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Buck is starting to think that night shifts with the 118 are cursed. First he almost lost his- Eddie. He almost lost Eddie. And then a train derails and Abby comes crashing back into his life totally out of the blue. Buck thinks maybe he should try sticking to the day shift from now on, they seem to be much less emotionally exhausting.
He doesn’t even have the words for the way he felt when he saw Abby standing there talking to Eddie, or the way old wounds seemed to tear open as she yelled in his face about her fiancé. God, her fiancé. But he didn’t even get a second to breathe, to pull himself together, because people were trapped and they were dying and it was his job to save them.
Buck is always saving everyone. Sometimes he thinks it would be nice if someone could save him.
But he couldn’t dwell on anything, much less the ache in his chest at the sight of her, not when her fiancé was pinned underneath the seats of the train. So he’d worked his ass off, Eddie by his side as always, to free him and get him back to her. And when they’d cut him loose and he was in the back of an ambulance, Abby left him again, with a thank you and a scrap of paper that had her new number scrawled on it.
Call me she’d said, and Buck was so stunned that he agreed, just as the back of the ambulance closed in his face and they drove off. It felt eerily similar to the way he’d watched her walk into that airport and never look back, not even once, and he hates how even after all these years it still makes him feel lonely, somehow.
Then Eddie’s hand is on his shoulder, gripping tightly, and Buck feels like he can breathe again. So he smiles at Eddie, ignoring the raised eyebrows and the multitude of questions in his eyes, and they get back to work.
The sun is up, just kissing the water’s edge and setting the sky on fire by the time they make it back to the station. They’re all scratched and bruised beyond just the physical, after a night spent working on lost causes and around dead bodies. They barely have the energy to move, let alone speak, and Buck can’t help but notice the haunted expressions on his teammates faces.
“We all doing okay?” He asks.
He’s tired, and way past being in the mood for any kind of conversation, but they’re his family. He once read that in 2017, more firefighters died by suicide than in the line of duty, so it’s important to Buck that they know they can talk to him, and that he’ll listen if they need him to. Even if he’s not in the headspace for it himself.
“I can’t wait to see Maddie,” Chimney says, rubbing at his bloodshot eyes.
“Yeah, Athena should be home by the time I get back and I want to spend the day with her and the kids,” Bobby agrees.
Buck nods, smiling softly. He turns to Hen, who is sitting on the bench in the middle of the locker room with her head in her hands, barely managing to keep her eyes open. Buck sits beside her.
“You good?” He asks, swaying into her slightly.
She smiles tiredly. “I’m good Buck, thanks. Karen is gonna come pick me up.”
Buck wraps an arm around her anyway, and she lets her head rest on his shoulder for a moment before standing up and continuing to pack her bag.
“Man, I can’t wait to give Christopher a hug,” Eddie says, laughing quietly. “I might just make it home in time to take him to school.”
And Buck definitely gets that. There’s not much he wouldn’t give right now, for a hug from Chris and a day with the Diaz boys, eating junk food and playing video games and forgetting about the world for a little while. Or even just an hour, to speak to the kid and give him the once over just to make sure he’s ok. But he knows Eddie needs to be with his kid right now, and Buck wouldn’t dream of pushing in on that.
“Well as long as you’re all okay. We did a good job today,” Buck says, finishing tucking his uniform into his bag.
It’s true. They did a damn good job. Too many lives were lost, but most of them were either on impact or beyond saving once they arrived. They got everyone who was trapped out alive, and that’s better than they could have ever hoped for when they first arrived on scene and saw the catastrophe in front of them.
Buck forgoes a shower, so exhausted that he just wants to go home and probably a cry a little, then sleep the day away. He’s half way out the station when he hears Eddie calling his name from behind him.
“Yeah?” He replies, turning back around to face Eddie.
“Are you okay?” He asks, a sincere look on his face.
