Chapter Text
PoV Eddie
There he sees him. In the sideview mirror of his truck, his silhouette getting smaller and smaller, with every second. There is no backing up now. He has to get his son back, and he knows that he can't do this from LA. He feels a tear slowly making its way from his left eye to his cheek. He quickly wipes it away with the back of his hand. No. He cannot cry at a moment like this, he should be happy that he gets to see his kid again!
He checks the back mirror again, hoping to see Buck. But he is already gone. He made peace with the situation, that they probably will not be seeing each other in person ever again. And so should Eddie. It will take a while, but he will. He has to. The thought of that leaves a big hole in his chest and it aches, badly.
Fuck it hurts.
Eddie knows how it is to leave friends behind, but this feels different. He wants to turn around, walk back into his house, hug his best friend and never let go of him. But that simply is not possible. As much as he wants to stay in LA, he has to reunite with his son.
He chooses to ignore that feeling for the rest of his way to El Paso, replacing it with the stress of not knowing how Chris will act when he’s around. Maybe he will not be speaking to him, maybe he will be ignoring him the whole time, maybe he won't even want to see him.
He takes a deep breath. Well, he would certainly deserve it. He hated himself for the way he acted in this situation for months. He’s not going to blame Chris, if he does the same. But the biggest fear he has, when thinking of El Paso, is to be judged by his own parents. Over and over again. Like they always have.
He shakes his head at this thought. He really needs to stop thinking about those things. So he turns the volume of the radio up, the latest hit taking up the silence that was creeping around. He left the volume of the radio up, so that his mind wouldn't go back to overthinking stuff.
When he drives past the sign of “Welcome to El Paso”, his stomach starts to turn around, making him want to vomit. God, he hates this place. He left this city behind to build his own life with his son, Chris. The irony, that he has to come back here to rebuild it again. The grip on the wheel tightens. He feels the stress coming up again. This feeling is like a rope that tightens around his chest. Leaving him unable to breathe normally. And again, he takes a deep breath, telling himself that everything is going to be just fine. But deep down, he knows that it’s going to be a wild ride with his parents and maybe also with his own son.
He drives the driveway up to his so-called new “home”, turning the motor of his truck off. Then, he just sits there, alone in his truck, thinking what the hell he’s going to do now. The last few times he felt like this, he called Buck, his best friend came and sorted all of Eddie’s spinning thoughts, leading him in the right direction of what to do next.
But he can’t do that now, can he? He just left his best friend and with that, the privilege, that he’s coming to fix everything, like he always did. He buries his face in his hands, letting out a big sigh. He grabs his phone, keys and wallet, opens the door of his truck and walks up to the house door. Just as he entered his new “home” his phone buzzed.
Buck: Hi, did you already arrive? How is Chris? Can I speak to him?
He caught himself smiling at the text from his best friend. He tipped his answer as fast as he could, not wanting to leave Buck worrying.
Eddie: Hi, yeah, just got here. I wasn’t at my parents house, yet
Eddie: I think I’m gonna go there tomorrow
Buck: Oh. Okay, well good luck then!
Eddie: How are you doing in your new house?
He saw the bubbles that symbolises Buck writing. But they disappeared, then they were there again and disappeared again.
Eddie: Buck? Everything okay?
Buck: Yeah. Sure, my phone was just acting up I guess
Eddie knew that his best friend was lying, but he didn’t pressure him into telling him what was actually bothering him.
PoV: Buck
Buck hit his head with his hand. Why did he lie about what was going on? How can he try to act so normal, when everything is obviously not normal? His best friend just moved away, leaving him behind. Again.
He sits on the couch, which he placed in the exact same spot, where Eddie’s old one was. How pathetic, right? Buck leans his head on his hands, thinking how he should be able to just live in this house that is being haunted by the ghost of his best friend. It feels like somebody that should be there isn’t and he doesn’t know how to get this feeling away. Everywhere he looks, he sees something that reminds him of his best friend. Reminding him that Eddie left. And there is no coming back.
Buck drags himself to Eddie’s old bedroom - no, his bedroom, and covers himself in the bedsheets. He closes his eyes, trying to get some sleep. But he just can’t. He rolls from one side to the other, then he thinks that maybe he will be able to sleep on the couch. But that turns out to be even worse. He turns his phone on to check the time. It is just past 9pm. Pretty early for him to go to sleep anyway. So he gets up and walks to the kitchen. He puts on his black apron and starts to do that, which takes his mind off the things he can't get past: Baking.
