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It’s been two days.
Two days since the love of his life, the person at his side day in, day out – through calls and heartbreak and joy and everything in between – was lost.
Two days of the world stopping its movement, the tide ceasing, the air stilling without the stiff blow of a heated breeze.
Life, as Evan Buckley knew it, will never be the same again.
It all started somewhere in the first six months of the guy joining the 118, the first time Buck’s eyes landed on his shifting hips – tracing abs and biceps up to strong shoulders as a t-shirt settled into place – doing leaps more for Buck’s thundering heart than anyone had before him.
Eddie Diaz waltzed into the station, all confidence and control, and Buck thought he’d lose everything. The time he spent building up his name, gaining skill and respect and something that looked like home – all of it suddenly shifting the minute Eddie came to the team.
Buck, with such fierce jealousy and envy at the ease with which he carried himself through the world, lashed out with anger. Frustration carried him through calls at Eddie’s side in the only way Buck knew how to keep love – through rebellion.
Eddie didn’t bite, though. He didn’t push back, didn’t take what Buck did to heart. He softened, promised he’d be there, that he could be trusted, reliable, a partner.
It didn’t take long after that to fall into friendship. Secrets shared over meals, lives nearly lost on calls that broke them down, heartache and suffering sewn into shifts so deeply they could never be erased.
When Eddie lost Shannon, Buck felt it deep in his bones – like the loss was his own, like the memories shared were something branded into his own skin. Eddie’s pain became his, his loss something Buck tried like hell to help him through.
A reliable, steady presence, at his side through the worst of it.
But a ladder truck and months of recovery brought suffering Buck hadn’t ever experienced before, the physical pain nothing compared to the ache of being apart from his team.
When he nearly lost Chris in the tsunami, fought like hell to make it home to people who proved they mattered time and time again, something shifted.
Eddie showed up one night, tears burning in his eyes, brow furrowed in pain or agony, Buck wasn’t quite sure which. He didn’t question it, didn’t want to be a barrier to anything that could help Eddie be happy – somehow – again. Instead, he opened his arms and Eddie fell right in.
After that, something beyond friendship grew so rapidly, it felt inevitable. So powerful, loving, captivating in every way, Buck didn’t question it – couldn’t for fear of losing something he’d been searching his whole life to find.
They got married soon after, celebrating five years of wedded bliss just barely a month before everything changed.
Chris still calls him Buck, despite him earning the title of stepdad, and Eddie calls him baby. The quiet, candlelit dinner on the anniversary of their wedding day softened into a shared night together, so intense and loving Buck could only thank his lucky stars he’d fallen into something so perfect.
The 118 got a call, a few weeks back, of a wildfire they finally leveled after endless days of battling against the smoke and ash. They’d partnered with the 122 and the 217 to battle to the bitter end.
Tommy Kinard, a pilot with the 217 and veteran of the old 118 under Gerrard’s heyday and Bobby’s beginning, shot the shit with them during breaks, making a quick connection with Eddie and falling into a fast friendship.
He’d spent a couple nights at the Buckley and Diaz home, Christopher hounding him with questions about flight and Eddie ragging on his latest car project, calling him a quitter for giving up when the transmission cut out too soon.
Buck liked the camaraderie, liked finding someone that sparked so much joy in Eddie over hobbies he had little interest in pursuing. He’d clicked with Tommy too, found it easy to talk to the guy about his Nonna’s recipes and favorite contestants on The Bachelor before he’d call it a night.
It feels like everything is falling into place, bricks stacking and building a house Buck plans to call his forever, one of love and protection and care, built from friendship and family and something that stretches beyond both.
The morning it happens, they’re up at the same time, Buck cooking breakfast and Eddie pestering Chris to get dressed.
“School drop-off in fifteen minutes, Christopher. If I don’t see you out here in five, I’ll make you walk,” Buck hears him say. He smiles, shaking his head knowing the threat is empty, hearing it every other day all the same.