And, oh. He isn’t really used to being asked that. He thinks it over for a second, whether or not he really is okay. He’s tired and his body aches, and his heart does too, a little, because Abby is back and she’s engaged, and he’s feeling so many things that he can’t make sense of.
He shrugs his shoulders. “I’m always okay.”
He gives Eddie a smile and a wave, and then turns back around and heads to the parking lot.
It’s not true, not anywhere even close to being true. But they’re all tired and everyone has a family to go home to, he doesn’t want to bore anyone with his mundane issues. He knows what they all think of Abby anyway, knows that they hate her for leaving Buck behind, and the expressions on their faces when they saw her at the crash site just proved to Buck that he probably shouldn’t speak to any of them about her.
So he drives home to his silent, empty apartment, and doesn’t even bother taking off his clothes before collapsing into bed.
Except the second his head touches the pillow, his thoughts are racing. He’s feeling too much of everything and he doesn’t know what to do with it, doesn’t even know how to separate his thoughts so he can figure out what he’s actually feeling.
It’s just. She’s back, and she’s engaged, and like. Buck is over her. Completely, 100%, in-love-with-Eddie-Diaz, over her. But it felt like a red hot iron slicing into his skin when she screamed at him about her fiancé. And not because he was jealous, but because she’d never cared about him that much.
Buck can’t help but wonder what this new guy has that he is lacking in. He knows - knew - Abby, and he knows that she doesn’t like to rush into things because she’s too careful for that, which means she must have been dating him for a while for them to be engaged.
Buck wonders how long after she left that she met him, and what it was about him that made him enough for her to stick around for. Buck had been there for her through everything, so why hadn’t he been enough?
At the time, she had felt like it for Buck. She’d changed him so completely, into the best version of himself that he’d ever been, and he loved her so much for it. He thought she’d loved him too. But then she left him behind, and Buck could never be mad at her for grieving in the way she needed to, but leaving him was so easy for her, and it just doesn’t seem fair to him.
She just left. There were no calls or texts to let him know that she was safe, or even to tell him that he needed to let her go. She just disappeared on him. And then she has the audacity so show up with her fiancé? Like, Buck could have still been waiting for her to come home, for all she knew - hell, he probably would have been had he not met Eddie - and she didn’t even consider that.
It feels kind of selfish, to Buck. He gets a flash of guilt for thinking that, but he forces it down quickly, because he knows that he’s right. He knows it’s okay to be selfish sometimes, and he knows that Abby needed to get away in order to grieve, but he also knows that he deserved at least a text from her to properly end things. He deserves more than what she gave him, and it’s okay for him to recognise that.
(He briefly thinks that he owes Frank a thank you and probably some cookies for helping him reach this point.)
Acknowledging that settles something deep inside of Buck, that he thinks had probably been out of place since the day Abby walked away. He lets out a breath of relief, and acceptance, and then falls asleep between one heartbeat and the next.
The next time Buck’s eyes open, it’s to the sound of keys turning in his front door. He rolls out of bed quickly and stumbles to the top of the stairs just in time to see Eddie walk through the door. The clean clothes that he is wearing is a reminder that Buck has fallen asleep dirty and in the same clothes he’d arrived home in.
“I’ll be down in ten,” he calls down the stairs.
Eddie probably replies with some acknowledgement but Buck is already shutting the bathroom door and stripping off his clothes, grimy with all the dirt that he hadn’t bothered to wash off earlier that morning. He doesn’t waste any time, just hops into the shower and scrubs himself quickly, rubbing shampoo into the tangled curls on top of his head.
When he’s finally done he pulls on a clean pair of sweats and an LAFD t-shirt, then heads downstairs to meet Eddie. The clock on the wall says it’s just past 1pm, so Buck had managed to catch a good six hours of sleep before he was disturbed. He still tired though, and lets out a yawn as he steps down off the last step.
“You want coffee?” He calls into the living room.
