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Eddie takes comfort in living with a certain stillness.
Being an army medic means walking into gunfire without being able to shoot back. It takes a steadiness that’s hard to train and while the army did help him grow into the man he is today, they couldn’t teach him that. That stillness, that restraint and level-headedness — he showed up to basic training with it. It makes him a good medic, a good firefighter, and it’s what makes him a good son. (If he’d countered his parents’ yelling with his own, if he’d let loose the caustic retorts he has tucked away, it wouldn’t be long until they were out of his life for good.)
He lost that stillness after Shannon died and he nearly lost everything else he’d worked so hard for because of it. So he built that restraint back up brick by brick until he was safe again. It was a little harder to breathe sometimes, but it was a familiar kind of pressure. Like a jacket you’ve grown out of but still love the look of enough to wear out sometimes.
And then he gets shot, and he doesn’t move, doesn’t say a word, doesn’t react at all. But it’s not his stillness kicking in.
It’s having a bullet tear through his body on a sunny afternoon in L.A., thousands of miles away from where this should have been a hazard of the job.
It’s hearing the bullet go off before registering the pain, but seeing the blood spray across Buck’s face before any of that.
It’s falling and Buck — open, emotional Buck — not reacting at all.
It’s collapsing on the street and smelling iron and finally putting together all these pieces and understanding why it’s so hard to breathe.
It’s not stillness, it’s just shock. Pure and simple.
But after that moment passes, as Eddie lays on the hot pavement bleeding out, his eyes locked on Buck’s bloody face, his hand reaching out towards him, the stillness that washes over him isn’t his hard-earned restraint nor is it the shock.
It’s clarity, edging slowly into focus from off-stage.
Clarity like he had in Afghanistan as the bullets rained down around him and he bled out in the sand, the clarity that nothing in the world mattered to him more than Christopher and nothing would ever keep him from his kid again. Not the army, not his problems with Shannon, not his parents.
This clarity, this epiphany, is seeping slowly into his consciousness and he grasps at it, tries to pull it in closer to understand. But just as it starts to trickle into him, Buck screams for him, his voice breaking, terrified, and a strong hand lands on his arm. Anything else his mind was trying to tell him is drowned out by his own screams.
When he wakes up in the hospital bed, lights too bright and his throat sore from the extubation, he feels...strange. He feels a stillness take hold of him, but it’s not a familiar one. His body and mind are calm, but anticipating something. He feels like he’s woken up from an important dream he can’t remember. Like he’s late for something but doesn’t know where to go. Like he was mid-conversation when the other person vanished.
Then he registers a soft, slim hand in his and thinks, no, that’s not it.
Eddie’s skin feels different after the shooting.
He knows that from the moment his mind and body reconnect and half-asleep he tries to pull his hand out of Ana’s, but he doesn’t get the extent of it until his welcome home party where he tries to lean in for a kiss but diverts himself to her cheek, lingering there longer out of guilt. Her skin is as soft as always, warm from the heat of the house, but that small thrill of learning intimacy with someone new is gone and he’s not close enough to her to feel the deeper, warmer rightness he feels when he kisses Christopher’s forehead or Abuela’s cheek.
Carla’s comment has been rattling around in his head since before the shooting, trying to find the unfinished puzzle inside him it could match up to. Ana sidles up to him at the party, lacing their fingers together and a faint rush of no crawls up his arm. He squeezes her fingers to compensate and smiles, blaming its weakness on fatigue. He looks at her, so beautiful, kind, and patient, and suddenly he hears Buck’s voice in his head saying, “Overcorrecting” as the puzzle piece slides into place.
Eddie’s parents were wrong about Christopher, about Eddie as a father, and he will forever be angry that they made him feel like nothing, like worse than a deadbeat dad when he was already at his lowest. But he still loves them, still understands they were trying to do the best they could for Christopher, and in that their values will always align. He knows that if the day comes that he needs their help, they’ll be on a plane in a heartbeat.
They’re family.
So he can’t dislodge the seed of hurt buried deep in his gut when they tell him he’s failing in their eyes. And they weren’t wrong in their accusations, really. He works crazy hours, the extended family doesn’t live here, and every other week with a specialist or new consultation makes him feel like he’s playing catch-up on what his son needs to be healthy and happy.