Arms wrap around his waist, warm and strong, the familiar press of palms against his ribs exhaling a sigh as he leans back against his husband.
“Any luck?” Buck murmurs as he plates eggs and flips off the burner.
“He was still in bed when I went in there,” Eddie grumbles, no real heat behind the words.
Buck hands him a plate and presses a kiss to his temple as he turns, nodding toward the table. “You, eat. I’ll pack his for the car.”
Eddie salutes playfully and sinks into a chair, shoveling eggs and toast into his mouth and chasing with coffee. Buck stacks Christopher’s egg into toast, wraps it up in parchment paper and tosses a few grapes in a Tupperware with it. He brings it to the front door, tucks it into the side of Chris’ backpack and stacks it with his and Eddie’s work duffels.
When he winds back to the kitchen, his boys are ready and waiting, Chris rubbing at his eyes grumpily and scanning the kitchen counter.
“Breakfast in your bag, kid,” Buck says, tugging Eddie in for another kiss. “You guys ready?”
They leave the house and make it to school with a few minutes to spare, Chris slamming the door shut with a murmured “Later.”
Eddie shakes his head and pulls out of the lot, smile still tugging at his lips. “I can’t believe he’s already a teenager.”
“I can’t believe you still believe he’ll be ready on time,” Buck laughs, turning up the radio.
The rest of the drive is filled with chit-chat, a reminder to pick up brown sugar on the next shopping trip for a cookie recipe Buck wants to try, and a save-the-date for a pick-up basketball buddy’s wedding sometime in the fall.
It’s the same as it always is, just as mundane as before, just as casual, no professions of love or intimacy that isn’t shared every day on the same drive.
The call comes through dispatch like always – house fire in Glendale, wife and husband likely trapped inside, and the 118 climbs into the engine. It’s muscle memory, slotting himself next to Eddie in the cab, Bobby’s voice carrying through the headset laying out details and directives.
The fire’s climbing, started on the first floor near the kitchen and took off like a rocket, slamming through the dining room, living room, and spreading across the first-floor bedroom.
The goal is to go in, get the victims out, put the fire down.
It’s the same as always.
It’s the fucking same. As. Always.
Buck’s replayed every second of the call in his mind since it happened, considers every alternative to every decision he made, every chance he could’ve changed something, somehow – desperately – make a different outcome.
But that’s not what happened.
Buck and Eddie went in, found the wife right away pinned behind a chair in the dining room, skin blistering from the heat, ash and smoke curled around her mouth where she lays in a helpless heap.
Eddie tells him to take her out and climbs up to the second floor where the husband must be.
Buck carries her out, transfers her quickly to Chim and Hen, placing an oxygen mask over her face as they get to work and assess her vitals.
Time stops, right then.
The moment clicks in Buck’s mind over and over and over.
An explosion, debris flying through the air and scattering across the road.
The house, nearly gone, splintered into dust and battered concrete, steel and molten metal. Furniture flung into the road burns bright, scarves and shirts fly in the wind like driftless birds.
And Buck is frozen.
The team runs around him, holds him in place when he tries to sprint into the molten memory of a home that was. Bobby’s shouting in his ear, telling him to stop, Chim’s screaming to back down, Ravi’s rushing over with his arms full, begging the team to help in some way.
But it’s gone.
Eddie, too.
Somewhere between the explosion and the station, Bobby found what was left, tells Buck he doesn’t want to see, wants to protect him from the pain.
But he can’t. Couldn’t possibly. Because the pain is all-encompassing, full-throated. Life-changing.
Buck’s heart feels like it’s pulled straight from his ribs, chewed apart and hastily sewn back together so it barely beats enough to survive. When he thought he was helping Eddie live without Shannon, he had no idea it felt like this.
Like he’s lost a limb, like he’s been left in the middle of the desert without water, like he’s stuck on Mars without air.