Eddie appears almost instantly, as if he’d been standing around waiting for Buck to finish upstairs. He smiles when he sees Buck, and nods in agreement.
“Please,” he says. “Sorry to wake you.”
Buck shakes his head as he scoops the coffee into the filter and gets two mugs out of the cupboard.
“No don’t worry man, I forgot to set an alarm so you just saved my sleeping pattern,” Buck laughs. “Is everything okay?”
It’s not that he isn’t happy to see Eddie - god, he’s always fucking happy to see Eddie - he just wasn’t expecting a visit, not after such a chaotic shift. But then Eddie takes a seat at the island counter and Buck gets the feeling that he’s here for a conversation with a capital C.
“Yeah everything is fine, I just wanted to check in on you.”
Buck hands Eddie a mug of coffee then takes a seat beside him, cupping his own mug between both of his hands.
Eddie has been like this for a while, more invested in Buck and his well-being. Losing Red had hit Buck hard, probably harder than it should have considering he barely knew the guy, and of course Eddie had picked up on that.
He’d listened carefully while Buck poured his heart out about Abby, Ali, and even Maddie leaving him behind, about how he was worried the team would lose contact eventually, about how he’d lose everyone. And then he’d squeezed Buck’s shoulder, looked him in the eyes, and promised that at the very least, he was never going to lose Eddie and Christopher.
That, of course, had sent Buck’s heart into a panicked frenzy, and he’d laughed it off and changed the subject hastily. He’s making progress ok, but he’s never claimed to be perfect.
“I’m good man, just tired you know, that was a lot,” Buck says, honestly.
Because he is good, really. Abby showing up has definitely thrown him, but he’s handling it better than he would have done even a few months ago, and it doesn’t make him feel like he’s completely spiralling.
Eddie still gives him the look, though. The ‘I know you’re not being honest with me’ look, that raising Christopher has ensured he’s got down to a science. Buck just rolls his eyes.
“Abby is back,” Eddie says bluntly, and Buck can’t help but laugh.
“Yeah, I’d noticed that thanks,” he teases, nudging Eddie’s shoulder with his own.
Except Eddie doesn’t really seem like he’s in the mood for joking. He’s frowning and gripping the mug of coffee way too tightly for someone who’s in a good mood. Buck isn’t exactly sure why. They’d all had a rough shift, but they’ve had plenty of those before and Eddie doesn’t usually get so mad.
He immediately wants to fix it. Whatever it is, whatever has happened to piss Eddie off, he wants to make it go away. He figures that that’s a side effect of being in love with someone, you always want them to be happy and when they’re not you’d do anything to make them feel better.
“Did you know she was coming back?” Eddie asks, then takes a sip of coffee.
Buck shakes his head. “Did I look like I knew?” He asks. “I haven’t heard from her at all since she left.”
Eddie scowls at that. He puts his mug down on the counter, picks it up again, then brings it to his mouth but doesn’t drink. It’s like he doesn’t know what to say or what to do with himself, and Buck isn’t used to seeing him like this. He lets his knee nudge against Eddie’s underneath the counter.
“So she leaves without even breaking up with you, then comes back two years later with a fiancé?”
“Pretty much,” Buck confirms, laughing at the strangeness of it all.
Because really, it is pretty funny now that Buck is over it. Sure, it broke his heart at the time, but he knows he’s an even better person for it, and he’d managed to move on even without getting closure from her. So, he shouldn’t have had to go through it, but he did, and now laughing about it makes him feel lighter in some ways.
Eddie clearly disagrees.
“Why are you laughing? That’s like, such a shitty thing to do,” he says.
Buck is kind of flattered that Eddie is angry on his behalf, but he really doesn’t need to be. Buck is still a little insecure about it, sure, but he’s almost completely healed, and definitely a better version of himself than he was before she broke his heart. And yes, her just showing up had startled him and got him stuck in his head for a while, but accepting that she was the one in the wrong had done him the world of good.