And then Ana was placed in his path. A schoolteacher turned vice-principal with a Ph.D, who could cook, and who was kind, beautiful, Latina, and worked almost exactly the same hours Christopher would be in school for. And so, just like he had with the skateboarding, Eddie had overcorrected and tried to make up for his deficiencies.
Eddie breaks up with her over coffee during her lunch break while Christopher is at school and Buck is at work. She’s as understanding as she has been since they started this little courtship and he’s grateful to have known her, to have tried this, even though it didn’t work. She squeezes his hand on the table as she gets up to leave and he smiles politely, stretching his fingers in and out only once she’s completely out of sight.
He passes out on the couch when he gets home, grateful to have the excuse of recovering from a major injury to do absolutely nothing but blank out for a bit, and is woken up by warmth cupping his shoulder. He opens his eyes to find blue eyes and an amused smile tugging at full lips.
“Hey, dinner’s on,” Buck says. There’s a question written across his face, a hint of worry creasing in the corners of his eyes, but Eddie smiles back tiredly and the shadows on Buck’s face clear. Mostly.
“We’re having ziti!” Christopher yells from the dining room, and Eddie is not surprised. Buck has been staying with them for three days and they’ve had foods easy to eat one-handed for those three days.
“We are having ziti,” Buck echoes with raised eyebrows to convey the nonexistent significance of having ziti.
“Well I’m definitely getting up for ziti.”
Unexpectedly, Buck’s hand slips into his good one and his other hand goes to support Eddie’s shoulder to help him upright on the couch. He backs away once he’s sure Eddie isn’t listing sideways and shoots him a smile with a cocked head before hopping back to the dining room to supervise. Eddie takes an extra moment on the couch opening and closing his fist, letting himself revel in the electric tingle racing up and down his arms, and the feeling of sweat prickling along his skin where Buck’s slid.
Eddie's hearing things differently after the shooting.
Between being a young, single parent and his military training, Eddie has mastered the art of sleeping lightly to keep alert to any sounds in the night. He’s so good at it that when they first moved into this house, he only lasted 3 weeks before he had to get his toolset out, take Christopher’s bed apart and reassemble it with a copious application of WD-40 to stop the one damn metal slat squeaking just loud enough for him to hear all the way from his own bedroom every single goddamn night.
He thought he’d naturally start sleeping more soundly as Christopher got older and more independent, but then Shannon died, and the tsunami happened, and being able to spring up at the first hint of a cry overrode any other instinct his body could manifest.
And now he’s recovering from an injury, which never lends itself to a deep sleep, which works out well because Christopher is processing his father getting shot at work and Eddie needs to be ready to reassure him that he hasn’t lost both his parents when the nightmares come.
So when he wakes to Christopher shaking his arm and whispering, “Daddy”, he immediately springs awake, his hands already reaching for his crying son….who isn’t crying. Which Eddie can see clearly by the strong light of the sun filling the room.
“Mijo?” Trying to blink himself into alertness.
“Are you awake?” Christopher asks, a crooked smile on his face. “It’s breakfast time.”
“Yeah, yes, I’m awake,” he says, though his mind is trying to tell him otherwise. “Breakfast? What time is it?”
“Breakfast time!” Christopher repeats, shaking his arm again for good measure. “It’s gonna get cold!”
“I’m coming,” he says, but grunts as he actually tries to lever himself up.
“Hey, hey, you were only supposed to see if he was awake, not actually wake him up,” Buck admonishes as he rushes the room. He pokes Christopher in the side a few times as punishment until the boy is shrieking with laughter. Then he moves into Eddie’s space to slip a strong arm under his back and practically lifts him up into a seated position without Eddie’s help.
Eddie blinks against a small rush of dizziness and Buck’s hands stay on his shoulders until he nods that he’s okay. The feeling of them stays on his skin like tattoos long after.
They make it to the table and Eddie finds himself still disoriented as he takes in the impressive spread on the dining room table. Buck is many things but he is not a quiet man, especially not while cooking and this is a minimum of a half hour’s work. Probably closer to an hour judging by the very uneven shapes of the hashbrowns pointing to Christopher’s appointment as sous-chef.
He didn’t hear any of it.
