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Chapter 1- A Place to meet.
“So is this what you are looking for, sir?” Buck didn't want to admit it but it was the most boring place he ever visited, and he thought he had seen the worst but this, this was literal hell.
“Yeah, it's interesting just…” he looked around giving the place a last look before denying it. The girl who spoke to him earlier was very nice to him, so he didn't want to make her feel bad but seriously this place wasn't for him. Something about the weird rooms, or even the wind blowing felt odd to him, like he didn't belong and he knew that wasn't going to change until he actually stays there enough but he felt this was going beyond that.
“You know, it's quite… funny” he said instantly.
“Funny? In what sense?” The lady spoke really confused.
“I don't feel it like my place, see i don't even picture myself inside these walls” he immediately thought of how he would even see himself here, and he didn't understood why the simple idea of it made him melancolic.
The lady took some minutes standing in front of Buck trying to understand him then she started looking for something inside her bag “well I hope you choose a good place that feels like home" she offers him a cardboard piece with some information. “Call me whenever you're ready”
“Yeah”
“So you just couldn't find a proper house?” Maddie asked him more confused than anything while she was dressing up Jee. The little girl was playing with her mother's hair, Buck couldn't help finding cute how Maddie tried to fight back with her and still lost.
“Didn't you hear what I said?” he said, now paying attention to the conversation.
“Yes, i did, but you sure is that the only reason why you don't wanna leave Eddie's house” she raised her eyebrow and met his eyes, the look she threw to her brother was so powerful Buck felt like she was swimming in his insides thoughts.
“What else would it be then?” He fought back and tried to bury himself up into that chair he was using. A weird feeling in his stomach started to ache.
Maddie sighted just to throw him a last look.
“Guess, Even Buckley, guess by yourself”
“Ok. I know I've been really unbearable but don't blame me, okay? I can't let my feelings control me, Maddie, you know that. "
"Could you explain those feelings? your sister here would like to hear them."
Buck lets out a sigh. "It's just that I always found it easy to ignore this before. It's like a string that draws me in to him and I don't know how to name it. I know you came up with a lot of ideas so far this part, but it's not that easy for me. Now that I live with him, a part of me sleeps peacefully and excited, like I've satiated an old dream I never thought I'd have, yet I know I shouldn't listen to it, I know that."
“Then your solution is to stay with him until you explode?”
Buck raised his eyebrows in immediate response from his body, he moved awkwardly in his seat knowing he was in a bind. “Something like that.”
Maddie nodded her head from side to side in disbelief at how stubborn her brother could be at times. “At least talk to him, Buck.”
“I will” Maddie glared at him. “When I'm ready.”
…
The melodies of a song echoed in the room, whispering melancholic and nostalgic sounds to the liquor sitting on the table. A song as old as the tequila that decorated the insides of his cupboard, burning his throat choking back sobs due his memories.
Eddie was screwed, he knew it clearly. His life had become a buffoonish song that only sought some semblance of meaning. So as he went back to drowning his throat in the sting of his tequila he rambled more memories in the couch.
He knew this was only the effects of the alcohol or whatever he was calling this weird situation.
Buck had left early in search of his new home, and that for some reason made him so depressed that he was now in a state of mind lying on his couch, with a song he'd heard in El Paso and a third tequila shot just about to fall out of his clumsy hands.
Pathetic. he thought.
And it all went back to that place, where it all began, where his heart wanted to spit out all the accumulated dust: El Paso.
It all started in one those nights he was fighting the urge to call Buck. So he just stared the open chat on his phone not knowing what to do.
Because his therapist's words were all over his mind, he couldn't sleep well. “Apparently you have been repressing something so much you force yourself to act like someone that it's not you…”
And all the shit Eddie had to listen about his parents and how he was damaged because of his childhood was making him incapable of sleep, because what do you mean he's been repressing his happiness because his parents made him feel he wasn't worth something unless he earned it? And that he had his whole life following an Idealist idea his parents sold him?
