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Buck has moved on from snickerdoodles to Bobby’s brownie recipe, which used to be Chim’s favorite. Eddie is slumped on a couch trying to make himself care about a book Hen recommended, hoping she doesn’t look over and see how distracted he is. Chim’s been bouncing his foot for the last twenty minutes, making a counterpoint to the clinking of Buck doing dishes in the kitchen.
Buck took the brownies out of the oven a few minutes ago, and the smell of chocolate wafting through the firehouse is making Eddie salivate. This isn’t the first attempt at these brownies, though, and Eddie learned not to go hover over the fresh brownies after Buck slapped him away on a previous attempt—“You have to let them cool,” he’d said, and Eddie had pouted, and Buck hadn’t even given in.
So Eddie is impatiently waiting for the brownies to be lukewarm enough for Buck to be willing to serve them, and he’s reading the same sentence in this book over and over, and he’s not thinking about what Abuela left him in her will.
There are footsteps behind him. “I think I’m getting closer,” says Buck, and a tray of fresh brownies appears in front of Eddie’s face.
Eddie takes a bite. It’s exactly right, and he has a sense-memory of Bobby laughing at him when he got brownie crumbs stuck in his mustache and they kept moving when he talked. Eddie shakes himself. He keeps having these—
He was getting better. He’s been in emergency mode for years now. And every time he thinks he’s fixed his life, something happens to prove he shouldn’t try.
He saw Kim and it was like remembering Shannon died all over again, an apology he could never make and a question he could never ask. When he finally told her to leave for good, he thought he could get back to his normal life, take care of people, be responsible. Only she didn’t stay away, and Chris left, and Eddie was afraid he was gone for good.
Eddie fixed that, too. And as soon as he had his son back, Bobby died, and Eddie moved back to LA and tried to push through his grief. He tries to save people, and all he ever gets is a more thorough education in watching people die.
Not watching. They keep dying when he’s not looking.
And he finally felt halfway to okay again. He was back at the 118, he was spending time with his son, he had the joy he’d been chasing all his life even if it was bittersweet, and then Abuela died, and Eddie remembered how to do things through the numb feeling.
He knows too well how to do it. He sits through mass and feels hollow, he smiles at his son and tries not to feel like he’s faking it, he calls his parents and tries to believe they’re happy to see him.
Eddie’s not sure why he’s supposed to seek joy. In mass a few weeks ago they talked about Job, who was the greatest man among all people. And he lost his children and his wife and everything he cared about, and he still didn’t blame God.
Eddie is no Job. Eddie can’t stop thinking about Job’s wife and children, who died. They died, and there was no reason for it, and God gave him a new wife and children in the end, so it was a happy ending. Maybe not for Job, though. Eddie knows more than most people that you can’t bring back the dead.
Why seek joy, then? So that there’s something for God to take away?
He last saw his parents at the reading of Abuela’s will. When Eddie's name was called, he felt their eyes on him, the way they watched the bequest spin in the air as it was dropped into his hand.
Across from him, Chim takes a bite of his own brownie. There’s a flash of grief on his face, probably his own sense-memory. Chim shoves to his feet. “I think you should find another hobby and quit trying to be Bobby.”
Buck flinches, Eddie winces, and Hen says, “Whoa, Chim—”
Chim is already shaking his head, backtracking, faintly apologetic but abrupt about it. “They’re—you got them right. Don’t make them again.” He looks at the rest of the brownie in his hand like it might sting him, sets it gently on the coffee table, and leaves the room in a rush.
Buck is staring at the empty space where he was. He looks bereft.
Eddie says, “They’re good, Buck. And you didn’t even have to get a hint from someone in your attic this time.”
Buck smiles at him, so at least Eddie can still do one thing right.
That feeling lasts through their next call, and the next, and then it all goes to hell.
It’s a call at a church, which feels a little on the nose. Some kid crawled onto the roof through the bell tower; Buck is harnessed up there and getting the kid down.
Eddie is on the ground. Buck’s foot slips.
Eddie panics. He prays. People keep dying and Eddie can never do anything about it. If Buck fell off of that roof Eddie would have to watch him die, and Eddie keeps having people die when he’s not looking, and he can’t decide which would be worse.
Buck is harnessed, and the harness doesn’t even have to catch him. He catches his balance on the roof, no problem, and Eddie is abruptly furious.
Eddie doesn’t say anything to Buck when he’s back on the ground. He doesn’t say anything on the ride back, and he ignores Buck’s increasingly nervous glances in his direction.