But the biggest blow comes ten minutes into the meal when Christopher, who’d been all energy until he got to the table, suddenly seems to have lost his appetite and slumps into his chair as he plays with his food instead.
Eddie’s hand comes up automatically to check for a fever despite the lack of redness in his cheeks but Buck catches his eye and shakes his head, assuaging that concern. Buck, Eddie now notices, is sporting quite the bruises under his own eyes.
“Nightmares,” Buck mouths silently, tipping his head towards Christopher.
And for a moment, Eddie’s parents stand in front of him, telling him he couldn’t even be there for his son when he needed him and the guilt and shame curls between his ribs and suffocates him.
But then Buck negotiates Christopher into eating one half of a banana in exchange for two more squirts of ketchup for his eggs and Eddie lets the guilt wash into him, through him, and then away.
He wasn’t there for Christopher, but Buck was. And would forever be. Eddie has had nearly a year to come to terms with that fact, to grapple with what little doubts he had that Buck would pass on the responsibility — not because he didn’t want it, but because he’d forever find someone else more worthy of it — and yet he’s still caught off-guard every time he’s reminded he isn’t alone in this anymore.
Still, he feels the need to be there himself for Christopher if he’s needed, so he tries to train his mind to stay alert while he sleeps that night.
He lets himself drift, cataloguing the sounds of nighttime. The periodic hum of the fridge, the air conditioning kicking in, the crickets outside. He slips away at some point, pulled into darkness by a healing body and a tired mind, but he’s gratified to find himself waking suddenly at 1:13am at the sound of murmuring voices down the hallway.
Buck is up with Christopher again.
Eddie’s stomach muscles make a valiant effort to try to get him up but the rest of his body and mind are unconcerned. He tries to flare up some adrenaline, something to tell his body to respond to his child who’s in distress, but all he gets is the molasses-heavy pull back to sleep. He knows he should be bothered, should be scared that he can’t do this. But he’s just not. Because Buck’s got this.
A month ago, footsteps in his hallway at night would have him waking up tense and alert, ready to respond to the intruder, until he remembered that Buck stayed over, or Tía Pepa came in early and he would slowly, consciously release the tension in his muscles until he was calm again.
Tonight, the sound of heavy footsteps going back to the living room doesn’t even pass into conscious thought. Before it can even get to his higher thinking, it’s interpreted as safe.
Eddie’s seeing things differently after the shooting.
Eddie’s back to work a week after the shooting, on light duties, and while he hates not being able to jump in the truck and watch his team’s back on calls, he doesn’t hate taking it easy. Just for a little while anyway.
Today, however, they’re all taking it easy. It’s a slow day, and they have an open house for several local high schools’ career day. The firefighters of the 118 are spread out, some leading tour groups, some recounting PG versions of intense calls, some handing out snacks and pamphlets. Civilians are milling about as though this is a museum and not a functioning firehouse that could get a call any minute, but he’s not stressing about it. That’s Bobby’s job.
He does raise an eyebrow at whichever parents feel it’s okay to let their toddler toddle off in a strange place full of dangerous equipment though. Eddie sees the tyke waddle past him and almost moves to block her path when he sees her destination.
Later, he’ll remember this moment as time slowing down to a crawl just for him, but what really happens is his heart realizes something just moments before the rest of him does and his brain has to pump the brakes to align everything back up.
What happens is Buck crouches down to the level of the little girl whose pudgy arms are reaching up for him, like she recognizes the safest place in this whole new, strange environment. He puts his hands around her — his fingers spanning from her hips to underneath her arms — and lifts her up high above his head in one quick swoop that has her shrieking with delight. And the people drop away, the cacophony dies down until all Eddie can see is Buck and the little girl backlit by the sun pouring in from the open bay doors. And at the crest of the arc the little girl makes in the air, everything stills and something in Eddie’s chest just cracks right open. Something deep and consuming. Something that resonates through him until he’s shuddering with it. Something that yells,
I want that.
It’s a picture of achingly beautiful contrasts — a child the size of a doll over the head of a towering form, taut biceps straining against his uniform short sleeves to hold her fragile body with just enough force to keep her safe in his hands, the dark masculine line of his uniform against her light purple princess tulle dress — but their beaming smiles are matched perfectly.
