Archive of Our Own

Eddie left Buck’s house with a casual, “See you next week?” Chris already strapped into the passenger seat and waving Buck goodbye.

Buck kept that just-too-tight smile plastered to his face as he disappeared behind his front door, Eddie watching after him. Pulling himself away, despite the itch under his skin wanting him to keep close, keep an eye, Eddie climbed into his truck. Something like dread dripped cold down his spine as he drove away. 

“He seems fine,” Chris said as they turned off Buck’s street. “And you were worried.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agreed, but it came out strained, his eyebrows pinching, that line between them creased. He forced himself to relax and quirked a grin at his kid. “He knows what he’s doing.”

And Eddie wanted to believe that; to trust him, so much so that he could almost convince himself it was the truth. But there was something about the way Buck carried himself, the way he smiled, the way his words of encouragement sounded pressed and thin as they passed his lips, that made Eddie uneasy—it was a tension, just under a precariously thin surface. Eddie prodded, tried to pop it, but it proved stronger than Eddie could have anticipated. 

Buck hadn’t cracked yet, but Eddie knew Buck, and he knew it was only a matter of time. It was really only a question of whether Buck would implode or explode this time—and who would be in the blast radius when it happened.

In a way, though, he’d never seen Buck quite like this before, not exactly. It was part of the reason Eddie was so inclined to believe him that everything really was okay, even if he couldn’t force himself to believe it. Buck held things in and he pushed people away, but it never took long for his wild emotions to boil over and cause him to lash out. Conversely, Eddie had seen Buck withdrawn and lost in his own head, but he’d always been able to coax him out of it with a visit from Chris, a pizza, and a couple hours of video games on the couch.

It’d been a month since the desert, and for all his effort, Eddie hadn’t broken through whatever walls Buck had built in the wake of New Mexico.

He couldn’t force Buck to talk to him. Last week, Buck had hidden from him. When Eddie asked during their next shift, Buck had lied and said he was out for a run when Eddie stopped by. They both knew it was a lie; they’d practically made eye contact through Buck’s blinds, but Eddie didn’t call him out on it—didn’t want to start another argument where Buck just brushed him off with breezy excuses. All Eddie could do was try again.

 And this week, Buck had opened the door, let them in. That was progress. They were making progress.

Eddie shook himself out of it. Buck was fine. He was alive. Eddie got him out. Whatever this was, they could deal with it. Eddie would deal with it.

-

Buck had been moody all day, keeping to himself during downtime between calls, on which he was irritable and short with everyone. In the rig, heading to their last call before end-of-shift, he stared out the window with a pinched look on his face while the team chatted idly, voices rising over the blaring sirens despite their comms. Harry was relaying some story about May to annoy Ravi, who entertained him with only a dead-eyed stare. Eddie, barely listening, watched Buck’s already working jaw tense as the playfully heated conversation continued. At one point, he squeezed his eyes shut, as if in effort to block them out completely.

The engine pulled to a stop, the sirens cut, and Buck didn’t move, didn’t flinch, as if completely unaware of the world outside his own head.

“Buck,” Eddie called sharply. Ravi and Harry’s conversation, ongoing even as they gathered themselves to hop out of the engine, stopped abruptly. They turned their uneasy gazes towards Eddie, then Buck, whose own eyes, red-rimmed and glassy as if he hadn’t slept, snapped to focus on Eddie at the sound of his name.

“What?” Buck said. Eddie couldn’t read his tone, but it didn’t matter because a second later Chim was calling out orders. With a last lingering squint, Buck tore his attention from Eddie and stumbled out of the rig.

The call had been a false alarm, a medical emergency that didn’t even require patient transport. Buck groaned as they trekked back to the engine, dragging his hands down his face and pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes.

“You good?” Eddie asked.

Buck shook his head. “When are people going to learn the difference between a panic attack and a heart attack?”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Eddie said, and Buck shot him a look. Mildly, he added, “Would you rather it have been a heart attack?”

“Maybe if it gave me something to do,” Buck said without heat. He shook his hands at his sides as if he was wound with excess energy despite that tired look in his eyes. “I just need this fucking shift to be over.” 

There was a desperate tinge buried beneath the clear exhaustion in his voice. Eddie scrutinized Buck’s profile as he walked a step behind him, but gleaned nothing from it aside from his obvious bad mood. It had not been a particularly bad shift. Calls were light and tragedy minimal. As far as they go, this shift didn’t distinguish itself as anything outside of typical, but Buck had soured more and more as the day went on.

He had seemed fine, relatively, at dinner the other day—as himself as he had been lately. Eddie brought pizza again, and Buck had Chris help him make snickerdoodles. They still talked about nothing, Buck able to brush off the worst of Eddie’s concern with a shiny smile and that carefully manufactured disposition. Eddie might as well have been looking at a different person now.

Before New Mexico, he would have known what was bothering Buck. He would have known without asking, though Buck probably would have told him anyway. Now, Eddie was lost. Buck was somewhere deep inside his own head and falling deeper, and Eddie couldn’t get him out. He couldn’t even dig his own way in to find him, meet him there.

Eddie didn’t know what, but he knew that something had been left behind in the desert.

He had the details, had sat next to Buck and listened, contempt still hot in his chest, as he gave his report to the local police, describing what Bonnie Sheets had done—from changing his clothes while he lay unconscious in her braindead son’s bedroom to jabbing him with a live cattle prod again and again. As far as he knew, he had all the pieces. 

If it was post-traumatic stress, they could deal with that, theoretically—if Buck would accept help.

But he wouldn’t. And technically, he was fine. He was coming to work, doing his job as well as he ever did, if a bit more gruffly. He opened his door every week and let Eddie and Chris inside for dinner. He chatted with Chris over homemade dessert and smiled in that way Eddie now expected him to, like he believed Eddie was falling for it.

Eddie needed to get Buck alone, to try again. He needed to talk to him—without Christopher, without distraction—to say something, anything, that would get Buck to tell him something true.

Because that was the crux of the problem pestering Eddie’s conscience: Buck wasn’t telling him the truth. He was lying. It was okay if Buck wasn’t okay; Eddie didn’t expect him to be. Buck just needed to say it—to anyone, even if he couldn’t say it to Eddie.

So as they wrapped up their twenty-four back at the station, Eddie did his best to corner him. Buck lifted his head from where he was bent over rifling through his duffle to meet Eddie’s genuine, if not pointed, smile. He startled only slightly, then relaxed as the hint of a smile touched his lips despite himself.

“Are you up for breakfast?” Eddie asked, casual.

Buck lifted an eyebrow. “Breakfast?”

“Yeah, you and me. Breakfast. It’s been awhile.” 

That was true despite his ulterior motive. They used to get post-shift breakfasts all the time, either just the two of them or with more members of the 118 tagging along. It was one of those traditions that fell to the wayside after Bobby.

Buck’s ever-tightening grin twitched. “We have dinner every week.”

“This is breakfast,” Eddie countered.

A look passed over Buck’s face, just for a second, almost too quickly for Eddie to read. Buck was uncomfortable, nervous. It was in the pull of his lips, the nearly imperceptible furrow of his brow.

“Uh, I—I think I’d better just go home and sleep,” Buck answered slowly. “I’m kind of worn out. Long shift.”

Eddie nodded amicably. “You should come over later, then, after you get some sleep.”

Buck stared at him for a long time, considering, expression clouded by whatever he was struggling to hide. His jaw worked, and his misty eyes glistened with thought, some calculation toiling behind them that only Buck himself was privy to. 

And then, abruptly, he smiled—toothy and very Buck and very nearly real.

“I’ll see you in a couple days,” was what he said, and then he skirted around Eddie with his unzipped duffel in hand and walked out the glass locker room door. Eddie could only watch him go.

-

Buck did come over later, to Eddie’s surprise. Eddie had taken a nap when he got home, and was now wasting time until he had to pick Chris up from school in just under an hour, fiddling with his laptop and hardly watching the basketball game that played at a low volume on this TV. He barely had time to register the rapping echoing through the house from his front door when he heard the familiar click of Buck’s key in the lock.

He had closed his laptop and muted the game before Buck appeared in his living room. 

He didn’t look like he had gotten any rest in the six hours since their shift ended. He wasn’t wearing different clothes either, an oversized sweatshirt thrown over the same outfit he’d left the station in. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, and if anything, his red-rimmed eyes were even glassier than the last time Eddie looked into them. He wondered if he was imagining how pale Buck looked.

“I thought you weren’t gonna come over,” Eddie said. He nodded toward the seat next to him on the couch, expecting Buck to take it, but Buck either didn’t notice or didn’t care, shuffling his feet awkwardly as he waffled in the archway.

“Yeah, I was out. I, uh, I had a doctor’s appointment.”

