imagining a mixture of both where buck watches eddie's car drive around the corner and he blinks the rain out of his eyes and touches his cheek that was pressed to eddie's shoulder and realizes that he's crying. oh. at least it's raining, so eddie couldn't tell. so he wouldn't have to worry about buck when he should be worrying about chris. and thinking about eddie going to chris another tear rolls down his face and another and eddie's leaving, maybe forever, so it doesn't matter now, does it? if buck knows or not. so buck knows. he lets himself know that he's in love with eddie.
so he waits until he can't hear eddie's car engine anymore because he's in love with eddie and he opens eddie's door with the spare key he's always had because he's in love with eddie and he walks into eddie's house because he's in love with eddie and he sits on eddie's couch because he's in love with eddie and buck is allowed to think that, now, because eddie has gone from the person buck can't risk losing to the person buck has already lost.
and around the time he thinks this, his phone starts ringing.
he thinks it's maddie for a second, because maddie knew when eddie was leaving and maddie is. well, maddie shouldn't be worried about him right now, given her own situation, but maddie will be maddie. and then he remembers that maddie wouldn't call because she can't speak right now and doesn't that just make everything worse. and buck pulls out his phone and the little picture on the screen isn't maddie, isn't bobby or hen or anyone else that he half-expects. it's worse. it's eddie. of course it's eddie.
it's eddie, who's facetiming, the absolute idiot.
buck scrubs an arm over his face and hopes that any red around the rims of his eyes can be attributed to rainwater. picks up eddie's call. "don't facetime and drive, are you insane?"
a huff that sounds like static, painfully familiar but terrible nonetheless, now that it's the only way to feel eddie's breath. "i know how to drive, buck," eddie says, like he's just picking up a conversation from the station. like nothing has changed at all.
"do you?" buck retorts, falling into their banter easily. he watches eddie on his phone screen, the pixelated blur of him, connection wonky because of the weather and distance.
eddie rolls his eyes. buck traces a rivulet of rainwater down the curve of his jaw (because he's in love with him). "oh, he's got jokes."
"did you forget something?" buck asks, looking at eddie (because he's in love with him). eddie glances at the phone screen, and buck smiles reflexively (because he's in love with him).
"no," eddie says, simply.
buck forces a smirk onto his face, a lightness into his voice. "miss me already, then?"
a pause. rain pattering down outside, through the phone. it's raining outside of eddie's car, and outside of buck's (eddie's) house, because they are still, in this moment, in the same state, the same world. buck holds onto the moment like a dying bird cupped in his palms, precious and temporary.
"yeah," eddie says. a long huff of air, a challenge in his voice. "maybe i do."
the screen is too small for buck to trace the exact shades of his skin but he knows that his cheeks are a little pink, his lips pursed in the way he does when he's annoyed about having an emotion. buck knows these things, about eddie (because he's in love with him, you see).
buck feels the air stutter out of him, tripping into eddie's living room, diffusing through the cracks of the walls, the door. he hopes that some particle of it will make its way to eddie's car, into his lungs. he hopes that he can sit inside eddie in some way. he thinks, suddenly, that even if it's not quite in the same way, that maybe eddie, this eddie, eddie who misses him five minutes into a thirteen hour drive, might want buck sharing the same spaces as him, too.
"oh," he says. eddie doesn't look at his phone screen, buck does. because buck is in love with eddie, and he wishes he hadn't allowed himself to know.
but he does, and he is, so with rainwater and nothing else on his face and a dying bird in his ribcage, he says: "i miss you already, too."
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