I have a lot of feelings about Buck, like don't even ask, I will never be able to put it into words or anything other than abstract feelings in this world
I just know this, Eddie loves Buck and Buck is ace and Taylor is a relapse ✌️
"You've been shutting me out."
It's ironic, Eddie thinks, that these exact words come now 20 minutes after the black out, which felt like maybe the world had shut down. They were stuck mid rescue in an elevator and well, the world had been such a whirlwind since he'd been shot, and this emergency and that- but now it had stopped. And they'd succumbed to their fate, sat down on the dingy elevator floor, bathed in a red back up light, the building silent around them. Out there, somewhere, a siren rang, and Buck sighed.
It was deep and heavy, like he was Atlas lifting the world off his shoulders for a break, something like relief, like that first deep shuddering breath when your lungs finally recovered from a run. It was way too heavy for a young man, barely thirty, who was finding himself. Eddie knew that Buck had been fighting lately. Mostly himself, but also his parents and past, and pushing past the boundaries of life that had been set around him. Then there was the shooting and Buck had truly been nerve-wrecked, Eddie was far from blind, and hell, he'd been a little preoccupied with figuring himself out, and recovering, letting go and paving the way for a future with no regrets- but he'd seen Buck. It was harder to look away at this point.
But he had, because the world had been spinning and Buck had been putting enough pressure on himself, becoming an uncle, and taking care of Chris with full abandon, and therapy and... Taylor. Eddie hadn't wanted to push too hard.
Now that they were here though, just the two of them...
Buck's looking at him, that irritated lost puppy stare, vulnerable and defiant all at once, like Eddie was the first to venture into certain spaces that made up Evan Buckley. It was a deliberant choice, at this point. Back in the beginning, he'd just reached out a hand and had been surprised to find an anchor to the world he'd never knew existed, and now he ventured further deliberately.
It hadn't been a question, and even so Buck looked ready to fight him, a last defensive wall, before he caved and those murky blue eyes dropped away. Full submission.
Eddie waited, opening up the room and hoping for his partner in crime and rescue to fill it and yet... Buck only shrugged weakly.
"Things have been..." He started half-heartedly, losing motivation half-way through and concluding with a disheartened, "busy." Eddie watched him busy himself with the callouses on his palm, picking and rubbing, as if he could erase the last few weeks of running himself ragged.
There had definitely been a lot less mentions of calls to Dr. Copeland lately, a lot of unfocused Buck, who was making himself smaller, less noticeable and quieter. Not that he was actually quiet, Eddie knew Buck could fill the building with vibrance for the benefit of everyone around within the blink of an eye. But his true emotions dwindled, where they'd slipped out before in shadows of an action, or an obvious plea hidden in drowning eyes - now he was more... Calculated.
And even now, Buck lifted his head again under Eddie's scrutiny in square-jawed surrender as if that was that to this conversation, there was nothing more to be done.
Eddie was not convinced. They'd gotten way too far, the two of them, to slip back down to the trenches in this mud slide. Eddie had found solid footing in his own world, and he was unafraid right here, under private eyes with the one person in the world he trusted most. Solid enough that he could stare right back at the nervous energy Buck was holding back and dare it.
A question he had asked himself many sleepless nights, especially after Carla's little "follow your heart" speech, after he'd laid in bed, heart racing, hearing shots and all he wanted had been to-
All he'd wanted was safety, and he could've kept lying to himself, could've deliriously shouted at the universe that he didn't know where he could ever feel safe again, and yet his own body and heart had long gone betrayed him that day in the hospital just before he'd walked out, explicitly stating that he had signed his heart off to Buck a year ago. He couldn't even call it betrayal, because there wasn't a single cell in his body that doubted his decision, that doubted Buck. He just doubted... Himself.
And maybe that he'd be enough for Buck right now, still. He was so far from his best self, and yet better and more stable than he'd ever been. So he sat and he stared back, arms resting easily in his lap, and challenged.
"Why do you keep going back to her?"
Goddammit, Eddie, way to sound like the most jealous jerk in the world.
Buck winced, eyebrows seeming to ask 'really?' and 'what do you mean?' all at the same time and then shrugging again.
"Taylor?" He asked simply, biding time probably.
"Yeah," Eddie assured, the hum of the emergency light their only company as he waited for Buck to reply.
"She's the only one who really wants me," he said, but the tone of his voice wasn't right. Unconvinced. The admission to easily offered to ring true.
Eddie can't stop the snort of disbelief from escaping him. From all that he's heard about the rust-haired reporter... He couldn't imagine what Buck saw in her. He'd seen the effect of her words on him, saw Buck fall in line behind her with a bowed head, saw how the hurt now flared in Buck's face at his open faced challenge to that statement.
