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“I think you should go back to Texas,” he hears Buck whisper from where he’s standing at the sink filling a glass of water.
Eddie whips around from digging in the fridge for some leftovers to heat up for the two of them and slams the door closed. They had just walked into the house after getting back from the station after cleaning up from the building collapse.
“What?” Eddie gasps, looking at Buck who has turned off the sink and is avoiding turning around to look at him. Eddie thought that Buck would have been excited for him to stay, he saw how much happier he had been this last week since he and Christopher had been in town. “You want me to leave?”
Eddie stares at Buck as he takes a long drink of water and stares out the window before he finally turns around to look at Eddie. “I wouldn’t want you to regret staying if that’s not what you really want, just because Chimney told you to.”
“Why would I regret staying? Buck, I never wanted to leave. I don’t want to leave now.” Eddie knew that Buck knew this, if there was another way he never would have moved to Texas.
“Well, you didn’t want to stay either, otherwise you wouldn’t have accepted the position with the El Paso Fire Department, and we wouldn’t have been having your going away party earlier today, in case you forgot.”
Eddie felt the anger rising in him. After the day they had, he couldn’t believe that Buck was bringing this up. Couldn’t he tell that Eddie being back in his turnouts and being with the 118 was the happiest he’d been in months? Couldn’t he just be happy that he wanted to stay?
“You know damn well I didn’t leave for me, I left-”
“I know, I know, you left for Chris, but you stayed for you.” Buck interrupted. “You know I understand why you left even though it killed me inside but at least that was a decision you made for yourself, not someone else making it for you.”
“What are you talking about? I’m making the decision to come back to LA!” Eddie shouts.
“Only because Chimney told you to.”
“Okay, and? Hen and Karen told me I should stay too. Why does it matter? ”
“Because you should have listened to me! Not Hen, and not Chimney!” Buck yells. Eddie looks over and makes eye contact with Buck, his watery blue eyes meeting Eddie’s brown.
Eddie scoffs, “Of course, you’re making this about you again.”
Buck, who’s the most pissed off Eddie has seen him in a while, takes a step towards Eddie, unlike their fight a week ago in this same room where he stood in the corner and let Eddie come to him. “You know what? Yeah, I am. I’m the one who took over your lease so you could go to Texas. I’m the one who lost his partner on the job. I’m the one who lost two of the people he loves most to a place 800 miles away.”
Eddie blinks at that. “Buck, what-”
Buck keeps going, “I’m the one who people keep leaving and coming back to and then leaving again, and if I can’t be the one who leaves this time, then I need you to stay gone, because I can’t do this anymore.”
Eddie’s heart cracks as Buck’s voice breaks and watches some of the tears he was trying to hold back roll down his face. Some of the anger Eddie was holding seeps out of his chest as he takes a step closer to Buck, and even more makes its way out when Buck takes a step away from him and turns his face away.
“Buck,” Eddie says gently, taking another step forward and grabbing Buck’s wrist so he can’t move away from him. “I promise, it’s not because of you. The reason I left, the reason other’s did, it’s never been because of you.”
This has the opposite effect on Buck than he would have liked as Buck wrenches his wrist from Eddie’s grasp and moves back to the other side of the kitchen. “You think I don’t know that? Regardless of what the rest of you seem to think, I know the world doesn’t revolve around me. I know that it’s not my fault that everyone leaves, but do you think that makes me feel any better? Guess what, Eddie? It doesn’t. I’m still the one being left behind.” Buck spits at him, his voice getting louder as he keeps going, his chest rising and falling rapidly.
Eddie takes a deep breath, and he can see Buck subconsciously trying to match his breathing from across the room, even though he’s not looking at him. He doesn’t want to be mad at Buck, even if Buck is mad at him and telling him to leave Los Angeles. Being mad at Buck has never solved any of his issues, only made them worse. “I thought you’d want us to come back, Buck.”
“I did,” Buck pauses,“I do, but I just don’t understand why it finally took Chimney telling you for you to agree.” Buck says quietly, and finally, Eddie understands. “You knew that I didn’t want you to take the job in El Paso. You admitted to that, and you knew I didn’t even want you to move, but I let you go anyways, and I knew it would be selfish of me to ask you to stay so I didn’t but you knew anyways and you still were going to leave me.” His breath hitches as he starts to cry and he turns away from Eddie again and puts his face in his hands.
Before he even knows what he’s doing, Eddie moves around the island and is standing at Buck’s side, slowly turning him around to face him. He uses one hand to move Buck’s hands away from his face and his other goes on his spot on Buck’s shoulder, his thumb on the hollow of Buck’s throat. He can feel Buck swallow hard as his other hand moves to Buck’s waist. For a brief second, Eddie’s mind flashes to a distant memory in Bobby and Athena’s old house, hugging Buck like this at his surprise party to celebrate his reinstatement to the LAFD.
