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#NOT GONNA TALK ABOUT HOW BUCK IS CHRIS' SAFE SPACE
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I just think a lot about Buck being Christopher’s safe space.
Christoper asking for and looking for Buck after they were separated in the tsunami, not his dad, Buck. He still trusted Buck to save him.
Christopher asking to spend Christmas with Buck the first year after his mom died when his dad couldn’t take the day off
Christopher running away from home and going to Buck when he is upset about losing people he loves
Christopher being comforted and looked after by Buck when his dad was in the hospital
Christopher calling Buck when something is wrong with his dad (not abuela and not Pepa and not Carla)
But also thinking about Christopher being one of the few people who is always trying to comfort Buck when he is upset
Christopher telling Buck “you’re gonna be okay, Kid” when he’s struggling with his injuries
Christopher searching for Buck after the tsunami because Buck needs him as much as he needs Buck
Christopher making Buck “get well soon” cards
Christopher comforting Buck when he breaks down after the shooting
Christopher trying so hard to stay cheerful and teasing while Eddie is in the hospital and Buck is looking after him
Christopher insisting his father break the rules and let him see Buck because he NEEDS to talk to him, he needs to do something to show him the way back home
Thinking about Buck being a lonely boy who always felt abandoned and Chris being so loved and yet having loss so much and how much love and comfort they have given each other just by being in each other’s lives…
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ashavahishta · 2 years
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Actual Things That Actually Happened in 5B
...AKA these were actual canon things that happened in canon and not fanfiction and i still can’t fucking believe it
(there was a 5A part to this but tumblr ate it and honestly the best stuff is here anyway) - "all this time you all thought i was a bad cook" "you were" buck and chris just casually roasting eddie and being all domestic and teasing
- "you don't have to pretend with me"
- "you need to move on" yeah just keep using this romantic coded language thanks
- absolutely INSANE camera choices in the bar scene; buck framed in light laughing and smiling, eddie's lil smile and pining eyes as he watches him from the semi-darkness??
- frank encouraging eddie to to talk someone who's lived through it about his trauma, then cutting to buck??
- buck's giant smile when chris calls him followed immediately by his utter panic when he realises something is wrong
- buck letting himself in. buck running to chris first. buck's hand on chris' neck
- he
- broke
- down
- the
- door
- "eddie?" with the break in his voice and the single tear
- "eddie?"
- ryan guzman emmy WHEN
- "okay buddy we'll be right out here"
- he apologised to buck for scaring chris. he apologised to BUCK for scaring their son,
- "okay. okay. what are you afraid of?" in the softest voice known to man
- "buck already took him to school, figured you could use the rest" + "we've got it taken care of"
- more insane lighting choices: eddie stepping out of the darkness to join buck in the light of his dining room
- pure husband domesticity: the soft 'hey's, buck being completely comfortable in eddie's house, eddie settling in with buck long before asking after chris because he knows chris is always safe with him
- buck MISUNDERSTOOD the ASSIGNMENT and then he GAVE EDDIE HIS HEART??????????
- just two dads taking their son to equine therapy
- eddie literally checked in with buck about chris riding the horses. wordless reassurance was asked for and buck gave it with that lil smile and half nod and eddie just?? accepted this?? a thousand words passed in this one interaction? i want to study them like BUGS
- RETURN OF THE SHOULDER BUMP
- “it got me thinking about the day you were shot” and eddie immediately turning away bc he Knows that talking about THat is still Too Much (bc of how he reached for buck when he was dying and buck saved his life and he didn’t pass out until he knew buck was okay and  - yeh, you guys rmr that, right?!)
- the way buck framed that conversation PERFECTLY to make his point, KNOWING exactly what eddie would say. "yeah, i think so too" + eddie's reaction to buck's prodding being so much softer and more open than when frank did the EXACT same thing???
- "that started with you" and eddie's half smile yeah i'm still crying about it
- eddie talking with may about not knowing you really want to be and staying somewhere you feel safe and trying to figure things out and just??? yet another queer coded conversation, thank u
- BAMF eddie diaz: the Return feat. sexily applying sternal rubs, sexily carrying men over one's shoulder, sexily speaking into walkie talkies, sexily announcing dispatch is on fire
- "eddie, you're with buck", "buckley and I -" "buck!", more wordless communication, husbandly banter, working seamlessly (and on the same side!) together, "you guys should take this show on the road"
- *buck's gf and the woman he kissed are in the middle of a confrontation* buck: i Do Not See It, but hey eddie sure looks great i'm gonna give him all my attention and pull flirtatiously on my suspenders and just generally stare at him
- even MORE husbandly adventures feat. buck being the Cutest Possible playing with dinosaur toys, giving the fondest looks, BATHED IN LIGHT YET AGAIN, gently giving eddie space to talk about his family, "they SHOULD understand", the implication he was probably going to drive them all to the airport? husband behaviour your honour
- just every single thing about eddie's trip home and the revelations about how he was always a sweet soft kid who was forced to grow up way too fast, the way he always took care of people, he felt like he was punishing himself?!? FOR WHAT EDDIE???, he wants to be better "for myself" that's growth babey i'm gonna cry about it for awhile
- "i just want to -" " -fix it?" just casually finishing each others' sentences, giving a throwback to another soft supportive conversation, WHILE in soft comfortable clothes domestically cleaning up eddie's mess together, LITERALLY building something together, Petty Eddie making an appearance as he silently encourages buck to break up with his horrible girlfriend
- "isn't that what we want? someone to have our backs?" in a BLATANT call-back to That Scene from 201 like THEY ACTUALLY FUCKING DID THIS I AM STILL IN SHOCK??????????
- buck explaining that true love means seeing someone at their worst and still wanting to try??????? buck and taylor’s breakup perfectly mirroring eddie and ana’s??? “i thought i could learn to live with it” and buck FINALLY choosing himself???
- they’re both single now but also married and just. What Is Coming Next, this entire season was so fucking unhinged and i need to eat season 6 immediately
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singlethread · 11 months
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ok i finished 911, and now that i have can you tell me more about the buck and eddie vision with any spoilers you might have been avoiding before
Okay so first lemme link you to my PowerPoint that’s goes through season 2 up the 6.09
And honestly the second half of season 6 is what has really stepped on the gas. When Buck got struck Eddie lost all sense of self preservation and just had to get to Buck, has to make sure he was okay. He ran up the ladder after just getting struck himself, without his line secured, while screaming Buck’s name. Then we he got there he tried to pull Buck up to him before realizing he was too heavy. Then he’s so quick to get back down to them, Bobby has to force Eddie away from Buck while chim is coding him and Bobby makes Eddie drive.
Then in the next episode Eddie switches out with chim and it’s actually Eddie to start Buck’s heart again, this show has had a lot of subtext and parallels when it comes to hearts and the fact that Eddie was the one to get his partners beating again just makes me scream. Then when the doctors say they’ll do their best it’s Eddie who yells at them desperately to “do more.” While Buck is in his coma Eddie is seen in all black like a mourning spouse when Christopher insists on seeing Buck. Eddie then sneaks his son into the icu to see Buck and then he can barely even look at Buck just lying there, and Hen has to take over explaining while Eddie just silently cries. The people closest with Buck were the ones who really struggled to look at him and those people were Maddie and Eddie. They just constantly frame Eddie so differently with Buck as opposed to the other members of the firefam.
A lot of us also believe that Buck didn’t see Eddie in his coma world because he might not have been able to leave, because with Eddie is his home, his safe space. It’s shown to be canon when Maddie keeps sending over babysitters for Buck. Buck could’ve gone anywhere or even just locked his door with a note pasted on it. But no, when Buck was overwhelmed by the world and his place in it, he went to Eddie’s and fell asleep before Eddie could even come back with a beer.