Eddie swings himself out of the engine, gets his feet under him, and doesn’t look at Buck on the way to the showers, and he doesn’t look at him getting dressed, and there’s a buzz in Eddie’s ears and Abuela’s last gift to him in his pocket.
Buck stops him in the locker room. “Eddie, are we okay?”
“You can’t do that shit,” Eddie says, voice clipped.
“What did I do?”
“At the church,” and Eddie’s thinking of the mental image he can’t quite erase: Buck smashed open on the ground, uncannily still.
No one else is in the locker room. No one else needed to shower after that call—Eddie didn’t really either, he just needed to hide somewhere and breathe.
Buck’s brow scrunches, like he doesn’t see anything wrong with almost dying in front of Eddie. “I always do this. That was fine.”
“Well, you can’t anymore.”
“I can’t—”
“You can’t,” Eddie says, his voice coming out cool and certain even as he knows it’s unfair. Buck was harnessed up there. He was taking precautions. Eddie just can’t handle it.
Eddie can’t handle it if this piece of his happiness gets taken away from him, so he just has to make sure God doesn’t think he’s too happy.
Buck says shortly, “This is my job.”
“Dying? It does not have to be your job to die for people, Buck, you matter more than that.”
“I’m not trying to die, Eddie.”
“Aren’t you? Stupid risks, dangerous stunts—” Eddie punctuates this by throwing his dirty clothes into his locker with a satisfying thwack.
“It wasn’t stupid,” Buck says, voice rising for the first time, finally being a little less cautious of Eddie’s feelings.
Good. Eddie hopes he gets mad. Maybe if Eddie can piss him off enough, this thing Abuela could see in him won’t catch God’s attention. Maybe if Eddie isn’t happy, Buck will stay safe. “You can’t act like it’s no big deal to fall off a roof.”
Buck shrugs. “Not the first time I have.”
“Don’t joke about that.”
“I didn’t even fall! And if I had I was in a harness!”
“Sometimes it seems safe and people die anyway!”
There’s too much understanding in Buck’s eyes. “You can’t—can’t wrap me in bubble wrap.”
“You can’t do this anymore,” Eddie says, and he means, I can’t lose you.
“This is what Bobby taught me to do.”
“And look where he is now,” snaps Eddie, and Buck goes white.
It’s the flip side of the cookie discussion earlier. Only Eddie can calm him down that fast, and only Eddie can get him this angry. It’s satisfying, in a way. Nice that even though Eddie’s not talking to him about this, even though it’s been weird between them and it’s only gotten weirder after the reading of his Abuela’s will, Eddie still knows him well enough to make him mad and Buck still cares about him enough to bother being angry.
“Maybe he’s up there protecting me,” Buck snaps. “Maybe I should take even more risks.”
“Don’t—He’s not some kind of saint.”
“No? I can pray to Bobby and God and maybe one of them will answer.”
“That’s blasphemy,” Eddie hisses.
“And God’s gonna, what, send a lightning bolt?” Buck bursts out, arms wide. He tips his face upwards. “Again? Okay, God, you hear that? Do your worst.”
“Don’t—” Eddie takes two long steps forward and grabs a fistful of Buck’s t-shirt, right over the middle of his chest. Buck lowers his chin, looks at Eddie, his jaw still set. Eddie says, “Please.” His voice breaks.
“Eddie,” Buck says, the frustration making his voice tight, “This is my job. I am good at this job. Don’t tell me I can’t do it.”
Eddie looks at his how fist still clenched in Buck’s shirt so he doesn’t have to look at Buck’s face. “Not you, too.”
Buck’s brow wrinkles. “Not me?”
“He can’t take you,” says Eddie. He’s breathing fast. “He can’t.”
“Who?” says Buck, the anger lifting for a moment in his confusion.
“God.” There’s a wobble in Eddie’s voice without his permission.
Eddie feels the puff of air Buck breathes out, but he’s still determinedly looking down. Buck lifts his hands, very cautiously, and sets them on Eddie's shoulders. Buck rubs a little, a small movement. “Eddie, hey. Hey. I’m not going anywhere, okay? God isn’t taking me.”
Eddie gasps a deeper breath. “He’s going to try.”
Buck slides his arms around Eddie to wrap him in a hug. Eddie shoves him away and stumbles back a step. Buck stares at him.
Job got rewarded in the end but he never got his wife and kids back. Eddies had his wife die and he didn’t get anything out of the suffering. At least his kid came back.
Eddie has his hand clenched in his pocket.
Eddie says, “You have to stay away from me.”
Buck hesitates. “l get it, okay? I’m still—Bobby is dead, and it still hurts.”
