Chapter Text
Aftershocks can last for decades.
Eddie only knows that because Buck Googles things that scare him—flash floods, mud slides, infrastructure failures, lightning strikes. And, yeah, maybe Buck should take Bobby’s advice and worry about emergencies as they come instead of ones that haven’t happened yet—or the ones that have already happened, for that matter—but there are worse ways to cope with sleepless nights.
It’s just—Buck hadn’t slept at all on the plane. (Not the night before, either.) He’d bitten his thumbnail into the quick before Maddie had even dropped the two of them off at LAX. So as a consequence, Eddie is thinking about earthquakes when they touch down at Harrisburg International on a gray November evening. He’s loading their luggage into the trunk of a rental car thinking of tectonic plates under the Pacific—of the tide receding. Statistically, it’s ridiculous. They’re not sitting on a fault line; they’re nowhere near the coast. But a tsunami in suburban Pennsylvania isn’t actually the disaster he’s worried about.
Buck’s eyes have never looked so much like a storm.
Buck had called his hometown poison; he’d been barely an adult when he’d run like blood from it. He’d put Hershey in the Jeep’s rear-view and hadn’t exhaled until he’d hit the opposite coast. But here he is now, climbing into the driver’s seat like he’s got something to prove. In the wake of the past few months, maybe he feels like he does.
‘Actually, mom, I’m moving in with Eddie’ shouldn't have come as a shock. (No one else had been surprised—Buck has had a key for years.) But Eddie can’t forget, can’t forgive the resulting silence. It tracks, though. These are the same parents that had cut Maddie off entirely when they’d disagreed with her choices, when she’d needed them.
Even if their disapproval is more subtle now, Buck apparently still has enough deep-rooted abandonment issues to stress-book a trip.
Eddie won’t fault him for that. It’s what Buck does—tries to fix things he didn’t break. (Tries and tries and tries.) He’ll meet people miles past half-way. He’ll swallow his pride and show up on his parents’ doorstep like a lost dog because he still hopes things can be better. Call it a bad habit, or resilience, or stubbornness—Eddie has always loved Buck for it, but witnessing this from the passenger seat is kind of breaking his fucking heart.
Driving toward the setting sun, Buck makes no move to change the radio from the oldies station softly playing. But even as the sky darkens like a bruise, even as much as Buck has said he’s fine, he can’t lie for shit. Not to Eddie, at least. (Not to Maddie, either. Buck’s chin was on the top of her head when they’d hugged goodbye at the airport; he hadn’t seen the look in her eyes. Eddie had.)
Buck’s not fine.
He hasn’t been fine for weeks, but if calling his bluff was going to change anything, Eddie would be doing that instead of reaching to turn up the heat as high as it can go. Through the speakers, Bowie croons softly about heroes, about standing by the water. Buck’s anxious hands tap against the steering wheel in time. A muscle jumps in his clenched jaw, and if Eddie knows anything second-hand about disasters, it’s how quiet it seems right before a pier gets leveled by a 70 foot wave.
“It’s not too late to turn around,” Eddie murmurs—more of an observation than a suggestion. It’s an out if Buck needs one. It’s instinct—the same reason he sleeps on the side of the bed closest to the door, the same reason he used to hold onto the back of Chris’s shirt if he leaned too far over a railing.
Buck’s eyes don’t leave the road. “Maddie went back to Big Bear.”
Reaching over the center console, Eddie takes Buck’s hand, kisses his scarred knuckles. He gets it. He’d taken Chris back to Santa Monica himself as soon as the beach reopened. He understands.
But Eddie doesn’t have to like it.
Because this isn’t Big Bear. It’s not like confronting a ghost. Even if Buck swears his parents had never put their hands on him, they can—they do—still hurt him. When things go south, Eddie’s there in the gym watching Buck beat the shit out of a punching bag or pulling Buck from a burned out factory—soot and smoke, curls matted to his forehead, tears in his bloodshot eyes.
‘I almost gave up.’
Their entwined hands rest against Eddie’s thigh like a reminder that, whatever happens, he’s still here on standby.
Maddie says Phillip and Margaret aren’t bad people, just bad parents; Buck says they’re trying. But there's only so much to blame on a time difference, or grief, or ‘dealing with their own pain.’ It's not fair that Buck had spent his youth trapped in a house where they’d pick and pick and pick at Maddie’s appearance and forget they had a son until he’d wreck his bike and break his wrist in two places. Every disinterested sigh, every backhanded comment, every missed birthday, all of the resentment they’d harbored in secret toward a child because of the brother he couldn’t save—it leaves a scar. It sticks around like shrapnel even though Buck has spent years trying to repair the damage.
Maybe Eddie’s an asshole, but he doesn’t know if he believes Phillip and Margaret would have visited the hospital when Buck was in a coma if they weren’t already in town. If they didn’t misguidedly assume that they were the ones who’d need to get Buck's affairs in order. (The Buckleys’ disdain for Eddie started probably around the time they’d found out he was Buck’s medical power of attorney).
And for what it’s worth, Eddie thinks they do care in the only way they know how: from a distance. Passive disapproval and conversations about the weather. It’s okay as long as it’s shallow. (Throw money at it and call it even.) They’ll insist on chipping in for Maddie’s wedding to overcompensate for not being at the first. They’ll buy Buck a couch he doesn’t want.
That is not enough.
One handed as to not let go of Buck, Eddie sends Chris a quick text to check in, letting him know that they’ve landed and they love him.
Chris’s reply in the group chat is a screenshot of a 3 lb Hershey’s kiss. As evidence he’s inherited Buck’s negotiation skills, it’s followed with a string of prayer hand emojis and a promise not to watch that telenovela without them. (Which, of course, means that that sugar monstrosity is as good as already in Buck’s carry-on.)
“We’ve only been here for 5 minutes, and Chris is already begging for chocolate.”
Buck snorts. “Called it. I shoulda put money on that.” His smile falters and slips. “Hey, uh. Listen—I apologize in advance if they say anything out of line.” Buck brushes his thumb against Eddie’s knuckles. “Don’t take it personally. They think everything I do is a mistake.”
Eddie bites his tongue, wishing Maddie and Chim were here to run interference, wishing he had more than the barely 10 miles of highway between the airport and the hotel—another 10 to the Buckleys’—to brace himself for this dinner.
(The guest room hadn’t been offered, and Buck hadn’t asked.)