And Eddie wants. He wants to the point of breathlessness and he doesn’t know what to do with that. He just knows he wants to be looking at this exact image again a couple of years down the road, but when it happens next he wants the little girl in Buck's hands to be his, and that is some fucking news to him. He’s never thought of having more kids. Well, he has, but in the same abstract way he thinks he might someday get a dog. It would be nice, but not in the cards for now, not something to spend time thinking about in realistic terms.
But maybe that’s what his brain is straining to catch him up on. That he wants more kids. Like a biological alarm clock coming to life. He could deal with that. He could.
Only Buck is putting the little girl down and she’s walking away with her parents and Eddie can’t pull his eyes away from Buck’s deep dimples and the whites of his teeth, and that warm pressure in Eddie’s chest sinks down into his abdomen and curls into something hot and he can hear the blood rushing in his ears, and he thinks wildly that it may not be about the little girl at all. But it may be that if there is a little girl in his future, he’d want her to be theirs, like —
Like Christopher is.
His mind supplies him with the image of Buck carrying Christopher to bed last night — in those same strong arms, tenderly removing his glasses and tucking him in — and just like that this kernel of panic that had been building in his sternum bursts like an overfilled balloon whose contents are unexpectedly soft because they rain down over all the fear and anxiety until all he can feel is a bone-deep calm.
Eddie wants that. And maybe that’s okay.
“You okay, Eddie?” Asks Bobby, coming to stand next to him.
Time is winding back up to normal speeds, and the sun framing Buck is slowly lowering back down to the brightness of a regular sunny day, but Eddie is still staring.
“Yeah,” he says in a voice he barely recognizes as his own.
“You sure?”
Buck is saying something to a parent, then asks them to wait, running behind a truck for something and finally releasing Eddie’s gaze.
He takes a deep breath and sits with the feelings pulsing through his veins before turning to Bobby, his eyes maybe a touch wide if the captain’s concern is anything to go by. He wants to say something, wants to blurt it all out, wants to be that person who wears their whole heart on his sleeve...but he’s not that person yet.
“We had a conversation not long ago,” Eddie begins, sounding as shell shocked as he feels, “about focussing on the wrong thing. Missing out on something.”
Bobby is quiet and when Eddie finally turns his head he finds the man looking past him, to where Buck has returned.
Bobby’s lips turn up into a small, satisfied smile. “Yes, we did. Found something to focus on?”
“Yeah,” Eddie admits. “I think so.”
Bobby claps him on the back, and leaves his hand just long enough to feel like a blessing.
Eddie’s breathing is different after the shooting.
He wishes he could blame the bullet but the same kind of luck that had gotten him out of the well had somehow seen him come out of a sniper attack with mostly muscle damage and a cleanly fractured scapula that should heal if it's kept immobile. His ribs, collarbone, and lungs have all gotten off without injury.
And blaming the bullet was always going to be a hard sell when his breath only hitches and constricts when Buck lets himself into his house at the end of his shifts. When he toes his boots off and hangs his jacket up in the closet like he means to stay. When his socked feet bump into Eddie’s under the breakfast table because they’re both too damn long in the legs to be sitting across from each other. When their shoulders brush when putting the leftovers away. When Buck is the one to let Abuela into the house and chats with her easily as Christopher gets ready to leave. When —
Suffice it to say proximity may be more a factor than the bullet. Though Eddie can understand how Buck’s gotten it wrong.
“Don’t tell me you’re not hurting, tough guy” Buck chastises him later that night with a knowing glimmer in his eyes as his fingers reach out for his shoulder, “I’ve been listening to you flinch for three days straight.”
It has been three days since the open house. He doesn’t know if he should be grateful Buck waited until Christopher was at Abuela’s to bring this up or terrified he’s lost his child-buffer.
“Buck, it’s fine,” Eddie protests even as he holds still for Buck to palpate the area gently. “I am a medic, in case you forgot. I know what to look out for in healing wounds.” The warmth leaves his shoulder and he misses it instantly.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but apparently doctors make the worst patients,” Buck informs him, hands on his hips which pitch forward in a way Eddie desperately tries not to interpret as suggestive. This is just Buck peacocking to drop some knowledge. “There’s a reason docs aren’t allowed to diagnose or prescribe themselves anything. Meds and beds, Eds!” he decrees sunnily like the dork he is.
