neon set of luggage to turn and glare at him. “Some load of good that’s done me.” On instinct, Buck grabs Eddie’s backpack. Their fingers brush in the awkward handover, Buck yanking back like he’s been electrocuted. The radiator, a lighter, boiling lava.

We’ve done this before, Buck thinks. We’ve played this game before. Eddie’s hurt him. He’s hurt Eddie, too—maybe worse.

“I’m gonna go.” Eddie turns, limbs poised to flee even as he halts. “You sure you don’t want that ride?”

“I’ll text Ravi,” he says, forgetting his original lie. Eddie doesn't react to the contradiction. “You should go.”

Defeated, resigned, he says, “Bye, Buck.”

Eddie leaves him there, a black pool of fears between them, all these years stretched out and wasted, Buck still wearing the clothes Eddie held him in. It’s worse, somehow, that Eddie won’t stray far. Not like before. But maybe this is who they are to each other. All they could ever be.

Eddie is someone who leaves.

And Buck—

Buck is someone who stays.

Bobby finds him, listless, sitting on the dirty airport floor. All things considered, it’s not a bad place for a breakdown. Most people don’t bat an eye as they sidestep around him.

“I think Athena could make a case to charge you for loitering.”

His head snaps up. “Cap?” The dreams don’t tend to start like this. Then again, over forty-eight hours awake is verging into hallucination territory. “What are you doing here?”

Bobby picks up his abandoned backpack, shouldering the weight. “Thought you could use a ride.” Right. Buck walked over here to charge his phone, not space out. The security guard has been inching closer the longer he sits. “Come on. They’re going to tow my car any second now.”

Buck follows him out, the air thick with vehicle exhaust and smog and the familiar, lingering vestige of a beach. A blatant fire safety violation, Bobby has left his car parked in the pickup line. The overworked traffic controller is more concerned with her phone than yelling at people to move along.

The clock taunts him as he climbs into the passenger seat. They won’t make it back to Bobby and Athena’s before two, even with this traffic. Snapped out of his stupor, Buck notices Bobby’s flannel pajama pants. The smell of coffee and the stained napkins piled up in the center console. Bobby worked earlier, and it’s an ungodly hour, and now Buck has discovered a new way to inconvenience him.

“I can drive,” Buck offers when he starts the engine. “You–It’s late–”

Bobby snatches the keys out of reach when Buck tries to take them. “Put your seatbelt on.”

“Bobby–”

“Leftover chili,” he says, shoving a spoon and a warm thermos into Buck’s hands.

He accepts the gesture, throat burning. “Thanks for coming.”

Bobby puts on his reading glasses, blinking down at his phone and typing something out with his pointer finger. When he places it in the cup holder, Buck catches a flash of Eddie’s contact at the top.

“Harry is in the guest room,” Bobby says as he merges into traffic. “Athena insisted we didn't need two, even though I told her–” He glances at Buck and clears his throat. “I’ll make up the couch for you.”

He forces down a tomatoey mouthful. “Thanks.”

Bobby clears his throat and asks, in a tone that tells Buck he already knows the answer, “Are you going to tell me what happened? Or are you going to sit there and pretend you’re fine, and I have to force it out of you?”

An irrational flare of anger bursts through him at Bobby’s evergreen concern. “I never asked you to, you know.” He wraps his hands around the warm metal container, shaking. “I never asked you to pick me up, or–or make me food. Accept me at the 118 when I graduated from the academy.” The view of the road smears, watercolored. “I never asked you to care about me.” His voice cracks around the word, a betrayal. “But you went and did it anyway. Made me–care. About you, and Chim, and Hen, and Ravi.” He laughs, incredulous. “You made me care about Eddie. You–You brought me Eddie. Eddie and Christopher. And then you–you just left. Said goodbye like it was nothing. Like I would be fine.”

“Buck.” A warning.

"Newsflash. I'm not. I wasn't." He turns to face him. “So how are you, Bobby? Do you ever think about how you died, and we don’t talk about it? Brushed it over, onto the next?”

Someone honks when Bobby pulls over, the chili sloshing over Buck’s shoes at the force of his brake. “What happened that day was an accident, Buck. You knew what you were getting into with this line of work. This is what we do.”

“That doesn’t make it fair!” he bursts out, like a child. “You–You’re not supposed to leave.” He shakes his head, vehement. “I’m not supposed to be terrified, all the time. Why do I have to be, just because I love someone?”

“You think I didn’t feel the same seeing you under that fire truck?” he demands, and Buck sees his own reflection for a split-second, like they really are bound by something greater than choice. “Coughing up blood in my backyard? A tube down your throat in the hospital? I have watched every single one of you—my wife, my kids, my team—beaten and bruised and bloody. You're not the only one who's afraid.”

“I want it to stop,” he says, pleading like Bobby could fix this somehow. Fix him.

Bobby sighs, deflating. "I know. You walk around with that oversized heart inside your body, and I watch it eat you alive, Buck."

“Sometimes I think it was better when I had less to lose," he admits. "I was so lonely before I met all of you. Thought I'd be alone like that forever."

"And now?"

He gives Bobby a wry smile. "You know the answer."

Bobby leans back against the headrest, watching the road. “I used to think things were better that way, too.”

“And now?” Buck echoes.

“When I was watching Athena through that glass,” he says, and Buck flinches so violently it makes him pause, “I changed my mind. I’d take an eternity of worry to stay here with everyone I love.” He glances over at Buck. “I used to think about death as a release. I would contemplate it, how I would cause my own, and this complete peace would wash over me. The nothingness of it all." He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “But, for the first time, I was scared that day. I know you were, too. I didn't want to die."

"I believe you," Buck says. "Doesn't make it any easier, though."

"We haven’t done a great job of talking about it.”

He can’t get himself to look at Bobby. “No.”

“So are you going to be honest now?”

Buck turns the knife inside himself. “I hate you for dying sometimes.” The panic of the admission rears its mangled head and subsides, a hand settling on his back like a warm blanket. “I think that makes me a bad person.” He’s blown apart, scattered into a thousand particles. “I’m. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Bobby says, more than he deserves as the tears run rivulets down his cheeks. “You’re okay, kid.”

Sometimes Buck dreams about Daniel.

They’re kids on a front lawn. They’re strangers in a corridor. They’re adults back in Pennsylvania. The image of him is fuzzy, abstract, something reconstructed and redrawn with no reference.

Tonight, Daniel is behind the glass—except, this time, Buck is on the same side. On cue, the drone of the alarm starts up, and the shutdown protocol begins.

“I’m not leaving you,” Buck says, but he can’t quite get his hands on his brother, a shimmery mirage.

Lost in time, Daniel gives him a bloody smile, says, “It’s not your job to save me,” and shoves him through the shrinking gap in the door.

He startles awake a mere three hours after he'd collapsed on Bobby and Athena’s couch. Jet lag spares no one. Staring up at the arched ceilings, the sharp smell of furniture polish burning his nose, he tries to get himself back to sleep. When it fails, he busies himself making an elaborate breakfast with whatever he can find. It's a relief when the household begins to stir, Buck finally granted some company.

Harry emerges first, visiting from Miami, and fist-bumps Buck before shoving a wad of bacon into his mouth. May bursts through the door fifteen minutes later, near-tears about a paper her professor ripped apart in her feedback, and Buck piles her plate high with food while he reads it over. Bobby ambles into the dining room, perplexed but pleased by the company at his kitchen table. Buck pretends not to see his pointed look about the food, grateful Athena is at work and there’s one less person to answer to.