“I mean yeah it was, but you know. She was grieving. She’d spent years taking care of her mom, and once she was gone she just needed time and space to heal,” Buck says.
“That’s crap,” Eddie argues. “I mean I get the grieving, of course I do, but that doesn’t give her the right to just disappear without a trace, does it? You deserved so much more than that.”
And Eddie is right, Buck did deserve better than that, but for some reason he feels weirdly defensive of Abby. It feels sort of dumb, defending the person he used to love to the person he loves now, but the point is he did love her once. And yeah what she did to him was awful, he knows that, but he’s past the stage where hearing other people bad-mouth her makes him feel better.
“No it doesn’t, but she did it anyway, and staying mad at her won’t change what happened.”
Eddie looks at Buck like he’s just spontaneously grown a second head, and Buck gets that because he’s actually talking sense for once in his life. But Eddie still looks mad as he taps his fingers rhythmically on his leg.
“So what, you’re forgiving her just like that?” Eddie asks, only it sounds more like an accusation.
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, because he doesn’t wanna get angry at Eddie when he knows he’s only looking out for Buck, but it’s starting to annoy him. It was Buck’s heart that got broken and Buck who had to pick up the pieces, Eddie wasn’t even in LA when it all went down, so he doesn’t really get a say.
“I don’t know, Eddie. Maybe. She gave me her number, maybe we’ll get a chance to talk about it.”
Buck isn’t really sure why he said that. He doesn’t actually plan on calling Abby. As far as he’s concerned it was over and done with long ago, and dredging up the past isn’t going to change anything anyway. He thinks some twisted part of him wants to get a reaction out of Eddie, wants him to get jealous maybe, even though realistically he knows it’s never going to happen.
Eddie laughs bitterly, standing up and starting to pace.
“So what, everything she did to you doesn’t matter?”
“I never said that,” Buck reasons.
“But you’re just gonna let her waltz back into your life?” Eddie asks, running his fingers through his hair.
“I never said that either.”
“Jesus Christ, Buck!” Eddie finally yells.
It’s weird. Buck doesn’t want to be arguing with Eddie, but it also feels a little rewarding. It’s good to know Eddie cares - it actually sends Buck’s heart racing - but he also needs to know that as much Buck wants him to be, Eddie isn’t his partner. He doesn’t get a say in these things, and Buck isn’t sure why Eddie seems to think he does.
“What is your problem?” Buck asks.
“Why are you just forgiving her?” Eddie yells back.
“Why do you care?”
“Because you’re clearly still in love with her!”
Buck isn’t, nowhere even close. And he knows Eddie doesn’t feel the same way that Buck does, but he still needs him to know that he’s not in love with her, even if it shouldn’t matter to Eddie.
“What? Eddie, I’m not in love with Abby,” Buck tries to explain.
“Yes you are, it’s so obvious,” Eddie argues, laughing humourlessly.
“I’m in love with you, you idiot!”
And. Oh.
That was absolutely not what Buck was going to say. Like, not even close. But he was mad and Eddie was yelling at him and he didn’t even understand why, so it just came out.
He barely refrains from slapping his hands to his mouths like they do in all the movies, because the last thing he needs is to be another cliche. Instead he remains seated, not even daring to look in Eddie’s direction. He never planned on telling him, never wanted to risk the best thing that’s ever happened to him. But now it’s out there and Buck can’t take it back, and he’s terrified.
Eddie seems frozen in place, when Buck finally turns to look at him. He’s watching Buck, but he doesn’t look like he’s moved a muscle since those dreaded words left his mouth. Buck feels sick to his stomach.
“Eddie-“
That one word is enough to bring everything crashing down. Eddie doesn’t even look at him as he leaves, taking Buck’s heart right out the door with him.
——————
Their next shift feels too much like Buck’s first shift back after the lawsuit. It’s tense and awkward, with Eddie ignoring him unless it’s absolutely critical that they communicate. And it doesn’t affect their work, because they’re professionals who know how to do their job, but it affects just about everything else.
