Chapter Text
Eddie POV
Eddie is dragged to consciousness gradually, despite the blaring of his phone alarm. He pats his bed clumsily on a half-hearted mission to locate the snooze button. His fingers tap the cold glass, temporarily silencing the alarm. He buries his head underneath the pillows to block out offensive sunlight, and his cheek is met with cool, unmussed sheets. He might as well let sleep drag him back into its sweet abyss. After all, that alarm belonged to another life—another Eddie. Eddie, who was a firefighter, Eddie, who had a life, Eddie, who had a purpose. The sound of that alarm belonged to LA Eddie, who was an entirely different breed of human than El Paso Eddie.
It's only been about a month and a half since he packed up his entire life and moved himself back to Texas. El Paso Eddie doesn't really have alarms, and El Paso Eddie is practically suffocating under the heavy burden of every hometown expectation that seemed to settle back onto his shoulders as if he became Atlas the moment he passed that godforsaken city limit sign. He found himself standing straight, gelling his hair differently, even buttoning up his shirt higher. All the pressure that had eased in his chest from years of being away from Texas seemed to return like a wave and compound tenfold.
So Eddie is drowning on dry land and aimless every moment he isn't existing in the same residence as his son. It's like Eddie was nothing more than a ghost, haunting a town that he had left long ago, and his body's object permanence relied entirely on his son's vicinity to him. If he were still seeing Frank, he'd tell Eddie that was an unhealthy coping method, if he counted it as coping at all. His feelings of lacking worth aren't helped by his abysmal job search. Being turned away from job after job—even the ones he had plenty of experience with—was proving difficult on his psyche. Nowhere was hiring, and Eddie is reaching the end of his funds.
On top of that, things had only very recently begun to get better with Chris, and it was somehow already halfway through January. Eddie's not sure if he'd deep down thought his arrival in Texas would magically put the pieces of his life back together, but the scotch tape he's tried using sure as hell isn’t working. He'd only thought his mental health was in a downward spiral when Chris first left—the months following his son's absence seemed to open a bottomless chasm in his chest. He hadn't realized there was space at what he'd thought was rock bottom for his mental health to tank even more spectacularly upon arrival in the Friendship State.
Eddie really hopes there's truth in the whole 'things get worse before they get better' saying. And Eddie does think things are better than when he first arrived. Chris actually even talks to him sometimes and comes to visit of his own volition, even if he still tends to ignore Eddie a vast majority of that time. The only thing soothing the ever-present hum of panic in his chest is the fact that Chris seems to FaceTime Buck quite consistently. Chris not talking to Eddie was fine; it didn't feel fine, but it was fine as long as he was talking to someone. Eddie was more than happy for that someone to be Buck.
To say his arrival in El Paso hadn't been received exactly as planned was a bit of an understatement. He'd spent the first two weeks of December packing up his entire life. Admittedly, arriving on the tail end of the month, just in time for the holidays, had been completely ill-advised. Buck had gently tried to convince Eddie to warn his family, but Eddie had his heart set on a surprise—a grand reveal. Chris hadn't been happy to see Eddie, not at first at least—it was another decision made without him after all.
He'd been so certain that their vicinity alone would fix everything; he'd never considered even for a moment how he'd cope if it didn't.
Eddie's first week in Texas was spent making Chris's room perfect. And then when it became clear Chris wouldn't be willingly moving in anytime soon, he'd spiraled a bit. When Adriana dropped by during New Years, she'd told him the place felt more like a hotel room than a house. Boxes are still stacked around every room, half unpacked. They feel more like unorganized and overwhelming piles of doom, which feel unbearable to touch or manage. With each passing day, though, eventually, like everything else, they've faded into the background.