Telling Christopher is nothing short of torture, his heartbreak amplified, shattered again in the cries that come from his chest. Raw and ragged and torn from something so deep, Buck can’t begin to know how to mend any of it.
Lost a mother and soon after, a father. And Buck, nowhere close to being enough to fill the hole where his heart is lost.
Buck gets by doing something like living, breathes through the pain and drinks enough water to replenish tears he feels like won’t ever end. They aren’t alone, someone from the 118 stopping by to check on them, to bring food, to let Buck drift into the bedroom and close the door where he can shatter quietly.
Without Christopher’s determined eyes.
It’s Buck’s fault, really, and Chris deserves better.
So, two days go by and Buck still hasn’t changed the outcome, still hasn’t traded his life for Eddie’s, still wakes up in a world where he isn’t.
It hurts.
It’s horrible.
But somehow, he survives.
He makes it through another, and another, and five and ten and thirty more. The ache is the same, hasn’t changed shape or softened, hasn’t grown weaker as the sun shimmers into dusk each evening.
He keeps going, for Chris. It’s always for Chris.
He needs a family, needs a parent, and Buck’s the only one close to something like that left. Even if Chris deserves more, deserves better than what Buck thinks he’s worth, Chris has told him it’s him he wants to stay with.
Eddie’s family fought to take him back. Fought to take Eddie back, too.
Buck refused, thanks God he and Eddie had been in the field long enough to know better, shows the paperwork that proves he wants to be buried in Los Angeles with a plot beside him waiting for Buck. And another where long down the road Chris will meet them at the river, waiting to walk into peace together.
It’s not far, and Buck makes a point to go at least once a week, he and Chris stopping by Shannon’s grave while they’re there, sharing new recipes, flowers, school grades and picnics. Chris talks about the girls he wants to impress, teases Buck and asks Eddie to back him up.
Buck can’t be sure, but he swears he feels the breeze shift when Chris laughs, hopes like hell it’s Eddie laughing with them again.
At the six-month mark, Buck decides he wants to start going through some of Eddie’s things.
His side of the closet hasn’t been touched, closed off and sequestered to a world stuck when he was still alive. Buck hopes somehow the air feels different, that it’s laced with something bigger than the smell of Eddie’s sea-salt cologne, the distant smoke that’s tucked into so many of their clothes.
Chris is at a friend’s, likely three slices of pizza and two Mountain Dews deep, complaining about the next level of whatever video game they’re stuck on. Buck’s sitting on the bed, facing the closet, fists clenched tight, heart racing rapidly in his chest.
He’s seen inside the closet a million times before, knows exactly what’s sitting behind the doors.
Still, when he finally gets the courage to open it, he staggers back and loses feeling in his legs, collapsing heavily back on the bed where he started.
It smells like him.
When Buck closes his eyes, he can feel Eddie’s touch lingering on his cheek. Can feel the soft press of his lips at his temple, at his neck. Feels those warm arms wrap around his hips once again.
He chokes on a sob and feels his hands reach for his chest, like he can somehow pull the man back from the dead through a string tied right around his heart.
He can’t. He’s tried more than once.
Knows this song and dance like he knows the way Eddie’s lip tilted into a frown every time he read the instruction manual. Like the way he put his milk in before his cereal, so it didn’t get soggy too fast. Like the way he carried mints in his pocket since Buck would complain about his breath in the car, or tilt his head away from a kiss after they ate dinner.
“Now you never have an excuse,” he’d said with a smirk, cheeks rosy with delight smile soft with teasing fondness as he handed Buck a life saver. Shifted to spearmint when Buck complained about peppermint.
When the fog clears and his tears dry, Buck closes the closet doors, heads out the front door, and drives right to his favorite coffee shop.
He’s proud he opened the door, made it through the hardest part, dignity not intact but at least contained to his own bedroom. He’ll try again another day, ask for forgiveness when it turns into months, beg Chris to clean up his homework so they have more room in the dining room even when he could make more space in the bedroom.
