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This is what Buck does.
He clings.
He can't let go.
This he knows about himself. It's not a new trait. It's embedded as deep as his loneliness, his pride, his love.
So it makes sense that his very last act in this world would be to cling.
He sits in the passenger seat of the beat up little sedan that Eddie maybe bought, maybe stole, and watches his best friend drive. Watches the desert fly past them, watches the sun catch on the dust-crusted window, watches Eddie's eyes flicker to him every few seconds.
Buck isn't supposed to be here. He knows this. That's what happens when you die — you're not meant to stick around for what comes after.
But Eddie keeps looking at him, and Buck doesn't want to let go.
"Thank you," Buck says, when the crunch of the tires and the whir of the broken AC start to get to him. "For coming for me."
Eddie breathes in, long and slow. He doesn't look at Buck when he says, "You don't have to thank me. You would've done the same."
He doesn't know. Buck figured that out around the time Eddie was released from the hospital. He kept watching Buck, waiting for him to follow. Opened the car door for him.
He thinks he saved Buck, and Buck doesn't have the heart to tell him otherwise.
"I know." It's fascinating, the way Buck's voice comes out hoarse even when his vocal cords are incorporeal. "Still."
He waits for Eddie to say something else. He dreads what he'll say when he does.
Whatever faults he has, Buck isn't a fool. He knows how this ends. Eddie will look at him and see through him, and in that moment Buck will cease to be, the strength of denial no longer enough to hold him.
Until that happens, Buck gets to stay. He gets to sit next to Eddie, watch the tendons in his hands twitch, listen to his little grunts. He can watch Eddie's eyes flicker to him over and over, like he can't quite believe Buck's still there, like he wants him to stay.
Buck will stay as long as Eddie wants him to. As long as Eddie will let him.
—
Eddie knows.
He knows this isn't healthy. That he shouldn't indulge in this vision. This hallucination.
Buck is dead. He knows that Buck is dead. There is no one sitting in his passenger seat, because Buck didn't make it out of Bonnie Sheets's shed.
But every time Eddie glances over, he's there. Sitting. Watching, like he's waiting for something.
He doesn't look good. He doesn't look dead, but he bears the marks of his last day on Earth. The angry scrapes. The bruises. The swollen cheekbone and split lip.
Mercifully, he bears no bullet wound between the eyes.
He's changed his clothes, too. The boyish, ill-fitting stranger's outfit he died in is gone, replaced by a soft hoodie and well-worn sweats.
The effect is brutal. He looks like a man who survived a car crash, who dressed himself for comfort and mobility in the face of broken ribs.
He looks like a man who survived, and who expects to heal.
Eddie can't look at him. Neither can he look away.
So he drives. There's six hours of road ahead of him still before he lands in Los Angeles, and he lets himself believe he spends it in the company of his best friend.
—
Eddie drops Buck off at home.
He drives to Buck's house and stops at the curb out front. Puts the car in park. Bids Buck to sit, rest, he'll get the door for him.
Buck lets him. Part of him wonders, worries, if he tries to do it himself he'll just pass through.
So he lets Eddie open the car for him and walk him to the front door. Eddie opens that too, with the spare key Buck had given him once the last traces of Dwayne were cleared from the attic. If someone was going to invade his house, better it be someone he trusts.
Maybe Dwayne will get to live here again. Since Buck isn't anymore.
Eddie lingers in the threshold for an awkward moment. Torn, he seems, between staying and going. Finally he looks at Buck with a stiff smile and says, "You probably wanna call Maddie. Let her know you're home."
He still hasn't realized. Buck can't tell him.
So he nods. "Yeah. Yeah, she'll be —" devastated. "Relieved."
Eddie leaves with a promise to call Buck later. He closes the door behind him. It's a few minutes before his footsteps retreat.
Time stretches. Seconds become minutes become hours, and still Buck remains. He waits, at first. Stands where Eddie left him, and waits for …
He waits.
Nothing happens.
—
Eddie calls Maddie.
—
Evening falls, and Buck comes to life.
Not in a literal sense. That, he thinks, is beyond him now. But time enough has passed for him to accept that he exists even in Eddie's absence.
So he moves. He drifts. Room to room Buck wanders, opening doors and slamming cabinets just because he can.
There's little else to do, as a ghost, than haunt.
In the kitchen he opens the fridge. He gazes at the eggs, the sauces, the vegetables, and wills his stomach to turn in hunger. It's been two days since the diner — two days since his last meal.
He feels nothing. He closes the fridge.