It was a lot to take in one week. In fact he was initially denying it because “childhood wasn't that bad” but then after spiraling enough he noticed that the priest said something similar.
So when he was back in texas he could feel really hard the consequences of the way he was raised. Because he saw his parents all day and by that he also could see the reflection of that Edmundo who ran away from them.
It was so difficult to him to even express himself without feeling useless, someone who fucked up so much he wasn't allowed to be with his kid anymore, that maybe his parents were right about his future.
All his life being the shadow of what his parents wanted him to be, cause he wasn't enough to actually be the actual person, he was just a little part of that, never enough.
And even though he didn't want to, he always ended up giving the rigth to his parents.
But don't get him wrong, weeks later he worked with that feeling, he learnt how to overcome his parents and that mistakes didn't make himself less of a father. Then he accepted happiness, he accepted having his kid back, he accepted moving to LA with his real family, to learn about all those forgotten and opened scars he had that Texas made him healed.
So why was he spiraling?
See he was all the way up, he felt brave enough to talk about things, the therapist helped a lot, he opened up more with him, he was going fine, until he came back to LA. Everything feels wrong, like he hasn't changed at all.
And also there was this thing called Evan Buckley and his new distance. What the fuck was Eddie doing wrong? he asked himself one night where Buck just was seated exaggerated far away from him watching a movie.
And all these actitudes and the way Buck was seeking for a loft so intense made him feel like he was the problem here. He was so embarrassed of the feeling he had when Buck talked about moving because, why did he thought Buck was going to stay forever? What a delusional.
So now he just gets himself drunk trying to figure out if to ask him to stay or not.
Eddie wasn't conscious when Buck got home so it was quite a surprise to find Eddie on the couch with a tequila in hand and a Christopher Diaz trying to wake up his father.
“What happened here, buddy?” asked Buck standing in front of the couch.
“I don't know, I went out of my room to get something to eat and found him like this” Christopher raised his shoulders just as confused as Buck.
Then Buck noticed the tequila on the table and the glass on the floor near where Eddie's arm rested.
He sigh something and said “let me juts...” Buck started trying to wake Eddie up, “Chris get me a glass of water please.”
“Okay” he headed towards the kitchen.
“Tshh, Eddie wake up” he said, shaking him a little. “Eddie please” he said louder this time.
Chris walked over and handed Buck the glass full of cold water. Buck poured some into his hands without touching the water inside the glass and ran his hands over Eddie's face.
In a matter of a few minutes he woke up totally confused and dizzy.
“B-Buck?” he said almost in a whisper, rising a little on the couch and cradling Buck's face in his hands. “Is that you?”
Buck took one of his hands and looked at him in sorrow and confusion searching for an answer to this situation. Why would Eddie, the most caring father and best drinker, be drunk on his own couch at this hour and with his kid at home. He positioned the glass of water to Eddie's lips and held his jaw to help him drink it.
“Drink some water Eddie” He demanded and Eddie just nodded and grabbed one of Buck's arms for balance. One thing he could never deny was that he hardly ever got drunk, however there were times when he reached the bottom so hard that he needed a lot of help getting up.
When he finally finished drinking the water Buck broke away and helped him up, sitting him on the furniture.
“Are you hungry?” He asked him seeing what time it was.
“I am,” Christopher said next to him, so Buck suppressed a small smile. “Okay I'll make you both dinner.”
And Eddie was only able to nod as he processed what was happening in his surroundings.
“Do you mind if you help me a little bit, Chris?"
“Never” he answered with a smile.
So there was Buck, after an exhausting day, cooking for both of his favorite boys.
He was exhausted, that day felt really charged by all the emotions he's been supresing, it almost was like going to the most horrendous wave of feelings and now he's trying not to drown.