Buck had tried to call Eddie right after he stormed out of his apartment but he didn’t pick up, and he’s been avoiding him ever since. Quite frankly, it’s killing Buck. He’d take a dozen ladder trucks falling on him over this kind of pain. He’s so used to him being around now that he’s almost forgotten how to exist without Eddie.
It’s so blatantly obvious that the whole team has noticed as well. Bobby keeps giving him concerned-dad looks, and Hen and Chim keep frowning at each other and nodding between Buck and Eddie when they think neither of them are looking. They’re definitely not subtle, which is rich coming from Buck, who wears his heart on his sleeve.
He just wants to fix things, but he’s worried that they’re beyond repair. Of course Eddie won’t be comfortable having Buck around him when he knows how he feels, but that also means he won’t get to see Christopher either, and he’s not sure he can survive losing both of them. He’s come way too close to that before and it nearly killed him then. Now he just feels like he’s suffocating.
The entire shift is agony, and when second shift arrives he wants nothing more than to go home, crawl into bed, and never get out. But just as he’s about to leave, Hen grabs hold of his arm.
“Not so fast Buckaroo,” she says.
Her voice is gentle but firm, and Buck knows he has no chance against her. He immediately acquiesces, letting Hen push him down onto the couch. She sits beside him, then just looks at him, for so long he starts to shift uncomfortably.
“What’s going on?” Hen asks eventually.
“Oh you know, just about to head home,” Buck says, attempting to avoid the upcoming conversation.
Hen rolls her eyes. “Buck, what happened with Eddie?” She asks, her voice softer this time.
She looks sad, like her two favourite kids are fighting and she doesn’t know how to fix it. Buck just sighs, dropping his head into his hands and letting the frustration of the day wash over him.
“I fucked up so bad, Hen,” Buck confesses.
“Baby,” Hen sighs.
She wraps her arm around Buck’s shoulders and just lets him sit quietly with his thoughts for a few minutes. He doesn’t want to bother her, and he doesn’t want to make the situation worse with Eddie by talking about it to someone, but he doesn’t know how he’s just supposed to go on like this without talking to someone.
“I told him I love him,” Buck finally confesses.
He feels Hen tense beside him, and it just makes him feel a million times worse, that even she knows how monumentally he’s fucked up.
“Oh,” she says, pausing for a second to look Buck in the eye. “How did he take it?”
Buck can’t help but laugh. “How do you think?”
They’re quiet again for another minute or two, and Hen just rubs her hand in circles on Buck’s back to try and soothe him.
“You need to talk to him, Buck.”
“I’ve tried! He doesn’t want to hear it,” Buck explains. “Fuck, he hates me.”
“No, hey, Buck, no. Eddie does not hate you, okay? You’re his best friend,” Hen tells him, holding his face gently between her hands.
And Buck wants to believe her but it’s kind of difficult when Eddie is refusing to even look at him, let alone talk to him. He has no idea how to make it better, or if it even can be made better, and he’s so worried he’s ruined the best thing he’s ever had.
“Talk to him. I mean it, you have to talk. Do you promise me?” Hen asks.
Buck nods in agreement, because he knows that she’s right. Even if Eddie doesn’t want to be his friend anymore, they’re still colleagues and they have to be able to work together without creating an atmosphere for the rest of the team. So he promises Hen, then stands up ready to leave.
“Hey Buck?” Hen says, just before he walks out of the firehouse.
“Yeah?” He replies, voice hoarse with the tears he’s been holding back.
“I love you, kid.”
And some of the sadness and the worry eases instantly, because Buck has people who love him, and that’s not going to change, even if Eddie isn’t one of those people anymore.
“I love you, too.”
The ride to Eddie’s doesn’t take nearly as long as Buck would have liked it to, because when he pulls up outside the Diaz residence he’s nowhere near ready for what he’s about to do. Eddie could slam the door in his face for all he knows, and he’s certain that whatever happens, he’s not gonna feel good about it.