Buck slides one of the pain pills out of the child-and-shoulder-injury-proof bottle and Eddie takes it because breathing issues aside, he did overextend himself in physical therapy today and he’s not going to get any sleep without it.
“Come on, let’s go.” Buck tips his chin imperiously towards the hallway, expecting Eddie to lead the way to his bedroom where he’ll take off his shirt for Buck to inspect both sides of the wound, clean it, and redress it, like they’ve done nearly a dozen times before. He’s dodged it for the past few days in deference to his sanity but he’s not getting out of it tonight.
Eddie gets up and leads the way, telling himself he’s only doing it as a pretense to turn away so the heat crawling up his neck isn’t be on full display but as he gets closer to his bedroom, his mind lifts the image of Buck’s large hands from the little girl’s waist, and the electric warmth of his touch on the couch, and drops it onto the image of Eddie’s bare, shirt-and-bandage-off skin and now his feet are just following orders from higher up the chain.
Eddie sits gingerly on the edge of his bed and forces himself to breathe normally as his eyes track Buck’s easy familiarity with the inside of his bedroom. Buck turns the bedside lamp on, then crosses to the dresser to pull a fresh shirt for bed which he chucks at Eddie’s head (only once he’s sure Eddie’s aware it’s coming), then ducks into the bathroom quickly to grab the dollar store basket with everything he’ll need.
Then Buck is helping him out of his sling and shirt and stepping closer until Eddie’s field of view narrows to a broad chest and flat stomach covered only by a thin, soft-looking dark red henley. Buck inches closer still as he concentrates on carefully pulling off the old gauze and his thighs press into the inside of Eddie’s knees.
His breath hitches.
“Sorry, sorry,” Buck mumbles.
Eddie doesn’t correct him.
This close, the heat from Buck’s body is slowly seeping into Eddie’s space, the skin on the inside of his knees already past the point of overheating, much like his face, neck and chest are.
Buck’s hands are light as the pads of two fingers press around the skin around the stitching. “It’s...actually looking really good,” he says, puzzled but pleased. “Not red, no sign of infection. You do feel a little warm though.”
No shit.
Buck shifts, moving one leg outside of Eddie’s knees to better look at the back of the wound and he says something but all Eddie can focus on is the 5 inches keeping Buck from essentially riding his thigh.
“Eds? Hey.” Buck calls for what sounds like the second or third time. “What’s hurting? Where are you feeli—”
Buck is leaning back to better look at him and Eddie doesn’t know what his face is saying but no part of his body is less than overheating and thinks his eyes may be communicating this.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Eddie manages to get out.
“But…” Buck looks down, his body becoming tense with uncertainty. “You keep—”
“Yeah,” Eddie interrupts and he wants to blame the pain pill like he wanted to blame the bullet but Tylenol 3 barely makes people drowsy, it sure as hell isn’t responsible for people feeling up their best friends. And yet that’s what’s happening, apparently.
They both look down and watch as Eddie’s good hand slowly reaches out and settles on Buck’s hip, under his henley, fingers curling too naturally around his leather belt, the backs of his fingers pressing into Buck’s warm skin. Not only does Buck not reject the touch but he leans forward into it, his hands rising towards him but not landing. Eddie’s heart aches at the aborted motion and recognizes it for uncertainty. Buck’s not fully sure what’s happening but he’s willing to go along with whatever Eddie wants to do.
Eddie doesn’t want that.
He uses the hand on Buck’s hip to move him back just far enough to leverage himself up so they’re on equal footing, though only one of them is half-naked.
“Eddie,” Buck begins, though it’s obvious he doesn’t know what words were meant to follow. He swallows convulsively and narrows his wide blue eyes to roam over his face. Eddie doesn’t miss the naked hope filtering into his expression, nor does he miss the anxious self-doubt behind it.
“Buck,” Eddie murmurs so reverently he’ll be embarrassed about it later. He lets go of Buck’s belt, and lays his hand flat on his ribs before slowly sliding it up to the crook of Buck’s neck in a move that leaves nothing to interpretation. Buck breaks out in a full-body shiver and he laughs breathlessly, embarrassed.
Eddie keeps his hand soft, careful, on Buck’s shoulder, his thumb brushing against his collarbone and Buck’s eyes are glued to its motion, his mouth parted slightly.