After the sixth batch of cookies, he feels exhausted. But still not exhausted enough to get some sleep. So, he spends the whole night baking, binge watching TV and researching things that he saw on TV. But still, it doesn’t matter what he does, his mind wouldn’t go silent on the thought of Eddie -and Chris, but mostly Eddie.
Finally, somewhere around 5.30am Buck could get some sleep. Not as much as he hoped to get, because the alarm clock goes off, not even 1 ½ h later. He gets up, makes himself ready to leave for work. He even packs a big amount of the cookies he baked last night to take with him to the station.
He gets there just right on time. But everyone is just staring at him, like he did just wake up from the dead.
“What?” he asks, looking right back at Bobby, Hen and Chim, with a raised eyebrow.
“You don’t seem like you got much sleep last night, Buck. Did you even sleep?” Bobby asks worriedly. Buck looks at him, then turns his gaze to Hen and then to Chimney. They are trying to get something out of the answer he’s going to give. But what would they want to hear? That he isn’t doing great? Yeah, wow, everybody seems to already notice that. But this seems kind of deeper.
“I slept just fine.” he lied, knowing that his friends could see right through his lie. Hen squints her eyes, trying to get Buck to spill the truth. But he looks at her, like he doesn’t know what she’s trying to do. Then he pushes himself through the wall, which Bobby, Hen and Chim were trying to be. He quickly placed his cookies on the kitchen counter, just to make his way downstairs again, to change into his firehouse clothes. He strictly heads for the gym, trying again to take his mind off the thoughts of Eddie.
Not even thirty minutes into his session, his phone buzzed. Buck catches himself at the thought of hoping that his best friend wrote him a text. But turns out, it wasn’t actually Eddie who wrote…
Chris: Hey Buck, listen, I have just one question: Why?
Buck frowns at the text. What? He thinks to himself. He writes back quickly.
Buck: Hi Chris! What do you mean?
Chris: Why is Dad here?
Buck: I told you a couple of days before, that he is coming to stay with you. Didn’t you understand?
Chris: Well first of all I thought he was just visiting, and second of all I thought you were coming too!
What? Why would he think that? Yeah, of course Buck and Chris had a special bond with one another, but Buck still didn’t quite understand that.
Chris: You know, Buck, I miss you too. Not just Dad.
Buck: Well, we could FaceTime again, if that's what you want. But because your Dad left and there isn’t a replacement here yet, I can’t really take any leave…
Chris: Sure, we could FaceTime, but it wouldn’t be the same. Please, come to El Paso
Buck: As much as I want to, it’s just not possible at this point. I’m sorry kiddo.
Buck: How is it anyways with your Dad finally stepping up again?
Chris: I’m really excited that he’s here. But Abuelo and Grandma are giving him kind of a hard time right now. And I’m standing between them, not quite knowing which side to take.
This poor kid. Finally having his Dad back, but also not knowing, that his Dad doesn’t quite have a healthy relationship with his own parents.
Buck: Wanna FaceTime now?
Chris: I think now is not a good time. They are just yelling at each other and I’m just sitting here in my bedroom. They think I don’t understand what’s going on, but I actually do.
Buck: Then what is going on?
Chris: Dad wants to take me to his house, but Grandma and Abuelo wouldn’t let him.
Buck: And what do you want?
Then the alarm of the fire station goes off. Everytime something important is going on, this happens. Everytime. Buck looks quickly at his phone, hoping Chris already answered, but the bubbles were still there. Well it’s going to have to wait then.
“Buck hurry!” he hears Chim scream at him. He runs up to the truck grabbing his things on the way there.
“Who were you texting?” Hen asks with a smirk on her face. “That seemed pretty intense there.”
“Just Chris” he answers quickly, not telling too much to the team, because he didn’t know how much Eddie wanted them to know about this kind of stuff.
“‘You two are still in contact?” Chim asks, surprised.
“Well, yeah, we have for the entire time he was in El Paso, actually.” Buck admits. He told no one, because he knew that Chris, at the time, refused to talk to his own father. With that, the back of the truck goes silent for the rest of the route. Buck is just staring out the window, thinking about Eddie, again.
They arrive at the scene pretty quickly. It’s a car accident, where a car hit a bike. The car driver is hovering over the teenage boy, who was riding the bike.
“Hello, I’m Captain Nash, what happened here?” Bobby asks the middle aged man, who was hovering over the boy.