When Buck called the day of Christmas, Eddie had forwarded him to voicemail and responded with a text message. He'd felt an extreme amount of guilt doing so, but he hadn't had the heart to tell Buck that he'd spent Christmas and New Year's Eve with no one but his good friend Jose Cuervo and some draft beers. The night was spent memorizing the cracks in the ceiling of the house he'd mortgaged. Buck is also the reason he's avoided unpacking his kitchen like the plague. Those boxes with Buck's scrawl on the side makes Eddie feel too raw; everything inside those cardboard walls reminds him of his best friend. The kitchen back home was never just Eddie's—in fact, it was mostly Buck's, even though Eddie still cooked. This kitchen, though, well, it would never belong to anyone other than Eddie—which just felt wrong.
Eddie has been trying not to spend every free moment stewing on how to fix his relationship with Chris, thinking about Buck. Leaving LA had unveiled a very real truth for Eddie. It sank into his bones with certainty the afternoon he'd spent discussing his options with the realtor and Buck. When Buck went home later that evening, Eddie had come to terms with an inexplicable truth. Buck was always exactly the person he needed—he'd slot himself into Eddie's life almost seamlessly. He was always willing to help out in every area without ever being asked. He was the person Eddie turned to for help, to talk to, to simply exist near when he needed to spend time outside of his own head.
He still can't get over the chain of events—he'd expected the evening to go so differently. After being caught red-handed looking through property in El Paso, without even skipping a beat, Buck dove headfirst into the house hunt. And that, well, that was what caused Eddie to confront the fact, over a glass of cranberry juice, that Buck might be his perfect other half, his ideal partner. Peeling back that feeling between packing boxes of his things prompted Eddie to suspect that his feelings were potentially closer to romantic than they were to platonic. He was equally surprised to realize he wasn’t even scared of that possibility.
And although it deeply depresses him to do so, he loads up the U-Haul and makes a decision to keep his revelation to himself. Really there wasn't a point in saying anything to Buck now. Eddie has to prioritize his son, even if that means his feelings have to fall to the wayside. So that was Eddie's big secret, one he kept between himself and God. It was better for everyone that way, Eddie thinks. Besides, Buck deserves to be happy, and Eddie is certain he's too much of a mess to make anyone happy, if his recent trial and error were anything to go by. It was what it was.
Eddie sighs when his alarm begins to blare a second time. He sits up blearily and silences the device for good. It's still hours before he's supposed to pick up Chris from school. His arrival in El Paso hasn't gone well for numerous reasons.
Chris was initially resistant when Eddie first showed up. But after he'd had some time to adjust, he usually came over for a few hours at least every day—even if that meant they just sat in the same room while Chris played video games. It was normal enough, and just having Chris near was enough to soothe Eddie's soul. He worries that Chris keeps looking at him, though, as if he's waiting for the other shoe to drop. He hates that he's made his son ever second-guess him to this measure at all.
Deep down, Eddie knows they probably need to talk about Kim, to have a candid conversation about that. The only thing stopping Eddie is he isn't sure how to bring up the subject, terrified that trying could tank all the progress the two of them have made the last few weeks—so, Eddie admits he's been delaying the inevitable. But it was still just that, inevitable.
Eddie's first day in Texas still haunts him, sticking around as a bitter memory rearing its head anytime his nervous system decides it's been too long since his last anxious spiral. He'd parked the U-Haul in the driveway before dropping by his parents after giving himself a couple of hours to gain his composure and take a shower.
When his mother opened the door, he almost laughed when her mouth dropped into an 'o' of surprise. His delight quickly faded after telling her he'd moved into a neighborhood only about a mile away. He'd half expected her to light up like a Christmas tree—given that he'd finally acquiesced to her single-minded desire to force Eddie’s return to Texas. The one she harbored since the very day he'd told her he was moving to Los Angeles years before. Instead her face had fallen a fraction, and although she'd immediately schooled her expression into something more neutral, a certain stone-like heaviness rests in his stomach.
The veil of joy he'd been maintaining until then had been snuffed like a candle. Eddie had tried so hard to remain positive, but it becomes so clear that no one other than maybe his father wants him there. Even Pepa and Abuela had seemed to have reservations about his decision to move back, although they were more worried about his happiness in regards to being so far away from the life he'd built himself, which at the time hadn't felt so fucking fragile. When he looks back, he wonders if life in LA was always nothing more than a house of cards.
