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In Buck’s line of work, radio silence was never a good sign.
His nerves had been rubbed raw over the past month under the combined weight of Eddie going dark on him, high team tensions, and their current deployment. It was really starting to affect him, causing him to snap at his teammates and overlook issues he usually would be on top of.
Which is usually how he decided to finally tackle his problems instead of just shoving them under the rug. They weren’t an issue until they endangered the well-being of Bravo.
Buck paced back and forth outside of the temporary bunk structure, the African sun beaming him with heat, but worth it for the shred of privacy it allowed him.
He stared at the phone in his hand, practically willing it to ring on its own, anything to not have to call her. It was almost like admitting defeat, acknowledging that something actually was wrong.
Even if something was wrong, what could Buck do about it? He was some 7000 km away and he didn’t have much faith in prayer. Was it better not knowing? The knot of anxiety that twisted up his stomach and strangled his heart was a definitive answer to that.
The phone rang and rang and rang.
“Hello?”
Finally hearing a voice on the other line made him want to jump for joy. As it was, a wide smile stretched across his face.
“Hey, it's Buck,” he said.
“Oh…” her tone was almost disappointed. He could understand if she was expecting a different call from another man, but as it was, it stung a bit. “I wasn’t expecting a call. What's up?”
And that was the thing. He didn’t want to be calling her, but he didn’t have much of a choice. “Yeah, sorry. Eddie hasn’t been responding and I wondered if you knew what was up. Is he okay?” he asked with a forced casualness he didn’t feel.
It felt good to finally be giving voice to the worry that had been nagging on his mind since that first missed call. Even then, with answers so close, he had a churning pit in his gut. He tried to tell himself that Shannon would call him if things were wrong. That he would have heard if something had happened. But the thing was, he couldn’t be certain that Shannon would have called him.
“Oh my God,” she said softly. There was a rustling on the other end of the line as his heart rate kicked up. Something was wrong. “No one told you.”
“Told me what?” The sharpness of his tone had several people shooting him, looks ranging from alarmed to curious. Clay in particular caught his eye with a raised eyebrow but Buck turned his back on him, focussed on Shannon’s next words.
“Buck, I’m so sorry,” her voice broke, thick with emotion and at that moment he knew what she was about to say. “He’s gone.”
It felt like someone had just taken a baseball bat to his gut as all the air was knocked from his lungs by the weight of emotions that was dropped on him. “Wh-What happened?” he managed to choke out.
He could hear Shannon’s sniffles on the other end and maybe it was cruel to make her recount this, but he needed to know. “I don’t know the details, but he was in a helo that got shot down. No survivors.”
Oh.
Flashes of fire and blood, the scream of an incoming missile and the feeling of freefall flitted through his brain.
Eddie was gone. Eddie was dead and no one had told him.
He was distantly aware that he was no longer standing. There was a ringing in his ears that drowned everything out and all he could think about was the terror of freefall, of crash landing; the pit in his stomach when they were told no help was coming.
“Buck! Hey, Buck!”
Someone was calling his name. Someone who had a strong hand on his shoulder, shaking him back to Earth. The phone was by his knee. Someone, maybe him, had hung up.
“Hey!” Clay said, with a strong shake to his shoulder and the world was crashing back into him.
He looked up, meeting his teammate’s worried face.
“What happened? Who did you call?”
He felt the hole in his chest that was newly created as acutely as a gunshot wound. Shannon should have just shot him, it would hurt less. Buck would know.
“I-Shannon.”
“Shannon? Who’s Shannon?”
Eddie was dead. Eddie had died out here. Terrified and probably in immense amounts of pain. God. “He’s dead,” he mumbled. Saying it didn’t make it feel any more real, but the way sand cut into his bare knees, Clay’s hold on his shoulder, and the scorching sun. Those were all real and here and Eddie wasn’t. Eddie was dead.
“Who’s dead?” Clay asked, more alarmed this time.
Buck wasn’t quite sure what to say. The boys didn’t know about his and Eddie’s relationship. Not really anyways. They knew him as that one medic Buck had gotten real close with during their joint op a couple of years ago. If anything, the chances that they even remembered Eddie’s name were really low.