Cream of tartar sits in a prominent position on the spice rack. After the snickerdoodles, Buck had placed it there, right in his line of sight, so he wouldn't forget it again. Only later did he realize how little of it he actually used, day to day. For a month he'd gone on a kick, finding any recipe he could that used cream of tartar, which mostly ended up being various cookies and meringues.
Then Hen got sick. Suddenly, Buck had another project to think about. The cream of tartar has sat forgotten in its place of honor since.
Buck knocks it over and watches it roll across the tiled floor. It comes to rest in the alcove that houses Bobby's portrait.
"So it could've been you," he says to no one. "It didn't have to be a squatter. It could have been you."
The portrait just smiles at him.
—
Christopher is conducting a raid when Eddie gets home. He doesn't interrupt. He makes his presence known with a light rap on the bedroom door frame and a tired smile.
It's familiar, by now, the conversation they need to have. That doesn't make it any easier.
"I can't pause this," Christopher says after acknowledgments and hellos. "I'll be out as soon as it's done."
"Sure thing, bud."
That’s fine with Eddie. Let the boy absorb himself in a world of make believe, where death bears no more consequence than temporary frustration. Let him have a moment of fun. Of joy. Far be it from Eddie to deny him this.
But something in his voice must give away the game, because Christopher stops. He looks at Eddie, hands stilled over the keyboard, and says into the microphone, "Actually, guys, I gotta go. Sorry."
He takes off his headset, sets it on the desk while watching Eddie. Some part of him must sense the shape of the conversation about to happen, because it's not confusion or worry painted across his face. His eyes are tight and his mouth is thin. It's anguish he's prepared for.
"Dad," he says slowly, voice low. "What happened?"
There can be no hiding from Chris. No denial. The conversation doesn't start here — it started last year, with his bisabuela, with Bobby. It started three years ago, with a lightning strike. Five years ago, when Eddie was shot and Buck, without needing asking, became Christopher's momentary guardian.
It started seven years ago, with a young boy waiting for a mother who would never come home.
Eddie takes his time crossing the room. He perches at the edge of the bed until Christopher turns his desk chair to face him. Then he tells him.
—
Buck shows up to work, more out of curiosity than anything.
It's A-shift, but the team isn't here. His team, anyway. Vaguely familiar faces dot the station, ones he knows from shift changeovers and volunteer events and overtime hours. There are a few more regular faces — Sanchez and Rockburn and Browns — all looking a little dull, a little gritted. A-shifters who never quite made it to the inner circle.
Missing are the people Buck was hoping to see. Chimney and Hen. Ravi and Harry. The A-shift of A-shift.
Missing too are Buck's turnouts in the bay, though his name still adorns the cubby. That, at least, still hasn't been plastered over. He wonders what remains in his locker, but decides against opening it to look. That might draw attention — or worse, it might not.
Eddie's turnouts are also gone. Disappeared into the desert, or just not returned yet.
Buck passes Bobby's memorial on his way out. No one had known he was there.
—
There's a knock on Eddie's door. He opens it, and lets Buck in.
"I don't know how you do it," Buck says as he brushes past. Eddie feels the air shift and slide off him as he does. "Being holed up on medical leave with nothing to do. It's killing me!"
Eddie doesn't point out that someone already killed Buck. It would shatter the illusion.
What he does do is grab two beers from his fridge and take his usual spot next to Buck on the couch. A foot of space gapes between them. He pops open both bottles and sets one on the table in front of them. Buck ignores it completely.
"I would've thought you'd be used to it by now," Eddie says. "Seeing as you get hurt so much."
"I don't get hurt so much!"
"Okay." Eddie held up a finger. "Struck by lightning."
"That was a freak accident, could've happened to anyone."
"Crushed by a firetruck." Second finger.
"A targeted attack, doesn't mean anything."
"Mm-hmm." Eddie nods around the mouth of his beer. "Didn't you once get an emergency tracheotomy because you choked on bread during a first date?"
"You didn't even know me then!"
Buck is indignant, lighthearted, and Eddie feels lightheaded. He watches Buck. He could watch Buck forever, like this.
"No," he says, "but I knew you when you dislocated your shoulder slipping on rotten pumpkin guts."
Buck flaps a hand. "That doesn't count! That was a curse. But … oh." He adds slowly, "You don't believe in curses."
Eddie pauses. He places his words carefully. "You know I don't."
"You don't believe in curses or the universe or … or ghosts."
For once, Buck isn't looking at Eddie. He stares, brows knit, at the beer on the table. Still untouched.
The wounds on his face have begun to heal, as much as would typically be expected three days from injury.