It’s my fault he’s dead, Eddie thinks, the same thread of an argument they had months ago, and he sees Buck recognize it on his face.
“Bobby died months ago,” Eddie says instead, and hates that he said it out loud.
Buck stiffens. “I know I–I know it’s not like it is for you but I loved Abuela too.”
Eddie scoffs, because it’s the only noise he can manage without sobbing.
Buck’s face shifts through fury and to something foreign, cold. “Are you kidding me, Eddie? You don’t think I loved her? Fuck you.”
Abuela’s last gift to him is digging into his clenched palm, leaving a dent. Eddie had his name called at the reading of the will, and he had walked up that infinitely long aisle between the rows of chairs, and he had held out his hand to let the executor of her will drop it in his hand. His parents hadn’t looked at him the same, afterward.
He’s afraid to call them, afraid that they see him for who he is now and they won’t pick up.
Every time Eddie is happy someone dies. God knows Buck has had enough close calls already.
If Eddie could keep his mouth shut, Buck would go away and be safe.
He can’t keep his mouth shut. “She loved you,” Eddie says, wobbly, and Buck doesn’t look any less furious but his lip unfurls. Eddie says, “Do you know how I know she loved you? Because she left me this.”
He pulls his clenched hand out of his pocket, reaches out, and Buck automatically extends a hand. It’s a mirror: Eddie extended his hand exactly the same way at the reading of Abuela’s will. Eddie drops his Abuelo’s wedding ring into Buck’s hand, turns on his heel and walks away.
“What—Eddie, what? Eddie!” Buck’s voice breaks. He doesn’t chase after Eddie.
Eddie doesn’t turn around. He presses his fingertips into the indent in his palm. Abuela didn’t leave him her own wedding ring, not something for him to gift to a future wife.
What Buck is holding is Abuela’s gift for Eddie to pass on to a future husband.
When Eddie reached out to take it at the reading of the will, he knew bone-deep exactly what she meant. Who she meant. He’s been carrying it around in his pocket for days. It’s a blessing on something Eddie hasn’t been willing to look at, that he’d only just started to feel on the tip of his tongue since he got back from Texas.
Normally it doesn’t bother him when people make assumptions about him and Buck, but for the last thing she did to be—he never got to tell her and she decided that’s how it was anyway. This thing she knew about him, this thing they never talked about. He wasn’t trying to hide anything, not really, but his whole family is full of chismosas and they’re all great at reading between the lines even when there isn’t anything to see. This time there is.
Well, now he’s given the ring to Buck, who’s the rightful owner of it, anyway. Abuela knew that all along. Eddie has given it to him, he’s fulfilled his responsibility, and he can’t stick around for a conversation about it. It’s just the latest in a long list of things Eddie has said instead of I’m sorry.
Eddie hides in the bunk room for the rest of the shift. It’s quiet, thank god—or thank someone, anyway. He stays until B shift is drifting in, at least half an hour after the end of A shift so that everyone who saw him make a scene earlier is cleared out. He gets his stuff out of his locker, keeping his head down, and he drives himself home, and he collapses on the couch and stares at the blank TV.
He could put something on. That’s what his life is now, probably, now that he’s blown things up with Buck. He’ll have to entertain himself somehow.
Buck shows up at the door. Eddie recognizes his footfalls on the porch, the hesitation in front of the door. Apparently Buck decides this isn’t enough of an argument to stop using his key, because the lock turns.
Eddie turns to look at him as he drifts cautiously into the living room.
Buck shuffles his feet. “I’m—I’m not glad Bobby’s dead.”
Eddie can’t stop the surprised noise in his throat. Whatever Buck was going to start with, he didn’t anticipate that.
Buck smiles a little. “Okay, yeah, I get how that sounds. I mean I–I’m glad I–I knew him. I hate saying that, I hate talking about him in the past tense, sometimes I h–hate him for locking himself in there and not letting me help.”
“Buck—”
“I’m so angry he’s dead, Eddie. I’m–I’m so angry that you brought it up earlier like it was nothing, and I’m angry that you weren’t there because when you are there things always turn out better. But it’s not your fault. I’m glad he was in my life in the first place.”
Eddie shakes his head. “It wouldn’t have mattered if I was there.”
“It would have mattered to me.”
“People keep dying and I can’t do anything. God keeps—”
“I think you might need a new church,” says Buck.
Eddie snorts.
He finally heaves himself off the couch to stand in front of Buck and look at him straight on. His gaze snags on the chain around Buck's neck—Buck isn’t one for necklaces, usually. It dips below his t-shirt, but Eddie can see the outline of a ring.