“Buddy of mine,” he said. He needed to pull his shit together. Now was not the time to break down. He could do that later. Right now he needed to be normal about this because otherwise, people would get suspicious. “That was his wife. He is-uh… was an army medic. He’s dead.”
Part of him wished he could have not reacted in the first place, had lied to Clay or something because the look he was giving Buck now reeked of pity and that was the last thing he wanted to see right now. He wasn’t some fucking civilian. He was used to death. He shouldn’t be broken up like this if Eddie was just his ‘buddy’.
But it was the fact that Eddie had been so much more than that.
“Sorry, man. Wanna drink?” he offered.
Even though it couldn’t be much past noon, Buck nodded and followed him to the firepit they had dug, accepting the beer he was handed and collapsing into the nearest camp chair. Clay cracked open his own drink and sat by him in silence, a quiet show of support.
This was probably one of the worst places he could have been told about this. On deployment, when his chances of death were higher than ever. When he couldn’t go try and help, couldn’t go to the service, couldn’t see Christopher.
Fuck.
Christopher.
It had been a long time since he’d seen the boy. At least a year, if not longer, but he still missed him. And now…
Buck wasn’t delusional. He knew what Shannon thought of him. There was no way he was going to let him into Christopher’s life now that Eddie was gone.
And that was the second near-fatal blow he’d just been dealt in a matter of minutes. Minutes was all it took to have his bleeding heart torn out and crushed. It was a worse pain than any injury he’d ever gotten.
The only thing comparable was when his sister had left and that could barely hold a candle to how he felt now. Because he had known Maddie was alive, just leaving. But now his two favourite people in the world had been ripped from him in a single phone call and he would never see them again.
Eddie was dead, and far-fetched dreams of family and life after Bravo shot down along with him, burnt up somewhere in the Afghan desert. Honestly, Buck wasn’t sure how he was supposed to function anymore. How did you live without your heart?
<...>
In the end, it wasn’t a big thing that had the truth spilling out of him.
For the longest time, he had told himself he would never tell Eddie what Shannon had done. It was too horrible for words and Buck’s reaction hadn’t been pretty. Plus, Shannon seemed to be permanently out of their lives, a non-issue so there was no reason to bring it up.
But then Eddie had come through like a tornado, saying he’d called her and asked about Buck’s disappearing act and he had still kept his mouth shut.
Shannon was back in Eddie’s life.
Whenever he would mention her, Buck’s chest ached, phantom pains of the grief he had housed there for years. He still felt it, on nights when he would jerk awake, Eddie’s name on his lips and the memory of flames licking at his bones. His own memories gave him first-hand experience of what Eddie may have gone through, painting viscerally real images of the wreckage, bodies burned and broken and dredging up feelings he’d never properly laid to rest.
Pain and panic. That heartstopping clarity that those seconds may be his last. The fear and regret and anger and loathing. Too many feelings to put words to colouring every terror his unconscious mind presented him in those restless hours of sleep. Cobwebs of which clung to him come daylight.
It was haunting him. For years the ghosts of Eddie, of lost family had possessed his mind; a mind that was already a minefield of taken lives, lost youth, and desecrated innocence. After all, one of the worst parts of war was what came after.
He needed to do something, that something probably being telling Eddie what she had done.
Which was how he found himself on the Diaz doorstep only a couple hours after they’d been let off shift. He used his key to let himself in.
Their shift had been a long one, both in the terms that it was a 48 and in the way that the calls just never stopped. Call after call. Small kitchen fire, a kid stuck on the playground, chest pain, a bee sting with an anaphylactic reaction, domestic with injuries, a car accident, another car accident (this time on fire), unconscious and unresponsive, yet another car accident, and then finally a fire at an abandoned building.
It had been that last call that really stuck out.
As they’d been in the process of putting out the flames that had already consumed the majority of the structure, a young woman who couldn’t be older than 25 came running up to the scene, trying to sprint right into the flames that were only just starting to sputter under their assault.
“Jamie! Jamie!” she’d been yelling, the sound shredding her throat in her desperation.
There had been no signs that anyone was inside the building when they’d arrived and the person who had called it in hadn’t seen anyone either. The building had obviously been abandoned for years, rot taking over the structure. It had been a miracle it was still standing before it caught fire.