“Are—” Eddie clears his throat quietly. He doesn’t think he’s misreading but he has to know. “Are you into this?”
Instantly, Buck’s eyes snap up to his, vulnerable until he properly processes the question, then all traces of doubt clear in a blink and he’s treated to the laser focus of Buck’s hyperfixation dragging down his face to his mouth and Eddie’s breath hitches again. This time, Buck looks up with a cocksure grin tugging at his lips as he comes to understand what Eddie’s problem’s been these past few days.
Then the statue of Evan Buckley explodes into motion — his hands split their focus, one gliding across the bare skin of Eddie’s waist and gripping, the other carefully cupping his head a moment before his lips follow, landing just in front of his thumb on Eddie’s cheekbone and for a moment Eddie’s upset to have gotten this far and not have Buck’s lips on his. But then he realizes Buck is just as wound up as he is, and a wound up Buck is an aggressive force of passion looking for safe outlets who probably needs a moment and Eddie’s heart constricts tightly in his chest.
Finally, the wet drag of lips against his cheek veers downward and across, and Eddie’s mouth is engulfed in softness and heat. He’s pressing up into it, pushing up from the balls of his feet with his hand on Buck as leverage, pressing up and forward into Buck who takes it without moving an inch. He’s never had to reach up to kiss someone before, never felt evening stubble brushing against his and he’s keenly grateful to have this with Buck, something so different to mark this as not just another kiss, but a kiss with Buck. No ordinary thing.
One of them is making a noise but he can’t focus on that when he needs to get closer, needs to press in and through, needs to turn them and get Buck on the bed so he can—
“Ah!” Eddie gasps.
Buck’s lips are wrenched away, though his hands remain like hot brands on his skin. His eyes are wild and unfocused, his lips red and bruised and he’s panting, but his face is puckered with concern.
“Okay, that one was definitely pain,” Buck gasps, blinking back to some kind of lucidity.
Eddie winces, unable to deny the agony tearing through his shoulder. “My fault,” he hisses.
Buck frowns and only then realizes that the arm that should be in a sling is out of place because Eddie’s hand has gone rogue and reached out to hook into Buck’s pants pocket to pull him closer.
Buck winces in sympathy, though he’s not able to fully erase the laughter from his eyes or from the corner of his lips. He takes pity on Eddie though, and drops his hands to gently untangle Eddie’s clamped fingers and guide it back across Eddie’s body where the sling would be keeping it.
Once it’s back in its healing position, Eddie releases the breath he’d been holding and settles back into the familiar ache. Instead of releasing him, however, Buck covers the hand laying on Eddie’s ribs with his own, pressing enough to convey the command: don’t move, before leaning back in slowly to capture Eddie’s lips in a kiss achingly sweeter than before. It’s little more than their lips resting against each other but Eddie’s heart goes wild in his chest, matching whatever the hell butterflies are wreaking havoc in his stomach.
Buck leans back for a split second, just long enough for them to open their eyes and check in before he’s swaying back in for a short kiss once, twice, and one final time before properly moving away and leaving Eddie cold.
“Meds and beds, Eds,” Buck orders with finality, softened by a rueful smile.
And Eddie, who’s never had a single positive thought about Abby Clark, thinks of her fleetingly as some kind of saint because somehow she resisted Buck — kissing him, touching him, even seeing him — for months on end and if Eddie wasn’t suddenly struck with a physically deep fatigue borne of pain and emotional epiphanies, he thinks he would be on his knees begging for Buck to come back into his arms right now.
As it is, he studies Buck’s boyish grin and the fear in his eyes that his stopping this is a problem, and Eddie is filled with a helpless love that steals his breath again. Buck catches the hitch, understands it for what it is, and the tension leaks out of his shoulders.
He lets Buck help him put the night shirt and sling back on, his mouth curling into a smile with every gratuitous touch Buck allows himself, and catches that errant hand as it leaves his body, squeezing once before dropping into his pillows and giving in to sleep.
Eddie’s heart is definitely not working the same after the shooting.