Couches are another explicit metaphor in season 6 which was established when Buck said he didn’t want to pick the wrong couch again. Then he chose himself by positioning his arm chair in the center of the room. Well then his mom came and forced a couch on him, an uncomfortable one he can’t seem to sleep on, but the couch he did manage to sleep on was Eddie’s!
Then we get to the poker date episode of it all. So first of all Eddie and Chris just come to Buck’s apartment to hang out and help Chris with homework and that’s the most married co-parenting shit I’ve ever seen. And when Buck looks at his two boys he just has the most content expression in his face. Then Eddie, knowing that Buck’s been sad, starts little schemes to cheer Buck up! Then they go out together in the nicest suits we have ever seen them in and Buck is just down for anything because its Eddie even though he has absolutely no idea what’s gonna happen. To have that level of trust with someone! Also when they talk about Buck being dead, everyone keeps saying he was dead for three minutes. But it is Eddie that points out that Buck was dead for three minutes and seventeen seconds. This man knows down to the fucking second how long he had to live in a world with Buck in it and that’s some of the most in love shit I’ve ever heard.
Then when Buck starts winning and having a good time Eddie has extreme heart eyes going, literally ducks his head down at one point bc he can’t contain his happiness seeing Buck having fun again. This is the same man who doesn’t let his kid win boggle, meanwhile he’s giggling while Buck beats everyone’s ass at poker. Then when Buck wins it’s just so implicitly understood that they’re partners, when the chief asks Buck how he wants his winnings Buck immediately looks to Eddie because it’s for both of them, same with the money they scammed earlier, Eddie grabs it out of Buck’s hands but there’s no “hey that’s mine” because it’s just understood that it’s the both of theirs.
Then Buck is hanging out with Chris helping him bake cookies for his school (HELLO THATS CHRIS’S OTHER DAD) and then uses the steaks that he and Eddie won together to cook for Christopher and that shit makes me melt so hard because it just does more to establish that they are a complete family unit.
Okay then Pepa starts setting up Eddie on dates and Buck who was ghosted by Abby and knows how much that sucks was just like “lol Eddie what if you ghost her” like sir, your subconscious jealously is showing. Then when Eddie goes on the date and she lets him down and even though he was gonna let her down he spirals about her not wanting him which is just such a queer experience. Then at the end he realizes that Pepa is right, he doesn’t want to be alone. But also he’s clearly not in love with the idea of going out with strangers so hmmm perhaps someone you already know intimately would be a good fit
Then when Buck goes out with natalia Eddie makes his feeling on the matter very clear. He also has a moment of realization that Buck isn’t okay and you can just see how much it affects him and a lot of us at this point believe that Eddie is at least somewhat aware of possible feelings for Buck. But also there’s such a sadness to Eddie because he’s ready for something now, but Buck clearly isn’t.
We also have confirmation that the couch metaphor is gonna keep playing out for the rest of season 6 and we also got another scene of Chris this time sleeping on the couch and it’s framed almost the exact same way as Buck’s scene was.
I just personally have to say I have never felt this was about a ship like this before, like something has truly fucking shifted this season and especially this half of the season. We have had a profound Buck and Eddie moment almost every episode since the lightning strike and that shit means something. This show is so purposeful in everything it does, and season 6 especially has shown that with how many callbacks we’ve gotten to things that happened in earlier seasons.
I just, I really do trust the writers and even if it doesn’t happen it is canon that Buck and Eddie and Christopher are a family unit and I just really love them so much.
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eddiediass · 2 years
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“come on, you've never thought about it? “ “maybe once or twice” for the prompt!🥰🤗
please don’t ask me how long this has been in my inbox @ktinastrikesback
(using this for seven sentence sunday @tenisperfection )
“Are you gonna miss the loft?”
The question comes out left field. They’re in the grocery store—Eddie pushing the cart and Buck with a hand along the side of it, tossing in a generous variety of pasta shapes. They’d been talking about taking Chris to a baseball game once school is out—a real one, like the Dodgers—before walking around in a comfortable silence.
“Hm?”
“Are you gonna miss the loft? It was your first place, and you kinda—“
“—had to get the hell out, fast?” Buck huffs out a laugh.
Eddie nods, waiting. He wasn’t sure how Taylor made it this long, in all honesty, considering how much Buck had been staying over with him ever since he kinda lost his shit and destroyed his bedroom. Then again—Ana stuck around for as long as she did. Being in a relationship where only one person is invested isn’t fair to either person. Though, Eddie’s learned, it’s harder still when both aren’t in it but cling to the belief that, one day, they could be.
“I—yeah, maybe.”
Eddie rolls the cart forward. “Maybe?”
“It’s…” Buck’s eyes flit back towards Eddie before staring straight ahead again as they walk towards the produce. “It’s less about the loft itself and having my own place and more about,” he weighs his words, “how it felt like its own world sometimes, y’know?”
Eddie hands Buck a bag and grabs one for himself when they reach the fruit. There’s a lot the loft probably represented for Buck: a safe space, a move towards being more adult, a pain in the ass when his leg was crushed. Eddie didn’t love the place and, sometimes, he’d think about how none of it really made sense. Buck somewhere so… so cold and empty? But that’s where his head was at, wasn’t it? And he and Taylor hid away there for months while Maddie was gone and Eddie was, for all intents and purposes, gone, too. Out of it.
“What do you mean?”
Buck stares at the orange in his hand before quickly popping a few more into his bag and tying a knot at the top. “Look, I know the pandemic and quarantine was awful most of the time…”
“But?”
“But I miss it. I miss—never mind. Forget it.”
Eddie stops the cart, forcing Buck to pause. “What?”
The camaraderie? The pranks Chim would pull when he wasn’t out of his mind, worried about Maddie? The way Hen would remind them that, even on the shittiest days, they needed to celebrate the wins?
“Waking up next to you.” It’s whispered low—Eddie barely catches it before it fizzles out between them.
And that’s—
Yeah.
He didn’t let himself think about it. Mostly because it still feels like a fever dream when he does. But mentioning it in broad daylight? The two versions of himself—the one that wants to be “normal” and the other that wants to be—collapse on top of each other, and Eddie’s lightheaded.
Buck steps closer—
And then closer still, fidgeting with the straps of the seatbelt at the front of the cart.
“You miss how I would make the bed every morning, huh?” Eddie tries deflecting. They’re in the middle of a Trader Joe’s on a Tuesday morning, and he didn’t exactly add lovesick confession to their shopping list.
But—
Buck’s looking at him with those big blue eyes of his, shaking his head, and Eddie isn’t strong enough not to give him the world a second time.
“You’ve never thought about it?” Buck prompts.
“I—yeah… Maybe once or twice.” Or four times or twenty or every time he thought about how easy it would be to pull Buck off the couch and ask him to slip into bed beside Eddie. He’s thought about how there’s no other way he’d rather wake up, too.
Buck just nods, his mouth quirking up in a smile, “Let’s go to the check-out.”
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lovearne · 2 years
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Adrian's birthday goes off with a bang
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ADRIAN CHASE APPRECIATION WEEK: day 07: birthday celebration
All of my fics and my whole page is 18+ only, if you are a child leave. I deserve a safe space to express myself, all blogs under 18 or no age will be blocked. Let me enjoy my experience safely on the internet, thank you.
Word count: 1.8k+
Warnings: PiV sex, PiA sex, anal fingering, vaginal fingering, oral (3 reciving), three way, mxmxgn(afab), squirting, edging, cum, soft dom Adrian, restraints, switch Adrian, Dom Chris, switch Chris, reader teases both Adrian and Chris, dirty talk (2 mentions of the word whore)
"Hey Adi?" The man turned to your voice. "Happy birthday love." You had gotten a new set of lingerie, specially ordered with his suit design on them. The poor boy's eyes nearly popped out of his head. You could see his bones grow as he stared at you. His eyes devour you. He has to cover his lap up with a pillow, not wanting to give the wrong impression to his friend that he was chatting with on the couch.