Eddie rolls to the edge of his bed and hits the 'go' button on his coffee machine. This was a bad habit he allowed himself, due to avoiding the kitchen at all costs. A coffee maker on his bedside table felt a bit like a new low, but other than that, it was just about the only non-functional object he even had in his bedroom. Existing lately feels so much like punishment that he allows himself this one tiny pleasure.
Once he's happily sipping on a mug of black coffee, Eddie checks his messages. There are a few from Buck from the night before and even one or two from this morning, which means Buck was probably on shift. Eddie sighs, letting the phone fall away from his hand, taking another long drag off his too-hot coffee, like it could burn away his guilt. Eddie has actively kept in contact with Bobby, Hen, Karen, and Chimney, but he's admittedly let his friendship with Buck fall to the wayside. It wasn't as if he was actively avoiding Buck or anything; it's just… well. Eddie can't describe the feeling. It was guilt and maybe yearning… Maybe he was using his relationship with Buck as another means to torture himself for his poor decisions this past year. And maybe Eddie was doing just as Father Brian said—denying himself joy.
But if Eddie is perfectly honest with himself, it doesn't feel much like he actually deserves any semblance of happiness. Not with this life in constant shambles around him. Not with his son not exactly back home, not with living in an empty house that he's not confident will ever actually feel like home. Not when he doesn't have a job or even a support system at all here. He deserves the furthest thing from happiness, and he thinks that's what a lifeline to Buck offers him. Hope, happiness, relief.
Distantly, Eddie wonders if Buck has told the others that Eddie is avoiding him. Then again, it's also not like Eddie has been avoiding him altogether. They still FaceTime, and Eddie does text him back. Maybe just not as frequently as he did when he still lived in LA, which shouldn't make sense since Eddie has an endless amount of time between his failing job search, sleeping, and spending nights in dive bars missing his life from before with something akin to desperation. He'd been turned down by three different stations due to funding; he'd applied to mechanics garages, private security firms, stocking shelves in grocery stores, gym attendant, and every job in between. The El Paso job market was simply dead in the water, much like the rest of the US.
The second reason he's been slowly withdrawing from Buck is that he knows how easily his best friend can read him these days—it would be far easier to dodge Buck than keep up a facade. It also hasn't helped that a lot of his mental energy and spare time have gone into arguing with his mother on and off—Helena Diaz has made it clear that Eddie isn't wanted here. But Eddie has made it clear time and time again that he's not going anywhere without his son. Besides, Eddie doesn't have anywhere to go now. Buck had taken over tenancy of his rented unit, and he's not sure he could face his best friend right now anyway if Chris wasn't in tow. Eddie feels like he's failing on every level right about now.
It's also becoming depressingly clear how little Eddie's interests matter to his mother. She doesn't care about him and never has—she just cares about her chance to start over. If things stayed awful between him and Christopher forever, he thinks that might make her perfectly happy, just as long as she got her do-over with a son who wouldn't be a failure like he'd been.
In the grand scheme of things, Eddie's feelings were nothing more to her than spare change. It's getting harder and harder to come to terms with that. His father, on the other hand, had surprisingly offered Eddie an olive branch.
It was, of course, Ramon who'd brought Chris by to check out the new place. His son hadn't said much, but his father had looked at Eddie and sort of smiled, commenting how 'he's just as stubborn as you.' It had soothed that anxious fluttering feeling in his chest. "Just give him time," Ramon had promised. "He'll come around, you did, eventually."
And Eddie guesses his father has a point there. Eddie's relationship with his father had changed drastically after that retirement party. Since then they'd had countless phone calls, and it felt a bit like it mended some chronic wound he hadn't known could ever be healed. The difference is that Eddie has attempted to foster the healing portion of their relationship much sooner—it had given him hope that had since faded.
That dying hope could probably be attributed more to his thankless routine. Every morning he wakes up in this endless cycle of nothing, job interviews, and arguments with his mother. It felt like an especially fucked-up sort of time loop. Maybe this was Hell. He keeps hoping something will break the cycle and yank him bodily out of his dull oblivion sooner rather than later. Hopefully it's before they've got to lock him up in a padded cell, driven mad by the doldrums.