It’s a little easier to breathe after the night before, all the worst parts of himself laid bare. Bobby had hugged him long and hard when Buck stepped out of the car. A bit like forgiveness—on both ends.

Buck regales the present members of the Grant-Nash family with stories of his trip, omitting a few major details, hears about Harry’s university plans, May’s upstairs neighbor who likes to rearrange furniture exclusively at three in the morning. Harry and May leave for a movie, and Buck migrates to sit at the kitchen island while Bobby cleans up.

“You should come over more often,” he tells Buck, scraping dried eggs off a plate. “It’s nice to see the three of you at the table.”

“You just want me to assemble your furniture.”

Bobby shrugs, faux-innocent. “Help your old man out. It hurts to sit on the floor for so long.”

The offhanded comment sends a pang through his chest, but Buck laughs around the ache of it. Bobby is getting older, sure, but he feels lucky now to get to witness it.

Bobby leaves to go handle some paperwork at the civil service commission, something to do with Hen’s eventual captaincy, and Buck takes a poorly planned nap. He checks his phone out of habit when he wakes up, finding there's nothing from Eddie. Buck’s only link back to him is a picture from Christopher of a black cat on his dorm room windowsill. He’s sent it in the group chat with both of them.

Chris

i gave her my tuna sandwich yesterday and she came back lol

what if we get a cat instead

When Eddie’s typing bubbles appear, Buck removes himself from the group, panicked, and makes a call. He's going to go stir-crazy alone in the house.

Maddie picks him up with her shitty music from the early 2000s blasting through the speakers and takes him for a drive, barreling down backroads. She’s singing, off-key and weightless, and it’s like they’re kids again, his big sister ripping a pocket of escape into the very fabric of the universe. He leans his head out the window, wind whipping through his hair, feeling twelve and twenty-two and on the cusp of thirty-three, in synchrony.

They stop for greasy burgers and fries, talking around Maddie’s inevitable questions until they’re slurping air through their milkshake straws. Maddie maneuvers into a gas station, both to refill her tank and to air out the lingering smell of their meal, nauseous. His nephew is more sensitive than Jee, it seems. Doors flung open, Maddie’s hand pressed against the side of her stomach, they sit in the parking lot and people watch, making up stories about the people coming in and out of the convenience store.

“He’s–oh my god, Buck!” She laughs and grabs his arm, replacing his hand on her side. “He’s kicking!” An irregular pulsing sensation hits him, drawing a sharp breath from Maddie at a particularly forceful jab. “Ow. I can’t believe he inherited your ginormous feet.”

“How do you know that’s not his head? It’s probably big like yours.”

She punches his arm. “Get out of my car.” An absentminded smile on her face, her arms resettle over her middle, protective.

“Do you ever worry–” he breaks off. “Never mind.”

She sits up. “No. Tell me.” He shakes his head. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll send everyone at the 118 the picture of the time you tried to bleach your hair blond in high school and turned it orange.”

“Maddie!”

“Speak!” She gestures toward him.

“It’s–you’ll be upset.”

“You already are,” she points out. “I’m your sister. You’re supposed to share it with me.” She extends a pinkie, and Buck is right back there, the moment she admitted she was leaving. “United front, remember?”

He links their fingers together. “United front.” Lingering in the touch, he summons his courage. “After–After Daniel. Everything that happened. Does it ever make you worry about Jee and the baby?”

She frowns, nodding. “All the time. I worried about you, too.”

“How do you do it?” he asks. “How–How do you live with it?”

“I guess,” she begins, biting her cheek. “I share it, in some ways. With Howie, and with you. I mean, if something ever happened to Jee–”

“I’d lose it,” Buck says.

She lets out a breathy laugh. “Yeah. Me too.”

“But you still chose to have kids,” he presses. “To bring more people into the world that you care about, that you love, knowing they might not be safe. Why?”

“Because I loved Daniel, and I lost him,” she says, her hand now gripping Buck’s, “and I would do it all over again. And, yeah, it is terrifying to watch the people you love go out into the world and not know if you can protect them.” Her eyes flick to the family photo tucked into the sun visor. “But it means I’m lucky enough to have people I love. Who love and worry about me, too.” She clears her throat and pokes his arm. “What’s brought this on?”

“When–When you moved out, and you were with–him,” he pauses, and she nods for him to continue, “and I was wandering all over the place, I used to think about what it would be like.” The old vision takes shape. “The future. I used to want it all, Maddie.” He swallows hard. “When I got here, and I saw the ocean, I thought maybe someday I’d have a kid, and–and a partner. We’d all go sit there together.”

“And now?”

He lets out a broken laugh. “I don’t know. I think I’m afraid to lose something I don’t even have.” He digs his fingers into the leather seat, as if to ground himself with something tangible. “Ever since Bobby, and–and Eddie leaving for Texas, it feels like I live waiting for something else to be taken from me. Ripped away.” He swipes a hand under his nose, sniffling as he tries to cover it up. “So why bother, you know? It’s easier this way. It hurts less.”

Her eyebrows knit together, pained. “Buck.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He scrubs at his face. “Not like anyone is dying to start a family with me.”

“Of course not,” she says, and Buck squawks out a sound of protest before she continues. “No one wants to compete with the one you have.” Traitorously, he thinks of Chris and Eddie. “See?”

Buck jumps. “Stop acting like you can read my mind!”

“Don’t have to.” She pats his cheek. “It’s all over your face.”

“I slept with him,” he blurts, satisfied when her eyes widen at the confession, jaw going slack. “I–I slept with him, and all I wanted to do was tell him I love him.”

“You’re going to make me go into early labor.”

“Maddie!” His chest heaves like he’s been running for hours. “I’m–I don’t know what to do.”

“If there’s something you need to tell Eddie,” she says, verbatim from months earlier, “you will.”

“In. In my own time.”

“Buck,” she says, eyes shining—but there’s something happy about it. Hopeful. “I think it’s time.”

He leans his head on her shoulder. “Can I stay here with you a minute longer?” She kisses the top of his head, like she did all those times in the emergency room, like Buck imagines she used to do when they'd stick him full of needles. It would be a waste, he thinks, to let all this love she's given him sit untouched inside of him. "More than a minute, maybe."

“As long as you need,” she says, and Buck knows it's the truth.

Maddie drops him off in front of a bar instead of back at Bobby’s house.

“I can’t believe you’re actively encouraging me to drink right now. Worst big sister ever.”

She smacks his arm. “Ravi’s waiting inside. It’s trivia night, which is a great way to take your mind off things.”

He sighs. “I hate when you do this.”

“Too bad. I care about you.”

“Yeah, yeah, love you too,” Buck says, climbing out of the car.

The space is cramped, full of elbows sticking out, drinks precariously balanced on trays, music competing with the crowd in its volume, but he manages to find Ravi at a raised table toward the back.

“I have news,” Ravi declares when Buck slides onto the stool across from him. He barely has time to form a panicked hypothesis. “I was trying to figure out what to do, about my place in things, and I thought about when I was a peer trainer.”

“When I said don’t go to B-shift, I didn’t mean transfer back to the academy!”

Ravi waves him off. “Not that. I’m staying on A-shift. Officially.”

“Oh.”