"There's no such thing as ghosts, Buck," Eddie says.
—
Later, he pours Buck's full bottle of beer down the sink.
—
Three days into Buck's haunting, Maddie arrives.
The lock, already open, turns, and Buck hears a hiccup. He hears Maddie's voice, a hollow facsimile of amusement.
"I can't believe he left this unlocked."
Like trying to force amusement through a sieve.
She looks more a ghost than Buck does, her skin pale, her hair limp, her face shadowed. She's swamped in a faded hoodie, one Buck recognizes as his own. He must have left it at her house. He hadn't noticed its absence.
Chimney accompanies her, and he looks alive at least. Lined, weighted, but alive. Under his arm he carries six unfolded boxes.
"Okay," he says cheerlessly. "Where do you want to start?"
Maddie doesn't answer. She drifts. Entryway to kitchen, Maddie wanders, stopping before a particular counter.
"Maddie?" Chimney drops the boxes and hurries to join her. He peers over her shoulder, and a small keen escapes him when he sees what's in her hand.
The portrait of Bobby and Buck clatters to the ground.
"Fuck!" Maddie falls to her knees, gathers pieces of the frame. "No, no, shit, I didn't mean to —"
In a moment Chimney is with her, arms around her, guiding her hands gently away. "It's okay! Maddie, it's okay, look, it's just the frame. They're okay. We can re-frame it."
Buck isn't sure she hears him. But he sees Chimney's eye catch on the cream of tartar laying in the corner.
—
It's one in the morning and Eddie can't help himself. He calls Buck.
The phone itself was lost somewhere between the crash site and Bonnie's house. Maybe it ended up in an evidence locker. Maybe it's buried under metal and blood and sand. Wherever it is, Eddie isn't expecting an answer.
But he can't help himself.
The phone rings and rings and rings and goes to voicemail. Buck's voice in his ear is familiar, clipped. It doesn't say anything.
Eddie hangs up and calls again. And again. And again.
The fifth time, he leaves a message.
"I'm sorry I didn't save you."
He stares at his phone awhile. He stares at the ceiling. He stares at dust motes dancing in the moonlight.
On the eighth call, he leaves another message.
"You were right. I was there this time and it didn't make a difference. I wouldn't have saved him either."
The next call is his last.
"I'm doing real fucking bad without you here, Buck."
—
There are holes in Eddie's wall the next time Buck visits.
He's pretty sure he's not supposed to see them. Eddie closes the bedroom door hastily, ushers Buck to the kitchen. But Buck knows this house better than any other he's lived in. He knows the shape of those holes, helped patch not dissimilar ones so many years ago.
But Eddie ushers him to the kitchen.
There are ingredients on the counter, and Buck sits on a barstool while Eddie builds sandwiches. It feels like deja vu. Didn't Buck sit here once, Lichtenberg scar fading on his chest, while Eddie laid meats over cheese over bread? He'd thought himself a living ghost then. If he could see himself now.
Eddie is talking. He regales Buck with an anecdote about Christopher's bus driver. Buck has heard this one before. It happened two weeks before the desert.
Eddie's mouth is turned up at the corners. His canines are showing, small points glinting out of stiff lips. He hasn't told Buck a new story since he died.
There are holes in Eddie's wall.
"Eddie." Buck isn't sure he speaks loud enough to be heard, but Eddie stops mid sentence. His hands still; his eyes fix on Buck's; his smile thins, but doesn't fade.
Buck says, "Eddie, what are we doing?"
A long moment passes. Eddie's throat bobs. His jaw tightens.
"I'm making us sandwiches," he says at length.
"I'm not going to eat it." It's as close to admission as Buck can get.
"I know." Eddie gives him a long, hard look. "I'm making them anyway."
He drops a plate with rattling force in front of Buck.
"Bon appétit."
Buck doesn't eat the sandwich. Eddie is halfway through his, halfway through a halfhearted joke about alligators and motorbikes when the front door opens.
Eddie's eyes slide off of Buck. He swallows a bite hastily and calls out, "In here, Chris! I made sandwiches."
Even so, he gets up, joins his son in the foyer. Murmurs of life drift into the kitchen — thank yous and farewells to Pepa, the thud of a backpack hitting the floor, a father and son catching up in low voices about their day. Slowly they drift closer.
Buck needs to move. He can't be here at the same time as Chris. He can't let himself be looked through by the boy. Maddie was hard enough, but Chris —
"Buck?"
His head snaps up. Christopher is looking at him. Christopher is looking at him, and Buck is frozen, and he thinks, wildly, that the only person who knows a sliver of how he feels is a lady named Kim who bore a dead mother's face.