"H-hey babe." He stuttered as you sat on the arm of the couch he was leaning on, kissing the top of his head, body slightly bent forward, putting your boobs level with his face, not even 6 inches away. You pull away instead looking over to Chris.
"Mornin Chris." Peacemaker also had a pillow in his lap, apparently he had found it hot when you were dressed in vigs colours as well. You move to sit in Adrian's lap, giving him a hug, moving the pillow, you sit directly on his dick the poor guy had no idea just how much you were going to tease him.
Adrian's hands immediately go to your hips, holding you still, that doesn't stop you from being able to feel his dick twitching. Your lips moving to his ear.
"Aww little Adrian is excited to see me, maybe I should kiss him and say happy birthday." Adrian almost moaned at the thought of your mouth being on him. You turned your head to Chris who was watching intently from the other side of the couch. You give him a wink as you wake a show of starting to grind on Adrian. You've had a threesome with both men before you were committed to Adrian.
You grind on Adrian until his hips start to push against yours and then stop, edging the poor guy, as he was about to cum. His broken whine filled the air.
"Why'd you stop?" His voice was curious but annoyed.
"Because I told them to. And the two of us are gonna make sure you feel real good. Aren't we babe?" You nod at Chris' words. Adrian's cock jumps at the way Chris' words bathed his body.
You get up off Adrian's lap, and into the space between his legs, you unzip his jeans and start to pull them off of him, the peacemaker beginning to kiss Adrian, deepening their kiss as soon as Adrian reciprocated. Adrian's cock slapped against his stomach as you pulled his boxers down, letting out a low moan into Chris' mouth.
You kitten lick his tip, collecting all the precum, making sure to run the tip of your tongue over the slit. His hips bucking at the sensation. You bring your hand to start pumping his shaft, taking his head into your mouth, Adrian starting to whine into Chris' mouth, his hands starting to wander over Adrian's body, coming down to fondle at the man's balls as you take him to the back of your throat, pushing deeper as you gag a little. Adrian swore he could die a happy man right now, his cock jumping in your throat as you take him to the hilt, Chris' fingers massaging his balls gently, eliciting pleasure from him in two different ways, no three.
You and Chris work together, bringing Adrian to the edge several different times before he snapped, the switch between sub and Dom happened very rapidly, just as always when you tease your boyfriend.
"Oh you little whore, you dirty whore. Look at your face, all covered in my precum and your spit. Oh so pretty baby." His words sent waves to your core. He kissed your lips once before manhandling you into your room, tying your hands up against the bedrail. "Maybe me and Chris should tease you since you thought it was a good idea to tease me. Being bad and edging me, maybe I should edge you, maybe I should have Chris fuck your throat while I eat your pussy and make you cum over and over. Yes I think that's what we are going to do." He gestures to Chris to take his pants off, the man eagly doing so, your and Adrian's mouths watering at the sight before you, Chris' cock was already dripping as he brought it closer to your mouth. Your mouth opening wide for the man's large appendage, spit dripping as he pushes inside, letting out a groan as you close your lips around him, jaw straining from the size of him.
You can feel Adrian pulling away your soaked panties and chuckling at the sight before him.
"Wow babe, we really get you wet when you are pleasuring us don't we. You hum around Chris' cock in answer the man starting to fuck lazily into your mouth.
"Oh fuck babe, you feel so good around my cock." Adrian dove face first into your pussy, his tounge liking a flat strip up your slit and to your clit, doing so a few more times he hums, content with the taste of you. Bringing his hand up, he enters one finger into your hole as his tongue moves to focus just on you clit, pumping his finger in and out as he flicks rapidly at your clit, pleasure washing over your body. You moan loudly around Chris' cock, his hips starting to fuck your mouth more roughly. His hands sliding into your hair and one onto a boob, the other had adrians free hand on it.
Adrian added a second finger, the slight stretch feeling so delicious to you, no matter how many times you had sex Adrian was always amazed by your slippery tight cunt
Adrian's fingers passed by the spongy part inside your hips bucking at him, he smirks and brings his hand back down from your chest to hold your hips and waist in place. His lips locking onto your clit and sucking as his fingers press into your g-spot over and over, making you a winning mess and bringing you to the edge faster than normal, must be the excitement from being with both him and Chris today.
Adrian brings you through you orgasm and almost straight into another one as he doesn't stop his ministrations, making you cum again before you even come down from the first, still not letting up and holding your hips down as he keeps sucking your clit, flicking it with his tongue as now three fingers press against your g-spot rapidly, your third orgasm building stronger than your last two. Chris' hips were going at a fast rhythm against your face, grunting loud and pulling out, not wanting to cum just yet. Pulling you into a kiss after you caught your breath, his tkunge exploring every part of your mouth, his drawing all of your moans right up, you were reciprocating the amount of passion he gave in his kiss, almost screaming in pleasure into his mouth, getting closer and closer to you third orgasm, Chris pulls away from the kiss to watch as you cum. Adrian's fingers get pushed right out of your cunt, his mouth detaches in awe, and the two men watch as your pussy convulses and your ejaculated squirts out a couple times, soaking Adrian's face and chest, along with the sheets. Adrian almost Cummings from the sight and feeling alone, and Chris going absolutely feral over the sight he just saw. The men take a small break, Adrian moving up to cuddle your face, and Chris coming in with a water bottle for each of you.
"Are you ok to continue, honey bun?" Adrian's question was directed at you and you nod. Having a 5 minute break between a world shattering orgasm being just what you needed. Chris made sure the both of you drank at least half a water bottle each before letting anything more progress.
Chris grabs the lube from your nightstand table, eliciting to prep Adrian's hole, you kissing Adrian's face and lips as Chris applies some lube to his fingers, massaging them over his tight entrance. Slowly pushing one lobbed up finger inside, Adrian letting a loud moan out, his tip already leaking, it's been too long since he's had Chris fuck him, Chris finger felt really good inside Adrian, and as he pushed a second in, Adrian could've sworn he died and went to heaven. Chris started to scissor his fingers in Adrian's holes trying to get him prepped enough he could cause minimal discomfort while he pushed his dick into his ass.
Adrian keened under Chris' touch, moaning into your shoulder, and arching his back.
Chris was up to a third finger when he pulled them out, satisfied with the prep he'd done on Adrian.
"Are you ready for my cock baby boy?" Adrian nods his head, lining his cock up with your entrance.
"Yes sir." He said to Chris, pushing inside your wet and warm cunt, Chris pushing into his tight hole right after, you qere on your hands and knees, Adrian hunched over you, moving his hips as he fucked into you on one side and back onto Chris on the other. The man was in so much pleasure from having you around his cock and Chris' cock in his ass.
Chris started to thrust his hips, also setting the lace for Adrian's hips slamming into your ass. You moan as you feel Adrian's balls slap against your clit with every thrust of their hips, Adrian was non stop moaning, from the constant pleasure he felt, you pussy squeezing him as his ass was squeezing Chris.
None of you were going to last long at this pace, and as Adrian reached to play with your clit, Chris slapped his hand, instead reaching your clit with his. His other hand going around to fondle Adrian's balls. Adrian came first yelling his pleasure loudly, you came a few seconds after, screaming in pleasure and Chris came last, working you all through your orgasms.
He pulled out of Adrian, helping the drained man pull out of you, lading the both of you to lay on the bed.
He walks into the bathroom, producing two separate wet towels and coming back into your room, he hands a towel to Adrian, who cleans the mess between your legs, wiping gently as you are still over sensitive, then wiping his cock, feeling Chris wipe the lube and cum from his hole. Chris wiping his cock after as well.
The men throw the cum rags onto the floor, to be dealt with after. You lay your head on Adrian's chest, Chris doing the same, his arms wrapping around the both of you, whispering words of encouragement to the two of you. Adrian praised both of you as well, and you told the boys how amazing they did.
After all the praises were done and the three of you were drifting into a post sex nap.