But he leaves the car anyway, closing the door quietly behind him and then walking up the driveway. It takes him an embarrassingly long amount of time to work up the courage to knock on the door, and when he finally does his heart is in his mouth with anticipation.
Eddie looks good when he answers it, but then Eddie always looks good, it’s not even any different to how he’s looked all day at work, except a little more relaxed. Until he processes who’s at the door, and then his whole body stiffens with tension.
“Hey,” Buck says, waving awkwardly.
“Hi,” Eddie replies, sounding surprised.
“Can we talk?”
“Of course,” Eddie says, holding the door open for Buck to step inside.
Buck quickly notices that the house seems quieter than usual, and that’s Christopher’s schoolbag hasn’t been dumped by the door.
“No Christopher?” Buck asks, trying to ease into the conversation.
“He’s with Pepa,” Eddie tells him.
Buck nods, then hesitantly takes a seat on the couch. Eddie hovers for a second, then sits beside him.
“Look-“
“I’m-“
They both try to talk at the same time, laughing awkwardly when they interrupt each other.
“You go first,” Eddie offers.
Buck is grateful. He’s not ready to hear what Eddie has to say just yet.
“I’m sorry. For what I said,” Buck starts. “I won’t lie to you, I meant it. But it wasn’t fair for me to drop that on you and expect you to be okay with it, so I’m sorry. I don’t want this to change anything between us, but I get it if it makes you uncomfortable. I just want us to still be able to work together properly.”
Buck says it all in one go so he doesn’t chicken out. What he really wants to say, deep down, is to beg Eddie to want him back. But Eddie doesn’t deserve that and Buck has to be mature here, for everyone’s sake. He can survive not being friends with Eddie, he can. But he can’t survive losing the whole team, so they have to be able to put it aside and work together.
Eddie doesn’t answer for what feels like way too long, but just as Buck is about to start getting nervous, he finally speaks.
“I was jealous,” he blurts out, looking like he hadn’t planned on saying that.
“What?” Buck asks, somewhat breathlessly.
“I was jealous. Abby is back, and you loved her, and I was jealous.”
It sounds like a confession, but Buck can’t believe Eddie is really saying saying what he thinks he is. Because it sounds like he’s saying he was jealous of Abby, except that can’t be right. Because that would mean-
“I’m in love with you,” Eddie whispers.
Buck chokes.
“What?” He repeats, starting to sound like a broken record.
“I left the other day because, I don’t know, I guess I wasn’t expecting to hear you say that. I wasn’t ready to face how I felt? I was still kind of pretending it wasn’t happening,” Eddie admits.
Buck feels like he can’t breathe and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, everywhere he puts them feels wrong.
“But then the love of your life shows up, and I just. I couldn’t, anymore. I’m sorry,” Eddie says, finally turning to look at Buck.
Buck licks his lips. His throat is dry and his head feels fuzzy, but god, Eddie loves him.
“She’s not,” he says. “She’s not the love of my life. I loved her once, but not now. Not since you.”
The smile that spreads across Eddie’s face looks like the sun as it’s rising, all warm, and bright, and glorious. Buck can’t help but lean forward and kiss it from his mouth.
Eddie’s hands find their way to Buck’s hair, tangling in his curls to pull him impossibly closer. It’s everything they both have been wanting, and so, so much more. Buck feels infinitely lucky that he gets to have this, on top of every other good things in his life.
“I’m sorry it took me a while to get here,” Eddie says when they finally pull away.
“It’s okay, you’re here now. I’m used to you being late, anyway,” Buck teases.
Buck smirks as Eddie shoves him hard enough that he falls backwards on the couch, pulling along Eddie with him. They laugh so much their stomachs hurt, and not because anything is funny, but because they’re so overwhelmingly happy it feels like they’re bursting with it.