“No thanks to you,” he says around a snort.

“Explain.”

“Right.” He slides a beer toward Buck. “I was thinking, I liked being at the academy because they’d bring these groups of kids. Teach them about emergency service careers, let them do some of our exercises, things like that.”

“You’re good with the kids who come to the station,” Buck says.

“Thanks.” He brightens. "I love working with them."

“Are you thinking about volunteering to do the station tours more often?”

“Not quite. You miss out on so much when you’re a kid in the hospital, you know? I never got to go to a firehouse on a field trip. And my ambulance rides were traumatic, to say the least.” He picks at the label on his beer. “I want to develop a community outreach program. Bring the firehouse–or the truck, at least–to the kids who can’t come to us. Teach them about fire safety and what they can do to look out for each other.” He takes a deep breath. “I proposed the idea to Bobby, and he’s on board. He’s going to help me ask for city funding.”

“That’s–Jesus, Ravi. That’s incredible.” Buck’s smile comes easy now. “You’ll be amazing.”

“You think?”

“I know,” he says, taking him in. Maybe this is how Maddie feels when she looks at him. He hopes she does. “I–I’m really proud of you.”

He pulls a face. “Don’t make it weird. But. Thank you.”

“I’m serious.” He pretends to wipe a tear from his eye. “My probie, all grown up–”

“Okay, okay.” Ravi shudders. “Enough about me. What the hell happened between you and Eddie on that trip?”

Buck slams his knee against the table in his shock, Ravi scrambling to catch their beers before they tip over. “N–Nothing.”

“So why are you here with me and not at home with him?”

“Because I missed my dear, dear friend?”

Face deadpan, he says, “Try again.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Buck says, chugging down half his beer. Ravi waits, patient. “I’m not speaking to him at the moment.”

He elicits a groan that should only be possible from an overworked venture capitalist. “I cannot deal with this at work on Monday. Can you apologize? Please?”

“You haven’t even heard my side!”

“Fine.” He gestures for Buck to go on.

“He’s going to be a paramedic.” It comes out significantly more pathetic than he’d anticipated.

He nods. “Parameddie. I think Chim is trying to trademark it.”

“Eddie said nothing to me, can you believe that?” Buck scoffs. “Even you told him to talk to me!”

“I refuse to unpack how codependent you are if you’re reading each other’s messages–” Buck rolls his eyes “–but I didn’t mean he should talk to you about becoming a paramedic.”

“You–what?”

He makes a motion like he’s zipping his lips. “I officially resign from my position as the intermediary.”

“Ravi, what?”

“I’m going to miss out on so much gossip because of this.” Before Buck can interrogate him further, he nods toward the screen, displaying the list of topics for the night. “Look alive, Buckley. The first round is Natural Disasters. We’ve got this in the bag.”

There’s Three Letter Musical Artists and Evil Sidekicks and Renamed Cities. Through it all, Buck thinks about Eddie.

Athena is sipping whiskey at the table when Buck gets back to the house. He sort of unofficially needs to live here now, but he was hoping to bring it up with Bobby first.

“You want some?” she asks at his prolonged stare, and he shrugs, walking over to join her.

“Thanks,” he says when she slides over a glass.

Athena has never been his closest confidant, not really, but there’s always been a mutual understanding between them. A link first forged by Maddie, then Bobby. Sometimes they’d text, an offhanded update about someone they met on a call, a comment Bobby made that they'd both find endearing. Once, to be a tiebreaker on what tile to use for the kitchen backsplash. Buck looks over at it; they’d gone with Athena’s preference after all. The sight of it polishes a smudged window of a memory.

He’s sat here before, across from Athena. The same whiskey, rich over his tongue. Just like this.

“You brought me here,” Buck says, blinking awake from his weekslong stupor. “You–After the lab. You drove me here, a–and we drank.”

Humming, she takes a sip. “That I did.”

“Why?”

She regards him for a long moment. “I was worried about you.” A pause. “And I didn’t think it would do either one of us any good to be alone.”

“I never–I never thanked you. I… I didn’t even remember. I’m sorry.”

“Trauma reshapes our brains,” she says, like she’s reciting a verse from memory. “That night, what happened–” She shakes her head, downing the rest of the mahogany liquid. “I’d be surprised if anyone could recite a clear picture.”

“I’m not just apologizing for that,” Buck says, because it’s the first time he’s sat across from Athena like this in weeks, and the rift has cracked and opened between them, too, in the gap between life and death. “I’m sorry for everything lately. The texting. I’m not trying to make everyone dwell on it.”

"I never thanked you either," she says, "for your help that day."

It startles a short laugh from him. "Some help I was."

"You were there."

"Was that enough?"

She raises her refilled beverage toward him. "Best man-waiting-in-the-car I could ask for."

Buck laughs, clinks their glasses together. "I'm your guy." He stares down at the table, digs his thumb into a worn groove. "Can I ask you something?" When she doesn't object, he continues. "How-How do you live with it? Everything that's happened."

"I get up," she says. "Put one foot in front of the other and let it take me forward."

"But how. Doesn't it-just-hang over you?" Like it does me?

Athena sighs, setting down her glass. “Have I ever told you about my first fiancé?”

“Michael?”

“Emmett Washington.” A wistful smile crosses her face. “My first great love. He died in a robbery.”

“Oh." Buck files through his mental catalogue of information on Athena. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

She laughs, not unkindly. “I have lost more people than you could ever imagine. And some of them come back. Michael, May, Bobby.” She shakes her head, incredulous. “Funny how that works."

The alcohol slowing his brain, he asks, "Why are you telling me this?"

“Because I, of all people, am not going to be the one forcing you to move on from what happened before you're ready. Lord knows I’d be a hypocrite for it.”

He hesitates. “But I’m… I don’t want to make you sad. With me. I–I don’t want to make everyone panic and worry about Bobby.”

“Like you are?” She raises her eyebrows, but he stays quiet. “I’ll admit, I’ve been…” She makes a vague gesture. “Mildly inconvenienced by your texting.”

Buck snorts. “I can tell.”

“But” she continues, turning to face him fully, “it makes me feel better, too. Knowing someone worries about him like I do. That someone else understands the loss we experienced that night. The fear. But Buck–” She shakes her head. “Don’t let it control you.”

His throat tightens. “I don’t know how to let go of it. I feel like I can’t get back to myself. Like–I used to be this–this open person, who wanted to do a million different things and would chase down every good feeling I got about a person until a relationship blew up in my face.” He bunches a hand in his hair. “A–And now? Now it feels so fragile. Now I want to cling onto everything. But I can’t.”

“You can’t,” she agrees. “Life is going to take what it wants from you, believe me. But every personal failure, every person who walked out, do you regret any of it? The time you shared with them? Even when those moments, those people, were gone, did you wish you could erase it all?”

Buck thinks back on it, the disparate parts of his life, something nonlinear and pasted together. The anger and sadness, the pity and confusion of his younger self. Fumbling through the dark for a compassion he doesn’t know how to access, tumbling over in a wash of emotions. Here he sits now, parts of the past blacked out, permanent marker across a page, others in vivid multicolor, some amounting to nothing at all. Here he sits now, reshaped by all the loss and made anew. Not worse or better, just different, like he’s unwrapped a layer of the cellophane and gotten closer to the core of himself.