"Thank you both for the amazing birthday present. I love you guys."
And with that the three of you fell asleep, completely content in each other's arms.
Taglist:
@nptnewr @likedovesinthewnd @aprilfire18 @tempesttemper
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mr-and-mr-diaz · 2 years
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Most unhinged moment from this episode?
OMG @littlebetesofeverything WHERE DO I BEGIN?!?!?!!?!?!? You know when you see a trailer and a moment looks so deliciously, emotionally thicc, but in your own head you're like "it can't possibly hit that hard, I don't want my expectations to be too high only to be disappointed" so you keep them deliberately low and then the scene does arrive and it absolutely slays you where you stand?!?
The Eddie Breakdown scene did that to me. It DELIVERED in ways I could not have expected. Like there are so many things here that DID NOT need to happen and yet did, it reminds of 4x13 all over again. Deliberate choices were made here:
Christopher realizes something is wrong. The writers could have sent him to Abuela's house, easy out, but no, they made him present in this moment. He is now completely tied into it, it won't be happening behind his back
He can't help his dad on his own, and calls for Buck. Immediately, no hesitation, he doesn't even call 9-1-1, and his dad is a first responder! Nope, he calls Buck. These two fsckers just need to get married already I said what I said
They are now dealing with Eddie's healing AS A FAMILY. YES!!
Buck shows up, and before all else, makes sure Christopher is okay. The amount of times this man has shown up for Chris when Eddie isn't able to, I just can't with them, I can't. The will really was just paperwork, this sh!t was already set in stone
Buck knocks on Eddie’s door. What does he say?! “It’s me.” Not “It’s Buck” Because OF COURSE Eddie will recognize his voice.
Buck breaks into Eddie's room to make sure he's okay. The "there is nothing that will stand between me and you when you need me" of it all, I swear...
The way Buck is calling “Eddie? ...Eddie?” In that smol panicked voice. My mans is shaken and worried for his mans. He’s so scared of what he’s gonna find, but he’ll keep searching the wrecked room until he finds Eddie. And when he finds him, he runs right to him
I need a moment to stand up in front of my computer and applaud Ryan's acting here all over again, because he DELIVERED. Like HOLY WOW, he gave this everything. Remember, actors don't just show up, run through a scene once and that's it; they deliver take after take after take so the editors have material to work with, and Ryan just GAVE. I mean, WOW.
Back to what I was saying: Buck is in the room. Buck is in Eddie Diaz’s bedroom. He, Chris, and Shannon are the only people who have been in here aside from Eddie. The writers could have made this scene happen in a lot of places, but they put it in Eddie’s room. In his safe haven. And Buck isn’t just there with him, he broke down the door to be in there with him. Much like he has done emotionally over the years of their relationship. POETIC CINEMA
The way Buck was so shaken by seeing Eddie like this, but didn't retreat, just stayed. Made sure Eddie had space, but stayed. He is not trained to help with PTSD and you can tell how keenly he feels that when he sees Eddie completely broken down, but he doesn't walk back out and call someone else. He stays. He talks carefully, lets Eddie share only what he feels comfortable sharing, only asks deeper questions when he sees Eddie already opening up
Then once Eddie is off the cliff, he goes back to Christopher to make sure he's okay (or as okay as he can be in light of everything.) Checks in on him, reports back to Eddie. 
“He’s still scared out of his mind. And he’s not the only one.” Buck is scared for Eddie. HUG ALL OF THEM PLEASE
“I didn’t mean to scare him.” Eddie feels so bad about scaring Chris like that. He made sure his door was locked so he couldn’t hurt him, but he knows he scared him anyway, and you can tell that’s WRECKING him
They continue their conversation from Eddie’s room. Again, Buck gives Eddie his space, light prodding only once Eddie seems up for talking about it.
And Eddie. Eddie who is bottled up to the throat with everything he feels--Eddie tells him what's wrong. 
OKAY BUT REALLY he tells Buck about his war experience. It’s easy to forget that no one knows what happened, because we saw all of it in montage during the well scene. Buck wasn’t watching Eddie’s montage during the well scene--he knows Eddie saved his team, and that he got a silver star for it. But here Eddie is going into detail, sharing about his time, what happened. How many he saved. My grandad is a war vet, and he didn’t tell anyone his stories for years, even the most “mundane-sounding” ones. It’s not something you just share with anyone, but Eddie is sharing it with Buck, the sheer significance of that!!!!!!
“I’m afraid!” “Okay. What are you afraid of?” “That I’ll never feel normal again.” Eddie is Mr. Strong, Mr. Keep Calm and Carry On. And even if he felt it, he has NEVER admitted to being afraid of ANYTHING EVER to anyone. Except now. With Buck.
Eddie feels safe enough to have Buck in this with him, his deepest trauma, shame and guilt. He trusts Buck at that level, like no one else. 
And Buck doesn’t bother with platitudes, doesn’t try to say “you’ll be okay” or something else trite. He just accepts it. Accepts it and stays. These men are made for each other I'M STILL NOT OVER THIS
(I swear I started this list planning to write like 3 things like a normal person, but here we are 😬)
Tagging under the line, feel free to pm me to add or take away your name!
@matan4il @justsmilestuffhappens @blutterlie @buckactuallys @extasiswings  @fiona-fififi @eddiediass @princessfbi @loveyourownsmiilee 
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How Can He Know If You Won’t Tell Him?
Rated: Teen &+ | Words: 2.1k | Read on ao3
Eddie didn't know how he got here.
Well, that's not entirely true. He was the one who asked Buck to go on a hike. It had been a long week and an even longer shift and Eddie was aware of the distance that had been growing between him and his best friend. It had been slowly suffocating him; the chasm of silence was overwhelming. He could feel it every time Buck begged off, every time they went home to separate houses, every time Chris asked where he was. It wasn’t what they did, it wasn’t how they worked, it wasn’t Buck and Eddie. He felt as if he’d gone mad. 
So he invited Buck to their favorite trail hoping that some time away from siblings and friends and distractions could give them the space they need to actually talk. Talk about Connor and Kameron, talk about what Buck was truly feeling about the situation, talk about anything important, anything that would prove they were still best friends. 
But here, now, the anger that thrummed through his veins, the exasperation that pooled in his belly, the frustration that curled his fingers-how did he get here? Truthfully, he could have probably connected all the dots that lead to this feeling. The unspoken words, the charged glances, the way his heart had been yearning for something he refused to name for so long, for too long.
“I mean,” said Buck, running his hand over the back of his head. “It’s not like I’m gonna have my own kids. No one wants me enough to be stuck with me for that long.”
A surge of irritation coursed through his veins. Buck continued his melancholic rant but Eddie wasn’t hearing him any more. 
It’s just - Buck just - how could he not know?! How could Buck not see? Not see how much he gave away, how much he helped, how much he was wanted. Wanted by his family, wanted by his friends, wanted by Chris- Chris who looked to Buck almost more than he looked to Eddie, Chris who just asked for Buck to chaperone a field trip, Chris who missed Buck just as much as Eddie did. 
God, Eddie missed Buck. Missed his best friend, missed his support, missed his laugh, his real, genuine laugh, not the self deprecating one that Buck had been favoring. He wanted their banter back, wanted their dynamic back, wanted Buck to come back to him… Eddie just wanted Buck. He knew that, he did. He wanted Buck in a way that was astronomically different from the way you were supposed to want a best friend. He wanted Buck in his house every day, wanted Buck to make their kid breakfast on Saturdays, wanted Buck to feel safe, and loved, and happy, and with him. It was there at the back of his mind everyday, but he never let himself think about it. Because Buck never seemed to want the same things. Because Eddie didn’t know how to voice his feelings. Because he was scared that this secret would ruin his friendship with the most important person in his life. 
‘How could he know, if you won’t tell him?’