He had a heart scare in high school that freaked him and his parents out. It benched him from the football team for nearly half a season until the doctors said it was something called premature ventricular contractions. It was supposedly benign and something most people will have at least once in their lives. It didn’t feel benign. It felt like his heart was stopping suddenly, then pressure building up in his chest before the next beat came and overcompensated by beating three times as hard as normal like a goddamn punch in the chest. It had kept him up at night, not from anxiety or anything, just because it was so disruptive, as if your head jerked on its own just as you were falling asleep.
But he’d grown out of it after a few months and never really thought of it again until he got shot, realized he was in love with his best friend, and his heart started going out of whack again.
He was fairly sure it wasn’t PVC. Much like the breathing, there seemed to be a clear and defined trigger.
Such as Buck pressing a kiss to Christopher’s curls at the dining table as he geared up to leave for a Saturday shift. Then turning to Eddie waiting at the door, his eyes a lot darker than they’d been a moment ago, and pressing a lingering kiss to his cheekbone, in the very same spot as he had two days ago in his bedroom.
“Be good,” Buck murmurs, tugging lightly on Eddie’s sling strap before straightening out to pick up his bag.
Eddie wants nothing more than to catch his hand and pull him back in, hold him close so he can’t leave, and he’s pretty sure all that is painted clear as day on his face if the regret and longing that washes over Buck’s face is anything to go by.
It’s a problem.
Eddie’s been trying to reign himself back in. Trying to find that stillness so he stops feeling like he’s going to buzz out of his damn skin.
But then Buck is back from his shift and locking the door to Eddie’s bedroom, assuring him it’s “just so we have time to get some clothes back on if he needs us,” with a rakish grin and fuck if it doesn’t feel exactly like PVC - a sudden pausing of his heart as he tries to deal with all these emotions before they crash into him on the next beat.
And he’d worry about it but Buck’s laying him out, pressing his hot mouth on every inch of skin he can uncover, setting his nerves off like electric pulses until all Eddie can hear is their panting and the rushing of blood in his ears. His heart is trying to beat its way out of his chest by the time Buck’s divested him of his sweats and boxers. But then Buck pauses and looks up for permission before continuing, and Eddie gets to look down and take in his best friend’s darkened blue eyes and ruddy cheeks and what his heart does is definitely not sex-related. Not only sex-related.
He nods helplessly and Buck grins with delight before taking Eddie’s dick into his mouth and if he thought his body felt different before, it’s nothing compared to being suddenly engulfed in the velvet heat of Buck’s mouth. Eddie’s good hand slaps down on the mattress and grips the sheets tightly. He’s about to bring up his fist to his mouth to do something, he doesn’t know what, when Buck anticipates danger and his strong fingers are gripping his other hand, forcing it to stay in place on his ribs. Eddie laughs breathlessly — the man can multitask.
Eddie twists his fingers until they’re threading between Buck’s, who catches on and properly holds his hand as he takes Eddie apart.
And Eddie...Eddie hasn’t had sex in a really long time, and he hasn’t been so fucking in love during sex in an even longer time so he’s not surprised when it’s only minutes later that he’s squeezing at Buck’s hand and gasping. “Buck...I’m gonna—” and he’s somehow not surprised when Buck hums his acknowledgement and presses himself closer and closer in until Eddie’s toes curl and his back bends and he’s shooting down Buck’s throat who stays in place until Eddie’s hissing from overstimulation.
“Oh fuck,” Eddie says helplessly, his heart galloping, and another small laugh escaping him as he brings his good hand up to his forehead.
Buck climbs his way back up his body, sitting lightly right over his spent dick and he knows he shouldn’t torture himself but Eddie looks down and lets himself commit the image to memory until they can do that properly. Then he drags his eyes up and over Buck’s straining erection, his panting chest and up to that pleased goddamn smile.
“Good?” Buck asks, cocky as he’s ever been.
“Good,” he laughs sarcastically. “I think you broke me. Dios, I think I need an ECG.”
Buck actually looks mildly concerned so Eddie reaches for him and Buck lets himself be pulled down by the nape until Eddie can lick into his mouth, going a little nuts over the taste of himself on Buck’s tongue.
Eddie pulls his hand away from his nape to reach down for Buck’s dick, but Buck takes that as direction to sit up so Eddie pulls him back in until their lips are barely touching. He squeezes Buck’s nape, says firmly, “Stay,” and marvels when Buck’s eyes go wide, his face slackening, and a shiver running down his back. Fuck.