They’d had no reason to think anyone was inside.
But through choked sobs, the woman, Marissa, explained it had been a stupid hangout spot for her friends. Jamie, Marissa’s partner, had said they were heading over to catch up with someone. They lived about a block away and when she’d seen the dark smoke rising above the horizon. She’d had a horrible sinking feeling in her gut.
After the scene was reduced to damp char, the 118 had trudged through what they could of the structure, looking for any evidence of human remains. It wasn’t a pleasant task, but none of them found anything.
Then, like Lazarus rising, Jamie was there, walking the opposite way down the street, completely unperturbed until they caught sight of Marissa.
Screams of pained relief and worry erupted from the pair as they were reunited. The look on Marissa’s face was almost everything Buck himself had felt when he’d walked into work that fateful day a month and a half ago.
Most days, Buck was still expecting that other shoe to drop; to wake up and be told he’d been hallucinating or in a coma. That Eddie was still dead and nothing had changed.
But more than what had shown on Marissa’s face, the relief of a few moments of heartbreak, was the deep ache in Buck’s own chest. Because for him, that loss was supposed to be permanent. Scars like that didn’t fade overnight.
Some days he still woke up believing Eddie was gone, those cobwebs too thick, holding him prisoner within his own mind. The only real remedy to that, the only thing that could ground him in the present was Eddie himself.
To have him here in front of him, alive and close enough to touch was too good to be true; an unbelievable and unattainable blessing for a sinner such as he. Buck felt undeserving, unworthy to even begin to think he could have this: Eddie, love, family, stability. Safety.
The apprehension, anticipation of the inevitable gripped him in its ice-cold ironclad grip. Seeing Eddie, talking, touching—it all felt unreal.
But for now, he would accept it, revel in it for he was a weak man. He was unable to deny himself the comfort, even while aware of the irreparable damage he would be left with should this all end.
When Eddie had stormed into Abby’s apartment, frazzled and ranting about Shannon, ice had again filled his veins. He hadn’t felt warm since, the worry that she’d yank him right out from under him again following him like a fog. The fact that one person had that much power over him made him sick.
And through it all, he had to hide it all for Eddie.
Because Eddie couldn’t know. Eddie was… well, not happy since Shannon had come back, but he could get there. They could get there again.
It didn’t matter if he still held Buck close. If they still exchanged secrets, covert touches, and private smiles. It felt almost like it had all those years ago sneaking around the base and pretending to be nothing more than close friends while under the private cover of darkness, they carved their initials with whispered words, earnest confessions deep into the other’s soul. They had a love that was theirs and theirs alone.
But it was temporary. Buck had always been temporary.
Maybe though, maybe it could be more.
Because Hen was pulling him into a discreet corner and asking him what was up. And Maddie had asked him the same question. And so had Bobby and Eddie and Chim. So maybe he wasn’t acting as okay about everything as he’d thought.
While he barely told any of them anything, least of all Eddie, he felt guilty in his deception. Really it was his business and no one had a right to know what was going on in his head. That didn’t change his feelings.
Bobby had told him to talk to someone before it destroyed him.
Chim had cracked a joke about his pining and told him to just talk to Eddie.
Hen had told him that honesty was always the best. He needed to trust his partner to back him up, to support him through whatever was nagging at him.
Maddie, the person who knew the most about the situation, but still not everything, had told him to put himself in Eddie’s shoes. To look at this situation from his point of view. And was Evan sure that Eddie even wanted a relationship with Shannon because it sure seemed like she just created more stress in his life?
When he did that, looking at this from Eddie’s position, he knew he needed to tell him. To keep the truth of Shannon’s actions to himself was a betrayal of Eddie’s trust.
So he unlocked the front door to the Diaz household and walked straight in a mere 6 hours after he’d last seen Eddie. Eddie, who would have been in bed, sounded asleep after their gruelling work shift except someone had just walked into his house so he was clattering out of his bedroom into a hallway, stopping only when his panicked eyes landed on the familiar form of Buck kicking his shoes off in the entryway.
“Hey?” Eddie breathed. It was a strange mirror of that day weeks ago when Eddie had come storming into Abby’s apartment. This time it was Eddie’s turn to watch on in confusion as Buck waltz right into his space.