Eddie picks up his phone again and sips his coffee a few more times before setting the empty mug aside so he could message them all back. He even shoots off a single text to Buck. A simple 'morning' was all that it read.
When Buck responds enthusiastically, Eddie's heartstrings tug and pull, and he forces himself to exit the screen before it threatens to scoop out his heart and guts and put them on display to the world. Instead of wallowing in his misery, he settles back into the bedsheets and lets himself doze—he's startled when another alarm sounds off. Now this alarm—this alarm is meant for El Paso Eddie. He gets up and showers, changing with a renewed sense of purpose. He gets dressed and eagerly grabs his key and wallet before heading for his truck. It was time to pick up Chris.
BUCK POV
The heady heat of whiskey burns the back of Buck's throat. He fights the urge to grimace or clear his throat, but whatever he's drinking tonight at this shitty dive bar is cheaper and burns brighter than the more expensive liquors he's become more accustomed to with adulthood. He stares into his empty glass, tracking a stray amber droplet of liquor that follows along in the bottom of the glass with the motion of his hand.
The bartender barely even glances up at him for confirmation before pouring him two more fingers of whatever cheap whiskey this bar stocked. Buck contemplates the booze before taking a tentative sip, rather than throwing it back like the last two. He's trying to salvage the first Friday night he's had off in months since he can't remember when. He also can't remember the last time he'd done this—fleeing to a cheap bar to drink alone on a Friday night. This isn't something he does anymore, not for years.
Yet, that is still exactly where he finds himself at 6 PM, an hour and a half after the end of his last 48. He's got the next 70 hours, give or take, ahead of him—stretching out through the weekend. Once upon a time, Buck would have shown up on the Diaz's doorstep with grocery bags, and then together, the three of them would plan out the weekend.
Then after Chris left, Buck took up arguably even more space in Eddie's life—it was like they were two magnets, pulled together. So, with nowhere else to go, he was drinking his feelings tonight a bit like 1 or 2.0 would have done. Of course, Buck had tentatively prodded his friends, hoping desperately that someone might be able to fill the yawning space of three empty days that now held no real purpose.
A heavy emptiness creeps down his throat and nestles in the hollow of Buck's body cavity. Whenever the void rose up to meet him, all he could do was gaze back into the horrible emptiness presented before him. All of his friends have other lives outside of Buck; they all need their own space and time to spend with their family and other friends. Buck doesn't take that personally anymore, the way he would have when he was younger, because he understands. Over the years, the feelings of rejection had eased as he became too wrapped up in other things for any of his days to be deemed pointless or empty.
And whenever his head did get too loud, well, he'd taken to simply showing up at the Diaz's residence and occupying Eddie's couch until the numbness and self-projected rejection melted away. Only a commute to Eddie's now is a longer, less reasonable distance away. His hollowness isn't helped by the fact he's been living under Eddie's roof after taking over the lease. A big empty house devoid of bustling and Eddie and Christopher. Going to the space felt like the furthest thing from a reprieve.
It's the beginning of February now, and Eddie's been gone for nearly two months. Buck had assumed he would get used to the gaping emptiness in his chest. He'd plied Eddie with fake smiles and false laughter in the days leading up to his departure. They only felt that much more plastic with every FaceTime. Buck misses Eddie, and sometimes he thinks that no one has any business missing anybody half as much as he misses his best friend. He misses him with such a ferocity it often exhausts him. Maybe that's why it stings so much the first time he realizes that Eddie is blowing him off.
For the first week, their communication hadn't changed. When Eddie lived in LA, days spent apart usually ended with at least 10 minutes of FaceTime or even just a phone call. He was used to receiving a myriad of texts from Eddie throughout the day—lately their texts have been rather dry. Eddie doesn't dodge all of them, just enough to make Buck feel like he's losing it a bit.
And Buck has admittedly been told he's too clingy more than once in his lifetime. He's worried lately that maybe his entire friendship with Eddie was all one big fraudulent projection.