But today, he orders some kind of chocolatey mocha – one he knows Eddie would give him shit for – and settles into a seat on the patio, keeps his red-rimmed eyes behind sunglasses, and takes a deep breath.
“Evan?” He hears his name from across the lot, sees a slew of cars tucked into spots and kids running with their parents close behind through a small park at the edge of the complex.
The voice sounded familiar, but he can’t quite place it, scans again for someone he knows.
“Evan, hey,” the voice grows louder and the bulky man behind it comes along for the ride, broad shoulders stretched against the sunlight. He’s standing in front of Buck now, stuck in a shadow when Buck squints up at his frame.
“Sorry,” he laughs, shifting to the chair across from Buck, settling into it and leaning on the table.
“Tommy Kinard,” Buck says, finally seeing his face, knowing it from their brief time together before…last year.
Tommy smiles and nods, gesturing toward the coffee shop at their backs. “I was just gonna grab a coffee, mind some company?”
Buck shakes his head and smiles – it feels like he hasn’t talked to many people outside of the 118 and his sister in the last six months.
The funeral, school, work – it’s all kept him busy enough that he’s lost touch with a few other friends in the fallout, doesn’t quite know how to pick back up again without sounding like a bummer.
“Not at all,” Buck adds. “P-Please.”
Tommy smiles and asks, “Need anything while I’m in there?”
Buck shakes his head and his drink, “I’ve got my coffee dessert, I-I’m good.”
He’s in and out in no time, and when he relaxes again across from Buck, something feels like it settles. A connection to Eddie he didn’t have before now, one he feels like he wants desperately to keep.
“So what concoction did you go for?” Tommy asks, and Buck exhales. Waiting for the question, the pity, the sad, dark look that comes with the loss – it hasn’t gotten easier over time. In fact, it gets harder with every encounter, the urge to scream and cry wrapped in the frustration of feeling like he can’t do more than say he’s getting by.
Tommy doesn’t look pitying, though, he looks light and genuine, tuned into Buck without being wrapped in sorrow.
“Some mocha special they have,” Buck shrugs. “I just wanted something that tasted more like a milkshake today.”
“Didn’t want to spring for an actual milkshake?”
Buck chuckles, something so foreign these days it feels like an act, like the edge of a performance despite it’s authenticity. “Don’t have Chris with me, so it felt like coffee was the more, uh, mature option.”
Tommy laughs and sips his own iced brew – dark and bitter – a far cry from Buck’s milky white blend. Eddie’s was somewhere in between, a cream and two sugars, one if he was eating it paired with a scone or muffin Buck baked.
He claimed it balanced out the flavor somehow, kissed Buck to shut him up when he argued the logic. Buck licks his lips and imagines he can taste Eddie’s favorite flavors when his tongue traces over them.
“Up to anything fun today?” Tommy asks, leaning back in his chair. He looks so at ease, so casual with his kindness, something about it reminds him of Eddie’s sincerity. The way his eyes latch onto Buck’s like he’s paying attention, like he’s listening. Eddie used to do the same.
Buck laughs, something hollower this time, and sips his drink for comfort.
“Well,” he sighs. “I opened Eddie’s closet today, so I thought I deserved something sweet. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able t-to cook dinner tonight without crying.”
The words spill out before he can stop them – he’s sick of pretending he’s not still fighting a barely-winning battle, each day somehow both better and worse than the previous one.
He huffs, scrubs his hand over his eyes and keeps them closed to avoid having to see that pitying stare on Tommy’s face.
“So-sorry,” Buck murmurs. “I didn’t mean to…no. No plans today.”
“Hey, I think that warrants something sweet,” Tommy says, and it sounds like he’s smiling.
When Buck opens his eyes, sure enough, Tommy’s still slouched in his chair, eyes still warm, cheeks tipped into a smile.
“M-Me too,” Buck says on an exhale, taking another sip of his mocha.