A scuffle from behind the closest bedroom door could be heard and Christopher was poking his head out, eyes still half shut with sleep. “Dad?” he yawned.
“Everything’s fine, Chris,” Eddie said, regaining composure. “It's just Buck, go back to sleep.”
It was proof of how much the boy was not awake that he didn’t even react to the news Buck was there, just nodded and closed the door again, supposedly shuffling back into the warm embrace of sleep.
“So,” Eddie said, following Buck into his kitchen. “What brings you around at this…” he checked the clock, eyes widening at the time. “Dios mío, why are you here?”
As Eddie slumped into a seat at the kitchen table, Buck shuffled around making coffee for the both of them, hands shaking slightly with anxiety. Eddie, for his part, waited patiently just watching Buck’s movements with a careful eye.
“I need to talk to you about something,” Buck finally admitted, stubbornly watching his water seep through the coffee grounds.
“I’m all ears,” Eddie offered, leaning back in his seat.
“It's about Shannon.” The coffee finished dripping and he poured two mugs of the steaming liquid, moving to the fridge to grab milk to add to one cup. “And what happened after your accident.”
“Oh?” He placed the mug with milk and coffee in front of Eddie who accepted it gratefully. He held it with both hands, letting the heat seep into his fingers as he watched the way Buck stared into his own mug where he was still standing against the counter.
The tremor of his hands sent ripples across the surface of the dark coffee that had curls of steam floating up, caressing his face. He didn’t have much of a plan coming over except for: tell Eddie. Which wasn’t really a plan but more of a general goal. A goal which he was stumbling over, unable to form his scattered thoughts into words.
Finally, he broke the silence of the dark kitchen. “I thought you died.” The admission felt like a confession placed at the feet of an unyielding God. He knew not what response was about to become him. Just that he’d let loose those words that had been haunting him and now was helpless to control what would come.
“You… thought I died?” Eddie repeated like he couldn’t quite comprehend the meaning. “But I was… not fine but definitely alive. Why would you think I died?”
Buck moved on weak legs, taking the chair across from Eddie and sinking into it. “I called Shannon when I couldn’t get a hold of you. She-” he choked off, not sure he could recount the words that had been looming over him for years. He took a sip of scalding bitter liquid and tried again. “She told me you had gone down in a helo. No survivors.”
He chanced a glance up to gauge the reaction his confession was eliciting. What he found there had him bracing himself for an explosion.
Eddie’s eyes which had previously been blown wide in shocked confusion were now narrow, brow furrowed in frustration and anger. He looked at his mug with such malice it was a wonder the mug hadn’t burst into a million pieces. Especially with the white-knuckle grip he had on the offending object.
“She what?” Eddie snapped. He knew what Buck had said, just needed repeated verbal confirmation.
Buck gulped. “She told me you died.”
“ Fuck ,” he hissed emphatically. “Fuck!” and now he was on his feet, mug forgotten on the table as he paced the kitchen like a caged tiger.
“Eds,” he intoned, springing to his own feet to try and calm the other. “It's okay really. I know now you’re fine and really, maybe she thought you were gone at that time. I don’t know the exact timeline of events. I mean she never really liked me anyways and I think that's pretty reasonable given everything. Sure that was a bit far, but you’re okay and I’m okay now and we’re both here. So no harm no foul right? Well not really no harm but again I don’t really think it was unjustified. And it really was a nonissue except now she's back and you two are seeing each other and Christopher might want her back in his life. But I don’t think she’s a bad person for what she did. It's not like you’re supposed to like the mistress anyways and this is her family that she was probably just trying to protect even though I don’t know what was going on in her head and how was she supposed to know how that would affect me and it was my own fault for spinning out while on deployment so really she shouldn’t be blamed for-” Buck was muttering a slew of excuses that turned into a ramble, anything to get Eddie to calm down and for the murderous expression to leave his face.
“No!” the other man snapped, whirling on Buck in an instant, effectively cutting him off, and grabbing him by the shoulders in a surprisingly gentle grip. “No Buck, that's not-”
He took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts as Buck stared at him with wide, startled eyes. “What Shannon did was in no way even slightly alright. She knew I was alive by the time they contacted her. She willfully lied to you.”