“Oh?” Eddie asked mildly, though his thoughts turned, hope bubbling cautiously. Had Buck actually set something up with a professional without telling Eddie? It wouldn’t be the first time Buck got help on his own without telling anyone.

But Eddie’s flicker of relief snuffed out when Buck said dismissively, “Yeah. It was just a follow-up. From the—from the car wreck.”

“The car wreck? Is everything okay?”

Buck had been worse off than Eddie after the accident, obviously, but they both had been cleared for work a couple weeks ago. As far as Eddie knew, Buck’s ribs should be healing fine on their own. Eddie got the feeling that what he didn’t know was beginning to outweigh what he did.

“Yeah, yeah, everything's fine. Hey, I’m gonna use your bathroom,” Buck said distractedly, and then he disappeared down the hallway, leaving Eddie staring after him, moderately stunned.

Hastily forging a plan, Eddie plucked two cold beers from the fridge—a little early for a drink still, but Eddie thought it might drop Buck’s guard, ease him into an ambush.

Eddie placed one open bottle on the coffee table and rolled the other between his palms as he waited for Buck, turning the words he wanted to say over in his mind. Eddie hardly noticed the minutes passing, only just starting to wonder what was taking Buck when he wandered back into the room.

He seemed less agitated, some of that anxious energy he’d walked in with having dissipated and his hands relaxed at his sides instead of stuffed into his pockets. The knot in Eddie’s chest cracked.

“You want a beer?” Eddie offered, raising his own bottle towards Buck before taking an inconspicuously marginal sip.

“At two pm?”

Eddie shrugged. “It’s Friday.”

Buck actually chuckled—just a breath of a laugh, but it was something. “Yeah, sure.”

Eddie found comfort in the line of warmth at his side when Buck fell into the couch beside him—a solid reminder that Buck was still here, that he wasn’t actually disappearing in front of Eddie’s eyes.

Eddie watched him knock back his drink, slightly amused by but otherwise not making note of the way he downed it in the time Eddie drank only a quarter of his own. It was enough to see Buck loosen up, melting into the cushions like this was the first time Buck felt comfortable in weeks. He wouldn’t begrudge him for slamming an early afternoon beer.

“So how did it go?” Eddie asked.

Buck met his gaze without urgency, empty bottle dangling between his thighs from his interlaced fingers. “Huh?”

“The doctor.”

Buck’s shoulders curled up towards his ears. “Oh. Fine. Everything looks—ya know, all healed up.” He dropped his shoulders with a soft huff and quirked his lips into something that could be mistaken for a smile.  “Like it never even happened.”

“Is that how you feel? Like it never happened?” Eddie asked, putting all his effort into keeping his voice light, as if his peace of mind didn’t depend on getting an honest answer from Buck right now.

Buck turned his gaze toward the TV and the game Eddie knew he had no interest in. Eddie thought maybe he was considering his answer, but several moments passed while Eddie waited, and Buck’s dull eyes never shifted or sharpened, even as the game passed into halftime and was replaced by the soundless, moving mouths of the talking heads.

“Buck,” Eddie pushed. “Can we talk?”

“Are we not talking?” Buck said, no irritation in his voice, but nothing genuine either.

“About you.”

Suddenly the stakes felt too high, like if he couldn’t break through to Buck now, the chance would pass him by, and he wouldn’t have another. For eight years, he’d known how to pull things out of Buck, things Buck buried deep inside, that he wouldn’t even acknowledge about himself. Not just the hard things—the scary things that ate away at Buck’s better sense until he was losing himself and lashing out—but the good things, too. The things Buck couldn’t see about himself that Eddie could.

“Look, I know I said I’d trust you to do this your own way, but I’m worried about you, man. I know what happened out there was scary; it was scary for me, too. I’m not one hundred percent, either, you know? It—I just want you to know that I get it. Alright?”

Buck seemed to ignore him.

Eddie moved from the couch to sit on his coffee table, between Buck and the television, into his line of sight.

“Buck,” Eddie said, a tinge of fear finally bleeding into his words. “Do you hear me?”

Buck’s eyes finally focused on him, and his features crumpled slightly. “Yeah, I-I hear you, Eddie,” Buck said.

Eddie tried not to look helpless, but he felt it. “I don’t know what to do. Can you please just tell me what I can do to help you?”

Buck looked so tired, suddenly, a bone-deep exhaustion giving way to an immediate need for sleep. In an instant, Buck’s eyelids were half-mast and his chin bobbed like he struggled to hold up his head. “I’m tired, Eddie. Can we—” Buck cut himself off and sunk further into the couch.

“Have you eaten today? That beer… really hit you.” Eddie said, baffled, a fresh wave of anxiety tingling from his chest to his arms down to his fingertips.

“Maybe I should have let you take me to breakfast.” Buck slurred with a languid chuckle, setting Eddie even more on edge. Then he shook his head like he was trying to dislodge something, maybe that poor excuse for a joke. “I’m just tired. I haven’t—I haven’t slept, I haven’t been sleeping.”

His voice trailed off at the end; his eyes slipped shut. The empty bottle slid from his loose grip, landing with a dull clunk on the rug and rolling under the coffee table between Eddie’s feet.

“Okay,” Eddie said, placing a hand firmly on Buck’s knee. Buck flinched, dragging heavy lids open for just a second. “Okay, look. I gotta go pick up Christopher. Just hang out here, rest up, we’ll have dinner, and then we can talk. Yeah? Buck?”

Buck nodded sluggishly, and then he was out, slumped but sitting up still, head lolling to the side to rest on his shoulder. Carefully, Eddie guided him down to lay on his side, one hand on his shoulder and the other cradling the side of his head. Buck followed easily without stirring. It took Eddie a moment to pull away; Buck felt warm and alive, but he looked like he’d turn cold as soon as he lost Eddie’s touch.

Eddie didn't know what just happened. 

He unfolded a throw blanket and draped it over Buck; then he picked up the beer bottle from the floor and emptied his own into the sink before throwing them both into the recycling bin. He couldn’t find the remote to turn off the television, and he was too frazzled to search for it, so he left it on.

He locked the door behind him, in a daze as he drove to Chris's school. One second he was turning off his street and the next Chris was slamming his palm against the window, calling for Eddie to unlock the car. He shook himself out of it as Chris regaled him with the details of his day, his stream-of-consciousness jabbering the only thing keeping Eddie present for the fifteen-minute drive home.

He told himself that Buck was just exhausted. If he hadn’t been sleeping, if he was truly sleep-deprived, that could explain a lot—the odd behavior, the irritability. Though why Buck wouldn’t tell him that a week or a month ago, Eddie couldn’t guess. What he did know was that Buck felt safe enough in Eddie’s house to rest there. He would get some much needed sleep, Eddie would feed him a full dinner, and then he and Eddie could talk.

The front door was unlocked when Eddie stuck his key in the deadbolt. Confused, he turned to check the street. He hadn’t even realized Buck’s truck was already gone when he pulled up.

He’d been gone not even forty minutes. Buck looked like a bomb going off wouldn’t have woken him when Eddie left. He certainly shouldn’t have been driving.

In his living room, the muted game continued without an audience and the navy throw blanket lay crumpled in a heap on the floor. Buck, obviously, was nowhere to be found.

Chris had already closed himself in his bedroom, content to play video games with his friends until he was called for dinner.

Eddie stood dumbly in the empty room, feeling unsure and uncomfortable in the wake of Buck’s strange visit. Eddie wondered why he had even come over at all, if he had done something to scare Buck away. He pulled out his phone and sent a text, the only thing he could think to do. Let me know you got home alright.

He spent five minutes watching for the read-receipt, to indicate at the very least Buck was conscious and alive. Finally, his text flicked over to read, and he had a reply within five seconds. 

Home sorry see you monday.

Eddie could hardly feel relieved, but he told himself that Buck was okay, at least for now. He was alive; he was responding; he told Eddie something, even if it was something small. He hadn’t been sleeping. Eddie could work with that.

See you monday. Get some sleep.

-

Eddie had never called Maddie in his life. Their text thread was existent, but sparse.

What was that restaurant you told Chim about? He won’t shut up about going there, but he doesn't remember the name. Thanks.

Do you know bucks favorite cereal? Dont ask why.

The smell of black coffee thick in his kitchen, Eddie sat at his table and stared at the contact in his phone. He still had her in there as “Maddie Buck Sister,” never having bothered to change it after Buck shared it with him early on in their partnership, just in case. Her last name had still been Kendall back then.

His thumb hovered over the call button. It was early, not yet nine, but Eddie knew she’d be awake already with two small children to wrangle on a Saturday morning. He didn’t even know what he wanted to say to her. Part of him felt guilty for considering going over Buck’s head to tell on him to his big sister, but he’d feel even guiltier going over Buck’s head to his boss, even if his boss was also his brother-in-law, and whatever Eddie told Maddie would almost certainly be passed on to Chim anyway. 