"Wait, you can see him? I thought …"
Eddie looks between Christopher and Buck, eyes wide, deerlike. His gaze lands on Buck, and it's the first time since he's died that he feels seen.
—
Later, Eddie stares at the spot where Buck disappeared.
After the tears. After the revelations. After the accusations. After Chris shut his door and words were exchanged.
The fight rings still through Eddie's head.
"I'm not sorry that I didn't want to leave you alone, Eddie! I just — I don't know, I wanted you to say something. I mean, this is, this is crazy, right? We can't keep going like this."
Eddie could've agreed. Eddie could've said any number of things.
Eddie was never good at keeping his tongue in check. Not when his heart backed him into a corner.
"So what, it's my fault you're stuck here? You can go any time you want, Buck, but you — you've always been a clinger."
Buck had grown quiet then. Eddie might've thought he'd left already, when —
"Do you want me to go?"
Eddie didn't answer.
—
Come back.
—
Buck finds himself in Minnesota. He isn't sure how; he couldn't trace the steps if he tried. He walked out of Eddie's kitchen, then he was nowhere, then everywhere, then here. Maybe he willed himself here. Maybe it's where he needed to go. If he'd known he could do that days ago, he would've saved so much time walking between his house and Eddie's.
The how of it doesn't matter much. He stands at the edge of an unfamiliar graveyard and knows exactly where he is.
The grave isn't difficult to find. It's sleek. Unadorned. Shiny, still, under less than a year's worth of wear.
"Hi, Bobby," Buck says.
The grave remains silent.
Buck looks around. The graveyard is quiet, bathed in the last rays of the dying sun. Deep shadows, gray stone, the occasional flower arrangement.
No ghosts. Present company excluded.
"Sorry I haven't visited. You know how it is. Things have been busy. Plane tickets are expensive."
The reasoning feels shallow. Buck's not sure if it's true. If he could have faced this moment with breath in his lungs.
"Um, Eddie and I did that competition you signed us up for. The one in Nashville that you didn't tell us about. We won! I mean, we tied for first but … I think you would've been proud."
He can imagine Bobby's response. Picture him saying he's be proud no matter what. Somehow, he would've meant it.
"But something, uh. Something happened on the way back."
Buck looks around. There's nobody here.
"I died." He hates saying it out loud. "I'm dead, now, and … I don't know what to do with that."
Buck looks around. He keeps expecting Bobby to step out from behind a tree, around a mausoleum.
"I could really use your help, Bobby. I don't … what am I supposed to do?"
He waits to feel something. Some sort of sign — the wind picking up, a branch snapping. Anything that a pattern-seeking brain can mistake for an answer.
The last of the sun's rays dim. The world washes in blue.
"It's not fair. It wasn't even about me, I just — I looked a little bit like that lady's son, so, so what I just have to die about it?"
A groan rips out of Buck. He scrubs his hands through his hair, gripping the strands at the roots. If he tore it out now, would it grow back? Could he even tear it out, or would it stubbornly remain?
"And that’s the thing, Bobby, 'cause it's not … it's never about me, is it? The worst things that happened to me, none of them were about me."
It isn't fair. He knows it isn't fair, but once the thought takes root, he can't stop it tumbling out.
"Right? 'Cause my parents, they couldn't even look at me, but that wasn't — it was because of Daniel. And, and when Abby left me, there was nothing I could've done differently, because it was about her, not me. When Maddie left because she needed time, when-when Eddie moved away for Chris …"
It shouldn't hurt, still. They came back. The people that mattered most came back, and those wounds healed over, so why does it feel like they're suddenly bleeding again? He doesn't even have blood anymore.
"And you!" Buck's foot doesn't connect with the gravestone; it passes through. "You had to go and die! Bobby, you fucking died, and it broke me. And I never. I never picked up the pieces, I just kept going with that-that hole you left in me, pretending it wasn't there. You took something from me, when you died, but it doesn't matter 'cause … I don't know. I don't know."
Whatever marionette strings hold Buck together snap, and he slumps. The grass over Bobby's grave is cool beneath him, the stone a steadying presence at his back. Buck presses his eyes shut.
"What am I doing here?" he mutters. "You're not here. You're not here."
He sits and waits anyway.
—
Eddie lays in bed and tries not to feel.
He goes to follow up appointments and rejects painkillers.
He tries to go back to work. Chimney sends him home.
He drives Christopher to school. Christopher won't look at him.
He talks to the FBI. Apparently he wasn't supposed to leave New Mexico, but it's fine now. They have a confession. Bonnie is to be tried as a serial killer.