He let out a rush of air and tilted forward, lightly banging his forehead into Buck’s chest. “She told you I died and I didn’t reach out. I’m so fucking stupid,” he grumbled. “I should have reached out after, should have called you first.”
“Hey,” Buck breathed, bringing a steady hand up to grip the back of Eddie’s neck and encouraging him to look Buck in the face. “You didn’t know any better.”
“But you thought I was dead,” he pleaded, looking absolutely heartbroken. “And I let you think it.”
He could have given the other any number of reasonable excuses, but he knew Eddie wouldn’t take them, too stubborn to absolve himself of that guilt so easily. In that way, they were so much alike.
Instead, Buck ran a hand through the other’s hair, caressing the short hairs at the back of his neck and tried for a small smile. “You’re here now, and that's all that matters.”
Eddie shook his head, pulling away and putting distance between them again. “No. No, that isn’t all that matters because here I’ve been, trying to make things work with Shannon, trying to work back to bringing her back as a co-parent and you’ve just been sitting on this information. Why didn’t you say anything? How didn’t you?”
Buck looked reproachful, sinking into himself as he wrapped his arms around his waist and shrugged. “I didn’t think you needed to know until Shannon came back. And then it was such a big thing and I didn’t want you to think that I- I was making stuff up or something—trying to wreck y’all’s relationship out of jealousy or something.”
“Why should you be jealous?” Eddie asked because that was the important part of that confession.
Buck laughed weakly, humourlessly. “She is your wife.”
“That I haven’t been in love with since I was 20,” Eddie scoffed.
“That you still haven’t divorced,” Buck countered, letting his own insecurities have a voice at long last.
Eddie frowned. “It's not that easy, Buck. Do you know how much my family already talks about my failing marriage? Divorce isn’t really an option!”
“So I’m supposed to just stay silent? Be okay being ‘the other woman’? There’s not much I wouldn’t do for you Eds,” Buck admitted, eyes stinging. “I love you. And I get I’m not really worth it. But I can’t just be your fucking mistress. Please don’t ask me to.”
And that was just it, wasn’t it? There were too many obstacles in the way. He and Eddie may fit together in theory, but like Eddie and Shannon, maybe there was too much baggage in this relationship to make it work.
He loved Eddie. Loved him like no other. And he loved Chris. Loved him like his own kid. That didn’t mean his love gave him a right to be in their lives, a right to freely and openly express that love.
The thing was, he knew if Eddie asked, he would settle. He would resign himself to never being more than the side bitch to Eddie’s marriage. He would love him quietly. He would support him even if his choices didn’t make sense to Buck and only gave his insecurities fuel to the fire that burned away at his already damaged sense of self-worth.
Maybe his self worth was like that dilapidated building fire they’d fought earlier. Already damaged and barely able to support anything and finally destroyed by the raging fire that was his need for the Diazes. It ate at his self-worth, his esteem, all that he was. Eventually, it would leave nothing but a hollowed-out husk, ashes that he would hunt through in an attempt to find even a modicum of something worth giving to someone else—proof that he was worthy of that same love.
“I can’t ask that,” Eddie murmured. “I wouldn’t.”
Buck sniffed, tears tracing down his cheeks. “You are.”
“I can’t- you don’t know what it's like for me. What it is to deal with my family,” Eddie countered.
“No, I don’t,” Buck agreed. “But wouldn’t it be worse if it came out you were having a queer affair with your best friend than it would to get a divorce? I don’t know, nor do I pretend to know what goes on with your parents, but don’t they hate Shannon? Would it really be worse?”
So Buck is really overstepping now. But he was desperate. And the way that point had Eddie’s mouth snapping shut and his eyes narrowing deep into thought told him that maybe he wasn’t all that far off. He quashed his own hope before it could begin to bloom.
“Maybe,” Eddie finally admitted. He sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face and through his hair. “Fuck, this is a mess.” He collapsed once more into an exhausted heap into his kitchen chair.
Silence hung in the air and Buck tentatively sipped his coffee, waiting for something to break that silence.
It was Eddie when he said. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. You shouldn’t have even been involved in this mess in the first place. If I hadn’t been so glaringly obvious about my feelings, maybe Shannon wouldn’t have…” he trailed off, placing his head in his hands.