Eddie was at a loss. He hadn’t been able to settle his nerves since Buck’s visit yesterday. Eddie was becoming desperate, and he didn’t know what else to do. If anyone could get through to Buck when Eddie couldn’t, it was his sister.

But still, Eddie hesitated. He wanted to trust Buck, like Buck had asked him to. Yesterday was strange, if not downright startling, but Buck had come to him. Who was to say he wouldn’t again, if Eddie just held out, stayed the path? Maybe he was expecting too much from him. Buck almost died—again—in one of the scariest ways possible. Buck was breathing; he was talking; he was here. Eddie could almost convince himself he was pulling Buck out of it, bit by bit. Would calling Maddie open another door, or would it shut the only one Buck had?

Eddie waffled until his coffee had gone cold and he could hear Chris stirring in his bedroom. His fingers tapped in a nervous rhythm against the back of his phone case.

And then, to his surprise, with a short buzz a text dropped down from the top of the screen. Actually got some sleep last night. THANK GOD! Sorry about yesterday.

Relief wasn’t the right word, but something preferable to the concern icing his veins since yesterday washed over him.

No worries. You feeling better?

A second later: 100%. Then, Maybe 80%. 50 at the least. I’ll be back to 100 by next shift, followed by the salute emoji.

Eddie read the texts over and over, convincing himself that this was good. Buck was reaching out; he was joking. Maybe this was the best Eddie could ask for right now. He set his phone face down on the table when Chris wandered into the kitchen, asking, “Where’s breakfast?”

He had to trust Buck. He would get through this. He always did.

-

“Where’s Buck?” Chimney asked, leaning against the doorway into the locker room, hands in his pockets.

Eddie turned from where he was shoving his civvies into his locker. “You asking me?”

Chimney shrugged. “Are you not your best friend’s keeper?”

“I’m not, actually,” Eddie said, but he was already pulling out his phone to check his texts. Shift started five minutes ago. Eddie hadn’t even noticed Buck’s absence yet; he’d been running behind himself, between getting Chris to school and a rush hour collision backing up traffic on his route. “I haven’t heard from him since Saturday. He didn’t call you about running late?”

“Nope.”

Eddie’s brow creased, unease setting in. “He’s been having trouble sleeping—maybe he slept through his alarm. Do you want me to call him?”

Chimney shook his head. “We’ll give him ten, and then I’ll give him a try,” he said, then he shoved off the door jamb and retreated into the truck bay. Eddie closed his locker and followed, joining Hen, Ravi, and Harry chatting with the last departing C-shift members as they prepared for shift change.

“Hey. Where’s your boy?” Hen asked as he approached, light as ever, but he could sense the anxiety hidden in her tone. 

He shrugged helplessly.

“Has he ever no-call, no-showed before?” Harry asked.

“Never,” Hen said. “Not even back in his rig-stealing hookup days.”

Harry shot her a crooked look. “His what days?”

“Yeah, no. You can ask Buck about that. See if he can tell you without dying of embarrassment.”

Harry looked to Ravi for help, but Ravi put up his hands, waving him off. “That was before my time.”

“It was before Eddie’s time,” Hen said pointedly.

Harry scoffed. “That’s a hard thing to imagine—Buck before Eddie.”

Hen grabbed Eddie’s arm above the elbow and gave him a fond shake. “Yeah, he was a bit of a stray when we found him, but we had him mostly house-trained by the time Eddie came along.”

Eddie forgot his worry for half a second, allowing himself a moment of levity. The hand on his arm tightened, warm and reassuring, and he caught sight of the concern glinting in Hen’s eyes. He swallowed around the lump in his throat.

“Do you think this is about—?” Harry started to ask but cut himself off, clearly uncomfortable. The energy shifted in the air between them, becoming stiff and awkward.

“New Mexico?” Eddie finished for him.

“He’s just seemed different since you guys got back.”

Eddie bristled unconsciously, knowing how much it would bother Buck that everyone could see how off things were with him, but it was getting harder to ignore. “Yeah, he has been.”

“He’ll come around,” Hen said, confident in a way Eddie hadn’t felt since he’d pointed a gun at a kidnapper’s head. “We just gotta give him time.”

“And space, apparently,” Ravi quipped with a lightness that betrayed what they all thought: that Buck would show up any second, breathless with excuses about the traffic and lost time.

He didn’t, though.

Chim called him first, then Eddie called, then Eddie *67 called him, in case Buck was deliberately avoiding their calls, then Eddie texted—and texted and texted. A sense of dread, hot and overwhelming, rose slowly as each call and text went unanswered, and he did his best to push it down, steel himself, breathe through it. There was no reason to panic or get ahead of himself. He shouldn’t assume the worst; he shouldn’t assume anything at all. For all he knew, Buck was asleep with his phone on silent.

“I should go check on him,” Eddie said, already rearing up to grab his keys and go.

“Hang on a minute,” Chim said, raising a finger. Eddie glared at it before he could stop himself. “Maddie doesn’t have work for a few hours. Let me send her over there.”

“Doesn’t she have Nash?” Eddie asked.

“She can take the baby with her—what do you think she’s gonna find?” Chim said incredulously, looking at Eddie like he might be crazy. “But no, she’ll have already dropped him off at daycare.”

“Fine,” Eddie relented, as if the decision was up to him in any way. Chim didn’t comment on it—just pulled out his phone to dial Maddie.

After a short conversation, Chimney reported that Maddie was on her way to Buck’s, and as much as Eddie wanted to hover over Chimney’s shoulder and wait for his wife to call him back, they did actually have a job to be doing. They started checking off the rig, but Eddie remained on edge and distracted, hyperaware of his phone in his pocket, thinking every shift of fabric was a vibration alerting him to a text from Buck.

When his phone did buzz, it wasn’t a text from Buck, but from Maddie. Eddie had been waiting to hear from her through Chimney, so he was surprised to see her send an update in a group text to the both of them.

He’s sick. He thinks it’s food poisoning, but he’s not sure what he ate. I don’t know why he didn’t call in. His phone is on. I made him turn on the ringer and promise to answer all his texts. I’ll check on him again after work tonight.

Food poisoning. Okay. Unfortunate timing, and it was still odd that Buck went radio silent, but it was an explanation that Eddie could stomach.

Separately, Maddie messaged Eddie. Do you think you can check on him after your shift ends tomorrow?

Sure thing. How did he look? Eddie replied.

Like he has a bad case of the flu. He scooted me out the door before I could get a good look at him, but I’m pretty sure he’ll survive.

Eddie rolled his eyes at the image of a sick Buck pushing his concerned sister away so he could suffer alone.

Thank you for checking on him. Now I can get through this shift without losing my mind.

Eddie watched the little green bubble; the ellipses danced for several seconds before stopping and starting a couple times, then keeping up long enough for Eddie to get distracted and put his phone away. He’d almost forgotten he was waiting for the text when it came through.

Of course. I’m a little worried about him. I’ve tried to talk with him about what happened to him, but he won’t have any of it. Maybe it is just food poisoning, but I wonder if this is his body catching up with his mind. You were out there with him (thank you by the way for bringing him home). Do you think he’s dealing with it?

Eddie couldn’t answer right away. He didn’t know how—did she want honesty or reassurance? What could Eddie tell Maddie about her own brother that she couldn’t figure out on her own? If anything, Maddie understood what Buck had gone through better than he could. But still, she asked him. 

You were out there with him. Do you think he’s dealing with it? 

Eddie started to feel sick again when the tones started blaring. An internal switch flipped, and he could pull on his gear, shut off his mind from the anxiety prickling there, and do his job. He never did get around to answering Maddie. He told himself he simply forgot.

The longest shift of Eddie’s life followed. He texted Buck throughout the day, just to make himself feel better, and he got an answer about half the time, which Eddie accepted with a modicum of comfort. Around six, Maddie sent another update after visiting Buck again. He was still sick but alive, and she had let him know that Eddie would check on him in the morning. 

Eddie just had to get through the next fourteen hours, and then he could see for himself.

It wasn’t a historically crazy night, but they did stay busy, and by the time eight in the morning rolled around, Eddie was both exhausted and wired.

Chris was taken to school on days Eddie got off shift in the morning, so he was free until pick-up at three. He changed and packed his duffel with efficiency, dashing out of the locker room while Harry and Ravi chatted idly about their plans for the next seventy-two hours.

Hen, still in uniform and obviously waiting to catch Eddie before he could disappear, stopped him in the truck bay with a hand on his chest. Her fingers curled slightly in his shirt as she said, “Shoot me a text after you get over there and see that we’ve all been worrying for nothing, will you?”