“You’re right,” Eddie says softly, moving his head to make sure Buck continues to make eye contact with him. Buck makes a soft hurt sound as he goes to pull away, but this time Eddie won’t let him. “I know you wanted us to stay. You have to believe me, if it were up to me, we would’ve been surgically attached at the hip once Hen became a doctor,” Eddie was grateful to see the twitch of Buck’s lips at that, like he was trying not to smile. “But staying made me feel selfish, like I was doing wrong to my relationship with Chris, like I had given up on something that I hadn’t put my full effort towards, and I guess I thought that going back to El Paso would help with that, but I was wrong.”
“I’m sorry that Chimney was the one who made me realize it, but I belong here, with you,” Eddie moved his hand to poke at Buck’s chest and then put it right back on his shoulder. “Even when we got back to the station and I said I was looking for flights, I was hoping there wouldn’t be one. I was looking for any excuse to be here for longer than I was and then Chimney was stealing my phone and telling me that I couldn’t leave and suddenly it just felt so easy. Maybe it’s because he knows what it’s like to have someone he’s in love with run away and it’s not like Maddie and I were in similar situations at all, but-”
“Wait, in love?” Buck interrupted, looking stricken, but Eddie kept talking over him.
“But Chimney forgave Maddie for leaving and I was hoping you could forgive me. I’ve been trying to work on knowing that I deserve good things and you are by far the best thing in my life and I don’t know what I would have done today if you hadn’t made it out of that building alive and I couldn’t stand it if I went back to Texas and you transferred to another firehouse and you didn’t have our family watching your back.”
Eddie watched as Buck absorbed what he just said until he finally whispered. “Do you think I’m in love with you?”
Eddie laughed lightly, “That’s what you got from that?” Buck stared at him wide eyed and didn’t answer. Eddie gently stroked his thumb lightly on Buck’s neck as he admitted, “I know I’m in love with you, and you don’t have to be, but I was sure hoping that you felt the same.”
Inside his brain, Eddie smirked as Buck seemed to be buffering, making sure to add this to his mental notebook of all the times he’s made Buck speechless. “You’re straight,” Buck managed to spit out after at least 30 seconds of silence.
“I don’t think I am, Bud.”
“Please don’t call me bud after confessing your love for me,” Buck stammers out, his brow furrowed in confusion. “You’re sending mixed signals.”
Eddie laughs softly as he moves his hand up from Buck’s shoulder to straighten out the crease in his brow and then moves it over to stroke his birthmark. He smiled softly as he felt Buck lean into his touch. “Buck Buckley, I am not straight. I’m in love with you, and if it’s alright, I’d like to stay in LA, with our kid, and ideally spend the rest of our lives together.”
Buck nods into his hand and sniffles, “You said our kid.”
“I know what I said. He reminds me of you every day, Buck. He’s yours just as much as he’s mine and Shannon’s.”
That seems to be the last straw for Buck as he starts sobbing and buries his face into Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie’s not sure how such a large man manages to make himself so small, but he resolves to never let it happen again. Eddie strokes his hand up and down Buck’s back as he cries, and slowly turns them so he’s leaning against the counter to hold up Buck’s weight. After a few minutes Buck pulls back and with watery eyes asks “So you’re not leaving?”
Eddie shakes his head. “I’m not leaving,” he says firmly, hoping the point finally gets across.
“If it’s okay then I would like to retract my previous statement of you moving back, because I was lying,” Buck says with a small smile.
“We’ll chalk it up to the emotions of the day, it’s already forgotten,” Eddie says as he grabs Buck’s hand with his own and squeezes. He smiles as he feels Buck squeeze back. He looks at the clock on the oven to see that it’s nearing 9pm and he knows they’re both exhausted. “You should go put on comfy clothes, and I’ll heat up some of Pepa’s leftovers and then we can go to bed, alright?”
“Will you come with me?” Buck asks softly, looking at him as if Eddie can deny him anything.
“Of course, baby,” Eddie says softly as he pulls Buck closer to him to kiss his birthmark. He smiles as he sees Buck blush as he pulls them into the bathroom. He has Buck sit on the toilet seat as he uses a wet washcloth to wipe away the rest of the tears on Buck’s face and then pushes him into the bedroom to find pajamas for both of them, before returning them to the kitchen for a quick meal of leftovers. They both talk to Chris briefly while they ate, who was ecstatic to find out that he and Eddie were staying in LA, and was even more ecstatic to find out that Buck would not be moving out, ever.
Before either of them know it, they’re tucked into bed staring at each other, hands connected between them. Eddie moves towards Buck, moving his limbs so they’re wrapped around each other. As he feels Buck drift off to sleep, he knows that this is just the beginning. There’s still a lot of hurt between the two of them and between himself and Christopher. He makes a mental note to look into family therapy for the three of them, and to call Frank soon. He’s done hurting the people he loves.
He hears Buck’s snoring in his ear’s as he drifts off to sleep and can’t help but think that this is a good first step to the rest of his life.