When Eddie pulls his hand away again, Buck stays, pressing his elbows on either side of Eddie’s head to keep himself in place until he catches onto Eddie’s plan.
“You don’t ha—”
“I still have one good arm,” Eddie retorts. “As it happens, I’ve gotten a lot of practice out of this one.”
Then his fingers curl around hot flesh and Buck jerks like he’s been struck.
“Easy,” Eddie soothes, craning up to remind Buck what he’s supposed to be doing. To his credit, it only takes the soft press of their lips to get him refocused, then Buck’s tongue is in his mouth while he pushes helplessly into Eddie’s hand. It’s dry because they didn’t plan this out beyond a heated look in the living room, but Buck’s leaking enough to provide at least some lubrication. In the end, he’s got about as much stamina as Eddie did and a few minutes of rutting into Eddie’s fist and attacking Eddie’s mouth is enough to set him off, his cum spilling over Eddie’s stomach in long pulses.
Eddie’s hand uncurls and smooths over the skin of Buck’s side, making long passes from hip to shoulder as Buck comes down from his high. On the fourth sweep, he trails his hand inward, over Buck’s waist and back up his ribs and chest in a move reminiscent of the night of their first kiss, but this time he stops in the middle, in the dip between his pecs.
“Looks like I’m not the only one who needs an ECG,” he grins.
Buck huffs with a grin that grows to overtake his face. “Less of a concern for young guys like me. You should probably get checked out though.” He leans back in to occupy Eddie’s mouth before he can think of a retort, but as the kiss devolves from heat and passion into sweet and lazy explorations, Eddie feels a distinctive disruption of rhythm in Buck’s chest and smiles.
Later, Buck gets up and gets them cleaned up with kleenex, except for the drops of cum caught on Eddie’s fingers. Those he takes into his mouth to clean thoroughly until Eddie feels himself getting hard again and has to call uncle. Buck dresses himself perfunctorily and helps Eddie back into his boxers before reaching for the sling and carefully threading it over Eddie’s arm and neck, squeezing his fingers before pausing and looking unsure.
“Should I—” He looks towards the door, beyond which is the hallway and living room where he’s been bunking down because Christopher’s in the house and they haven’t had time to talk about all this yet.
Instinctively, Eddie’s good hand reaches for his hip and grips gently but firmly.
“Stay,” he says again, watching with clear eyes now how Buck’s eyes grow wider and his throat convulse. They’re definitely going to be exploring that in the future.
For now, Buck nods absently before smiling. He moves to the door only to unlock it and crack it open before returning to the bed and the domesticity of it twists Eddie’s heart one last time before he’s folded into Buck’s arms and succumbing to the darkness more easily than he can ever remember doing so before.
Eddie suffered a near-death experience on the job. Christopher almost lost his father. Buck almost lost his best friend. Getting shot again aggravated his PTSD. The bullet created cracks not only in his bones but in the shell casing he built around himself, the effects of which he’ll probably carry his entire life.
But he survived, he came home to his son. He’ll learn to be okay with loud, sudden noises again. He’ll learn to deal with the nightmares if they come back. He’s in physical therapy for the pain. And in the end, he can’t find it in himself to wish it had never happened.
Not when he wakes up to Buck’s arms pressed against his bare skin, sharing his heat and feeling that electricity coursing softly just under his skin.
Not when he hears Christopher inching the door open in the morning and Buck beckoning him in while whispering, “We gotta be quiet, your dad’s still sleeping.”
Not when he loses his breath at Buck’s casual parental love as he twists to grab Christopher by the waist and heave him into the bed between them, causing the boy to giggle way too loud.
Not when he paints an unimpressed smile on his face before rolling over dramatically, finding two too-innocent faces smiling back at him and he's struck dumb for just a second at the picture they paint, eyes wide and curls askew.
Not when Christopher throws Buck under the bus, giggling “it was him!” and Buck takes his revenge in the form of tickles until they’re both pink-cheeked and laughing and the bed is shaking like it may not support them, and Eddie’s heart is so fucking full it may not even be able to beat anymore.
Eventually, Eddie does feel a stillness rebuilding within him after the shooting, but it doesn’t feel like walls, it feels like love. It feels like peace.