i’m like a witch and you can’t kill me

“Hey,” Eddie says, voice soft and low, almost as soft as the one he uses with Chris when he’s sick. Buck watches him make his way to the chair next to his bed and sit down, hesitating for a breath before pulling the chair as close to the bed as he can get. 

Good. Buck would’ve pulled him over himself if he hadn’t. 

“Hey,” he says back, sitting up straighter against his pillow. He’s not in pain exactly but he feels…uncomfortable. No position he sits in ever feels good enough, standing for too long makes him dizzy. The nurses are right, of course, he’s definitely still healing, he just wishes he didn’t feel like he was about to vibrate out of his skin while it was happening. 

That may be a him thing, though, nothing at all to do with being struck by thousands of volts of electricity and all to do with him being restless, bouncing off the wall Buck. 

A Buck that he no longer resents. Except in this moment when he just wants to relax.

They’re quiet as he adjusts himself, finally settling and facing Eddie as best he can. “Did Chris go home?”

“Yeah, about half an hour ago. Carla took him, he’s got school in the morning.” Eddie picks at a loose thread coming off the blanket covering the bed, and Buck notices he’s shaking. He wants to reach out, to hold him, to show him that he’s okay, that he’ll be back to normal in no time, but he looks like a strong breeze would shatter him where he sits, so he stays put. Eddie clears his throat before talking again, eyes never leaving the thread. “Did he tell you how we snuck him in to see you?”

Buck smiles. “He did. Made it sound a lot like a heist.”

“I wouldn’t call distracting one nurse a heist,” Eddie says. The corner of his mouth just barely ticks upwards, as close to a smile as Buck expects to see from him today. “But you know Chris, he could charm the pants off anyone without even trying.”

“Sounds like his dad.” Eddie rolls his eyes, but the tips of his ears go Buck’s favorite shade of pink, and he’s grateful that he gets to see it again. But the levity is brief — his brow furrows again, and Buck sees him bite the inside of his cheek, watches the shaking get a little more pronounced. His hand had moved up the blanket at some point, coming to rest right next to Buck’s where it rests. Eddie traces the outside of his pinky, softly, gently, like he’s worried about Buck shattering too. He takes a couple deep breaths and moves his hand again, twisting their pinkies together. The vibrations that have been coursing through Buck for days now quiet down the smallest amount, but it’s enough. It’s a relief. He’s touching Eddie, and it feels grounding, steady, sure.

It feels like a lifeline.

“I was really scared,” Eddie says, quiet enough to almost be absorbed by the blankets and bedding. “I saw you hanging there and I just ran, I didn’t even think about it. And then you wouldn’t—we couldn’t—” his breath shudders. “You were so still. I’ve never seen you that still.”

Buck sits up then, moving so he’s cross-legged on the bed, looking at Eddie straight on. He twists their already clasped hands until they’re fully intertwined, grabs the other one too and holds on tight. He squeezes once, twice, three times, before Eddie takes the hint and looks him in the eye. They’re bright and shining with tears and Buck still wants to get lost in them, even when they’re breaking his heart.

“I remembered you, you know,” he says. Eddie cocks his head, confused. “Not the dream version of you, I didn’t even meet that version. But the real you, the one that had my back when I went up the ladder. The one that always has my back. I remembered that. I remembered you, before anyone else.”

Eddie ducks his head again just before his shoulders shake, still trying in vain to keep everything together, either for Buck’s sake or his own. He wishes he could drill it into his stubborn brain that it’s okay to break, that Buck has picked up the pieces before and he will every other time after, that he fought like hell to get back to this family, to this Eddie, shrapnel and all. Instead, he holds Eddie’s hand a little bit tighter, threads his other hand through the hairs at the back of his neck, and rests his forehead on Eddie’s crown. His hair smells like cedar and cinnamon and faintly of smoke. It smells like Eddie. It smells like home.

They sit up after a while, but neither goes very far — their hands are still clutched together and Eddie is tracing nonsense on the inside of Buck’s wrist. He can’t believe that even for a minute, he didn’t want to come back to this — to Bobby on his way with In ‘n’ Out, to Hen and Chim ordering a cake with a horrible joke on it in the waiting room, to Maddie’s smile and Chris’ laugh.

To Eddie holding his hand.

“Thank you,” Eddie says, softly but fiercely. He looks Buck in the eye again, determined and steady, like he’s trying to piece himself back together by sheer force of will. “For coming back to us. We need you, Buck, more than I think we’ll ever be able to tell you.”

He brings one of Eddie’s hands up to his heart, and the last of the vibrations finally melt away. He feels still again, but not in a scary way. In a way he’s not sure he’s ever been, even before being struck by lightning.

“I’ll always come back,” Buck says, a truth he knows better than his own name. “It’s gonna take a lot more than a trippy purgatory nightmare to keep me away from you.”

Eddie smiles, a real, joyful smile that crinkles at his eyes and makes Buck want to sing. He presses his lips to the inside of Buck’s wrist — in prayer, in thanks, in a promise.

It hits him then as hard as it’s hit since he opened his eyes: Buck’s home. People love him.