“If you want help with dinner, I can swing by with something – drop it off for you and Chris,” Tommy offers casually. “I’m grabbing groceries for some minestrone soup, I was gonna make extra to freeze anyway.”
Buck starts to decline, doesn’t want to be a burden, but the sudden thought of Eddie whispering in his ear, telling him to let someone else in, take help where he can – pushes him in the other direction.
“If you don’t mind…”
“I don’t mind,” Tommy says easily. “What time do you want me to drop it off?”
“You can eat with us, i-if you want,” Buck offers, knowing Chris is a fan of Tommy’s too, wanting to bring a piece of Eddie with him as an offering, even if it’s only in the form of Tommy Kinard.
Tommy squints at him and Buck worries he crossed some kind of line; doesn’t want to burn a bridge he just built so quickly. He rushes to apologize, to say he doesn’t need to worry about it after all, knows if he calls Bobby, he’ll drop off dinner instead.
“I didn’t–”
“On one condition,” Tommy says as he leans in closer. “You let me leave another meal. And do the dishes.”
“That sounds like two conditions,” Buck says, just to be defiant. Can see Eddie rolls his eyes in the way Tommy’s grin grows.
“Then on two conditions,” Tommy retorts.
Buck sticks out his hand and Tommy shakes it. “Deal.”
Tommy makes minestrone and brings it by at six, sits down at the dining room table with him and Chris, and Buck can’t help but smile at the questions Chris asks over spilled soup and homemade bread.
He begs to know more about rotor speed, elevation, ejection procedures – the whole gamut – and Tommy, happily, obliges every question. Chris mentions something they did together with Eddie and Buck swallows back the sudden jolt in his chest at the story. He laughs, smile tight, then offers to take dishes into the kitchen.
Tommy glances at him and watches him go but doesn’t stop Chris’ story, instead leans in with inside jokes and pulls up a picture of Chris from the day, strapped into a helicopter seat, smile wide and bright.
Buck can hear Chris ask for him to text the picture and Tommy tells him it’s already done, and their laughter fades as Buck battles to get back to solid ground. He takes a heaving breath, shudders as it shakes on the exhale, blinks back tears that threaten to fall with every blink.
He turns on the faucet and runs a bowl beneath the water, doesn’t add soap, just lets it collect and spills it out over and over again.
He thought somehow this would make things easier, would help to have someone around that wasn’t a co-worker, wasn’t so closely tied to who Eddie was, what he did every day.
But somehow, he’s still fighting through the grief, stuck in the pain, trapped in the turmoil.
He gets it together enough to go back to the dining room with coffee – decaf this time – and scones he baked the other day. Chris wanders off to his room at some point to call a friend and supposedly work on a school project. Buck somehow doubts it when he hears the telltale sound of his Xbox start up through the closed door.
It’s a battle he has no interest in fighting today.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up anything that would–”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Buck rushes to say. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I-I just…you never know what’s gonna…you know?”
“Yeah,” Tommy says softly. “Anything I can do while I’m here?”
“No,” Buck says, “No, I, uh, you’ve done more than enough. I really appreciate dinner. A-And Chris…I’m glad he got to remember a fun day with his dad.”
Tommy nods and starts to head to the kitchen, “I hope you didn’t do the dishes.”
Buck salutes teasingly, “No sir.”
It’s stupid, something he would’ve done to Eddie, but Tommy laughs the same as Eddie would’ve and the warmth feels right somehow. It’s not quite like it – far from it – but it’s not out of place there, in their home.
That feeling, even the fleeting tenderness behind it, makes the night worth it, and Buck makes sure to thank Tommy when he bids him goodnight after dishes are washed and tucked away. Leftovers sit stacked in the fridge as promised, and a tiramisu somehow snuck in alongside it. There’s a note pinned on top in messy chicken-scratch.
‘I didn’t make it but thought it could be your next reward for being courageous. When you’re ready. – Tommy.’