Eddie smiled, tight but sincere. “You got it.”

Hen nodded, studying him for a moment before letting him go.

Eddie knocked on Buck’s front door to make his presence known, but he didn’t give him time to answer before he unlocked it himself. Frankly, he’d be surprised if Buck was awake this early while he was ill; he’d be even more surprised if he bothered answering the door when he knew Eddie had his key.

What he found inside couldn’t be what Maddie had left last night.

The living room and the bedroom were empty. Eddie called out for him with no reply. There weren’t that many places to check, and Buck’s truck was still parked out front, but still he didn’t really expect to find Buck where he did, curled up on the bathroom floor in the dark, back facing the doorway and knees tucked close to his stomach. He was dressed in only a sweatshirt and boxer shorts. The small space reeked of sweat and vomit, some of which sat unflushed in the toilet. Eddie opened the door wide to let the light from the hallway pour inside before kneeling at Buck's side, automatically pressing two fingers to his pulse point, the skin there hot and clammy.

Buck flinched away from Eddie with a low groan, whole body shaking as it wracked with a wave of intense full-body chills.

“Buck, hey,” Eddie soothed, holding firm. His pulse fluttered wildly beneath Eddie’s touch. “Can you look at me? Can you sit up?”

Buck gave no sign that he heard him, so Eddie wrapped his hands around Buck’s shoulders and hauled him upright, leaning him back against the tub. Eddie kept one hand firm against Buck’s shoulder and lifted the other to cup Buck’s jaw, thumb absentmindedly stroking his cheek. Heat radiated off of him. He was grey, literally, the bright red rimming his wet eyes standing out stark against his muted pallor. Old vomit crusted his chin. His usually bright pink lips were dry and peeling, in contrast to the sweat which drenched his skin, soaked his limp curls, and darkened his navy hoodie at the neck and underarms.

Eddie lightly tapped his fingers against Buck’s face, desperate to rouse him. “Buck, if you don’t acknowledge my existence right now, I’m calling 9-1-1,” he said.

“I’m here, ‘m okay,” Buck murmured. He finally opened his eyes beyond slits, revealing blown pupils.

Eddie released a tight breath. “Give me an assessment.”

“I’m sick.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Have you had any water since Maddie last checked on you? Taken tylenol for the fever, anything?”

Buck hummed a negative.

“I think we should get you to urgent care. You gotta be dehydrated, and I don’t know what this is, but you look about two inches from death.”

Buck’s eyes had fallen closed again; he shook his head drunkenly. “No. No hospital.”

“Buck.”

“I’m serious. I’m not dying.”

“How do you know that?”

“Trust me.” Buck’s whole body seized and shook with another set of chills. Eddie’s hand shifted to the back of his neck to hold his head steady.

“I’m finding that a little difficult to do right now.”

“Food poisoning,” Buck muttered, as if that was any kind of argument or explanation.

“Buck, this isn’t food poisoning,” Eddie said, exasperation bleeding into his tone. He’d been able to maintain his composure, shift into medic mode and keep his worry at bay, but he was starting to lose his cool. There were pieces of the puzzle here that Eddie didn’t have, that he didn’t understand. Buck was still withholding, and Eddie either wasn’t smart enough or wasn’t objective enough to put them together without help. “I’m calling Maddie.”

“Don’t, Eddie, don’t,” Buck said with a sudden rush of energy. His hands flew out and tangled in Eddie’s shirt, pulling. His next words tumbled out of him, desperation turning them breathless. “Don’t call Maddie, she’ll know—”

Eddie ignored Buck’s white-hot panic, instead focusing on what he let slip. “She’ll know—? So you do know what this is.”

Buck shook his head and rocked forward, curling further into himself until he pressed the top of his head against Eddie’s collarbone. “I-I can’t—I can’t say it, I can’t tell you—Eddie—”

“Okay, okay, breathe,” Eddie said, rubbing small circles between Buck's shoulder blades. “I need to call her. I’m-I’m out of my depth, okay? I can call Maddie, or I can take you to the ER. I don’t know what else to do here, Buck.” 

Buck didn’t seem to have the energy to resist, nor the wherewithal to push Eddie away like he had done to Maddie yesterday. He kept shaking his head against Eddie’s chest, but when he didn’t say anything else, Eddie reached for his phone.

She picked up on the second ring. “Eddie?” she said, sounding surprised. She probably hadn’t been expecting more than a text update after Eddie's check-in.

 He controlled his tone as he spoke, but he knew she’d be able to hear past the manufactured calm. “Hey, Maddie. I’m with Buck, um—do you think you’d be able to come over?”

“Is everything okay?” she asked, immediately tense.

“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie said, wanting to reassure her despite the fact that everything could hardly be less okay. He was trying not to think about it, but there was something distinctly terrifying about seeing a new low in this person with whom he’d thought he’d seen it all. But Buck was breathing and his heart was beating, so he said, “Everything’s okay—we could just use a second opinion over here.”

She exhaled sharply, tinny over the phone. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

While they waited, Eddie found a washcloth and wet it with warm water, but Buck took it when Eddie tried to wipe his face for him, apparently not far gone enough to sacrifice this one shred of dignity. Eddie winced as Buck roughly scrubbed it over his face, but he didn’t intervene. 

Eddie wanted to keep pushing, prodding at Buck’s weak points until it all spilled out, but the lost, weepy look on Buck’s face stopped him. This moment felt too delicate—like if Eddie did get him to break now, he would shatter into too many pieces to put back together.

Buck threw up again, long minutes of heaving turning into wrenched sobs, and Eddie sat on the edge of the tub with a hand on his back, a detached calm pressing his reeling thoughts out of his mind. Conclusions seemed to elude him.

“Eddie?” Maddie called from somewhere outside the bathroom, which Eddie had quickly forgotten existed, the walls of this stuffy, sweaty room having closed in on him and shrunken his awareness.

“We’re in the bathroom,” Eddie answered.

Eddie heard her before he saw her, her breath caught in a gasp at the sight of her little brother slumped against the toilet. His cheek rested carelessly against the seat as he breathed through waves of nausea.

She rushed to his side without pause, hands immediately on him, pressing against his face and pushing back his drenched hair. “Buck?” she said. He hummed in acknowledgement, and she nodded as if checking something off a mental list. She turned to Eddie. “He was not like this yesterday. What can you tell me?”

Eddie shrugged helplessly, at a loss, but he provided her with everything he’d gathered so far. “Fever, chills, elevated heart rate, uh, blown pupils. Nausea, obviously. He has to be dehydrated. He’s been sweating and shaking out of his skin, I don’t—I can’t tell how out of it he is. He’s responsive and answering questions, but he won’t let me take him to the hospital, and he didn’t want me to call you. He said you’d ‘know.’ Do you know what that means?”

She shook her head. “Hey, Buck, can we help you sit up?”

Buck hummed again, and she took it as permission, grabbing Buck by the shoulders and pulling him away from the toilet. Eddie helped, propping Buck up against the tub again.

The movement roused Buck from his post-nausea lethargy, and he seemed to only now become aware that Maddie had joined them. “Shit,” he groaned, trying to curl in on himself again, but Eddie held him up with a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m just gonna check you out, okay?” Maddie said. 

Not waiting for an answer, she pressed the back of one hand to his forehead and held his wrist with the other, measuring his pulse. “Maddie, I’m fine,” Buck insisted as he tried to wriggle away from her ministrations. He flinched back harshly when she pulled open an eyelid with her thumb to look at his pupils. “Hey! Seriously!”

When Maddie finished, she sat back on her heels and watched her brother for several long moments, her expression inscrutable to Eddie. Maybe Buck could read it—or would have been able to with a clearer head. He squirmed under her scrutiny, but eventually he lost the energy to care, slumping, and Eddie moved to his side to give him something to lean into.

Maddie shook herself out of her reverie. “Buck, I’m going to talk with Eddie outside.”

Buck’s hand shot out in an instant, wrapping around Maddie’s wrist. Eddie startled, both at the suddenness and the loss of Buck’s weight on him. “Don’t.”

“Buck.” Maddie said it like it hurt.

 Buck began to beg, desperation building with every word. “Maddie, please, I have it under control, okay? I had it under control. Just trust me—trust me with this, I swear to God—”

“Buck,” she said again, more forcefully, but no less pained.

“Maddie, Maddie, please, don’t tell him, you can’t tell him, I know I fucked up, I fucked it all up—”

Maddie twisted her hand out of Buck’s grip so that Buck’s trembling hand was held between her own instead. Buck ripped it away, breaking himself from the attempt at comfort. 

“Evan, I don’t know what you want me to do,” she pleaded, and Eddie realized she was crying. She made no move to stem the tears, letting them fall as her little brother kept her at arm’s length.

