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It’s a long way down to the bed from standing when you’ve been stabbed in the gut. Eddie groans, unable to bite back the pain, as the movement tugs and pulls on his stitches — internal and external. Flesh and fascia and sinew hauled back into place.
Buck is hovering while Eddie gets into bed, watching him with dark eyes and nervous hands.
“Can I—”
“I got it,” Eddie says. He’s not sure what’s worse — swinging his legs up on the mattress or trying to shuffle his torso into the most comfortable position to lean back on the stack of pillows against the wall. He should really get a headboard.
Now that he’s out of the hospital he’s down to alternating acetaminophen with Ibuprofen every four hours. It’s working, for the most part, and after Buck’s brush with addiction Eddie isn’t taking any chances with something stronger.
But when Eddie reaches behind him to adjust the pillows, white-sharp pain lances through the recently closed hole in his gut and Eddie grimaces.
Buck finally moves, grabbing the last pillow to wedge it behind Eddie’s back for him, carefully helping him lean forward before settling back. It hurts differently than a gun shot, than broken ribs. The heavy-hot impact of the knife hitting home, too low to be protected by his ribs, sliding past his soft, slippery intestines. Severing veins and arteries while the rapid adrenaline dump kept him from feeling every second of it. Every second of pain.
The pain came later.
“I can get more pillows from the couch,” Buck offers. There’s a concerned furrow between his brows and at least three days’ worth of scruff on his face.
“I’m fine,” Eddie tells him. He takes a slow breath. He thinks this recovery will be the quickest, that the hardest part is going to be staying off his feet for the prescribed length of time and allow himself the luxury of boredom. Allow himself to accept the help he knows is going to be on offer.
“Fowler’s Position promotes lung expansion,” Buck continues, giving the pillows minute adjustments. Keeping his hands busy. “The head of the bed should be elevated 45 to 60 degrees, which lets gravity pull your diaphragm down, allowing for better chest and lung expansion with less work.”
“It’s a good thing I wasn’t stabbed in the lungs, then.”
Buck pulls back so fast Eddie’s worried he’s going to get whiplash.
Shock paints Buck’s face. And hurt. Fear and anger, before he blinks and smooths it away with an affable smile and aww shucks shrug.
“Elevators are off the list,” Buck states. He won’t meet Eddie’s gaze.
“What?”
“No more elevators.” Buck pushes Eddie’s phone closer to him on the bedside table and makes sure the charger is within easy reach. “No guns. No collapsed wells. No rental cars. No knives.”
“No pick-up basketball?” Eddie asks, grinning.
Buck finally looks at Eddie. The lamplight catches in his pale eyelashes. “Get over it.”
“You maimed me.”
“You took a dive,” Buck protests. “It wasn’t even broken. Barely sprained.”
Buck’s finally smiling and Eddie feels muscles he didn’t know were locked up start to relax.
“Are you okay?” Eddie asks. Buck has dark shadows under his eyes and his hair looks unwashed. He knows Pepa’s been watching Christopher for him while he was holed up in the hospital, but Buck looks like he’s been stuck in his own elevator.
“I’m not the one with a fresh set of stitches and orders for bed rest,” Buck says. He reaches across Eddie’s body to grab the edge of the duvet and tugs it over him.
“Not this time.”
Buck pauses tucking the blanket around Eddie’s waist, his legs. “No,” he says after a long moment. “Not this time.”
Eddie doesn’t like silence between them. Doesn’t like how they can stretch like a desert sky, yawning and endless. Dry and brittle. Someone always has to break.
“Okay, so no fire engines and no lightning.”
Buck blinks. “We’re controlling the weather now?”
Eddie shrugs. He wants to tell Buck to sit down, but there are no chairs; he’d have to sit on the edge of the bed. Eddie has a grey-tinged flash of sitting at Buck’s bedside while he sweated and vomited through a too-long night.
We really should stop meeting like this blazes deliriously through Eddie’s mind and he can’t even blame pain medication for it.
“If we’re taking things off a list those come off too,” Eddie says instead. It comes out more seriously than he intends. He watches Buck swallow, his Adam’s apple moving, before he nods.
“Might be hard to work if engines aren’t allowed.”
“I’m sure you’ll make it work.”
Buck huffs a little laugh, nodding ruefully. “Yeah,” Buck says, and he looks like he wants to say something else, but he just knocks his knuckles against the mattress near Eddie’s knee.
“I’m gonna make you lunch,” Buck states. “I know you weren’t eating in the hospital, and we’ve got enough to scrounge up burritos I think.”
Something warm fills Eddie’s chest. It’s familiar now, the feeling. Buck bringing him Carla. Making Christopher a skateboard. Helping Chris with homework. Buck trying to get out of singing karaoke. Watching the joy on erupt on Buck’s face when he realized Chris was home from El Paso. Finding out Buck was still alive in the New Mexico desert.
“Buck, you don’t have to.”
Buck rolls his eyes. “I know I don’t. I want to.” He taps the bed again and then turns to leave the bedroom. “If you fall asleep I’m gonna eat yours,” Buck calls over his shoulder and Eddie laughs.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Eddie can hear the floorboards creaking as Buck walks through the hallway back to the kitchen. Eddie knows exactly how many steps it is from the bedroom to the doorway and he knows Buck does too. He imagines Buck moving effortlessly around the space, pulling ingredients from the fridge and plates from the cabinets with ease, knowing where everything is just as well as Eddie does. He forgets sometimes that Buck lived in this house too. Without him.
The warmth is still there in Eddie’s chest, his stomach. It’s nice and he doesn’t look at it. Buck is in his kitchen making them lunch like he’s done hundreds of times before and Eddie doesn’t look at that too closely either.
Eddie closes his eyes and rests his head back against the next the pillows Buck helped make and waits.