“No,” he says. “I don’t want to erase it. Any of it.” He gets to see Bobby like this, the limitations of their time together, the fragility of their two lifelines, because he’d almost lost him, once. Each fleeting moment with Maddie. Chris.

Eddie.

“You can think about it. And you will. You’ll go back to it, over and over again, obsess over what you could have done differently. You will find yourself back in that place, that moment, more than you could ever imagine.” Athena slides a hand across his, eyes shining through the dark. “But don’t stay there, Buck. Don’t let it steal you away from everything you have in front of you.”

“I’ll try.” He takes a deep breath. “I want to try.”

“That’s a good start."

Maybe it could be enough.

Eddie goes to voicemail six times before Buck gives up.

“Jerk,” Buck mutters at his screen, pacing around Bobby and Athena’s pea graveled driveway. He opens up a rideshare app and punches in his address, swearing at the surge pricing. If he asks politely, maybe Athena will let him take her car.

He spins on a heel, readying his argument, when bright headlights flare behind him, freezing him in place. Through the fading glow, it takes him a second to see he’s staring at his own car.

Eddie hops out, pebbles crunching under his shoes. “My phone won’t stop ringing. Must be an emergency.”

Buck’s heart lurches. “Is that why you came?”

“I realized I never answered your question,” Eddie says, twirling the keys to Buck’s car around his finger, the fucker.

“Wasn’t aware I’d asked you anything.”

He takes a few steps forward, determined. “The last night, in the hotel. Something good?”

So he had heard. “Doesn’t matter. It’s a stupid game.”

“It’s not, Buck.” Eddie squares his shoulders, braced for impact. “Never was. I think you know that, too.” Closing the distance, he tilts his head. “Ask me again.”

A parting gift, he reasons, before Eddie cuts him loose. “Something good?”

“You.” Eddie smiles, and it’s like staring into the sun. “You. All the time. Every single fucking day you’ve been in my life.”

Buck decides he can be the brave one, now.

He leans in to kiss Eddie, no farce, no foreign country—kisses him like he loves him and never wants to stop. Eddie must understand it, somehow, must feel it in the way Buck’s hands reach up to cradle his face, through the bump of their noses when Buck tilts his head to deepen it, in the race of his heart beneath Eddie’s palm.

“I’m not trying to leave you,” Eddie whispers when he pulls back. He runs his hands up Buck’s sides, settling along his jaw, tilting his head down so Buck is forced to look. “It’s the opposite.”

“I know.” Buck places his shaking hands on Eddie's waist. “I can’t see around myself sometimes.”

“I know,” Eddie echoes, a hint of a smile on his face. “I love you anyway.”

“You–You love me?”

Eddie pretends to think. “Well, I saw you yesterday, and I saw you today, and I’m probably going to see you tomorrow.”

“Is this a convoluted way of telling me you’re sick of me?”

“No,” he laughs, smiling so hard his face must hurt from it. “I’m telling you, I’m really looking forward to tomorrow. Because you’ll be there.” His eyelashes flutter, expression settling into something quiet and earnest. “Right?”

“As long as you’ll have me,” Buck says, nothing short of a vow. “For as long as I can.”

Eddie’s lip trembles. “You mean it?”

“I love you,” Buck says, the words a release. Eddie stumbles forward, face pressed into Buck’s chest, something warm seeping through his thin shirt. “Eddie?” His arms come up around Buck, locking behind his back. “Eddie, baby, let’s–let’s sit down.”

“Thought I’d lost you,” he gasps out as Buck leads them to the front porch steps. “Thought it was over.”

“Hate to break it to you, but you’re stuck with me for life,” Buck tells him, relieved when Eddie lets out a wet laugh. They sit, and he holds Eddie’s shaking hands between his own, tracing small circles with his thumbs. “Better?”

“Just–give me a minute. Used up all my adrenaline on the ride over here.”

“I could go first?” Buck offers. “There’s some things I want to say.”

He shifts closer, their knees bumping, a familiar pressure. "Go for it."

“Okay.” Buck pauses, his heart tripping over itself. “I–um. Shit. I don’t know how to talk about this.” He tries to laugh. “Sorry.”

“Take your time.” Eddie presses a kiss to his shoulder. “Nowhere I’d rather be than here.”

He takes a deep breath. “You know I’ve been… grieving.” The word takes up an odd space in his mouth, foreign syllables on his tongue. “After what happened with Bobby.” Eddie nods, and it takes him aback, to not be questioned, asked for supporting evidence to verify his own feelings. “But I think I’ve been grieving a long time, Eddie. A–A lot of things. Versions of myself I can never get back.”

“What do you mean?” he asks, trying to understand as deeply, Buck realizes, as he tries to comprehend Eddie’s complexities.

“I was made from grief, out of it,” Buck says, and the acknowledgement will never go down easy. “Like–Like this byproduct of someone else’s sadness. Not even mine, but I’ve been carrying it around my whole life, even if I wasn’t aware of the source.”

“You can set it down, Buck,” Eddie says softly.

“Where, Eddie? Because I think I’ve spent my entire life trying to figure it out.”

“With me,” he says, like it could be so simple. “We could carry it together.”

Buck shakes his head, even as he hooks an arm through Eddie’s. “I’m so afraid of what it’ll do to you. What I will do to you. To us.” He blinks rapidly. “I’m not a religious guy, Eddie, you know that, but everything between us–it feels so holy, doesn’t it? I think loving you is the closest I could ever get to god. How could I risk destroying that?”

Eddie’s exhale is thick and shaky. “Jesus, Buck.”

"I love you." He stares up at the light-polluted sky, searching for a guiding star. “But I love someone, I lose them. It’s the only thing I’ve ever known. A personal prerequisite to loving anyone. I wonder who I could have been without all of this.” Buck wilts, voice breaking. “I think about it all the time.”

“Hey.” Gentle hands clasp his face, pulling him back from the stratosphere. “You’re allowed to mourn, okay? Whatever version of yourself exists out there.” Eddie brushes his thumbs over his cheekbones. “But you are so much more. We are so much more than all this loss.”

“You really believe that?”

“I know it.” Eddie presses their foreheads together. “Maybe I’m not sure whether I believe in God anymore, but I believe in you. In us.”

Buck’s not sure who closes the distance first, but he lets his hands roam Eddie’s body—the curves of his arms, the warmth of his neck, the slippery-soft hair at the nape of his neck—and kisses him with all he’s got.

“I should have started with this,” Buck says when they break apart, lips spit slick, “but I’m sorry. For everything I said to you that night in the hotel.” He puts a hand over Eddie’s knee. “I’m sorry for pushing you away. For–For punishing you. About Texas.”

“Buck–”

“You were right,” he cuts in before Eddie can assuage his guilt. “After Bobby, when you came back–I didn’t know how to fix things, and it–it scared me.”

“I don’t need you to fix anything,” he says, giving Buck a look so drenched in fondness it makes his organs feel twisted up. “Just let me in. I want to figure this out with you.”

“You’ve been mourning something too,” Buck says, “haven’t you?”

Humming, he places a hand over Buck’s to soothe his frenetic fiddling. “Maybe it’s the same as you, in a way. I keep thinking about the person I could have been, all these years, if I had let myself. Nothing but lost time.” He makes an aborted noise of frustration. “I’ve been standing in the way of myself for so long. Everything I want. I don’t know how to forgive myself for it.”

Buck shakes his head, throat burning. “Ninety-something, remember? You have so much time, Eddie. It’s all yours now.”

