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Somehow, he ends up on Buck’s doorstep.
He doesn’t remember getting in his truck, doesn’t remember driving over here, doesn’t remember seeing the city zip past him. All he can gather from the rapid racing of his mind is that he’s breathing too hard for it to be normal, he’s standing in front of Buck’s door and his clothes are sticking to him like a glove.
He hardly lifts a finger to knock when the door opens, his best friend’s broad frame filling the rectangular space, probably having seen him in the security camera.
“Eddie?”
“Buck,” Eddie whispers, wrapping his arms around himself. Suddenly, he feels small and inadequate, even though he knows it’s not Buck making him feel like that. He’s too vulnerable in the light of the hallway, too exposed to everything jagged.
Buck’s expression only softens. There’s no accusation in the lines of his body, which helps Eddie relax by a margin. His friend takes him by the elbow, gently leading him inside. “You’re soaking wet, Eddie. What happened?”
That’s when Eddie realizes that he doesn’t remember driving because he ran here, in the pouring storm outside. Now that he’s aware of it, he can feel the insistent ache in his legs, the pounding pavement beneath his feet, the tremors wracking through his muscles. He can feel the shivers coursing through his skin, valiantly trying to warm him up.
He’s hyper-aware of the sting of pebbles in the heels and soles of them; it feels like he’s bleeding out on Buck’s floor, leaving footprints of ruby ichor on the pristine tile even through his shoes. In his mind, he sees that ichor smearing further with every drop of water from his clothes.
“Are you with me, sweetheart?” Buck’s voice cuts through his self-assessment, through Eddie's sudden need to scrub the floors clean. He latches onto the term of endearment and uses it to keep himself anchored and afloat.
It was something they discovered by chance, to help Eddie ground himself. No one in his nightmares would ever call him any term of endearment like that, so it helps to recognize that as part of the present.
“I...I don’t know,” he forces out from a parched throat, the letters catching on his windpipe to come out breathy. Vaguely, he’s aware of Buck leading him towards the dining table, settling him down on his seat. The one he always sits in at Buck’s apartment. The one that’s practically carved with Eddie’s name, a right that Buck doesn’t know he’s gifted to him. “Yeah. Yeah, I-I’m with you.”
Eddie stares down into the soft wood of the table, dark planks that have been polished until they gleam. A fact Buck likes to boast about whenever he can, a testament of his ability to keep his place clean.
But even through the shine in the dim apartment, Eddie can see the battle scars on the surface, the ones that speak of home. There are faint pencil marks scoured into the canvas, a scar from one of Buck and Christopher’s multiple artistic escapades. Pressure marks from the slide of a pen reflect the moon shining through the window overlooking the balcony.
There’s a knife mark from where the utensil had slipped out of Eddie’s grasp a few weeks ago, nearly slicing his finger off. There’s a condensation mark at the seat that Christopher's deemed his own, probably from one of his various juice cups. Buck’s spot at the table has a few scratches in the form of letters pressed too hard into paper, spilling over to the surface behind it.
This one table is decorated with the overwhelming reminder of him and Buck and Christopher, and Eddie doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge, doesn’t know what to do with the feeling of “mine” that fills him at looking at something so mundane. It feels like there's a glaring symbolism for something he's afraid to reach for.
Eddie doesn’t know why he’s gone out thinking about it at this specific moment.
“Here,” Buck’s voice rumbles next to him, making him jump slightly. “I’m sorry, I should’ve warned you. Just wanted to grab you some water.”
Eddie obediently takes the cup and drinks from it, letting the cold liquid wash down the phantom taste of blood in his mouth. There’s a stitch in his side that disappears as the water rushes into him. He sets the glass down with a soft thump and sits quietly, still not being able to put together what he was doing here. He doesn’t even know what time it is, if Buck was sleeping. All he knows right now is that he’s with Buck, and he’s safe.
A hand comes around to his lap to curl around his limp ones, squeezing tightly. Eddie lifts his head to look into stormy blue eyes, the ones that calm all of his demons nearly instantly. The ones that spark with a light at the mention of Eddie’s son and glint with mischief on the best of days. The same ones that now stare at him with the heavy mix of worry and welcome, a silent invitation for Eddie to take everything he needs.