“He just came out of nowhere! I swear I was under the speed limit and I looked all the way, before crossing the road!” he brabbles. Buck walks up to the boy who is lying on the road, injured. He seems to have fallen on his head, his helmet broken into two pieces. His right leg has a pretty big wound. Buck looks at the face of this boy, because he wants to talk to him. But suddenly his breath gets sucked away. This boy looks really similar to Chris. The same brown curls, glasses and the same posture. A cold shiver runs down Buck’s back. Realistically speaking he knows that it’s not Chris, because Chris just texted him and he’s with Eddie. But just seeing a teenager that looks very similar to Chris, sets him in panic.
“Buck, are you okay?” Hen asks worriedly. “You are pretty pale!” Buck tumbles back, trying to get himself to breathe again. He somehow gets to that point, but he’s still not able to answer Hen. Then he suddenly feels a hand on his left shoulder.
“Buck, I think you should go sit in the truck.” he hears Bobby say to him. He finally finds his voice back.
“Yeah, no, I’m okay. I just thought I saw something, but I was wrong.” he says vaguely. He walks back up to the truck to get the gurney, to transport the boy.
After they are back at the firehouse, Bobby starts to cook lunch. “Buck, come help me with lunch” he shouts to Buck, who, again, is to be found training.
“Nope.”he answers. He knows that it’s obvious to the team that something isn’t right, they want to know why, but he really doesn’t want to talk about it. He succeeded to dodge the questions up to this point, but he knows that Bobby will get him cracking and he’s not ready for that.
“Buck, that wasn’t actually a question.” Bobby says with that authority in his voice.
“Fine, I’m coming, one sec.” Buck gives in, taking the boxing gloves off and changing into other clothes.
“Buck what is going on?” Bobby asks concerned. Buck hesitated with his answer.
“I don’t quite feel like talking about it.” Bobby looks at him with a frown on his face.
“Listen, Buck-”
“No, Bobby, I really don’t want to talk about it.” Right when Bobby wants to contradict, Buck’s phone buzzes. He realizes that he didn’t even check what Chris wrote to him a couple of hours ago.
Chris: I don’t know. I really want to go with my Dad. But I also don’t want to disappoint Abuelo and Grandma. They took me in, when I didn’t want to live with Dad. But now, they don’t want me to go. And they took good care of me.
Chris: Buck? What should I do?
Chris: Nvm. Dad took me to his house. He had kind of a fallout with Abuelo and Grandma…
Chris: Maybe you should talk to him. I think he needs you right now.
Those messages were from hours ago. The new message came from someone else.
Eddie: FaceTime?
Eddie: I kind of could use a little pep talk from my best friend to be honest.
“Bobby, can I-” he begins, but Bobby interrupts him, “Go, I’ve got it covered.”
Buck excuses himself from cooking and goes to the bunkroom. He opens up FaceTime, but hesitates to click on Eddie’s name. After taking a few deep breaths, reminding himself that he has to act normal, that Eddie needs him to act normal.
“You got this Buck, come on!” he says to himself, then clicking on Eddie’s name. It doesn’t even ring two times and Eddie already picks it up.
“Buck, hi!” Eddie says, it sounds like he is relieved that his best friend called him. He is sitting on his bed, his eyes kind of red and his hair kind of messy. Did he cry?
“Eddie, hi! What is going on?” he asks, concerned.
“Well, I went to my parents, actually, just to see how Chris is, and if he even wants to see me. But when I was there, my parents got all defensive, when I expressed the thought that Chris could come live with me, as soon as the house is renovated. I asked Chris what he wanted, because that’s a decision that he has to make. Not my father, not my mother. They wouldn’t even let him answer, they just sent him up to his room. I was pretty upset by it and I think I kind of started the fight? Things got out of hand, they accused me of not being a responsible father and that I would always think about my well-being first.”
Buck has to keep himself in control to not begin to curse Helena and Ramon out. He can’t, he doesn’t want to understand why they are that way. Why they always think Eddie isn’t fit to be a parent, because he is. Buck knows that Eddie is a way more better parent to his son, than his parents were to him and his sisters.
“So I said that that was an accusation I could easily say about them. Because they kind of forced me into the marriage with Shannon so that words didn’t spread, that I got a girl pregnant, without being married to her. Because back in the day they made my hobby into a competition and I always had to be the best, to defend our family name. So, it came to the point where they gaslighted me and I just couldn't take it anymore. So I told them, that they had their chance of playing parents with me, but they can’t do that with *my* son. I told Chris, he’s coming with me, he actually looked excited, I guess, and grabbed a few of his things. And now I think I was being too harsh to my parents and they didn’t deserve it, because they looked after Chris when I couldn’t.” Eddie talks like a waterfall not taking any brakes in his speech.
Buck just sat there, not quite knowing what to say, because it was just so much information.