Reality had t-boned Buck in the middle of an intersection. Maybe all along the light was red when he'd thought it was green. The thought feels like a sword through the chest; it digs and twists, and he wants to scream from the sheer pain of it—only screaming in public isn't socially acceptable, so he suffers in silence instead, with a whiskey in hand.
Buck has always been too much—it was something he'd heard his entire childhood, at home, at school, and eventually in his romantic relationships too. But maybe—he'd convinced himself things with Eddie could be different, or maybe were different. He never seemed to think that Buck was too clingy—too much, too, well, too anything. He's always accepted Buck for exactly how he was without question at face value.
So instead of turning all the lights off and lying on the floor of the former Diaz residence, he's spending his Friday evening spinning out at a bar. But maybe he's already entirely unspooled—burned the tread off the tires. He's dizzy and nauseous, although that might be from the sharp whiskey he's choking down, like he might find Eddie in the bottom of the glass.
The bartender gives him a long look, so Buck opts to switch to beer before the man cuts him off. He nurses his pint and stares at his open phone, begging someone, anyone, to text him with any sort of open invitation. Right now he's feeling just boozed up and reckless enough to revert back to his Buck 1.0 ways.
The bar fills and filters over and over on repeat. There's loud music that drifts through the front door every time a patron enters or leaves along with the sound of laughter and shouts, and if Buck were younger and stupider, he might drift along after it like a dog in search of treats. Instead he closes his tab and wanders out, purposefully walking in the opposite direction of the loud, alluring music.
Buck walks; he isn't sure for how far or how long—but at some point he reaches his neighborhood, and the city feels the closest to quiet it gets. He stumbles through the front doors alone and misses Eddie. He misses their fumbling late nights out on the town. A few months ago, Eddie would have been glued to his side, whispering far too loud for it to be anything resembling quiet.
Buck spends the rest of the weekend in bed, rotting into the mattress. His brain kept drifting to Eddie, wondering what he was up to, if he was still job hunting, or if he was hanging out with Chris or still fighting with his mother. He knows the obsession with Eddie's every move in Texas isn't healthy, but there was little else to do but wonder and stew when his friends are all otherwise preoccupied.
Maybe Buck needs more friends—his friendships are mostly tied to the station after all. Maybe his life isn't well-rounded enough; maybe it was time to dip his toe back into dating—he hates the apps, though. They remind him too much of the version of him addicted to the instant gratification and dopamine rush of hookup culture.
Currently the only thing keeping him any semblance of sane, other than work, is Chris, who has recently started FaceTiming him almost on the daily since a few weeks before Christmas. It was only a few days before Eddie left LA, leaving Buck behind for what seemed like good. After all, Eddie hadn't even looked for temporary housing—he knows firsthand Buck had helped Eddie with the house-hunting process.
Their friendship fading is inevitable, maybe. Buck just hadn't expected it to fade into nonexistence so quickly.
When Monday finally comes, Buck is relieved. Work is currently keeping Buck from falling to pieces. He shows up extra early to help Bobby with food prep. When he appears at the top of the stairs, Bobby gives him a long assessing look that Buck pointedly ignores because he frankly can't bear to dissect the horrible numbness sinking its roots into his heart or to explore the loneliness that feels more and more consuming with each passing day.
Hen and Chimney barely look surprised when they join Bobby and Buck for breakfast for the start of their shift a few hours later.
"Morning," Hen greets. She looks Buck over critically, and he barely manages to bite back an audible sigh. "You look like shit."
“Thanks for that, Henrietta.” Buck replies shortly, shoving her share of the food over the counter.
“Touchy,” Chimney comments a little playfully, swiping his plate before Buck can level a glare at him.
Buck's been feeling a bit like the team is walking on eggshells around him since Eddie left. It's been driving Buck perfectly insane.
Occasionally the way the others have been looking at him almost hurts more than Eddie's very real absence, which occasionally feels so strong it's practically a tangible thing. Like Buck might be able to reach out and touch the Eddie-sized hole in his life. Chimney appears sympathetic, Hen looks pitying, and Bobby appears concerned.