“Are you ready to tell me what happened?”
The question brings an inkling back to him. He’d had a nightmare of some sort. It must’ve been pretty bad if he ran six miles in the rain to get to Buck’s apartment.
Six measly miles were nothing. He regularly ran those, and was used to running more for the army. It was the destination he’d reached that worried him.
“I think...I had a nightmare,” Eddie says, still highly disorientated, “and I ran here because...because I needed to get to you.”
Those few words put him out of breath with his exhaustion. Buck stays silent, lifting a palm to tilt Eddie’s face towards him. It’s intimate, but grounding; not scary like Eddie thinks it should’ve been. He lets Eddie look at him freely, expression open and earnest. There's a quiet love hidden in the angles of his face, something that bursts behind Eddie's chest and lets him breathe again.
He stays tethered to reality just by being surrounded by Buck, all around. There was his gym bag by the door, the stupid dumbbells that him and Eddie fought over, the couch Christopher laughed at them from. There was the lingering scent of Buck’s cologne all throughout the loft, something warm, cozy and familiar.
“I’m going to go grab you a towel and some warm clothes okay? Just give me a minute,” he speaks softly but firmly.
That was the thing he loved the most about Buck. He was perspective enough not to push people in certain situations. He knows Eddie gets like this sometimes, takes it all in stride to offer his space without a complaint.
Eddie tracks him as he comes back, eyes trailing over every inch of him to make sure he was alright, though he still wasn’t sure why exactly he was doing it.
There was the threadbare shirt on his back practically ripping at the seams, the slightly-too-short pair of sweatpants that were probably Eddie’s. His bare feet pad over the tile to urge Eddie up from his chair, strong fingers slipping under his shirt to brush against frozen skin.
“Can I?” Buck whispers. Eddie gives a barely perceptible nod, letting Buck push the sopping shirt over his head. There’s nothing sexy about this moment; it’s simply Buck taking care of him, and Eddie taking a chance in letting him.
The clothes that replace his wet ones are warm and cozy, like a safety blanket. It’s just a hoodie, sweatpants and warm socks, but it makes Eddie feel human again, helps another piece of him come back.
The hoodie smells overwhelmingly of Buck, and Eddie can’t even find the decency to be embarrassed as he collapses into the chair again, snuggling as deep as he could into the over-sized garment. Buck leans over him to dry his hair and skin with another warm towel, a reverence and silent declaration in each sweep of his hand.
“Buck,” Eddie says quietly, looking up at him with tired eyes as the towel makes one last pass through his hair.
He traces the lines of his best friend’s face with one trembling finger, not letting go of the small point of contact even as Buck kneels in front of him, bracing a hand on Eddie’s knees.
“What can I do to help, Eddie?” The question is soft, pleading. Even in his haze, he can recognize Buck’s emotions, which probably speaks volumes of a truth Eddie doesn’t have the energy to face right now.
Then, in a timid voice entirely out of character for him, he says, “I-I’m in desperate need of a hug.”
The words hang between them for exactly one second before Buck’s arms come around him and Eddie shatters in his grip, the lingering anxiety of the night breaking him into a million irreparable pieces.
He cries into Buck’s chest, feeling the roaring panic simmer down as the warmth of his best friend holds him tightly, stopping him from crumbling all over the tiles.
Perhaps Christopher’s leaving for summer camp was the last straw in a long list of things he’d been trying to keep from his kid so he didn’t get scared. Perhaps this is a build-up of everything, something that was a long time coming and was now blowing up in his face with the magnitude of it all.
Eddie once read that the Japanese use gold lacquer to fix broken pottery, emphasizing the damage and imperfections as part of the piece’s history and not making an effort to hide them. Not for the first time, Eddie thinks that Buck does the same for him; he takes all of Eddie's flaws and accepts him without question.
This one embrace has Eddie feeling like each crack in his heart was slowly filling with an iridescent plaster to heal him, a cathartic feeling of becoming a better version of himself.
He still doesn’t know what exactly brought him here, what the rapid beat of his heart means. He still doesn’t know what time it is, doesn’t know how to put in words how much he needs this comfort. But he does know that as long as he has Buck holding him tight, he’ll be okay.
He’ll be okay.