Buck blew out a shaky breath, but it did nothing to calm him. “I cant, I cant—” he heaved; he let out a noise like Eddie had never heard from him and smacked the side of his head with a flat palm—once, twice, then Eddie’s bewildered stupor snapped, and he stopped Buck’s next strike before it could hit with a firm, halting grip.

“Buck,” he croaked, and he knew in all the years he’d been saying Buck’s name it had never sounded like this, like he was scared of it, and for a reason Eddie couldn’t understand, guilt surged in his chest.

“Sorry, shit—” Buck said, and Eddie let him pull his hand back so that he could shove his palms against his eyes. “Shit.”

Like a switch flipped, Buck seemed to shut down. His protests died and his loud breaths slowed, still hitching erratically but further from hyperventilation than they had been a moment before. Eddie finally let him curl into himself, not seeing any point in keeping him upright any longer.

Maddie sighed. She tore a piece of toilet paper from the roll and dabbed at her face, then blew her nose. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, so she could drag her hands down her wet eyes without smearing mascara down her cheeks. She sucked in a deep breath through her nose and then appeared to steel herself. She hooked a hand around one of Buck’s bare ankles, more for herself than for Buck, Eddie thought, as Buck stiffened at the contact.

“Do you know what Buck was prescribed at the hospital that took care of you guys in New Mexico?” she asked.

“What he was prescribed?” Eddie repeated dumbly.

“What they gave him.”

“Oxycodone and tramadol,” Eddie said. “I don’t—he shouldn’t still have any.”

“It appears he doesn’t,” Maddie said mildly, pointedly.

“No, I mean,” Eddie said, not comprehending, maybe not wanting to. He turned to Buck, whose fingers were interlocked behind his head tucked into his knees, the occasional shudder rocking through him the only clear sign of life.  “He shouldn’t still be taking it.”

Maddie looked at him sadly—with pity, he realized, and his heart clenched. He nodded, eyes burning, letting it wash over him. 

“Right. Okay.”

“I saw it enough times when I was working the ER. You didn’t recognize it?”

“No, we, uh—we see more ODs on our side of things,” Eddie said, but it was a half-truth. He probably should have recognized it. Now that Maddie said it, it was obvious. He could rewind the past several weeks in his mind and point out every red flag—his agitation, the erratic behavior and mood swings, the avoidance and flakiness, and now this. 

Withdrawal. Buck had been taking opioids, abusing them, and now he was in withdrawal.

He’d known. Eddie had known something was seriously wrong, but he doubted himself, and he trusted Buck. He didn’t push as hard as could have because he wanted to meet Buck where he was at, but Buck might as well have been on another fucking hemisphere. Against his better judgement, he had convinced himself that he could trust Buck to take care of himself, and—Fuck.

Okay. Eddie could handle this. Compartmentalize. Put it away. Focus on the issue at hand, on the next step, and then the step after that.

“Alright, we gotta get you to a hospital,” Eddie announced, nudging Buck lightly as he pulled back, preparing to stand them both up.

Buck shook his head against his knees. “Please just let me do this here. I’m already this far. Just let me sweat it out.”

Maddie met Eddie's eyes and frowned.

“Buck, you’re already dehydrated,” Eddie said, as gentle as he could manage. “At the very least, you need a banana bag.”

“Then get me a banana bag,” Buck grumbled. “You’re a paramedic.”

Maddie reached out with both hands, rubbing up and down his forearms. “Sweetie, you have to let us help you.”

“I don’t need help!” Buck snapped, shifting out of Maddie’s touch again. 

She pulled back, alarmed, and Buck finally lifted his head, exposing the mess of snot and tears on his face. He looked pathetic, but the anger flaring white-hot in Eddie burned away any immediate sympathy. “You don’t need help, right, that’s how you got hooked on pills.”

“Eddie!” Maddie scolded.

“I had it under control! Jesus! I was gonna—I was gonna ween myself off once I—once it stopped—but he cut me off, and I-I didn’t know what to do. It started spiraling. I didn’t know what to do—”

“Who cut you off?” Eddie asked, ignoring the rest of Buck’s frantic babbling.

Buck threw out his arms as spoke, suddenly with all the energy in the world. “The doctor I saw on Friday; he put me in a fucking database, and then I—”

Eddie cocked his head. “And then you came to my house.”

It replayed in Eddie's mind. Buck had shown up agitated and twitchy, practically running to the bathroom; and then he returned, seeming miraculously calmer and falling almost instantaneously asleep on Eddie’s couch. In retrospect it painted a crystal clear picture.

Buck froze as realization dawned on Eddie, fear locked into his expression like Eddie had never seen it, and then he crumbled, devastation unfolding over Buck’s features. “Eddie. Please don’t be mad—”

“You stole drugs from my bathroom,” Eddie said. It wasn’t a question, though he could hardly believe it.

“I—I knew you had stuff in there, and I just—I needed—Fuck, please, please don’t be mad. This isn’t—this isn’t me. I don’t—”

Buck dropped his face into his hands and started sobbing. Maddie, speechless, face wet with tears again, dragged herself to his other side and wrapped her little brother up in her arms as he shook.

Eddie took a deep, calming breath—in for four, hold for seven, out for eight. He had to rein in his gut reaction to this. He had to swallow it, bury it, take Buck at his word that this wasn't him. It was the only thing he could do right now—for himself and for Buck.

He let Buck work through the sobs. When he quieted enough that Eddie thought his words would push through, he pitched his voice low and said, “Okay, hey. I'm not mad, Buck. I'm not mad at you. Alright?”

“You should be,” he said pathetically.

Eddie released a puff of air between his lips that would be a laugh in entirely different circumstances. “Well, I’m not. I’m just scared, okay? I want to take care of this for you.”

“We want to,” Maddie interjected. “We just want you to be okay.”

Buck nodded, finally—maybe—relenting.

“I can’t do a treatment center,” he said wetly. “I can’t—I can’t be locked in a place like that right now.”

“Okay, no treatment center,” Maddie agreed. “People do home detox. We’ll figure it out.”

-

They got Buck cleaned up and dressed in fresh clothes. Eddie and Maddie decided to drive separately to the ER, in case either of them had to leave before Buck was released. They didn’t talk about who Buck would ride with, but after locking up the house behind them, he trailed silently after Eddie, pulling himself into the passenger seat of his GMC without a word.

Maddie registered Buck at the front desk while Eddie settled him in in a row of empty chairs. He found Buck an emesis bag, which Buck took with a self-conscious nod. They didn’t talk on the drive over, and they don’t have much to say now, either. A rare awkward silence hung between them; though if ever a situation called for it, it was this one.

“I need to call Chim and let him know what’s going on,” Maddie said when she met up with them.

Buck groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “Maddie, can’t we—”

“Don’t do that. He’s your boss and your brother-in-law. And I’m going to be here instead of home for at least the next several hours, so he’s going to be curious about that, too.”

Buck immediately caved, sounding defeated. “Fine.”

“Do you want to tell him?” Maddie asked seriously.

“No. You do it. Please.”

She pursed her lips and nodded, turning away to find a quiet place to have a difficult conversation.

Buck looked genuinely awful, no better off than he had when Eddie found him curled up on the floor. He at least hadn’t thrown up since the last time in the bathroom, but he looked close after ten minutes in the car. Eddie had filled a water bottle for him before they left his house, and Buck sipped carefully from it, but it wouldn’t be enough until they had Buck on a drip. His grey complexion looked somehow more alarming under hospital fluorescents, sweat glistening in a dull, sickly way that it hadn’t in the dim light of his bathroom.

Now that he was in public, with his pain on display for any and all to see, he held it together impressively well, but he had to feel like shit. He couldn’t hold still, curling in on himself with his arms wrapped around his middle; then resting his elbows on his knees with his head in hands as he bounced his knees; then leaning back with his head resting against the wall behind him, legs splayed out in front.

The ER wasn’t calm, either; it never was in this city. Nurses bustled about, snipping at each other and at patients, who coughed, cried, and, occasionally, shouted. Buck didn't complain, but if he told Eddie it wasn’t bothering him, he wouldn’t have believed him.

He surprised Eddie by asking, voice weak, “Do you think Bobby would be disappointed in me?” He tried to set his tone like the question just occurred to him, but Eddie could tell it had been percolating in his mind for a while, waiting for the right moment to be put forward.

“I think that Bobby would understand maybe better than anyone else,” Eddie answered honestly.

“Yeah,” Buck seemed to agree. He chewed his lip as he thought. “I’ve been wondering if this would have happened if he was still around.”

“Maybe not,” Eddie said.

“I felt like I was allowed to be scared with him.”