He goes to Maddie's house for lunch. He won't look at her.
He lays in bed and pulls up Buck's contact on his phone and tries not to feel.
He fails.
—
Buck can't wait anymore.
—
Christopher disappears from the breakfast table.
Eddie remains.
He contemplates a half eaten egg sandwich. He watches as the yolk congeals, as the avocado browns, as the bread sogs.
The sandwich turns inedible and noises seep from Christopher's room. Voices.
One voice.
Eddie creeps around the corner, leans on the wall next to Christopher's door. He can't help it. He needs to hear, drawn in like a specter.
"Where did you go?"
Christopher's voice is clear, strong. He's not choked up. He's not holding back. He always was stronger than Eddie.
"A couple places. There were some things I had to do. People I had to see."
"Did you do it all? What you needed to do?"
"Almost. There is one more thing."
"And then?"
"And then … I move on."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"Do you have to?"
"I do."
"Oh."
Whatever comes next is too quiet for Eddie to hear. He presses himself to the wall, willing himself to pass through, to become one with it, to be part of whatever's happening on the other side.
He can't. It's not for him, he knows.
"I love you, Chris." That’s louder, legible. "I-I want you to know that."
"But you don't love me enough to stay?"
"No — I love you enough to let go."
"Okay … um, if … if you see my mom, can you tell her …"
Eddie doesn't hear how the sentence ends. He pushes off from the wall, beats a retreat to the kitchen where even the most potent of eaves couldn't drop.
Rain pounds against the window as Eddie stands over the sink. There are dishes stacked up, a pan with rapidly crusting egg residue left on the stove. Plates on the table, leftovers to put away. Little tasks that might occupy his hands but couldn't possibly quiet the roaring in his chest.
So he stands over the sink, mired in the miasma of a life interrupted.
Buck's eyes are red when he emerges from Christopher's room. He leans against the archway to the kitchen but doesn't enter.
Eddie speaks first.
"You came back."
"I did."
"Thought you left for good."
Buck shrugs, breezy and bitter. "Yeah well, you know me. Always was a clinger."
Regret stings. "I'm sorry."
"I know, Eddie. It's okay." Somehow, he means it. "I shouldn't — I'm supposed to move on. I think I was just scared to."
Eddie is too, he thinks.
"You're not scared anymore?"
"I'm not not scared. But I know what I have to do now."
There's an air of finality to the words. Eddie steels himself for what comes next.
"You're gonna go, aren't you? For good this time."
Buck doesn't respond.
A nod, swift and terse, and Eddie moves without thinking. Past Buck, through the hall, to the entranceway. If this is what Buck has to do, Eddie will help. He won't bid his friend remain at his own detriment. He'll … he'll …
He stops with a hand on the front door handle.
"I don't want you to leave."
Bile that tastes like laughter bubbles in his throat. What was it Buck had told him in this very room? Last year when Eddie had planned to move. "I'm having a harder time dealing with the idea of you being gone than I'd like to admit"? Eddie knows now with painful clarity what he meant.
It's not the same, though. Eddie came back.
"Will you ask me to stay?"
Yes. Please.
"No." Eddie's tongue barely carries the word. He stares resolutely at the wall, the key bowl, his shoes by the door. Anywhere but at Buck. "No, I won't do that to you."
"I'm sorry."
He looks. He has to. Buck is fading, very slightly. His edges have a soft, muddy quality to them. Not quite translucent. Not quite solid.
"You have nothing to be sorry for." Eddie doesn't know if that’s true, but he knows there is nothing he would not absolve Buck of in this moment. Grievance, if it comes, would come later. There's no room in Eddie for it now.
Buck smiles, and it's a wretched thing. "I know," he says. "Still."
Now that he's looking, it's insurmountable for Eddie to tear his gaze from Buck. He wants to burn this moment in his memory, this face in his retinas. He wants to linger.
He gestures toward the door.
"I guess." His voice has to fight the clump of wet sand that’s taken residence in his throat. "We should, um."
"Yeah."
Buck leads him outside. The rain has subsided, reduced to a miserable dribble. It falls through Buck like he's not even there.
"So."
Buck watches him. He chews his cheek, nods minutely in that way he does when holding back some dreadful emotion.
Did. The way he did.
"Oh, come here, Eddie."
Buck feels remarkably solid in Eddie's arms. He presses his face to the crook of Buck's neck, breathes in Buck's scent.
"I love you," he whispers into Buck's skin.
There's no answer. Eddie stands alone in the rain.