Tommy comes over a few more times, offers to fix the back patio where a railing has been hanging on by a thread – says he wants to do it for Chris’ sake and Buck thanks him for the trouble.
He changes the oil in Buck’s truck – and Eddie’s while he’s at it even though Buck hasn’t done anything but let it sit in the garage. It’s sat, tucked beside a punching bag that swings, lightly caked with dust and traces of Eddie’s fists in the leather.
It’s the fifth time he makes his way over, hands covered in dirt with the grime he’s picked up fixing the hostas in the front yard – that Buck tries again.
He sits on the bed like he did the first time, faces the open closet and inhales the scent of Eddie’s cologne, traces of his sweat still somehow baked in the fabric.
This time Buck pulls out a few things, decides his socks are a good place to start, knows he’d yelled at Eddie for keeping a few long past their deterioration. He tosses out the first few pairs, doesn’t recognize them for more than a pair of white crew ones, a couple in faded black, a couple more of blue and red.
When he gets to the pair he’d gifted Eddie their second Christmas together – ones with cowboy hats and the Texas flag embroidered along the edge, he feels tears press against his eyes.
Tucking them to the side, he reaches for another – a pair of wool ones Eddie always begged Buck for before he’d given up and just handed them over, said he didn’t want them back. Eddie always wore them when he was sick, said they had some kind of healing property sewn into the thread.
There’s a few more he recognizes, ones littered with holes, ones he’d claimed Chris gave him for Father’s Day in some distant memory.
When he gets to the bottom of the drawer, where he thought his chest would feel just as empty, it’s not as all-consuming as he’d feared. Tears still trace trails down his cheeks, his ribs still shudder against his shaky breaths, but he feels like he made it through something profound.
Like he’d crossed the first hurdle of the race, one he’d been running for months – so much so he’s exhausted, ragged, body torn up with his mind, the slow crawl of movement hardly noticeable in the ever-stretching road ahead.
Buck steps out of the bedroom to take a break, drink some water and stand out in the sun for a minute, look up at the sky and hope Eddie’s proud of him for making it through his stupid sock drawer eight months after he died.
It’s then that he collides with Tommy, chests pressing together in an unceremonious tangle of limbs.
“Oof,” he grunts, stumbling back against the door.
“Shit, sorry,” Tommy says, reaching out for Buck and catching him before his head hits the frame.
Buck shakes himself out of his shock, brushes his shirt and stands upright again, only to see he’s covered in dirt.
“Oh, shit!” Tommy says, eyes wide, mouth agape. “I’m – ah, I was coming in to wash my…one second.”
He rushes into the bathroom and Buck hears the faucet, tries to brush away the grime without much success. Tommy comes back quickly, damp washcloth in hand, already reaching for Buck’s forearms, wiping away the mud.
“Don’t, uh, it’s fine,” Buck stutters, laughs to settle the air that felt too hot, too tight in the bedroom at his back. They’re close together, still stuck in the narrow hallway, and Buck feels his chest flutter at the proximity.
“I’ll just…” Tommy side steps, heads back into the bathroom to toss the rag in the hamper, and comes out clean.
Tommy offers to take the bag of tossed socks out with him and Buck accepts, grateful he can let them go without having to second-guess himself.
“Was there anything else you wanted help with?” Tommy asks as he steps out the front door, no annoyance in his tone. “Anything Eddie wanted you both to have he didn’t get to?”
It’s the first time Tommy’s said his name without Buck bringing him up first, and the feeling Buck thinks he should have – one of shock or anger or full-blown hopelessness – doesn’t come. The offer feels like a warm hug, like an offering laced with care and respect, one that recognizes the man that came before him and everything he hoped and wanted for his family.
Buck swallows and shakes his head, suddenly regretful he doesn’t have a reason for Tommy to return, can’t think of something else to keep him around.
“Well, you can always call,” Tommy offers with a smile. “Tell Chris to text me about the dance, I can’t wait to hear how Amber feels about the big promposal.”