A part of Eddie wanted to grab Buck by the face and scream at him, can't you see?!
You're wanted whole-heartedly by me.
But Buck wasn't his to love yet, not really.
"Look, I don't know what you see on the outside but... She wants me. She chose me and I- what more could I ask for, you know? I'm... I'm working on it. On myself. And for now- this is it," Buck said, rattling it down like he was trying to work it into a checklist.
Eddie just wanted to know what 'it' was supposed to mean. But he nodded, because in a way it did make sense. The same way Ana had made sense, even though she absolutely didn't and he was glad that was over and he could laugh over that foolish affair now.
People had questioned his change of heart when he broke up with her during recovery, but when they'd realized he truly wasn't heartbroken and backsliding, they had taken it in full stride. A little misstep, no great scars taken (well except for the new bullet hole in his shoulder but that didn't really have anything to do with Ana, it just happened to be a part of the same journey heading toward a joined destination) and here they were at a pit stop.
The silence simmered between them, just somewhere right before the cliff, staggering before the precipice toward their comfort zone. It had always taken a little leap from both sides to get them to where they were today. Buck usually happens to fall into his without thinking much, just because he was ready to throw himself in dangers way or alternatively, rushing in out of sense of duty, and making it seem so, so very easy. The way he had walked into Eddie's house and kitchen, stepped right into his space and said: 'i'm here and I'm owning my mistakes because you're worth it' or something of the sort. All Eddie remembered was the care and the genuine emotion he'd felt and... The realization that he'd finally found home.
"It just feels like... You smile less when it comes to her." Eddie still did't really want to say her name. He wasn't about to go out blaming Taylor for all the times Buck was sad- it was just an observation. It took a lot to get Buck to giving up his smile. He hated that Taylor accepted a watered down version of him; bright, bold, and boasting Buck.
"Do I?" Buck asked, a furrowed crease appearing between his eyebrows, truly confused.
"Relationships are always a compromise," Buck offered with a half-hearted twitch of his shoulder. "You know me. We're both pretty stubborn. We butt heads."
Buck flicked his wrist for a useless gaze at his watch. It made them none the wiser about the state of their rescue.
"Yeah, I know you," Eddie retorted gently. "Though, you do tend to have a point."
He could come up with a million examples. Eager, always ready to show up and make it work, Buck. How many times had he burrowed himself into Eddie's skin already with truths that stuck like thorns until Eddie accepted them into his bones.
All he wanted was to return the favor
The man granted him a small, crooked smile. It was crazy how much so little could mean to one person. Desperate, wounded, isolated Buck.
How Eddie wanted to tell him explicitly 'dont do what I did, kid, don't fall back into and habits at first chance just because you don't think you're worth anything else'- there were reasons why it didn't work in the first place. He'd learned the exact same lesson with Shannon. And God, the way Eddie had dragged Buck with him back then, for safety, as he had ranted to him and searched for the answers, only to make the same damn mistake.
And Taylor wasn't Buck's. And Eddie knew this.
Knew from what Buck had told about her the first time she had been around, and from all that Eddie had heard about Buck's relationship to sex. It had turned into a joke at the station, oh, Buck and his self-diagnosed sex addiction, but Eddie recognized that worried little steeple on Bobby's forehead when he reminded everyone that that one therapist wasn't licensed to work for them anymore. But it went way deeper, didn't it?
Eddie knew about self-destructive behaviors. Not intimately. But he'd learned a lot about PTSD lately and adjacent behaviors. Buck and sex was a self-destructive bomb if he'd ever seen one.
And it was no coincidence that Taylor and Buck's relationship centered around physical intimacy.
Buck showed up where he was wanted or needed. They all knew that.
"Just... Make sure you get what you want too," Eddie said. "Put yourself first."
Cue the bewildered, insecure facial expression. Now and then Eddie wished he could hide Buck from the world. Shield him. For now all he could do was stand by.
"Because you'll always be wanted. Make sure the reasons are right for you. It has to be good for you."
And Eddie wouldn't be leaning so far out the window if Buck were to look him in the eyes and say 'nah it's not like that' but all he did was get quiet. Eddie couldn't leave him sitting like that, rearranging himself to stretch his legs out before they fell asleep and casually leaning his shoulder against Buck's.
"You're a good guy, Buck. You deserve only the best.
If you wanted Buck to hear you sometimes you had to get straight to the point.
Maybe one day Eddie could conquer his fear and say what he really wanted to say.
When they were both ready.