“All mine, huh?” He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Not sure how to wrap my head around it, sometimes.”

“Well,” Buck runs a hand across his back, “if you want to be a paramedic, I support you.”

He jerks his head up. “Will you let me explain that now?”

“Fine.”

“Try to sound less enthusiastic.”

“I don’t know how to live without you,” Buck lets out in a rush. “I don’t know how to not be your partner.”

“Buck, I want you to be. That was the entire point.” He sighs. “The LAFD doesn’t allow romantic relationships between current work partners. So I told myself, even if I was misreading things, even if you didn’t want me the same way I want you, at least I’d have done everything I could to make it possible.”

Buck’s head spins. “Huh?”

“When I left for Texas, I started the process to become a paramedic, so there would be no barriers to our relationship. Ravi is still, technically, your assigned partner.”

Buck throws out the last part. “Our–Our relationship.”

“Keep up, man,” Eddie says, laughing when Buck rolls his eyes. “I’m trying to tell you what I want here.”

“Which is?”

“You. What I want is you,” he says, more calm than Buck’s ever seen him. “A life with you. All the time ahead of us. I think I’ve always wanted that.”

“I would have gone with you,” he says, chest burning, because he needs Eddie to know. “I would have followed you to Texas, if you had asked. Like a goddamn dog.” He takes a deep breath. “I would lay myself down here, in front of you and–and let you walk all over me. Just to make you smile.”

Eddie’s face crumples. “I’m not asking you to do that.”

“But I would. I need you to know that I would.”

“I didn’t think I was allowed to ask you to come with me.” Eddie toys with Buck’s fingers, tugging his hand into his lap. “I wanted to. I swear, I really thought about it.” He clears his throat, digging the heels of his shoes into the ground. “But it was also something I had to do alone.”

“I understand that.”

Eddie tries to fight down his smile. “No, you don’t.”

“I’m trying to,” Buck amends. “I’ll get there.”

“There were things I needed to face there.” Eddie squeezes his hand. “I wanted to be able to come back here and be the person you deserve. Not just for you, but for myself.”

Buck kisses his knuckles. “You are. Always have been.”

“When I came back here, some of it was for Christopher. For the 118. For you.” He pauses, takes a deep breath. “But mostly, I came back for myself. For everything I want. Everything I’ve always wanted, really.”

“I’m so glad, Eddie.” Buck presses a kiss to his forehead, unable to help himself. “I’m so glad it was for you.”

“I came over here tonight,” he continues, “because I decided I owed it to myself to tell you how I feel. About you, and us.”

“Us?”

“I want to be with you,” he says, the words light as a feather. “I want us to be together.”

“I want that, too,” he says, swallows hard, whispers, “I’m so worried I’ll fuck it up.”

Eddie leans in like he’s sharing a secret. “You will.” Before Buck can reel back, his thumb finds the divot along the side of his neck, the place his touch was always meant to sit. “So will I, man. That’s the way it goes.”

“And you’re not–you’re not afraid of-of what would happen?”

“I’m terrified.” Eddie traces a small circle against the sharp bone. “But we tend to figure it out. The two of us. You think that would change?”

“Never,” Buck says, with a certainty he can feel down to the very cells in his marrow, every piece that was taken from him before he learned to speak his name, renewed under Eddie’s touch.

“A wise person once told me this is the fun part. We get to figure it out now.”

“I have some things figured out.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I’ve loved you, and I love you now,” Buck tells him. “And whoever you become, I’ll love you, then, too. I know that much.”

Before Eddie can kiss him, they’re startled apart by a sharp knock. Athena stands at the open window, stern-faced, Bobby waving from behind her. Buck feels his face flame.

“California Penal Code Section 647–A,” she begins. “An individual who solicits anyone to engage in or who engages in lewd or dissolute conduct in a public place–”

“Okay, okay.” Buck yanks Eddie up by their joined hands. “We were just leaving.”

“You can sign the HR forms on Monday,” Bobby says. “And the workplace PDA agreement.”

“Kill me now,” Buck mutters, and Eddie laughs, tugging him toward the car. If they make out for fifteen minutes, parked around the block, Athena doesn’t have to know.

“I loved you yesterday,” Eddie says, pressing a kiss against his birthmark, “and I love you today.” Another to his lips, soft.

Buck slides a hand against the nape of Eddie’s neck. “And tomorrow?”

“I will love you tomorrow,” he says, eyes locked on Buck’s, the shine of his smile like crushed stars. “Every tomorrow we get, and then some.”

A revelation, Buck finds he believes him.

Eddie takes him home.

Exhausted from the travel, from their joint revelations, they should go to bed, but Eddie offers him a beer and a smile, so they sprawl out on the living room floor, laughing until their ribs get tough. Buck looks over at him, in between a fading consciousness, traces the lithe line of his form, and hands another part of his heart over to Eddie.

Buck wants—no, needs—to feel close to him, in a primal, intrinsic sort of way. He wants to unzip his skin and burrow Eddie beneath, safe from harm. A compromise, he settles for curving toward Eddie, an orbiting body, their forms heliotropic, attuned to one another.

The house greets him with blinding morning light, his limbs stiff and aching from a night spent on the floor. When he blinks awake, Eddie’s next to him, eyes closed and a private sort of smile on his face, a hand dragging up and down Buck’s arm.

“Hi,” Buck whispers, too loud, too quiet in the stillness. He doesn’t want to disturb this, whatever it is.

Eddie tilts his head to look at him, whispers back, “Hi.”

“How… How are you?”

“Good.” He bites his lip, unable to stop his smile from leaking through. “Really good, actually. You?”

“I’m good.” Buck presses lightly against Eddie’s carotid, his pulse picking up. “What are you thinking?”

Selfishly, he needs Eddie to say it again. To ensure he didn’t conjure up last night, these past few weeks.

“I’m thinking,” he says, shifting to tuck an arm under his head, unable to keep the amusement from his voice, prepared to reassure Buck regardless. “I’m starting to understand why you’re having trouble separating dreams from reality.” When Buck huffs, feigning annoyance, Eddie laughs and shakes his head. “Can I kiss you?”

He melts. “Yeah.”

It’s long and languid, their bodies stirring into motion, Eddie half on top of him. Buck slips his hands under Eddie’s shirt, smiling against his mouth when he feels Eddie getting hard.

“Shut up,” Eddie says, lips glistening with spit.

“Didn’t say anything.”

“No, but you–” He makes a choked noise when Buck shifts his thigh up to create friction against Eddie’s erection. “Fuck.”

“Does it feel good?” he asks, halting. Eddie’s hips stutter forward, chasing the sensation. “Thought so.”

Eddie groans, beginning to grind against him in earnest. Buck’s not doing much better, palming himself over his pants until Eddie swats his hand away to do it himself. He tugs off Eddie’s shirt, chest laden with something gooey and fond when it gets tangled and Eddie pouts at the interference. Buck grabs his hips in apology, encouraging him forward, their rhythm growing desperate and syncopated when they can’t get enough.

Buck moves his hands from Eddie’s hips to his ass, down against his thighs, and reaches for his waistband. He tries to maneuver Eddie back to slip a hand beneath, and he elicits a broken noise of protest.

“No, no, no,” Eddie whines, the words slurring into each other. “Need it–you. Now. I’m close.”