Christopher helped him in the kitchen, it wasn't much just passing him some utensils and stuff he asked him to. But he felt it so cute to share a moment with him after not seeing Chris for a long while that he was kinda forgetting about all the negative feelings he had.
He couldn't believe how much he had grown since he went to El paso to LA back, and it was one of the things that threw him off since all this started ’cause now he needs to keep reminding himself that Christopher is an adolescent. And that he is not the same child he met before.
So now he had grown this fear that maybe, maybe Chris wouldn't like to do some activities with him, or that maybe he wasn't cool enough by his adolescent criteria, or that maybe Christopher didn't consider him his best friend anymore after being apart for so long.
Buck knew that he didn't lost something with Chris, they kept talking via calls and some messages, for him he was the most important thing, he loved that child like a father -even if he feels shy to admitting out lout cause he doesn't want to force Chris to see him like that- so even if they talked that much he knew things wasn't going to be the same when he comes.
So now he fears that Christopher might not spend time with him, or that he changed that much he wouldn't like Buck anymore.
But all those voices shut when this happens, when he sees Chris interested in helping him, when he sees him smile like a kid again, when he jokes with him like no time has passed.
And Buck wants to freeze that moment and take a picture so he could carry Chris with him everytime. But reality comes hard when he hears him say something new, something different, that sounded less like kid Chris. But he loves him like that, in fact he is proud of what he become.
They finished the dinner and Chris went back to his rooms not after Eddie reminds him to not go to sleep too late playing.
He was washing the dishes in silence while Eddie was in the table almost falling a sleep.
“You should take a shower” he said cleaning the last plate.
“Yeah… i think” Eddie said closing his eyes.
They remained in silence for a moment, a very moment of great anticipation, as if there were words buried and hidden in the silence that they were afraid to break.
“So, you're not going to tell me what happened there?” Buck asked sitting in front of Eddie.
“Mhn?” he said while slightly opening his eyes.
“Why were you drunk in your couch Eddie while Christopher was there watching you” Buck was really confused by this, he couldn't understand why he would just get drunk with his kid in the house.
“I don't know” he said bringing his hands to his face. “I-i got one of those moments when you know everything feels like shit and i just realized that…” He swallowed hard before saying that. “Bobby's not here anymore”
Buck's expression softened and he grabbed Eddie's wrist causing him to put his head up and look at Buck.
“I know i had time to process this but is that, you know, with all the moving thing and getting everything set up and selling the house from El Paso i didn't had time to think about it” he looked right in Buck's eyes. “And now it feels like everything it's on me, it's like being stabbed harder everytime with all at the same time”
“I know how that feels, I know what it is like to search for comfort in the lack of lucidity of alcohol but Chris needs you here, not there” he starts saying. “If you need to spit everything out, I'm always here and you know it, don't let it be stronger than you”
He was going to say something else but Eddie started closing his eyes. He takes a long breath and caresses Eddie's shoulder with his hand.
“Let's take a quick shower man”
He helped Eddie wake up a little bit more and left him so he could take a shower, he was a little preoccupied cause Eddie was in a weird mood these days, and he was scared that it could be something big to even say it to him, so he was worried cause if there's something he cares the most about is Eddie Diaz.
Then Eddie said something semi-drunk that made Buck's heart cry.
“God, what am I gonna do without you around here?” Just like that Eddie left him remembering how much it's going to hurt leaving.
Eddie then changed and went to bed and Buck followed the same routine after getting into the bed they were charing -something Buck didn't want to pay too much attention cause was definitely one of the reasons he found out about his feelings-
But other than that he was very grateful that Eddie had begged him to share a bed with him after they had both suffered excruciating back pain in the middle of the calls just because of taking turns in bed, so they were sleeping much better now. Of course Buck couldn't admit that the fact that he was now sleeping with Eddie was also influencing his restful sleep.
As he lay in bed he felt the full weight of the day leave him. He didn't know he was so tired until he lay back in bed and fell asleep to the sound of Eddie's low snoring.