Buck chuckles and nods, tucking his hands in his pockets. “I’m sure she’ll love it,” he says with a smile, still connected to the piece of Tommy that Eddie knew too. The piece nobody but him and Chris got to see.
“See you around,” Tommy says as he heads for his truck.
Buck walks toward him without thought, mouth working before his mind, “U-Unless you want to help me with some more…um…helping get rid of some of Eddie’s stuff? It, uh, it helped having someone else around.”
Tommy softens at the words, barely noticeable, but his eyes shimmer with understanding, “I’d be honored.”
Buck feels like he means it.
The next time Tommy comes, they sort through Eddie’s jeans. Buck talks about the pair he’d turned into cut-offs for a Halloween costume a few years back, and Tommy laughs until his cheeks burn rosy pink.
There’s mints in the pockets of them all, ones Buck gathers and collects, and Tommy offers to tuck them into a small glass bowl he’d found in the kitchen. Fitting, since it belonged to Eddie’s abuela.
Buck arranges the mints inside and sets them on the dresser, tucked in front of a framed photo from Chris’ school play, one where Eddie’s smiling so big his eyes disappeared. It’s a place to say good morning, to remember the taste of spearmint, inhale it through the packaging and close his eyes, tasting Eddie’s minty tongue on his lips.
They make it through the rest of the dresser with only one panic attack and Buck blames the notes tucked inside an envelope at the back of one of the drawers. Little reminders, love notes, business cards, receipts from dates long passed. It’s a diary of Buck, tethered to Eddie, and tracing each word feels like holding his hand again.
The next time Tommy comes, he brings a shadowbox and suggests folding the notes inside, hanging them somewhere he can see them each day, protect them from the grit of daily life.
It keeps happening that way, Tommy comes to help and Buck tells him everything he remembers, all the best parts of Eddie, all the annoying frustrations that come with loving someone so intensely.
Tommy listens, holds his things with reverence, adds insights from his own time in the military to stories that Buck’s known without context for years. He asks questions, laughs about goofy things they’d shared over pavement in a pick-up basketball game, drenched in motor oil after a mishap in the garage.
Being with Eddie was like a warm quilt, one stitched with softened memories and care, one built through years of hard-earned love. It wrapped Buck in the scent of memories, kept him warm on harrowing nights, kept him protected and safe in times of strife.
Sharing space with Tommy feels like a backyard bonfire. Warm in a different kind of way, unexpected and exciting in the most electrifying ways.
They’re not the same, but they’re not so distant, either.
Somewhere between the collision in the hall and the final corner of Eddie’s things, Buck realizes he started feeling something more than friendship with Tommy.
Overwhelming guilt consumed him when he’d first recognized it for what it was – feeling like he was cheating on Eddie or being unfaithful even in the confines of his mind. Maddie talked him off that ledge, reminded him it’s been almost a year, that Eddie would be glad for him feeling safe with someone new.
That helps, a little, but it’s not until he’s with Chris one night that things settle.
“Is Tommy coming over?” Chris asks over pizza, mouth full of marinara and pepperoni.
“Swallow your food,” Buck says with an eye roll. “Is Tommy coming over for what? Do you need help with something?”
“He told me if you were okay with it, we could get a car and rebuild it together,” Chris says between bites. “Like Dad wanted to.”
Buck startles, takes a bite of his own pizza to buy a few seconds.
“Y-You, uh, you want that?” Buck asks tentatively.
Chris nods thoughtfully.
“It makes me feel…like it still helps me remember Dad,” he explains.
Buck’s chest tightens and his eyes burn with tears, but he swallows the knot in his throat. It’s a little easier to do today than it was a year ago.
He agrees easily, promises to invite Tommy over soon to start looking. Sometimes Buck wonders how he got so lucky with that kid – resilient, kind-hearted, always eager in his optimism despite the hell he’s endured in his short life.