“Okay,” Buck breathes out, hot and heavy and intermingled with Eddie’s panting into his open mouth. “Okay, baby, take what you need. Whatever you want.”

“Want you.”

“You have me.”

Eddie’s moan is muffled into his neck as he comes, Buck rutting up against him as he seeks his own release. Like a marionette with all the strings cut, Eddie collapses into him, their laughter breaking up the stale, empty household. They writhe around on the floor, trying to find a position where they can ignore the tackiness of their wet boxers, the dark patch on the front of Buck’s, and eventually give up to press their shoulders together.

“Want to know what I was really thinking?” Eddie asks.

“Mm.”

“I’m all in,” he says. “One hundred percent.”

“Really?”

He nods. “You and me.”

“For the record, I’d let you hump me either way. Platonically or romantically. So. You can be honest.”

“Buck!” he lets out, half a laugh, half a groan.

“I’m kidding,” he says, pressing his face against Eddie’s neck and fluttering his eyelashes until it makes him ticklish and squirmy. “Mostly.”

“I want to keep having morning sex with you,” Eddie says. “Romantically.”

“Which will inevitably lead to evening sex with me.”

“Oh, no,” Eddie says with an exaggerated gasp. “You’ve figured out my master plan. Whatever will I do?”

“Guess you’ll have to fuck me,” Buck says, shrugging. “Again.”

“Bummer.”

“Says the guy who just got off against my leg.”

Eddie shakes his head, smiling, and asks. “What are you thinking?”

Buck considers. “Nothing lasts forever.”

“No,” he says, finding Buck’s hand. “It doesn’t.”

“Kinda want to see how far we could get, though.”

The corner of Eddie’s mouth tilts up. “So, should we give it a try?”

“I’d like that.”

The sunlight shifts, painting them golden.

Buck never wants to step foot in an airport again.

“Chris on his way,” Eddie says. “Finally.”

They’ve been camped out in the baggage claim of LAX for the better part of the last hour, waiting for Chris’ plane to land. A thunderstorm passed over the city earlier, and they’d been forced to circle until it was safe to land.

Buck stares through the dirty glass, tries to find a sliver of sky. Pink and drippy, the earth uneven and malleable, something’s gone and has been reborn and changed anew. He can see the last place they stood here together, almost two weeks ago—arguing next to carousel 3. Unable to talk to each other, to truly speak.

They’re trying now. Fragile and nebulous as it may be, every attempt brings them closer in sync. Eddie’s changed; so has Buck. He rests a hand on Eddie’s knee. It’s not a bad thing, he’s decided.

Eddie loves him anyway.

Buck’s one-sided grudge against the airport melts and dissolves when he spots Chris, chatting with the friendly-looking airport worker who’s pushing his wheelchair. Buck scrambles up, raising his arms. Chris does a double-take at his glittery, crooked sign. He had miscalculated the space on his poster board. Eddie had dragged him out the door, and there was no way to rectify WELCO HOME CHRIS in the car. He’d gotten a far too enthusiastic kiss for his troubles, but it’s not his finest work.

“Did you forget how to spell while I was gone?” Chris calls out.

Eddie waves, like Chris can’t see them, says, “Fuck it,” and bounds up to embrace him. Buck hangs back to watch his favorite people. His family.

Chris laughs, lets out a loud, “Dad!” when Eddie pulls him out of the chair, begins to spin him, long legs barely hanging off the floor. The sight of it makes Buck’s eyes sting. Almost eight years later, it’s the same scene—hours after the earthquake, when he knew this was it. All the strange ways he’s tripped through life, only to end up here, there, at the center of the universe itself, the epitome. There's nowhere left to fall. 

“I missed you,” he hears Eddie say, Chris caught up in his arms.

“Missed you too, dad.”

Eddie looks up, gaze snapping toward Buck like he’s the only other person in the room. “Why are you standing there?” He waves a hand, grinning. “Come here.” Chris smiles, copy-and-paste.

Buck doesn’t need to be told twice.

Another flurry of announcements hit the firehouse. Bobby, Hen, and Eddie, their position shifts. Ravi’s new project. A potential transfer from Station 133 to fill the open B-spot position. Eddie keeps their pinkies linked through it all, tucked out of sight from their coworkers and friends.

“August thirty-first, huh?” Buck leans against the doorframe to Bobby’s office. “Barely two months to go.”

“On paper,” Bobby says, closing a folder, “but I’ll be around. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He clears his throat. “So you, uh, you got any plans? For–For retirement.”

Bobby narrows his eyes, suspicious. “Your standing dinner invitation won’t be rescinded, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“N–No, I…” Shrugging, he folds his arms across his chest. “I’m trying to be… supportive.”

“Care to tell me how you really feel?”

Buck sighs, plopping down in the seat not occupied by a stack of boxes. “Fine. This sucks, and I hate it. I don’t know how this works–any of it–without you.”

Bobby nods. “But?”

“But.” With a sigh, he continues. “I trust Hen, and I think she’ll make a great captain.” There’s a photo of their crew at Hen and Karen’s vow renewal on the table behind Bobby. He stares at their faces, frozen in time. “Ravi is taking on more responsibility. Chim’s getting ready to train Eddie.” Eddie. “He’s going to be an amazing paramedic.” As they speak, he’s hunched over a textbook at the table upstairs, Hen spraying him with a water bottle as she quizzes him on pharmacology. “I’m so proud of him. All of them. You too, Cap.” Swiping a finger under his nose, he tries to keep his emotions in check. “There’s never going to be anyone else like you.”

Bobby follows his line of vision, gaze softening when he sees the photo. “We’re proud of you too, Buck.”

“Haven’t done anything,” he says around a thick laugh. “Not really.”

“Tell that to any member of this team, and I guarantee they would say that’s not true.”

“Family bias.”

He stares down at a stapled stack of papers for a moment before handing it over to Buck. “I’ve written you a letter of recommendation for promotion to lieutenant.”

His head whips up. “Cap–”

“As have every single one of your colleagues,” he cuts in, refusing to accept the packet when Buck tries to return it. “You have to be the one to make the final decision and submit the application, but we’ve all agreed it’s about time.” Bobby rises, setting his glasses down on the desk. “Your future captain agrees.”

He peels back the first page to find Eddie’s loopy handwriting beneath. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“Think about it.” Clapping a hand on Buck’s back, he walks out the door. “We’re all behind you, whatever you choose.”

In a daze, Buck follows the sound of Eddie and Hen’s voices up to the loft, taking the stairs two at a time. They’re still at the table in the corner, a bowl of microwave popcorn half-eaten between them.

“Furosemide.”

Eddie blows out a long breath. “Edema or hypertension. Not in cases of pregnancy or dehydration, though.”

Hen nods. “Dosage?”

“It’s, uh.” He rubs at his forehead. “40-80 milligrams for adults.”

“Correct. And the pediatric dosage?” Frantic, he flips through his notes, but Hen slaps his arm. “No cheating.”

“I don’t know, like.” He makes a vague gesture. “Three milligrams per kilo?”

Hen sprays him, making a loud buzzer nose. “Wrong. One milligram per kilo.”

“Do you have to go so heavy with the spraying?” Eddie wipes at his forehead. “You’re making me feel like a houseplant. Or a cat.”

“You look like a drowned rat,” Buck tells him, affectionate, as he wraps his arms around Eddie’s shoulders. “Hi.”