The voice sounded like Linda’s - one of the few people Eddie had voiced any of these thoughts and feelings too. Linda quickly became a friend while he was working at dispatch. She was there when he started seeing Frank again, and she was there when Eddie admitted to himself what these feelings added up to. At the time, he had felt like an outsider. Donato had taken his spot at the 118, Taylor was in the picture, and Eddie felt like he couldn't talk to anyone in the firehouse. So he talked to Linda. Linda was his lifeline at the time, his North Star guiding him home in a time when he was untethered, floating around in his misery. Linda had repeatedly advocated for Buck- how can he know Eddie was an option, if Eddie never told him? 
She wasn’t wrong, Eddie knew, but.. That’s just it. But, but, but.. But what if Buck doesn’t reciprocate, but what if he’d be disgusted, but what if he hates Eddie for the feelings he couldn’t control.
“I think I’m just going to accept that I’ll be alone forever.” Eddie tuned back to the soft timber of Buck’s voice. The blond walked next to him with eyes trained on the trail ahead of them, fingers that drummed out a staccato beat on his thigh. The self pity poured off of him in waves and Eddie saw a frown on his mouth, small and almost not there, but still it pulled down those plump lips. That small down curve of  Buck’s lips, lips that should have been smiling, lips that should have been laughing, lips that should have been carefree opened up something inside him. Something crawling and clawing and howling its way up his chest.. He suddenly couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t feel anything at all.
‘He has to know.’ 
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swiftiebuck · 3 years
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People go away, and it’s sad, and it hurts. But, you know, not everyone goes away forever. Sometimes they come back, and as much as we miss them, that’s how happy we are to see them. 
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buttercupbuck · 2 years
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okay well now @yramesoruniverse got me thinking about buck and eddie and home metaphors (or whatever you wanna call them) at the ripe hour of 6:30 in the morning, but. just a little roundup, because it makes me feral actually  
“wait for me to come home” playing right before eddie knocks on buck’s door and everything that follows after that in 3.03
“i’m gonna make this place your home” playing in a scene where buck tells maddie he’s not really a guest in eddie’s house and that shows eddie watching chris and buck playing on the couch as he talks to chim about the family they choose
buck inexplicably being at the diaz home for chris and denny’s playdate in 3.10, and in that scene, chris asking buck if he could spend christmas with him
buck and eddie’s coparenting moment in the diaz home in 4.03 (and in it, the additional rejection of going to buck’s apartment)
all the talks of his apartment not feeling like a safe space in 4.07
eddie coming home to buck after his date in 4.08, and then albert being surprised to see buck come back to the apartment at the end of the night + buck feeling unwelcome there
christopher running away from the diaz home to buck in 4.08, and buck reassuring christopher he’s not going anywhere 
buck bringing eddie home from the hospital in 4.14 and watching eddie and chris fondly after the revelation about the will, but standing from the doorway
“it’s not like we’re going home any time soon” in a scene where buck tells eddie to break up with his girlfriend 
eddie going home to chris after the hostage crisis and buck going back to his apartment to taylor, but finding no relief or comfort in it (“did he get to see his kid?” “no”)
buck being practically confined to his apartment in almost all of his scenes outside of the 118 in season 5 (a lot of people have already talked about the symbolism of buck’s apartment and how it feels like more of a prison than a home at times, but yeah)
and fin. i’m writing this as i should be getting ready for work so if i missed any, feel free to add <3
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theladyyavilee · 2 years
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Not only would I never to stop you from talking about "home" metaphors and Buck and Eddie, this is me straight up instigating. So, please, keep going!
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okay okay okay it took a while but here we go xD (thank you for your enabling friend <3) also this is probably gonna get LONG so buckle in everyone <3
alright so we are starting with a disclaimer that some of this has probably - to some extent at least - been said before in bits and pieces in various posts (some by me and some by others and I'll try to find and link them but I probs won’t find most of them!) so yeah this is not just on me, but instead is a wild mix of ideas put into my head by other people's brilliance and my own rambling connections and theories in between xD
first off, I can’t take credit for the realization that how buck is not feeling at home and safe at his own place has been an ongoing thing that they keep building onto, that one is solely on @extasiswings and her response to this post here (and on this note I will not be talking about the frankly INSANE relation between the ending scenes in 5x03 and 5x06, because I have this whole linked post about it and this one here is already getting too long anyways, but yeah I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about those two episodes and the scenes relating to the theme of home there!)
the post that started all this (and has the above tags on it) is this one right here by @bestbuckleys and yeah that post is about 3x03 and we’ll get back to that in a second, but I think she said it very correctly in her tags on the reblog, that’s not quite where it started, it started with ‘you don’t find it son, you make it’, because at the heart of it, all of this is about found family/the family you choose and the fact that you don’t find a home, you build it, ya know?
but yes, 3x03, absolutely insane for how they line up ‘wait for me to come home’ with eddie and chris knocking on buck’s door, BUT that scene also has the voice over, which, guess what, has another mention of home ‘sometimes, being lost is not knowing how we get from where we are to where we wanna be, where we need to be. A few choice words can sometimes be the life raft that gets you home. To be seen, to be found, isn’t that what we’re all searching for?’ and they are INSANE for that voice over in general and the mention of HOME in relation to what eddie says to buck about christopher AND I mean at the end of the day this voice over is still where buck is at I think, even though it has been two years? and I cannot wait what the ‘choice words’ being the lift raft getting him home this time are gonna be, but I’m sure we all agree who is gonna say them <3
then we have the gift that is 3x11 (fascinatingly also the episode where buck lets albert move in and starts this journey of never really being on his own at the loft for long but also getting progressively less happy/at home there) where we get eddie saying ‘that’s what the 118 is, the family we chose’ to chimney AND then we have ‘home’ by phillip phillips playing and we get the line ‘I’m gonna make this place your home’ right as the scene switches to the kitchen and we get buck’s ‘this is eddie’s house, I’m not really a guest’  to maddie, like?????!!!!!!!!! that is so loud? gonna be thinking about that one for a while!
and okay we also have 4x08 and eddie being the one to come home to buck and buck feeling at home there and looking so cozy there and while taking care of chris and you know what? this makes me think about how we might have it wrong just a little bit, you know? we always talk about buck wanting to come home to someone, but I think it might be more him wanting to be the kind of person someone else looks fowards to coming home to? to be so loved that they look forward to seeing him at the end of the day and to have this space he belongs to and people he belongs to and who chose him to come home to because he is their safe space and oh no, I made myself sad about buck here xD
also on the note of 4x08 I have to agree with what chapel said in the tags of that first post I linked up there because yeah, it seems like the last time buck was really 100% comfortable in a space was eddie’s home in future tense, because he IS at home in 4x08 when eddie arrives, but then the topic of the date comes up and he kinda stumbles over his words and it introduces an air of discomfort for buck both in this home and in his relationship with eddie/chris and he leaves pretty quickly and doesn’t get to stay and I think that is also extremely fascinating (and then we have 4x14 where again buck is very at home in the diaz’ house but eddie’s absence is VERY felt and it hurts and ‘your dad’s not coming home tonight’ how is it supposed to be a home without eddie? ._. and of course the way he stays just a little on the outside looking in during that ending scene once again, foreshadowing to how he is feeling that veeeeery much again this season and that scene itself was foreshadowed in future tense when they had a cute family scene but ended the episode with buck on the outside only connected via the phone - PARALLELS my beloved <3)
and okay so out of all the tags up there, the two things that I literally only noticed today as I was writing them, are the ‘it’s not like we are going home anytime soon’ at the end of the ana-talk in episode 2 and I have been losing my mind over that one all day actually? it feels kind of as pointed as ‘you’re late’ - ‘there was a construction on sunset, had to take a detour!’ because like? buck keeps on not going home to the diaz’ house? and it is driving me up a wall??!!!