“I know what you mean,” Eddie said. “You know, when I say I lost him, too, I’m not saying that to shut you down. I’m trying to tell you that I get it.”

“I know that.”

Eddie nodded, choosing to believe him. “I wish you had talked to me like this before—when I could have helped you.”

Buck hid his face in his hands again, and Eddie resisted comforting him, remembering the way he had evaded Maddie’s touch earlier. “It was like it was locked inside me, and I couldn’t—I was just so fucking scared. I couldn’t—I couldn’t calm down; I felt like someone was in my house when I tried to sleep.” Buck said it all in a rush, and then he was shivering again, and then he was retching again, and all Eddie could do was wince sympathetically and wait for it to pass.

He didn’t know what to say without making it about him. He wanted Buck to know that he understood, but he didn’t know how. Buck had been locked up and tortured. Eddie had been free to save him. It wasn’t really the same.

“What did he say?” Buck asked when Maddie returned. She took the seat on Buck’s other side with a huff, hugging her purse like it was a comfort.

“He’s going to set up your medical leave,” Maddie answered.

“That’s all?”

Maddie shrugged. “Pretty much.”

“He’s not mad?”

“He’s your captain, Buck. It isn’t his job or his place to be mad at you for something like this. But no—he was… surprised and worried, but he’s not mad.”

Buck nodded to himself, not looking relieved. Eddie wondered if it was because he wasn’t or because he wasn't capable of showing it.

One miserable hour passed with Buck visibly trying to suppress his suffering, for the most part bent forward and biting back moans, until he apparently couldn’t take it anymore. With a frightening cry of frustration, Buck sunk out of his chair and melted onto the floor, curling up on his side with his arms tucked into his chest.

Maddie yelped a tight little,“Oh, my God,” and ran off; Eddie grabbed Buck by the arm, tried to pull him back up.

“Jesus, woah, okay, hey. Come on, Buck, get up, bud,” Eddie whispered harshly, trying to get Buck’s attention while ignoring the room full of eyes that landed on them all at once.

“I need to get the fuck out of here, Eddie, I’m about to crawl out of my skin,” Buck whined, almost crying, hot and agitated, pressing his forehead against the tile floor.

“Okay, okay,” Eddie said, feeling uncharacteristically unsure of himself. “We’ll get out of here soon, I promise, okay, just—shit.” He looked around stupidly for some kind of help, completely at a loss for what to do with his thirty-five year old best friend writhing around on the floor.

Like a Godsend, Maddie returned with a nurse and stretcher in tow.

“Okay, come on, Buck, up on the bed,” she said, soothing, and between the three of them they got him laid out. He continued to moan loudly, out of his mind with pain, face shoved into the mattress.

The nurse rolled Buck into an adjoining hallway. “You guys can wait here with him,” he said stiffly, but not unsympathetically.

Maddie and Eddie shared a look over Buck, but they didn’t say anything. They stood on either end of the stretcher, Maddie with a warm hand near Buck’s legs, which shuffled restlessly, and Eddie smoothing Buck’s damp hair back, thumb massaging his temple as he went. Eddie couldn’t tell whether it was helping at all, but as long as Buck didn’t ask him to stop, he wasn’t going to. Whatever had come over Buck seemed to pass, and he settled slightly, coherence returning.

Luckily it wasn’t more than twenty minutes later when an intake nurse called Buck’s name.

Neither Maddie nor Eddie presumed anything, but when the nurse asked if his friends were coming along, Buck nodded, so they trailed along as the nurse rolled him back to a room. The two of them sat aside, slightly uncomfortable, both unused to watching a medical professional work completely from the sidelines.

The nurse, Morgan—a short, young woman with hair pulled up into a greasy-looking topknot—hooked Buck up to an IV drip, strapped him into the blood pressure cuff, and clipped the pulse oximeter to his finger, all with a quiet efficiency.

“So, Evan, you’re experiencing opioid withdrawal today?” she asked.

Buck hummed in assent.

“You can call him Buck,” Eddie interjected, and Morgan shot him a look, but nodded.

“Okay, Buck. Unfortunately, before we can give you anything, I have to ask you a couple questions. When was the last time you used?”

“Sunday,” Buck said after a pause, face pinched with shame. “In the morning.”

“And what did you take?”

“Oxycodone.”

“Do you ever take anything else, anything illegal or purchased from a dealer?”

Buck shook his head.

“It’s important that we know because different drugs will interact differently with what we give you, especially fentanyl,” she said.

“I know that,” Buck said, the beginnings of irritation tinting his words. Morgan didn’t speak unkindly, but she was detached in a way that Eddie knew would be setting Buck on edge in his current state. “I’ve only taken pills.”

“Okay,” Morgan said. “You’ll have to be seen by a doctor first, but we should be able to get you on Methadone to alleviate your withdrawal symptoms.”

“How long a wait do you think that’ll be?” Buck asked.

“Not too long,” she assured him, but she probably gave that answer to every sick patient desperate for relief.

“Are we going to want a referral to an inpatient detox center today?” Morgan asked, addressing Eddie and Maddie as much as Buck.

“No,” Buck said sharply.

At the same time, Maddie said, “No, we’re going to do a home detox.”

“I’m obliged to tell you that a medically supervised detox has a far higher success rate than cold turkey or at-home medical detox.”

“We understand the risks,” Maddie said brusquely, not quite rude but curt enough to cut the discussion off at the head.

Morgan nodded, unbothered. “Okay. I’d talk to your doctor about it. We can send you home with some meds and resources that should help…. Someone will have to be with him pretty much twenty-four/seven if you want it to stick. Are you able to do that?”

“We’ll make it work,” Eddie said.

She then ran through the COWs checklist, asking Buck about the symptoms she couldn’t observe for herself. She determined him to be in “moderately severe” withdrawal, which caused a shift in her demeanor to something more genuine when she said, “It shouldn’t be too long,” and left.

“You guys can’t stay with me all day, every day for a week,” Buck said the second Morgan cleared the room. His voice wavered, timid and defeated.

Maddie shrugged. “I’ll take off work.”

Buck rolls his eyes. “You can’t do that. You just got promoted.”

“Josh can cover me,” she argued. “He wanted my job anyway.”

“Maddie, you’re being ridiculous. I—I’ll do the inpatient detox. It’s fine; it’s not a big deal.”

“I can take off, too,” Eddie offered. The last thing he wanted was for Buck to feel like he had no choice but to be locked in an unfamiliar room again, sick and alone and scared.

“You actually can’t,” Buck said. “Unless you want the station down two firefighters and for Chris to be a latchkey kid for a week.”

“I’m taking off,” Maddie said sternly, slicing her hand towards Eddie to cut off his next retort. “This isn’t an argument. I’m doing this. You’d do the same for me.”

Buck rolled his eyes, obviously hating this. “Sure, but I don’t have two kids and a husband and a dispatch center to run.”

“My kids need their uncle and my husband needs his best firefighter—no offense, Eddie.”

Eddie shrugged. “None taken.”

“Fine,” Buck relented; then softly, with no small amount of guilt: “Thank you.”

-

Christopher’s pick-up time came around before Buck was discharged, forcing Eddie to tear himself away from his bedside. He looked better, though, by the time Eddie had to go, having finally received the opioid agonist. It left Eddie feeling lighter even as the weight of the situation hadn’t been lost on him for a second. He felt slightly dazed as he left, the surreality of the day along with the fact that he hadn’t slept since getting off a twenty-four hour shift hitting him like a sharp gust of wind.

Once he was sitting in the driver's seat of his truck, that sense of levity dulled, shrunk to a pinprink, and a knot in his chest coiled tight and heavy. He braced his hands on the steering wheel and pushed himself back into his seat. He knew what was coming. He tried to convince himself he could stave it off—in for four, hold for seven, out for eight—but it was too late. His breath hitched; dizziness overwhelmed him; sweat beaded on his temple and dripped down his neck.

He squeezed his eyes shut, shutting out every sensation around him, and focused solely on his breathing, even as his lungs struggled to cooperate.

In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. Buck was alive. Buck was okay. Buck would be okay. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. Buck was here. Eddie got him out. Eddie saved him.

Nothing had changed, not really. They would get through this. Buck would get through this. Eddie would get him through this.

The panic attack eased after several long minutes, and Eddie pulled himself together out of necessity. He shook the familiar exhaustion from his limbs as best he could and steeled himself for his drive, ignoring the numbness lingering in his fingerprints as he pulled out of the hospital parking lot.

He ended up five minutes late to pick-up, but Chris was too preoccupied with relaying a day’s worth of fifteen-year-old drama to give him a hard time for it.

-

Eddie spent most of Tuesday evening waiting for updates from Maddie. 

Leaving the hospital and heading home with Buck, she sent while Eddie attempted to help Chris pick apart his math homework.