Eddie rests his chin on Buck’s arm. “Hi. I hate you.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Hen demands when Buck presses a kiss into his hair.

“Hugging my boyfr–Eddie. Hugging Eddie. In a completely platonic way that does not violate the terms of our PDA agreement.”

“Wrong.” Hen sprays him. Twice. “Try again.” Buck jumps to grab the bottle, but she holds it out of his reach, cackling. “I should have used this on you a long time ago.”

“Hen!”

She shoves a stack of flashcards at Buck. “Your turn. I need a nap.”

“Rivaroxaban,” Buck reads out from the card on top. “Hey, I know that one! Blood thinner. That’s what they prescribed me after I almost choked on my own blood in Bobby’s backyard.”

“Thank you for that association,” Eddie says drily.

Sheepish, Buck flips through the vocabulary terms. “Uh, albuterol?”

“Used for asthma.” Eddie lifts the edge of his shirt to pat Buck’s face dry. “And reversible bronchospasm associated with COPD.”

Buck’s attention immediately diverts to the exposed sliver of Eddie’s abs. “Whatever you say.”

“Perv.”

“Exhibitionist.”

He lets his shirt fall back into place. “Do I need to go find Chim to quiz me instead?”

“Nope. I’ve got something better than a spray bottle.” Sparing a glance around the empty loft, he bunches a hand in Eddie’s shirt, pulling him forward for a kiss. “That was for albuterol.”

Cheeks flushed, Eddie protests, “I knew rivaroxaban, too.”

“Fine.” Buck gives him a quick peck. “No more until you get another five correct.”

“Five?”

“You have to learn these, Eddie,” he says, trying to resist the wide, deep pools of his eyes. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Maybe we could lower it? To…” A hand snakes up the inside of his thigh. “One?”

“Three. And if you miss one of the indications, it doesn’t count.”

Eddie scowls and drops the touch. “Fine.”

Hen and Ravi catch them half an hour later, lips strawberry-toned and swollen, studying long forgotten.

“Technically, I’m still getting Eddie wet,” Buck points out, and she retreats, Eddie burying his face in his hands.

Ravi dumps the remainder of his water glass on Buck’s head and tells them to get a room.

Birthdays are an odd affair.

The first one Buck remembers was when he turned eight. His mother’s crying fit in the living room, his father telling him to stay out of sight. A breezy summer’s day in late June, he and Maddie rode their bikes into town, and she’d bought him an ice cream. Two scoops. She’d stuck a waxy candle into it, the heat of the flame making chocolate and vanilla drip down over his wrist. They’d walked back home, sunlight fading, the house frozen and silent, like no one had ever been there.

Buck hadn’t understood it at eight, at sixteen, at twenty-two, alone in a foreign country. Once he had the necessary information, it was easy to put the pieces together. Buck had gotten to turn eight; Daniel had not.

He wakes, thirty-three, to a frenzy of noise—laughter, the clang of a pan against kitchen tile, the lull of voices he knows like the back of his hand. The perpetual itch in his chest is noticeably soothed by it. Another year gone, another year older. It isn’t so bad, today. After scrolling through the messages on his phone for a few minutes—everyone from the 118, Maddie, old roommates and friends, a girl he met in line waiting for the all-gender bathroom at the bar—he rises, chasing the sound of Chris and Eddie’s voices like Ariadne's golden thread.

“Buck usually does this part,” Chris says, clear through the hallway. “I don’t know if I can.”

“You got it,” Eddie reassures, followed by a smacking noise.

Chris groans. “I knew that would happen.”

“I’ll eat that one. Try again.”

Buck leans against the wall, trying to piece together the context.

“What if I drop it again?” Chris asks. “I’ll make a mess.”

“Then you drop it,” Eddie says, like it’s nothing. “We can clean.” Buck resists the urge to reveal himself and kiss Eddie silly. Shuffling, a sizzle, then Eddie clapping, loud and enthusiastic. “See? You can do anything.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Buck inches closer to the kitchen, catching a sliver of Chris and Eddie, backs turned toward the door. There’s a bowl of pancake batter on the table, a browning banana that’s been sliced into quarters. Buck’s favorite.

“Hey, you, uh, you remember when I told you how I felt back in Texas?” Eddie starts. Buck freezes, foot hovering over the loose floorboard that creaks, and waits for Eddie to continue. “About Buck.”

“Yes,” Chris says. “I think I’m scarred for life.” Buck bites his lip to stifle his laugh.

“All I said was I wanted to ask him out!” Batter flies from the edge of his spoon with the force of his gesture.

“Too much information, dad.”

“You were the one who told me to be honest.”

Chris hums, grabbing a dinosaur-shaped cookie cutter. “Were you honest with Buck?”

“I was,” Eddie says, his smile audible. “We went on a few dates while you were gone.”

“So…” He abandons the task at hand. “You’re together now?”

A pause. “Is that okay with you?”

Chris sighs, bringing the cutter down on a pancake to turn it brachiosaurus-shaped. “You don’t need my permission.”

“I know, mijo. But you’re allowed to have feelings about it.”

“My feeling is that I want you to be happy,” Chris says, shoving the excess pancake into his mouth. “Does Buck make you happy?”

“Yeah,” he says, voice tight. “He makes me really happy.”

“Okay. If you’re with someone who makes you happy, that makes me happy, too.”

Eddie wraps his arms around him, head resting on top of his mop of curls. “I love you so much, Chris.”

“I love you too, dad,” he says, fond. “I’ll love you even more if you promise not to be gross in front of me.”

He laughs, relieved and weightless. “Noted.”

“And… Buck will always be family, right?”

“Of course,” he says. “Between you and me, I’m never letting him leave.”

Chris says, “I’ll lock him in the basement if he ever talks about moving again.”

“We don’t even have a basement,” Buck says, clapping a hand over his mouth when Eddie drops a plate into the sink in his shock.

Eddie whirls around. “Buck?”

“Metaphorical basement,” Chris says when Buck pops his head around the corner. “Happy birthday, eavesdropper.”

“You were being loud!”

“Not as loud as your snoring,” Chris retorts.

Buck glares. “Will you let that go?”

“Never.”

“Go back to bed.” Eddie makes a shooing motion. “You ruined your surprise.”

Wrapping an arm around Eddie, he wrangles Chris in with his free hand. “Don’t care. I want my birthday hugs.”

“Buck,” Chris protests, the container of orange juice open and wobbling on the counter. “I wasn’t finished.”

“Okay, okay.” He releases them, stealing a kiss from Eddie when Chris turns around to fill a glass. “I’ll go wait very patiently. Even though I’m starving.”

Eddie throws a dish towel at his head. “Ten more minutes.”

Before he can walk away, Chris wraps his arms around Buck’s torso. “I love you.” Eddie softens, catching his eye with a watery smile.

“I love you,” Buck says. “I’m not going anywhere. Promise.”

Buck pretends to act surprised when they bring him a stack of pancakes in bed, complete with little containers of syrup and bananas. Eddie manages to contain most of his grimace when Buck drips onto their sheets, and Chris sits between them, chattering on about the strawberry shortcake pancakes he had in Cambridge. When Chris leaves to get ready for the day, Eddie pushes him down against the mattress, kissing him, syrupy sweet.

“Happy birthday,” he says. “I love you.”

“Love you–mmph.” Eddie swallows up the sound, leaning back to squish Buck’s face between his hands. “Best birthday ever.”