and then of course the whole mitchell threatening eddie’s home (both the literal place which is supposed to be a safe space and more methaphorically christopher as eddie’s home) and it hitting so so so hard for buck, it just makes me want to scream and cry! and then he keeps not getting to go home to see chris and I’M!!!!!!! THIS HURTS, but I can’t wait for the pay-off <3
okay also something I am also absolutely fascinated by is how buck’s living situation is SO SO SO caught up in his love life? and therefore probably never manages to feel more permanent than his love life does? (the ever revolving hook-ups paired up with a roommate situation that in my experience is also an always revolving situation, then abby’s flat but abby leaves and the flat feels about as empty as that relationship, then we have the loft which he gets with ali, who breaks up with him and he is left with the loft and I wonder if it ever really had a chance to feel like just his and like a full home after that? (I feel like there is a metaphor in there somewhere between the loft and ali and their relationship, but I can’t quite make it out xD something about the loft being as much for her as it is for him, but then it is also reminiscent of the firehouse loft, because that is really the only home he knows, but then everything related to that and him being a firefighter is why ali breaks up with him and I feel like there is a connections somewhere in there that I just can’t quite grasp, so if someone else can crack it, please let me know) and then of course we had a large amount of the bucktaylor scenes taking place at the loft in s4 and now s5 it’s been even more and none of those scenes have felt homey in any way shape or form!)
and there is something about how he is looking for a home in a person and that is why he was so desperately looking for a connection and relationship like that in the hopes of it giving him this elusive feeling of home and safety and being sure of something he has been chasing (because he never really got that growing up, even tho I’m sure maddie tried, but it was pretty much impossible against the backdrop of the buckley parents and buck never feeling like he was enough for them or fully belonged there, like they were each other’s home for so long but I think both of them deserve more home than that and have both been looking for that? and maddie did build it with chim and jee-yun and buck is still a part of that but it is not his home in the way it is maddie’s now, you know?) and the fact that he now also has a home (the loft) and a girlfriend (taylor) with whom he technically should fit and still doesn’t get that reassuring feeling of home? yeaaaaah I am in love with how they are doing that and are paralleling it with how AT HOME he has felt at the diaz’ home and with eddie and chris already all the way back in s3 and it has only grown since then, but he is now kind of isolated from that and it is absolutely throwing him back into a very bad head space!
alright so this was a lot more about buck and I think it is suuuper interesting that partially that is because home gets mentioned more often in relation to buck specifically (but then also often in relation to eddie/christopher and his relationship with them) and less often in relation to eddie (for eddie it is more often a mention of family I think)!
but we do have eddie coming from a home where he too never felt like he was good enough and how he he and shannon probably never quite got around to building a home with each other/being each other’s home, with him being gone so much and how after that his parents kept him from ever feeling at home in el paso, so he was looking for a home for himself (and moreso for christopher) just as much as buck was, but I do think eddie is more settled about it now, than buck is and that probably partially stems from christopher being such a big part of what eddie sees as his home, but probably also how sure he is of buck’s place in their lives? I mean he did make buck christopher’s legal guardian and like he said, he was 100% sure that buck would never say no, would never leave them behind and the fact that he made that decision AFTER the well, where so many of the scenes he thought of had buck in them and the whole ‘I’m always gonna fight to come home to my family’? yeah, buck is absolutely included in that for eddie and I’m not sure how aware he is of that, but he is so fucking sure of Buck and he is so sure of always being there for Christopher himself, so of course he is sure of his own home and belonging!
and what we also have is eddie trying to conform to the very traditional (and outdated) idea of home, with ana there taking care of chris and him coming home to them, and then him OUTRIGHT REJECTING that in favor of the less traditional option of being a single dad for a little longer, but I mean we all know that it was also him rejecting all the expectations people/society have of him and his home and instead building what he wants for his home and his happiness (which has always included buck and being a family with buck) 
there is just something about the interconnectedness of people as home and the family you choose and the fact that for buck it is about building a home with someone and being someone’s home and for eddie it is choosing the family he wants and not the family he is expected to have and at the end of the day those two things are so closely related and are all about each other 💕 💕
(anyways yeah this is not very coherent and I probably missed a lot of things, so if any of you think of any mentions of ‘home’ that I missed, please come tell me about them so I can yell some more <3 but yeah I have to cut myself off here because this is already way too long, mad respect to anyone who made it through reading all of that xD)
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sevensoulmates · 3 years
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Thoughts on Taylor and Buck (and Eddie) in 4x14
For people worrying about bucktaylor.....I just want you to think about the moment Taylor first shows up in this episode. This is coming off half of season’s worth of episodes of Taylor and Buck building up a friendship. A close one too.
And yet...
When Buck is reeling, panting like he's on the verge of a panic attack, still blinking back tears (and failing) like he's gonna break down sobbing at any moment. It's the most vulnerable moment of his life and he steps out of the hospital and spots Taylor near other press trying to get in.
And he doesn’t think "this is Taylor my friend, my safe space, who I go to when I'm vulnerable and need someone who loves me". He took one look at her and saw the moment she stabbed him in the back and was going to turn Bobby's worst moment into a news story. He looked at her and his face fell and his voice shook and he turned around to leave and he said "no comment".
I was surprised by this because we've seen Taylor become a close friend to him this season and for him to be pushing her away so hard in this scene, like he couldn’t allow himself to have this breakdown in front of her because she could potentially use it against him. It proves to me that although they are becoming friends, Taylor has not yet earned his entire trust back from her season 2 betrayals (and from her season 4 rejections). (Remind us of anyone else we know? *cough* Eddie and Shannon)
Taylor wanted to drive him to Chris and he refused. She had to push him, had to tell him he couldn't see Chris like this, bloodied and shaken, for him to agree. And even still when he’s in the presence of Christopher, one half of Buck’s ultimate safe space, he fucking loses it. I have more thoughts on Buck and the significance of him crying with Christopher later. 
More under the cut:
Taylor is worrying about him the whole episode, but after this first moment he addresses her really nonchalantly. She's pissed at him for being reckless, she obviously is showing him she cares, and Buck is flirting. He's smiling and teasing Taylor and she's like??? I'm mad at you?? For endangering yourself?? Buck, who has been on the brink of collapse all episode, is putting on a brave face and pretending he's alright, even in front of Taylor.
And yeah it ends in a kiss but when it comes to the choice of chasing after Taylor (who’s essentially just shown that she does have feelings for Buck) or going to Eddie, Buck makes the choice to go to Eddie.
The very next scene we see Buck opening up to Eddie. Telling him that he broke down in front of Christopher, that he's sorry he failed Eddie and Chris like that, and that he wishes he had been shot instead of Eddie. Buck cracks open his heart and shows Eddie his insecurities, his darkest thoughts, his failures, his regrets. And how does Eddie respond?
He gives Buck the ultimate gift. But more on that later.
The next scene with Buck and Taylor involves Taylor coming back after she left after refusing to talk to Buck about her feelings for him.
Buck says "You came back. Wasn't sure that was going to happen." And that's because everyone who Buck has had a romantic relationship with thus far has left him, and he didn't think Taylor would be the one to break the cycle. Already she's fallen in line with everyone else having left the first time. 
(Speculation: This is why I think Buck will be the one to end their relationship next season, or it will be implied that’s he the one who ended it.)
And again, how does Buck conduct himself in this scene? His face is light, he's laughing. And although he admits that "he spent a long time feeling like he wasn't enough" and although he attempts to be vulnerable here, this scene is still all about whether TAYLOR wants him. Whether she chooses to be with him. And even though Taylor says she does....she hasn't (yet) done anything to prove it. And I doubt in Buck's heart of hearts that he truly believes her.
Now, we get to Buck and Eddie's last and most powerful scene together. Because Eddie doesn't just say it. He proves it with his actions. Actions he made a whole ass year ago. And he decides to tell Buck now when he didn’t tell Buck then, because he saw this whole episode how Buck was consistently devaluing himself and his life. Buck thinks he’s expendable, thinks he’s a burden, thinks he doesn’t matter, thinks no one wants him (even AFTER the bucktaylor moment, mind you). And Eddie tells him to his face: “YOU’RE WRONG.”