“Eds,” Buck sighed, moving and placing a comforting hand on the other’s shoulder. “It's not your fault. You couldn’t have known how she'd react. And I wasn’t the most covert with my feelings either. She could have picked it up from either one of us. But it's not like we… y’know, back then.”
“An emotional affair is still an affair,” Eddie groaned. “Don’t try to absolve me of something I absolutely did.”
And while they may not have done anything physical on the joint op, when they’d been stationed together overseas for nearly nine months, Eddie was right in calling it an emotional affair. They’d crossed the platonic line in the sand with one too many longing glances, whispered words, and shared smiles. The lingering hands and too gentle touches and too much time spent together. The way both of their fellow soldiers would gossip about them and study them, but never say anything outright. The way Eddie would introduce Buck to his family on calls home and talk about Christopher, nurturing a bond between the three of them.
So maybe they hadn’t ever fucked dirty in the back of the med tent, but they’d wanted to. Maybe they’d never run worried hands all over each other and exchange life-confirming kisses after an op gone bad, but they’d wanted to. Even if they’d never so much as pecked the other on the cheek until Eddie had shown up at the 118 miraculously alive and breathing; they had still had an affair.
At what point Eddie had broken his marriage vows, Buck wasn’t sure. Maybe they’d been broken from the moment he’d made them, rushing too young into a marriage doomed from the beginning. Or maybe it was when he’d fallen out of love with Shannon when he’d realized she wasn’t what he wanted to be his forever. Or maybe it was when he’d locked eyes with bright blue in the golden light of the desert heat.
Did it really matter?
Because what was done is done. There's no changing the past.
Only there here and now with Buck peering down at him in the dark kitchen, tear tracks still drying on his cheeks as he pleads with Eddie to let him give all of himself over to him. As he still heals from the emotional wounds Eddie’s wife had dealt to rip them from each other, to maybe recreate a place for herself in the wreckage she had created.
“I love you,” Eddie whispered into the stillness of the kitchen. “I love you and you deserve to be loved loudly and with every piece of me. And I can’t give that to you if I split my loyalties.”
Tears once again welled up in Buck’s eyes, despite him trying to blink them away. “That’s okay,” he tried to say, but Eddie was shaking his head.
“No,” he rushed out. “No, I love you, Buck. I need you and Shannon and everyone to know that.”
“Wha-”
“I’ll get a divorce,” he said and that shut Buck up who looked at him with glassy eyes. “My family will talk, but you’re right. My parents never liked her and it would be worse if they found out about us the other way. And you deserve my sole romantic love. It's you and it will only ever be you. You and Chris are my family. That's what I want.”
His admission was met with nothing but stunned eyes and heartfelt tears.
“I love you too,” Buck finally choked out, collapsing forward onto his knees, practically prostrating himself at Eddie’s feet.
It was surreal, Eddie’s words spinning in his head. He wanted Buck? Everything that he was? It was almost too much to comprehend. That maybe he could have this, this family that he’d longed for.
Eddie sank off his chair, joining Buck on the floor and used a hand to tilt his face up to meet his eyes. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t give you,” he intoned, an echo of Buck’s earlier sentiment.
Their lips met in a gentle kiss so full of love and heart, each pouring into it every warm feeling they could. Buck nipped at Eddie’s lower lip and in response he opened his mouth, allowing Buck’s tongue to slip past. Their tongues danced together gliding and caressing.
When they pulled apart, breathless, they collapsed inwards, a tangled mess of arms and legs on Eddie’s kitchen floor.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Buck mumbled into his shoulder.
Eddie ran a soft hand down his back and responded, “I’m sorry I left you.”
Buck wanted to protest again. He knew it wasn’t Eddie’s fault. The fault lay somewhere between him and Shannon, but never at Eddie’s feet. But to voice that would be starting an unwinnable argument and right now he was too at peace to stir the pot.
He just sank further into Eddie’s arms, holding him that much tighter and hoped he could hear what he was thinking. How each breath was a confession of love and every heartbeat was another moment together.
When they both began to ache from the hard floor, it was in mutual agreement that they moved together to Eddie’s bed where they finally fell into blessedly peaceful sleep entangled in each other and cocooned in the knowledge that the other would be there come morning.