“At least get through the itinerary I made before you make any sweeping declarations.”

“Eddie.” He shifts, trying to hide the growing pressure in his boxers. “You made an itinerary?”

He smiles, pulling away when Buck tries to feel him up. “Went full clipboard Buck and everything. So get dressed, we have a lot to do.”

Buck flops back down into the pillows. “It’s not fair to edge me on my birthday.”

“The faster we get through the day, the faster we can fuck,” he says, matter-of-fact.

“I’m up.”

Eddie laughs and throws a balled-up shirt in his direction.

Eddie is a mastermind, Buck decides.

They spend the morning playing Scrabble, a rerun of an old movie Buck likes playing in the background. Chris protests when he tries to count YINGYANG in his final score, but Eddie lets him have it. They sit out on the back porch, sipping juice Eddie squeezed with the oranges from the tree out front, until the mosquitos threaten to eat them alive.

The inconspicuous lunch they’d planned with Maddie reveals itself to be a surprise party. Buck, in all his nosiness, never sniffed it out. He nearly drops the glass tray of brownies when his friends and family jump out, Jee bounding up to him with a shriek. They spend most of the afternoon like that—Bobby at the grill, Ravi, Denny, and Chris sneaking bites when he’s not looking, Karen and Athena asking Eddie about his favorite Italian wine. Maddie pulls out old photos—Buck’s terrible high school dye job, the overexposed film camera shots, the two of them grinning, faces half out of frame as they tried to capture their dreary little life in Pennsylvania.

Jee sits in his lap while his parents give him a stilted birthday call, pressing stickers into his face.

“All better!” she exclaims, a gold star on his nose. “Now you aren’t frowning.”

He presses one to her own tiny nose. “You’re the best doctor in the world.”

Hen and Chim share the highlights of their respective adventures with Buck before Eddie joined the 118, before Maddie came out to LA, and he was adrift. The sting of the past has dulled; a retrospect he can now appreciate. Maybe there had been a point to all his years of recklessness, the swamp of uncertainty, the muck around his ankles, tugging him down. An unexpected comfort, Eddie at his side, everyone he loves most in this room with him, the restless thing in his chest settles down.

“Thank you,” Buck tells him on the drive home, forced to be the passenger to adhere to Eddie’s perfect schedule. “Bobby told me this was your idea.”

“It was nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” he says. “Not to me.” At a red light, Eddie leans over to kiss his cheek and Chris makes an exaggerated gagging noise.

“You up for one more stop?” Eddie asks, smiling at Chris through the rearview mirror. Buck presses a kiss to his knuckles in wordless confirmation.

The sun is beginning to set when they reach the beach, and it's not Italy, not by a long shot, but Buck staggers to a halt at the edge of the sea, the sound of Chris and Eddie's laughter over his shoulder. 

Good? Eddie mouths as the salty spray coats their faces. Buck nods and watches Eddie's gaze soften, knowing. 

They sit in the sand, ruining their clothes, while Chris, barefoot, throws jagged shells into the water. 

"I think I'm going to try applying for lieutenant," Buck says, the admission taking him aback. 

Unfazed, Eddie says, "I knew you would. Can't resist trying to one-up me." 

"Asshole." 

"Asshole who just passed his first pharmacology exam." 

"What?" Several people on brightly colored towels whip their heads around at Buck's exclamation. "Why didn't you tell me?" 

He shrugs. "It's your birthday."

"Eddie." 

"Things are changing."

"They are." Buck extends his bad leg, sand sticking to his calf. The ache is dull today; his body's gift to itself. "So am I. So are you." 

He studies Buck for a long moment. "And you're okay with that?" 

Exhaling, he waves at Chris when he turns around to point at a particularly large seagull, devouring someone's abandoned picnic. "I'm still scared, Eddie. I think I always will be." 

"I know."

"But you'll be there," he says, the world warping and narrowing until Eddie is the only thing he can see. "Won't you?" 

A shift, the press of a warm arm against his. "'Course I will." 

"Then I'll be okay." 

Eddie is quiet for a beat, then: "Promise not to get bossy when they make you a lieutenant." 

"You'd like it." 

He pretends to gag, leaning away from Buck. "I'll report you." 

"I'll bring the clipboard home," Buck says, wiggling his eyebrows, unable to resist laughing at the way Eddie's face contorts in horror. "Oh, c'mon." 

"You like it too," Eddie retorts, face blotchy. "Don't think I couldn't see the way you've been staring at me all day." 

"You planned, Eddie. With an itinerary." He lets out a content sigh. "You are so hot." 

Pleased, Eddie leans back toward Buck, a small smile on his face. "'Home', huh?" 

He decides to play dumb. "Hmm?" 

"Buck." 

"Did I ever tell you what I wished for on my eighth birthday?" 

"Specific. "He considers. "But, no." 

He thinks back to the dull Pennsylvania sun, Maddie's futile attempts to salvage the day. "I wished for a day like this. And, at the end of the day, my house would feel like home. Full of people I love." 

"Who love you, too," Eddie amends. 

Chris turns around like he's heard Buck's confession, somehow, hair ruffling in the breeze and his crinkled eyes all Eddie. A pang shoots through Buck's chest at the sight of him. Eddie finds his hand and laces their fingers together, the fading sunlight casting multicolored shadows across his face. 

Buck has it all now: a house and a home, a family to love. 

A family who loves him, too. 

Eddie squeezes his hand, and says, "Let's go home, then."

“Ready?” Buck twists the key in the ignition. “We’re twenty-seven minutes behind schedule, so I don’t want to hear anything about a bathroom break until we hit Nevada.”

“Speaking of,” Eddie says, clicking his seatbelt into place as Buck pulls out of their driveway, “it’s my turn to drive when we cross state lines.”

“And my turn to sit in the front,” Chris says from the back seat, equipped with a fully charged phone and most of their road trip snacks.

“My legs are longer than yours,” Buck says. “Grow a little first, then we’ll talk.” Chris throws a pretzel at his head and slumps down, headset already on.

Eddie’s hand finds the nape of Buck’s neck. “Never been to the Grand Canyon before.”

“Thanks for coming with me.”

“I’d go anywhere with you.”

He turns to look at Eddie, awash in the nascent blue-orange glow of the sunrise, his right hand man. “Something good?”

The proverbial boulder will lessen. Buck will carry it, as he always does. What he doesn’t know is this: a part of him will learn to set it down, to let Eddie take it from him, crush it under his love until it’s nothing more than a fine dust lining his insides.

There will be a joy, so unknown, so incomprehensible, from here on out. Late nights kissing like giddy kids experiencing a first love, triple checking every harness, holding each other through hurt. A trip up the coast, the two of them, the three of them, people who were always meant to find each other in some pocket of the universe. A place to call home. Learning what it means to be a family, how they’ll have to choose each other, over and over again. They’ll fuck, and they’ll fight, and they’ll fall in love with each other a hundred times more—more than they thought possible for their two brief bodies.

Buck will lose it all someday, in a far-off, distant future, when Eddie’s laugh lines are mapped out across his face like latticed branches of a tree, his hair fine and grey, the pale strip of a matching tan line on their left ring fingers impossible to smooth over. But that will be then, and this—

This is now.

“Something good?” Eddie smiles, and the jagged events of Buck’s life fit together into something whole. “We’re here.”

Buck is going to make the most of it.