resurrect your gays

Buck was hogging the firehouse couch. 

It was cheeky really, they didn’t have much comfortable relaxing space in the firehouse loft, just the three recliners and the sofa, so usually he wouldn’t monopolise it like this, but right now everyone else was either holed up in the bunk room or busy showering so he was trying not to think about it too hard. He’d move if anyone came up. 

The last call had been long and tiring and difficult in all the wrong ways, and now Buck’s mind was running too fast to sleep. If he went into the bunkroom he would inevitably annoy Hen into banishing him away again anyway, so he was doing the rest of the team a kindness and letting his brain wind down before bedding down for the night.

He was typing his disordered thoughts out into his Notes in an effort to calm down when a familiar hand batted his arm out of the way, long fingers and calluses on every edge, followed by the heavy weight of a body laying down on top of him and curling into him. 

“Uh, Eddie?”

Eddie huffed, eyes closed already. “You didn’t come to bed,” was murmured into his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Buck heart clenched. He’d carried a little girl no older than six out of the apartment building. She’d succumbed to smoke inhalation before the ambulance could set off. They couldn't bring her back.

“No, I– I know,” Buck replied. “I just– I’m not ready to sleep yet. Need to think it through, I guess.”

Eddie hummed, and the vibration warmed Buck’s chest. He shuffled slightly so that Eddie was cradled on top of him. 

“Okay. You can carry on, I’ll just… be here a minute,” Eddie said as he slid his leg between Buck’s for stability and buried his face into Buck’s neck. Barely ten seconds later his breathing evened out as he drifted off to sleep. 

Buck gently hooked his arms around Eddie’s sleeping body and carried on typing, warm and a hell of a lot more settled than he had been before Eddie arrived. 

An hour later, Henrietta Wilson shook awake from a nightmare, desperate for company and a glass of water. Heading through the common area, she was greeted with the sight of Buck snoring lightly into Eddie’s hair, cuddled into each other, dead asleep, and completely and entirely hogging the couch. 

She grabbed a drink and padded quietly up to the roof space, settling in on the deck chair next to Chim. He clinked his glass on hers. She looked up at the star-less Los Angeles sky, considering. 

“D’you think they know?”

Chim scoffed, “No. I think one of them might actually have to die for them to figure it out.”

“You would think that.”

Chimney laughed, “Hey,” he shrugged, cheery grin across his face, “It worked with you and Karen.”

Hen just rolled her eyes and sipped her tea.

They’d figure it out.

“Well,” he continued, “an alien head. Mask really. Is it a mask if it covers your whole head, or is that just a costume?” He looked up, surprised Eddie was still there, still listening. There was a time he didn’t have to doubt that either.

Buck watched as Eddie opened his mouth, frowned, and started heading towards Buck, only to keep walking towards the entrance of the station. There was a time when Eddie wouldn’t get that far away from him. Buck took a deep breath and reminded himself it was still closer than Texas while he followed.

Before he could juggle his bag and the mask—costume?—head to free his hand, Eddie’s voice carried through the door he was holding open.

“Why do you have—no, wait—where’d you—” Eddie’s questions seemed unable to settle on where to land as much as the excitement Buck had felt since he first heard of Hen’s invitation to space. “No. Why. Why, do you have an alien head? Did I miss the text about a party or…?”

Buck poked his head through the door, looking around to make sure that the lack of Hen’s SUV in the lot meant that she wasn’t here yet and not that she got a ride with Karen, before he passed through explaining, “I have an idea.”

His gaze caught on the unfamiliar skepticism hiding in the corner of Eddie’s eyes. It was foreign and fragile, a barely-there sharpness that Buck usually only saw on Eddie’s expressions when he was forced to contend with everyone else’s belief in the supernatural. Buck wasn’t used to having it leveled at him, even when he was trying to convince Eddie that curses were real and that superstitions were justified because usually Eddie let a fond exasperation file down his disbelief so it didn’t cut.

“This can’t be good.”

But now, Buck felt it, a small, jagged gash blooming that he hoped was only skin deep, even though he knew a paper cut could hurt more than a razor. He wasn’t bleeding out, and it felt warmer than absence, so he walked to the locker room, not looking back to check if Eddie followed. He felt an unbidden smile flicker at the sound of Eddie’s steps close behind him.

“What idea?”

“To, uh, to surprise Hen. I could…you know, hide somewhere and then…then jump out.” Eddie’s eyebrow moved up, just enough that Buck found himself offering, “Or, you could, I mean, since you’re her p-partner now.” He surprised himself with how much he wanted Eddie to say yes. There was a time when Eddie's yes was all but guaranteed.

Buck's heart raced against his control and his thoughts ran over reasons to convince Eddie into agreeing.

“I could hide in the ambo?”

Eddie was quiet as he got dressed, so his question felt loud in the confines of the glass room. Or maybe it was just that anything Eddie had to tell him had a way to rise above the din in his head.

Buck looked over, and even though Eddie wasn’t looking back, Buck could almost see it, in the corner of Eddie’s jaw, at the ease in Eddie’s shoulders as he straightened his shirt, something that felt like déjà vu in reverse, where instead of feeling like reliving a moment that had happened before, it was like he could sense the thing that should have happened but wasn’t. But it had been months of grief and weirdness and distance while still being at work 3-4 times a week that Buck was in no position to wait for what once was. He’d learned long ago that it could leave him waiting forever.

He didn’t have to wait long for Eddie to finish changing, for Eddie to lean against his now-closed locker, arms crossed in front of him, with a thoughtful expression softening his stance.

“I mean, she’d probably expect it less if it was me, even though I’m not completely sure I want to know what the inside of that thing smells like.”

“Rubber probably?” Buck turned the head upside down to check.

“Why exactly are we trying to jump scare Hen?”

Buck shrugged, not quite meeting Eddie’s eyes. There was a time Eddie didn't need Buck to explain, not because he didn't want to hear it, but because he already understood.

“I dunno. If you’re going to go to the great beyond, don’t you need to be ready to encounter—”

“Aliens.”

That same something flickered behind Eddie’s apathy as he looked at Buck. It was frustrating, knowing how close they were to what once was, this thing that he could see but was too far to reach.

“Oh right,” he deadpanned, as Eddie roll his eyes and pushed away from the locker. “I should’ve known.” He shook his head as Eddie took the costume. Buck didn’t try to thwart him, just opened his hands and let Eddie take.

Most days, Buck believed aliens existed, that even if they looked nothing like he imagined, nothing like the expected—big, bugged-out eyes; green, smooth skin; long, strange fingers—that some form of life had to exist beyond Earth. That there was something bigger and brighter and impossible to name beyond what humans on Earth understood. And even if there wasn’t any scientific proof, even if the theories and current evidence turned out to be wrong, Buck still believed. Still wanted to believe. He still hoped that something was out there. He didn’t want Earth, with all its disappointments, and finality, and small but surprising joys to be the only thing they had a connection to.

He watched Eddie sniff the mask, his nose scrunching in displeasure. He watched Eddie’s hands flip the thing around, his curious brown eyes inspecting it from various angles, almost like Eddie couldn’t believe in something that was trying to be something that might not exist.

“So,” Buck said, pausing until Eddie looked up, looked at him, eyes still big, still as curious. “You in?”

Buck wanted to hope he wasn’t alone.

Eddie frowned, but Buck waited until it stretched into a full-mouth smile. In that moment, it didn’t matter if Eddie was skeptical of what was real and what wasn’t; Buck could believe enough for the both of them.