While he cooked dinner—spaghetti, because it was one of the simplest meals Eddie could reliably prepare—he received, We are home with Buck in bed. Already asleep. Will you help me do a sweep tomorrow when you’re here? The doctor suggested it. I think if Buck had anything, he would have taken it but better safe than sorry.

So Wednesday morning, he headed to Buck’s and together he and Maddie checked every nook and cranny of his house while Buck slept restlessly in his room. The methadone made him drowsy, according to Maddie, yet good sleep still eluded him. 

Maddie had been right; his place was clear, though Eddie found a few empty, orange bottles that Buck had neglected to toss. Eddie resisted looking at the labels, curious but reluctant to learn what drugs Buck had managed to convince however many different doctors to prescribe him and how much. Despite all the dignity Buck had lost through this process, his vulnerabilities splayed open and exposed for them to pick apart and judge, this felt private, a line Eddie decided himself to draw in the sand.

Eddie stayed for as long as he could, but he ended up mostly keeping Maddie company as Buck slept through the day, rousing only to take more medicine and drink more water. Eddie did watch him for a while before he left, starfished on the bed with his comforter haphazardly folded across his middle, bare legs exposed to the cold air of the room. A chill shuddered Buck’s unconscious form. Eddie gently pressed the back of his hand to Buck’s forehead; he wasn’t hot, the Tylenol doing its job with the fever. Eddie straightened the blanket, pulling it down over Buck’s legs. 

He was still obviously sick, but it was such a stark improvement from the day before that Eddie felt overwhelmed watching Buck sleep mostly peacefully.

On Thursday, Eddie gave Maddie a break. She offered to pick Chris up from school and have him stay overnight so Eddie could be with Buck, and she could have a night home with the kids.

“To be truthful, I think Chimney needs the break more than I do,” she said when he arrived to relieve her from duty around nine in the morning. She walked Eddie through all of Buck’s meds, how much water he needed to make sure Buck drank, how to help if he got a craving too intense to self-manage. Luckily, he was through the worst of it now, five days since he last used and the methadone helping to control the lasting symptoms.

“He already had his methadone today, so don’t let him try to convince you to give him another dose,” she said, handing Eddie the key to the lockbox that held Buck's meds.

“Would he do that?” Eddie asked, skeptical.

“If he has a bad enough craving,” Maddie said.

Eddie felt a little sick at that—the idea of treating Buck with kid gloves, having to lock things away from him like he was a toddler who would try to sneak an extra cookie after dinner—or drink the dish detergent under the sink.

“My favorite babysitter is here,” Buck crowed fondly when Eddie appeared in the doorway. He set his phone facedown on the bed; Eddie wondered what level of Candy Crush he was already on for the day.

“Don’t let Maddie hear you say that,” Eddie teased.

“Don’t worry about Maddie. She’s sick of me.”

Eddie sat on the edge of the bed. Feeling confident, he grabbed Buck’s leg above the knee and squeezed. Buck smiled, wiggling underneath Eddie’s grasp, not to dislodge it but to let Eddie know it was welcome.

“How are you feeling?” Eddie asked.

He looked better. Color had returned to his cheeks, and his eyes were bright, with awareness now instead of fever. Deep lines of exhaustion still roughened his face, though, bruises under his eyes betraying how much actual rest he was getting despite the number of hours he spent snoozing these last few days.

“Good,” Buck said, far too chipper. At Eddie’s disdainful look, he amended: “Less bad. So less bad, in fact, that I’d be inclined to call it ‘good.’”

“I guess if we’re talking relatively, I’ll allow it.”

“Exactly,” Buck chirped with a self-satisfied grin.

Buck did not stay upright or conscious too much longer, however, the first couple hours after his methadone dose knocking him on his ass. Eddie didn’t think to bring anything to occupy himself, so after watching Buck sleep for about twenty minutes, he retreated to the living room to find something on TV to pass the time.

When Buck woke up later, he surprised Eddie by joining him in the living room, plopping down on the couch next to him.

“What are you poking at?” Buck asked, leaning in, a solid line of warmth against Eddie.

Eddie ducked his phone out of Buck’s view instinctively, but there was nothing really to hide. “Hen’s texting me. She’s been worried since you missed work. I’m trying to update her without saying too much, but you know how she is.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Buck nodded slowly. After a moment, he asked, “Do you think I should tell her?”

Eddie considered this. He did want Buck to tell the team, for several reasons. One of which was so that Eddie wouldn’t have to awkwardly skirt around questions for the rest of time, but the bigger one was because the more people Buck told, the bigger his support system would be.

But this was fresh and big and scary, and Buck hadn’t worked past that automatic sense of shame yet, so Eddie said, “You don’t have to tell anyone anything, but I don’t think you should be afraid to.”

Buck nodded again but said nothing more about it.

Eddie made them ham sandwiches for lunch, Buck’s with just swiss and mayo, his stomach still not up for much.

Buck wanted to stay out of bed for a bit longer after lunch, so they put Ratatouille on. Without a word, Buck folded himself against Eddie’s side, head tucked into the space between his neck and shoulder. Eddie floundered with his right arm for a second before wrapping it around Buck and pulling him closer. 

Halfway through the movie, Buck started to squirm. Eddie tried to ignore it beyond rubbing Buck’s arm in what he hoped was comfort, but before too long, Buck tore himself away and folded in on himself, arms around his stomach and head between his knees.

“Whoa, hey,” Eddie said, resting a hand on Buck’s back, but he shook it off with a whine. A shudder wracked through him, his muscles tensing against it, and his hands came up to wrap around his head, fingers digging into his scalp. “What’s going on, Buck, talk to me.”

Buck shook his head wildly, rocking slightly as he tried to curl further in on himself, but he couldn’t make himself any smaller.

“Is this a craving?” Eddie asked, remembering what Maddie had told him.

Buck whined again, high and distressed, and Eddie took that as an answer.

“Alright, come on—up,” Eddie said, dragging Buck up by the bicep. With no small effort, he got Buck back into his bed. Buck immediately curled into a ball under the covers, tucking his comforter up under his chin. Eddie didn’t wait for permission before he climbed in next to him, sitting up against the headboard, close enough that Buck could feel his warmth but not touching, and with enough room to spare that Buck could scoot away if it became too much.

Buck shook through it while Eddie did his best to distract him. He told Buck every detail of the new video game Chris had been playing with his friends; everything he remembered from Chris’s prattling on about it, that was, including some controversy with the company using generative AI as placeholders during development, whatever that meant; and how Eddie couldn’t begin to understand the ethics of that, but as far as he was concerned, the less robots in the workplace the better.

Eventually, Buck relaxed and stilled, stretching out to get more comfortable as the aches and pains and shivers that seized him finally relented. Eddie quit talking and listened to Buck breathe raggedly for several long minutes. Cautiously, he began carding his fingers through Buck’s hair, waiting for Buck to either flinch or pull away, but he didn’t. Eddie could tell the moment Buck finally passed over into sleep by the way his breathing evened and slowed.

Eddie tried not to think about it, but a new fear twisted in his gut despite himself. In one shitty slip-up that really wasn’t even his own fault, Buck had changed himself physiologically. And Eddie was terrified, frankly, that what had led them here hadn’t changed: that Buck would continue to push him away and shut him out even after this. He was letting Eddie in now, at his most vulnerable, but what about in two weeks when Buck had convinced himself he had it under control?

Buck absolutely could not do this alone. How was Eddie supposed to trust him now, after he’d given Buck that chance, and it had resulted in this? Buck had lied and stolen and hidden it all away, and Eddie couldn’t do anything, couldn’t even really see it until it was far too late.

Frustration and guilt burned hot in his veins and Eddie had to breathe through it, fold it all neatly into a box and put it away. The truth was he couldn’t hold this against Buck if he wanted their relationship to go unchanged, and there was simply nothing Eddie wanted more than that. He needed Buck as much as Buck needed him, even at times like this.

Buck slept for hours. Eddie messed around with his phone for a while, then puddered around the house, tidying as he went, and eventually he ended up back in Buck’s bed, having found a book in one of his shelves that interested him enough to kill time with. Maddie texted him for an update, and he let her know things were going well, about as well as he expected, even if the intensity of Buck’s craving had frightened him.

Eddie was flipping through the pages of Buck’s book when he began to rouse. At least he thought, until he looked over and realized the movement he felt wasn’t the stirrings of someone waking from a deep sleep but of someone thrashing mid-nightmare.

Eddie dropped the book and turned to Buck, who was now letting out tiny noises of panic. Eddie tapped his cheek with two fingers, his other hand firm on Buck’s shoulder. “Buck,” he called, soft but sturdy. 