He reaches out and hooks his fingertips underneath it, brushing the side of Buck's neck. Buck shivers. Eddie lifts it out, ring dangling from the chain, spinning as he watches it.
Buck shifts nervously and reaches up behind his neck for the clasp. “You can, you can have it back, I know you didn’t mean it like—like anything, I just wanted to make sure it was, um, safe. Since it was—”
“Buck,” Eddie says.
Buck stops. He lets his hands fall back to his sides, shoulders hunched.
Eddie is still holding the chain, watching the ring dangle, catching the light. He coughs a little to clear the emotion in his throat. “Abuela knew me better than—better than my parents, definitely. Better than most people. She saw the—the best in me.”
Buck is frozen, watching Eddie’s face like there are any answers there at all. Eddie doesn’t have any answers. All Eddie knows is that Buck is freaking out, and he can do something about that, at least.
Eddie lifts his hand to the joint of Buck’s shoulder, his thumb falling at Buck’s collarbone, his fingers wrapping around the base of Buck’s neck. “She didn’t know me better than you do.”
Buck shakes his head once, like it’s instinctive, and Eddie tightens his grip. Eddie can’t let him freak out about this. He needs Buck to be safe. The more he tells Buck, the calmer Buck will be.
“Earlier, when I snapped at you. That wasn’t about you.”
“I–I know, I know, I make things about me, I’m sorry—”
Eddie cuts him off, shaking his head. “Buck, every time I’m almost happy someone dies.”
Buck’s shoulders jerk. “I can’t—you can be happy, Eddie. Don’t lock yourself somewhere I can’t help.”
That’s Buck in a nutshell. Ready to help. Endlessly patient with Eddie, even when he’s been pushing him away. It’s not like God has done anything like that for Eddie.
Eddie’s been using that as an excuse anyway. His Abuela had a great relationship with God, and she wanted him to be happy, and she thought Buck was a part of it. Even if he doesn’t trust God, he trusts his Abuela.
Eddie tilts his head forward, touches their foreheads together. He closes his eyes, feels Buck’s breath on his lips. “Buck, you know why she left me that ring.”
Buck is absolutely still, like a prey animal that’s just spotted certain death coming for it. He says reluctantly, “You—you were close with your Abuelo? So it’s a–a family heirloom thing.”
“Buck, she knew me. She saw the best in me and part of that is you.”
“You don’t mean it like—”
“I mean it exactly like that.”
“What, that you want to marry me?” Even though Eddie was expecting it, hearing it out loud is like a shock of cold water. That’s Buck all the way through—coming right out and saying the thing they’ve been talking around, even if he’s putting a little bit of mockery in it.
Eddie can breathe now that it’s out there. Now that it’s out there he can do something about it. Diving into cold water is only a shock at first, and then he can adjust. Eddie is great at swimming—sometimes someone just has to shove him in. “I would.”
“What?” Buck yanks himself out of Eddie’s grip, tripping backwards.
Eddie finally opens his eyes. “Maybe take you on a date first.”
“Eddie, you can’t say things like that.”
“You thought I gave you that ring as a joke? I wouldn’t joke about that. It’s my Abuelo’s ring. It matters to me.”
“Yeah, I know it matters to you, that’s why I was trying to give it back!”
“Buck, shut up and listen for a minute.”
Buck scowls at him. Eddie steps forward again.
Buck plants his feet, like, I’m not moving for you. Eddie takes another step closer to him.
“That ring matters to me, and I appreciate that you put it on that necklace to keep it safe, but I don’t care if it’s safe as long as you are. Okay? What I’m trying to say is that you matter to me. More than any ring. The ring is just—a way of saying it.”
Buck swallows hard. “Your Abuela—”
“She realized that was how I felt about you,” Eddie says firmly. “And she watched too many telenovelas, and if she’s up there somewhere watching this, she is probably crying happy tears.”
Buck breathes a laugh, the light back in his eyes like he trusts Eddie to mean this. Like the wall that’s been up for months is gone. “Bobby is probably crying right next to her.”
“They would,” Eddie says. “So, Buckley, how about it? Give them a proper telenovela kiss?”
Buck grins, the side of it tilting sideways a little. “There are some things I don’t need them to see.”
“Oh, and you think those things are in the cards for you?”
Buck reaches for the necklace again, unclasps the back. He slides the ring off of it and onto his pinky finger, and Eddie can’t stop himself from reaching out to touch it lightly. Buck says, “You’ll have to resize it before you ask me again.”
“Come on a date with me first,” says Eddie.
“Kiss me first,” says Buck, ever-competitive. “And then maybe the telenovela can fade to black.”