And sure, maybe Buck had warranted those expressions with a very real breakdown over the holidays when he discovered whatever grief or loss he was feeling was actually lovesick heartache. Basically, realizing he was in love with his best friend a few weeks too fucking late sucked. And all three of them had ended up privy to that breakdown.
He'd gotten drunk at the Christmas barbecue, and his messy feelings had come spewing out in a very embarrassing manner. He was talking to Maddie at the time and hadn't realized until it was too late that he hadn't noticed Hen, Chimney, and Bobby's presence in the same room. He'd blubbered loudly and at length while Maddie urgently tried to shut him up.
Besides, it's sort of obvious that all three of them probably knew about his own feelings before he had—sometimes he feels like a passenger in his own life, always the last to know about the big things. It was kind of nice, though, to be able to talk about it so candidly with Hen and even Chimney.
Buck glances at his phone, frowning because Eddie still has yet to respond to his last 8 messages, including one asking him how things were going with Chris. It's like that a lot these days. He should be used to it by now, but his foolish lovesick heart squeezed every second the distance grew between them like a chasm.
He's pulled from his spiral by Hen abruptly laughing. She leans over and stretches out her arm to show her screen to Chimney, who chuckles. "Yeah, he told me yesterday when I called him he might be strong-armed into adopting a kitten. Chris apparently was asking if they could keep it." Buck feels his stomach swoop because he hasn't heard anything about a kitten.
"Are we absolutely certain that Eddie isn't a Disney princess?" Hen jokes. "First the deer, now this."
"Deer?" Bobby asks. And Buck is thankful because he doesn't want to ask, or, well, he can't without alerting the others that maybe not everything was quite business as usual between him and Eddie lately. He couldn't handle their pitying looks when they discovered that Eddie's been avoiding him like the plague.
"Yeah, one day he was out on his porch drinking his morning coffee, and a deer walked right up to him and stole his fucking bagel. It was hilarious—his security camera caught the entire thing." Chimney explains with a laugh, delighted by the memory. "I'll dig the video up for you later."
"What do you think? Is Eddie going to adopt the kitten for Chris?" Hen asks, and Buck freezes, put on the spot by the question.
"Wouldn't surprise me," Buck mumbles reluctantly; he's not sure he can really weigh in on this in any official capacity since he hadn't even known about the existence of a kitten. He didn't even know about the deer story. Lately, when they spoke at all, it always was about everything and somehow also nothing at all.
"Hey, are you okay? You look white as a ghost." Hen comments, standing up and walking over to him, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead. Buck quickly squeezes the phone's power button to make his screen lock. He couldn't bear for her to see the string of unanswered messages; it made him feel so fucking pathetic. Buck is half tempted just to turn the entire thing off—only he couldn't chance missing a call from Chris.
"I'm okay," Buck lies, because what the hell else was there to do? He fights down on very real nausea that's now struggling like hell to crawl up his throat. He stares at his breakfast, appetite out the window. Just so he doesn't worry the others, though, he chokes down what he can and tosses the rest the first chance he's got.
Buck peeks at his phone again, hating himself for the tiny flame of hope in his chest. Maybe it was a glitch; maybe there was some mistake. Maybe Buck's number had gotten messed up somehow in Eddie's phone. He wouldn't ignore Buck so blatantly, right? Maybe, though, he was just waiting for Buck to get the hint—the hint that their friendship was over. Buck quietly frets that Eddie might have picked up on Buck's feelings before he left for El Paso and hadn't known how to confront him. Had Buck ruined everything?
The shift passes slowly, and Buck barely even enjoys being out on calls, too tied up stewing over his unanswered message to focus the way he really should. Before their attempt at bedtime, Buck shoots Eddie another message. "Hope you're doing okay. I miss you."
It felt just as pathetic as it was. Apparently Buck no longer has any ounce of shame. And when that text goes unanswered, well, no one has to know if he squeezes out a few tears under the privacy of his duvet.