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Buck hands Eddie a beer and collapses on the sofa with a sigh.
“Some shift,” Eddie says.
“Some shift,” Buck agrees, clinking the lip of his bottle against Eddie’s. It hadn’t even been much, just a few calls and a lot of down time, but the stress of Harry’s first day had kept his adrenaline high and now he’s crashing back down.
“Where did you even get this pillow?”
Buck looks over at the pillow in question – a silly thing with a crochet overlay of duck in a cowboy hat. He grins. “You like it?”
“I didn’t say that. I asked where you got it.” Eddie shoves the pillow back against the armrest to lean against it.
“Urban Outfitters,” Buck admits.
“Shopping for yet another new jacket?”
Buck rolls his eyes. “Deep dive on the migratory patterns of Cinnamon Teals when I couldn’t sleep.” Nightmares keep him up less often these days, but he still wakes gasping sometimes.
“Are those birds?”
“Dabbling ducks,” Buck clarifies. Eddie hums under his breath and lifts the beer to his mouth, but he’s smiling.
“Harry did good today,” Buck says.
Eddie nods. “He did. When Chim finally let him off the leash.”
Buck lets the day play over: Chimney holding Harry back at the station before letting him out on the sanitation truck call, how it was raining, how much the burning trash stank, how the acrid smoke burned his eyes. The panic in Chimney’s voice when he couldn’t find Harry.
“Can I say something and you don’t tell Chim?”
One of Eddie’s eyebrows quirks up. “Depends on how illegal it is.”
“It’s not illegal. I just think–” Buck sighs, picks at the label on the bottle. “I wish Harry was doing anything else.”
“You don’t want him on the team?”
“I don’t want him anywhere near being a firefighter,” Buck admits, admits the thing that’s been sitting in his chest since the moment he found out Harry was joining the Academy.
“Why?”
Buck slumps down in the sofa and wishes he’d bought a couch with more cushion to it. “It’s dangerous,” he begins, saying the first thing, the obvious thing. He’s been worried about Athena, of course, but that’s also the easy thing.
“Yep, what we do is dangerous,” Eddie agrees, a bit of tease to his voice.
Buck casts a sidelong glance at him. “Yeah, but it’s like, it’s Harry. Harry.”
“It’s Bobby.”
Buck nods, swallowing heavily. “I just think there’s a million other jobs he could be doing. Why this one?”
Eddie’s quiet for a long moment. “You can’t tell teenagers what to do, even if you want to. Even when you try. They’re only going to listen when it’s convenient to them.”
“I’m worried,” Buck says, “that it’s not going to be good for us, that it’s not going to be safe for us to be in the same house, on the same shift. That we’re going to be thinking about him, about keeping him safe when we should be thinking about the call, the fire, the victims. I know Chim wants to keep him close, train him up, keep him in the family, I just think—”
“You think it’s going to hold him back and be an added risk for us,” Eddie supplies.
Buck lets out a breath. “I don’t want to worry about Harry – about Bobby’s kid – when I’m running into a fire.”
It’s hard enough worrying about you, Buck doesn’t say.
“Well, Chim’s captain. It’s been one whole shift. Let’s see if Harry makes it through his probie year.”
Alarm slams through Buck. “You think he’s gonna get hurt?”
“No,” Eddie put a hand on Buck’s knee and withdraws it quickly. “I mean he might decide this job, this life, isn’t for him after all.”
Buck settles a little. Harry might; Buck didn’t. Three hours into the academy he knew it was the job for him. He might not be able to do it for as long as he wants, considering his injury rate, but for now he can’t imagine doing anything else. The same might not hold true for Harry, whose barely 18 and didn’t even finish high school. His whole world is firefighting – he doesn’t know any better.
“You were never really a probie,” Buck muses, the thought maybe occurring to him for the first time.
Eddie looks over at Buck with confusion curving his mouth. “What?”
Buck smirks, the memory washing over him. It’s a good memory. “You came into the 118 as this golden boy—”
Eddie snorts.
“—and Bobby never treated you as a probie.”
“Well, I had plenty of experience in the army as a medic and—”
“But not a firefighter,” Buck notes.
“What’s your point, Buck?”
Buck shrugs. “Harry’s out there fighting nepo baby allegations and you’re the one who didn’t have to scrub the toilets or the clean the rigs all day or get sent on every grub run.”
“I feel like you’re retroactively mad at me about this.” Eddie narrows his eyes at him, but it’s gentle, playful.
“I’m not mad, just pointing out something interesting.”
“That I didn’t have to clean toilets?”
Buck nods. “Rite of passage and all that.” He’s not going to bother saying that he thinks the way old school firefighters treat their probies is barbaric and should be outlawed.
Eddie shakes his head and finishes off the beer. “Do you know how many johns I scrubbed in basic?”
“Did you count?” Buck asks, grinning and thinking about a 19-year-old Eddie with a crew cut on his knees holding a toilet brush.
“It’s gonna be fine,” Eddie says. “Harry’s going to be fine.”
“Changing the subject.”
“I can’t go back and rerun my probie year,” Eddie points out.
“You could pick up the coffee more often.” The idea comes to him and doesn’t leave – Eddie with trays of coffee and pastries in the morning, soft before the harshness of the day.
“Fine, I’ll pick up your little mochas,” Eddie concedes.
“That’s not even what I drink, and you know it.”
Eddie’s toothy grin makes something in Buck’s stomach twist. It’s been happening more often as of late. The hairs on the back of Buck’s neck standing up when Eddie stands close by. The way his heart rate picks up when Eddie agrees with him on calls. The way his heart rate slows down when Eddie sits next to him. The hazy dreams that are much more enjoyable to wake up from.
Maybe it started when he came out to Eddie in his dimly lit kitchen. Maybe it was earlier than that. Maybe it was when he found out about the will and realized he meant enough to someone; he was valuable enough to someone to be given that momentous responsibility. Maybe it was trying to keep Eddie from dying under his hands and realizing that if he did, if that was the end, Buck would never come back from it.
Maybe it was all the way back to very beginning.
“You still making dinner?” Eddie asks.
One of those fun little stomach clenches that Buck’s been getting happens and he breathes through it. “Yeah. Chris still coming over after school or is he too cool for us?”
Eddie chuckles. “He is, and he is.”
Buck nods and resists the heavy urge to lean over and rest his check on Eddie’s shoulder.