After they find a car, Buck asks Tommy to stay for a beer, and he smiles that easy smile, nods, adds “How can I resist an offer like that?”
Chris rushes off to tell his friends about the old Chevy they’d found for less than a couple grand, and Buck and Tommy settle into the couch.
“I really…thank you for doing that with Chris,” Buck says, picking at the label on his bottle, hands desperate for something to do.
“I love it too,” Tommy says easily. “And getting to teach him will make his Dads happy, so two-for-one deal sounds pretty good to me.”
“It’s more than that,” Buck says, eyes drifting up to find Tommy’s, heart heaving in his chest like a dangerous wildfire. “You’ve been…I really couldn’t have made it through this last year wi-without you.”
“I’m glad I could help even a little,” Tommy hedges, cheeks rosy, head tilting down like he’s embarrassed of the compliment.
Buck doesn’t fight the feeling anymore, can’t hang onto a love that won’t ever be the same. Instead, he gives in, tilting forward into Tommy’s space, and presses his lips to the pink, plush ones that face him.
Tommy freezes at first, then relaxes into the kiss, pushing back and wrapping a warm palm around Buck’s waist. He doesn’t pull, doesn’t force anything, instead just keeps himself steady.
Like he’s always been.
Just there.
When they part, Buck feels dizzy with a combination of relief and remorse, pushes back on the guilt and leans into the delight, and feels his cheeks heat.
“I-I hope that wasn’t–” Buck starts.
“It wasn’t,” Tommy cuts him off. His hand is still pressed to Buck’s side, his eyes are still tracking Buck’s, soft and open.
“I-I just wanted to see how it…what it….” He’s not quite sure what to say, feels stuck on the feeling of the kiss, on the way his mind swings rapidly between sorrow and giddiness, but he doesn’t feel like he made a mistake.
It felt right.
“And?” Tommy murmurs, so close Buck can smell his breath. The lingering scent of beer and…
“Do you chew bubblegum?” Buck asks suddenly, finally recognizing the flavor.
Tommy laughs and bows his head, raising his hand to hide his embarrassment. “It’s…I’ve always…” he heaves a sigh and squints through his fingers. “I don’t even have an excuse. Yeah. I do.”
“You’re so weird,” Buck says with a laugh, and the room feels like it exhales with them both.
But it’s nice. In a different kind of way.
They agree to a date after that. Then another, and another, until dinners become movies and they shift back to the house for time with Chris, falling into something more comfortable but still nothing like what they had before.
After three years without Eddie, Buck and Tommy sit in the living room, wrapped in one another as they watch Die Hard and Chris shouts incorrect trivia Eddie always spouted off claiming he’d read it on Pop-Up Video on VH1 some twenty-five years before.
Never mind that was for music videos and Buck doubted Eddie spent much time watching VH1 as a kid when he could barely name a band from the time.
Eddie’s notes still sit in a shadow box hanging in the dining room, his favorite pair of boots still sit in the front entryway next to a jacket Chris wears every day. Pictures of him and Shannon still sit on the mantle next to Abuela and Pepa, who visit often and share memories over warm tamales and Buck’s new cookie recipes.
But with the old memories are new ones, Tommy and Chris finally finished the body of the car and it sits shining in the garage with a fresh coat of cherry red paint, a brand new license plate with DIAZ inscribed courtesy of a friend of Tommy’s.
Pictures of Tommy, Buck, and Chris at the beach hang beside an engraved wood cutout of a helicopter Chris made in woodworking class, Harbor Station 217 etched into the rotor.
It’s not the same – it never will be – but this version of life, this peace he’s found to carry him through rising tides and careful currents, feels right. He knows Tommy will always love the piece of him that loves Eddie, will love the piece that lost him too.
But every morning when Buck smiles at Eddie, takes a spearmint, closes his eyes and inhales the scent of home, he exhales, opens them, and finds safe harbor in the lingering taste of bubblegum.