By making Buck Christopher’s legal guardian should anything happen to Eddie, Eddie has not only proven how much he trusts Buck, but he has told him you’re essential, you matter, you’re a gift, and we want you in our lives no matter what.
Eddie has seen Buck at his worst. He’s seen Buck being petulant and childish and territorial, he’s seen Buck being reckless and diving into danger head first, he’s seen Buck being kinda dumb sometimes, he’s seen Buck after (to Buck) he lost Eddie’s son in a tsunami, seen Buck furious at his parents, and seen Buck feeling like all he was good for is “spare parts”.  Eddie loved and trusted him through nearly losing Christopher, through the lawsuit, through the street-fighting, through nearly dying underground, through nearly dying on the street after getting shot. And Eddie still chose Buck through all of it. Each and every time. Still said, you are who I want for my son (and as it’s heavily implied: for himself).
And you can see it in Buck’s face in that last frame. When Eddie says it, Buck believes it. 
So although the two bucktaylor kisses may feel like a loss to some, I think the whole of bucktaylor’s scenes in this episode just show such a stark contrast to the strength that is Buck’s relationship with Eddie. And I think that next season if Bucktaylor becomes a full on relationship, it will not last, and I still think we’re headed towards Buddie endgame. 
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fruitydiaz-archived · 2 years
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safe (with you)
s5 speculation based on the new bts because idk how to be normal about this
3,049 words
AO3 link
By the time they pull into Eddie’s driveway Buck’s hands still haven’t stopped shaking.
He vividly remembers that day he spent driving around Los Angeles with Abby, searching for her mom, the day they saved the little girl in the pool. He remembers the way he lined his hand up with hers and told her that the first couple of weeks on the job he couldn’t keep his hands from shaking with the adrenaline. But Abby was good at compartmentalizing; her hands never shook.
Buck still hasn’t learned how to do that with the people he cares about. He’s beginning to think he never will.
Eddie had been held hostage for under two hours and made it out unscathed, and yet Buck couldn’t get his fucking hands to stop shaking. He felt like a wire with the coating stripped off, ripped down the middle, frayed open, ready to spark and catch fire at any moment. But he’d been feeling like that a lot lately if he was being honest. Not that anyone asked.
And he didn’t expect anyone to because everyone else had their own problems and it was his job at the moment to just pull his shoulders back and keep it together. That was all he was supposed to do. He could do that.
“Uh, let me get your bag,” Buck mumbles as Eddie opens his side door to climb out. He switches the engine off and jumps out before he can see the glare Eddie shoots in his direction.
He still feels it anyway.
“I can get my own bag,” Eddie says, his tone flat. He feels too tired to argue but there’s an energy vibrating under his skin that he hasn’t been able to shake since they pulled up to the scene and he found himself staring down the barrel of someone else’s gun. It’s making him irritable and jumpy and all he wants to do is climb into bed and forget.
Buck doesn’t even grace him with a response, pulling both of their bags out of the back seat and slinging them over his shoulders, glancing once at Eddie before marching towards the front door.
“Nothing even happened to me, Buck,” Eddie calls after him, following on his heels. “I’m fine.”
Buck still doesn’t say anything as he pulls out his ring of keys and unlocks the front door. He slips off his shoes in the entryway and drops both of their bags by the couch. Eddie follows him into the kitchen.
“Buck - Buck, come on man you don’t have to take care of me I’m-“
“Stop telling me that you’re fine,” Buck growls suddenly, spinning around to face Eddie. “I am sick and tired of hearing it. You got shot, Eddie, okay? Five months ago you got shot and you started having panic attacks and you hid it from me.”
Eddie blinks at Buck for a second, shocked, before his brain kicks back on. Being around Buck is one of the easiest things for Eddie to do, but the moment Buck starts to care too much, when he starts to push - either with wide eyes full of nothing but love and care that make him want to crawl into himself and never come back out - or like this, with venom and anger that coat the underlying fear and worry, it becomes hard.
He defaults to anger. He wishes it wasn’t so easy but it’s the one thing he’s been prepared to do his whole life; fight.
“I wasn’t hiding it from you. I was managing it on my own.”
“You’re my partner.”
“Yeah, and it wasn’t about work,” Eddie stresses, feeling antsy. He turns away from Buck and takes a couple of steps around the corner. He needs to put some space between them. “It was personal, okay? And I dealt with it.”
“Right,” Buck said, voice dripping with the kind of bitterness that Eddie can feel creeping onto his own tongue. “Because you don’t panic anymore, right?”
Eddie’s eyes flick down. The familiar sensation of bile laced with the accusation of liar rises in his throat and he struggles to swallow it down. He still panics; he just didn’t think anyone noticed.
“I can handle it on my own,” Eddie says quietly.
“When are you going to realize that you don’t have to?” Buck pleads, leaning against the counter opposite Eddie. “When are you going to let me help you?”
“I don’t need help,” Eddie says, retreating back and looking anywhere but at Buck. God, he was just trapped at gunpoint for nearly two hours can he catch a fucking break? He feels like he can’t breathe.
“Eddie.”
“I’m fine.”
“Eddie, you got shot.” Buck is begging him to talk about it, screaming practically. And he’s been screaming for weeks, months, doing all but dropping to his knees in front of Eddie and begging him to open up and talk to him about it and Eddie gets it but ultimately. Ultimately.
Eddie wishes Buck would shut up.
You got shot, remember?
He wishes he could make him shut up. He wishes he could make Buck leave his apartment and get back into his jeep and drive to his own place and never fucking talk about any of this again. Because of course he remembers getting shot. He remembers all of it.
He remembers standing out in the middle of the street thinking about hopping into the ambulance with Charlie right before a bullet ripped through his one good shoulder. That’s four times now. He remembers hitting the hard cement and feeling the blood pool under his body, remembers the familiar sickly feeling that comes with the realization that you’re losing too much blood, before you start to lose your grip on the world around you. He remembers staring across the pavement at Buck and thinking it would be okay, because Buck was okay.
He remembers waking up in the hospital, drugged up and confused and searching for blue eyes and a blood-splattered face. He remembers waking up to Ana smiling down at him with watery eyes and he remembers the way she barely concealed her disappointment when he immediately asked for Buck - but he was passed caring at that point. He remembers the day he had to wait, slipping in and out of consciousness, Ana making occasional small talk, until he was finally cleared for more visitors, and Buck came rushing into the room like a vision of something holy, his face clean, his smile bright.
He remembers the moment Buck said he wished he had gotten shot instead and when Eddie slipped back into another drug-induced sleep the only words on his mind were no, not you. Never you.
He remembers sitting on the edge of the hospital bed with Buck, the distance between them too much and not enough at the same time. He remembers struggling to find the right words, fumbling to find his footing, feeling stripped bare as he told Buck that he loved him. But the words came out you act like you’re expendable, but you’re wrong instead.
He remembers never feeling so cracked open and vulnerable in his entire life and it was terrifying. So he did what he does best and he retreated into the shadows and licked his wounds in private and put himself back together as best he could so that the next time someone saw him they didn’t look at him as if he were about to break.
And maybe it was a shit job and he still felt like he was barely held together by string most days but he was doing fine. He was back at work and Christopher was still happy even without Ana around and he was making it work.
So he didn’t give a damn if Buck thought he wasn’t doing enough. He didn’t want to relive the shooting again, he had moved on. He was fine.
He was fine.
Or at least, he was fine up until 7 hours ago when they got a call to an office building that turned into a goddamn hostage situation and Eddie spent the better part of an hour with a gun to his head.
He was fine.
He was fine.