When Buck’s face crumpled with fear, Eddie allowed himself to shake him, and Buck gasped awake, arms flying wild as he scrambled. Eddie reared back, hands raised. Buck pressed his body against the headboard, chest heaving, wild eyes unseeing.

“Hey, you’re okay, you’re awake,” Eddie said, loud enough to hopefully push through Buck’s frenzy. “Look at me. Look at me, hey,” and Buck’s eyes cleared, meeting Eddie’s for a bare second before releasing a loud sigh of relief. Buck slumped like a dead weight.

“Are you okay?” Eddie asked, not daring to move until granted express permission.

“Yeah,” Buck said on an exhale.

Eddie nodded—to himself and to Buck—and then scooted back over to his side of the bed. He gave Buck time to compose himself, but eventually he asked, “Has that been happening a lot?”

“Yeah, since New Mexico,” Buck answered, shocking Eddie as much with his honesty as with his answer. He’d assumed the nightmare was a withdrawal symptom. “Every night, almost.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me that?” Eddie asked before he could stop himself.

“I didn’t want it to be true, I guess. I wanted it to go away on its own.”

Eddie shook his head, trying to expel his irritation. Every bad choice Buck had made over the last six weeks, the last eight years—it all boiled down to this. He didn't want it to be true. He didn't want it to touch him. He didn't want to let anyone else help carry it. There was no way to get it through Buck’s thick skull that he wasn’t in this alone; that everything life threw at Buck, it was throwing at Eddie, too. 

All Eddie could do was remind him—again and again and again.

So he said, “You know, I thought you were dead.”

“What? When?”

“In New Mexico. When I couldn't find you after the wreck. When I found the truck that ran us off the road at that house. I thought for sure they’d killed you.”

“Eddie,” Buck said sadly.

Eddie muscled forward. “And I thought, ‘I can’t do this alone.’ That’s what went through my mind when I thought you might be dead. How am I supposed to do this alone?”

Buck didn’t seem to know how to respond. “I’m sorry,” he said eventually, sounding unsure if that was what Eddie wanted to hear.

“I was terrified.”

“I’m not dead, Eddie.”

“But you’re not okay, either.”

“I’m sorry,” Buck said again, a little defensively this time.

“I don’t want you to be sorry—I just—Buck. I need you to understand that I want to be in all this shit with you. I don’t need you to be okay. You just—you don’t need to pretend with me. You know that.”

Buck shrunk down a little further into the bed. “I know.”

“Then why did you?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Buck said, hiking his shoulders up to his ears. “It got out of control. I wanted to fix it before anyone could see me like that—before anyone could—could think differently of me.”

“I’m not just anyone, though.”

“You say that….”

“I’m not. I don’t think different of you.”

Buck snorted. “That’s a lie.”

“It’s not. I’ve known you too well for too long.”

Buck shook his head, disbelieving, but he relaxed his shoulders and pulled himself back up so he was on the same level as Eddie.

“Fine, then what do you think?”

“About you?”

“About what I did—that I lied to you and stole from you. I was getting high behind your back.”

“I think you made a mistake,” Eddie answered evenly. “You weren’t trying to hurt anyone.”

Buck rolled his eyes. “Tell me the truth, Eddie.”

“I am,” Eddie retorted.

“You’re not. I know you graduated from therapy with honors, Eddie, but you’re still a human being. Tell me what you really thought—when you found out what I was doing.”

“You were there,” Eddie hedged, trying to deflect.

“Barely,” he scoffed.

He knew what Buck was trying to do, this game of theirs where Buck pushed and pushed until Eddie popped, but this wasn’t a game. This was serious, fresh, and delicate, and Eddie didn’t want to hurt him.

Exasperated, Eddie asked, “Why do you want to know?”

“Because you deserve to say it.”

“You don’t deserve to hear it.”

“I do.”

“Why are you trying to punish yourself?”

“I’m not.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Eddie, I’m serious. Tell me.”

“Buck,” Eddie warned.

“Say it,” Buck demanded, voice rising.

And because Buck had a finger on every one of Eddie’s buttons, he broke, the truth that he had wanted to hold inside forever pouring out of him. “I was pissed off! Okay, and I was terrified, and I felt guilty. And I was pissed off that I felt guilty. And I felt guilty that I was pissed off.”

Buck seemed to take it in stride, despite Eddie’s fears, but he still held his breath until Buck spoke again. When he did, he asked with genuine curiosity, “Why did you feel guilty?”

“Because you’re my—because I should have done something. But you were too fucking stubborn, and you didn’t let me. And now you’re fucking—” Eddie cut himself off shortly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Seriously, don’t be. I’m sorry.”

“I know you are.”

Buck bit his lip. “Are we okay?”

“Of course we are,” Eddie said, forcing as much sincerity as he could fit into the words.

Eddie inched his hands towards Buck’s pillowed on the blanket between them until his fingers brushed Buck’s palm. Buck interlaced his fingers with Eddie’s. His hands were surprisingly dry and warm. They sat there, content, and Eddie thought the conversation was over, but then Buck asked, “What were you gonna say?”

“What? When?”

“Just now," Buck said. "Because I’m your what?”

It took a second for Eddie to even recall what Buck was talking about, and when he did, he didn’t really have an answer. He had no idea what he had been about to say, but he knew what he had meant. “I don’t know. It—It kind of feels like you’re a little bit of everything.”

A high, nervous, breathy sound escaped Buck’s lips. “That kind of terrifies me.”

“It shouldn’t,” Eddie said easily. “You’ve already got the job, and you’re tenured.”

Despite the joke, silence sat uneasy in the space between them until Buck said, “You’re a little bit of my everything, too. That also kind of scares me.”

“Why does it scare you?”

“Because— well, everything is a lot of different things,” Buck hedged, uncomfortable. “It doesn’t leave a lot of room for—for other people”

“Yeah. I know what you mean.”

Buck looked at him like he was waiting for something that would never come. Eddie felt like he was the closest he’d ever been to giving it to him.

“I don’t feel like I can say it out loud,” Buck admitted.

“Do you want to?” Eddie asked, and he really wanted to know the truth.

“Kind of.”

“You can.”

Buck searched Eddie’s eyes, looking for something, maybe a sign that Eddie really meant it—that he could really say it, and it would be okay.

“I love you. I’m in love with you, I think.”

Eddie took it in like they were words he’d heard a thousand times before; like they were monumental and life-changing, but at the same time a fact that Eddie had known for years.

An impression of a smile hinted at Eddie's lips. “Yeah, I think I’m in love with you too.”

“Is that—is that okay?” Buck asked, hesitant, like he was afraid to believe in it.

Eddie heard the unasked part of the question: is that okay, now that I’m different, now that I hurt you, now that I lied—now that I’m broken in this new, unfixable way.

Eddie tightened his grip on Buck’s hand.

“It’s okay with me if it’s okay with you,” he said.

“Good. That’s good,” Buck said, nerves bleeding out of him to be replaced with something lighter and more certain, that lit up his face with the freedom of it. “It's too bad it took us this long, you know. Now you’re stuck with a guy who can’t even do a backflip.”

Eddie barked out a laugh, surprising himself and breaking whatever tension remained in the room. “Yeah, but I got a guy who can bake.”

“That’s true, and I’m great with kids,” Buck said, now in that familiar, flirty tone.

“You are. You’re a catch.”

“I am a catch,” Buck agreed, and then Eddie was swinging a leg over Buck so he could straddle his hips. He leaned in, embracing Buck’s face, thumbs on his cheekbones, and kissed him. Buck was warm and alive and soft under him. Buck’s fingers brushed his waist, his torso. Eddie deepened the kiss, wanting to taste more of him, and Buck craned his neck to meet him with the same desperation, hands twisting in Eddie’s shirt.

Eddie nipped at Buck’s lip with his teeth, and Buck moaned, licking into Eddie’s mouth.

They got lost in it, exploring previously undiscovered parts of each other, that they'd wanted but never allowed themselves; then Buck lifted his leg between Eddie’s thighs, nudging his growing erection, and Eddie ground against his thigh automatically, without thinking.

Buck huffed a laugh against Eddie’s lips. “I, uh, I don’t think I can right now, but do you want—?”

“No, no,” Eddie said breathlessly, “This is good, just this.”

“Okay.” Buck smiled and kissed the corner of Eddie’s mouth. “Just this.”

-

On Friday, Eddie woke early, tangled up in Buck’s long, heavy limbs. He would have to get up soon—get ready to pass Buck off back to Maddie, to survive the next twenty-four hour shift with Buck’s taste still on his lips—but for the moment he let himself have this. With Buck’s warmth and weight all around him, Eddie felt real, genuine hope for the first time in not just the last week, but since New Mexico. For the first time, Eddie let himself believe that he didn’t just get Buck out; he saved him, too.

And he’d save him again, as many times as it took.