“Eddie, Eddie,” Buck’s voice is loud and sudden in his ear and Eddie startles, staring up at him. He blinks a couple of times before he realizes that he’s on the floor and that Buck’s kneeling over him.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Buck’s saying over and over again. “I shouldn’t have pushed you, fuck, I’m sorry.”
Fuck. Another panic attack.
Maybe he can’t pretend that he’s fine anymore.
“Buck,” Eddie says. Buck’s eyes fly to his and Eddie feels the bile rise again when he realizes Buck is crying.
This isn’t the first time tonight that Buck has cried. Over him.
“I’m so sorry, Eds,” Buck says again, his voice worn, and Eddie remembers him screaming. For him. “I just almost lost you again and I’m so fucking sick of it. I can’t keep doing this.”
“I’m sorry,” Eddie says because he doesn’t know what else to say.
Buck stares at him for a second, eyes wild, before he squeezes them shut and stretches his legs out in front of him, settling down on the floor across from Eddie.
It’s dark in Eddie’s apartment, the only light spilling in from the entryway, cloaking the two of them in warm dim light.
Eddie always found it easier being honest in the dark.
“I’m scared too,” He admits quietly. Buck’s eyes look too blue in the dark.
“I know. I’m sorry I’ve been so pushy. I just…I never wanted to make what happened about me…but I can see you struggling and it’s like - the only thing I know how to do is push. I can see it eating away at you.”
“I want to forget it ever happened,” Eddie says quickly, honestly.
Buck licks his lips. Nervous. “I get that. But…ignoring it doesn’t mean it never happened, you know?”
“It just…feels easier.”
“It’s killing you, Eddie.”
I was never meant to live this long anyway, is on the tip of Eddie’s tongue - but that’s too dark. Too much. Too honest. He shoves it back down.
One day something’s going to take him. Maybe it’ll be a bullet, maybe it won’t. Maybe it’ll be the crushing guilt he’s carried ever since he was a kid, too young to learn what that kind of guilt felt like.
“At least Chris will be taken care of if it does,” He says before he can stop himself, before he can remind himself that that’s something he shouldn’t say out loud. The pained look on Buck’s face feels like a slap in the face.
“What about you?” Buck grinds out, voice still hoarse. “Who the fuck is gonna take care of you - now?”
Eddie shrugs, “I can take care of myself.”
“Bullshit,” Buck snaps. “Full offense but I’ve seen the way you care for yourself.”
“It’s what I do, Buck,” Eddie says, leaning his head back against the cabinets and squeezing his eyes shut. “It’s - I can handle myself. I can’t…do this to anyone else. It was too much for Shannon - hell, even as a kid I was too much for my parents. I can’t.”
“Let me take care of you,” Buck says quickly and earnestly and the words shoot straight through Eddie’s heart. He couldn’t.
“No,” Eddie starts, sitting up straighter.
“Eddie, I can’t lose you,” Buck says with enough conviction to shut Eddie up for a second.
Because some part of Eddie has always been aware of the lengths to which Buck would crawl through fire and rain for him - because that’s who Buck is. Buck is the guy who puts everyone else before him, who will always put his life on the line first. Not because he wants to be the hero - but because he never thinks his own life is important enough to stop and consider the consequences.
Or at least, that’s what Eddie thought. But Eddie’s seen him hesitate more lately. He’s seen him pull back, actually listen to Bobby. And Eddie thought it was the will that was holding him back. And that was almost enough to soothe the constant ache in his chest.
But then Eddie got taken hostage. And it was like they were on that street again. And Eddie watched the fear strike Buck like a bolt of lightning, lighting him up from head to toe, nervous electricity in his veins. He saw the raw determination in his eyes, the devotion and instinct at war with responsibility and promise.
For a second, among the buzz at the base of his skull and the shrill ambiance of police cars, swat, and the ambulance, it hit Eddie. It wasn’t Buck being Buck. It was Eddie. It was Eddie that turned off every switch in Buck’s brain but his inherent instincts. It was Eddie in danger that broke him.
Eddie had never seen it before. And he’s been trying his damned best to shove it in the box labeled DO NOT TOUCH along with all of the other shit he’s been ignoring for the last five months.
It seems like it’s all coming out tonight.
Buck continues, “I don’t. I don’t want to do this without you. I can’t. Five months ago you sat with me in the hospital and - everyone always tells me that I’m reckless, you know? Or that I’m dumb or that I don’t think or that I want to be some hero. But you…you didn’t say any of that. And - and you made me feel like I was important. Like my life…was important. Is important. And I needed that, Eddie. So bad.
“Let me do the same thing for you,” Buck’s on the edge of begging again. “What do I have to do for you to realize that you’re important? That I need you? Because I do. God, Eddie, I need you…”
Eddie stares at him, wide-eyed and frozen in place. He’s never been loved like this before, has he?
Because that’s what this is. There’s no denying it anymore. That’s what Buck and Eddie do. They love each other. With some sort of deep-running unbreakable devotion that wraps around them constantly and pulls them closer and closer together.
That’s what Eddie’s been fighting all these months. The closeness.
Because it was easy before - to keep getting closer to Buck because it was safe, it meant they cared about each other, it meant that Buck would do his best to get Eddie home to his son and if all else failed Chris would have someone who loved him, who would look after him. That was good. That was safe.
But when the shooting happened and I have your back turned into I can’t live without you and Eddie realized that what he thought was a contingency plan that he had been slowly and methodically setting up was actually a living breathing family that they’d built - and all of a sudden the only way he ever wanted to live his life was with Buck and Christopher safely by his side - it wasn’t safe anymore. It was dangerous.
Eddie had been fighting so hard to keep Buck at arm's length so he could protect this system that he had come to rely on. Because now when he looked at Buck all he could see was the love and devotion reflecting back at Eddie. And that was terrifying.
Because Eddie had opened himself up to being loved before. And that ended in years of separation, divorce, and ultimately Shannon’s death. Maybe Eddie didn’t believe in signs - or maybe he just wanted to keep pretending the signs weren’t there. Because he was fairly certain that if the universe did send signs then Shannon’s death was the ultimate sign of them all, a symbol of what Eddie did to people.
He didn’t want to let Buck love him because he didn’t want to risk losing Buck.
But he is risking losing Buck the more he pushes him away…he’s risking breaking Buck. And ultimately he’s risking breaking himself. Because he can’t do this without Buck either.
“I need you too,” Eddie says, his voice barely a whisper. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to - I’m sorry. I’m just - I’m scared, Buck. I’m so scared.”
He’s crying. It’s like a dam broke loose with the quiet admittance and now it’s all coming out. He’s scared. He’s frightened. He’s terrified. He’s in love.
Buck’s crowding into his space, shoving himself up onto his knees between Eddie’s legs and crushing their bodies together, his long arms wrapping around Eddie and pulling him into his chest, tucking his head under Buck’s chin until he feels safe, protected, in Buck’s arms.
“I’ve got you,” Buck whispers into Eddie’s hair. Just a couple of hours ago they were in this same position, on the grass outside the office building, just after Eddie was released and SWAT rolled in. Eddie thinks that the safest place on earth might be right here in Buck’s arms.
“I can’t lose you either,” Eddie croaks, hands clawing at Buck’s back. “I can’t.”
“You won’t,” Buck says with the stubborn confidence that’s inherent to Buck. And Eddie believes him, he does. “Whatever you need, I’ve got you, okay?”
“I need you.”
“You’ve got me. You always have, Eddie,” Buck whispers, pressing a kiss to the top of Eddie’s head.
I love you is what he wants to say. He wants to say it every day; when Buck walks into the locker room and greets Eddie with a private smile like it’s not 6 am and he’d rather be anywhere else, when he bumps Eddie’s shoulder as they walk to the truck, when he pulls his helmet off after a tough call and holds eye contact with Eddie just long enough to communicate are you good?
Maybe he can’t say it just yet.
Maybe this isn’t the right time or place.
But he thinks Buck knows. And he thinks - no he knows, Buck feels the same.
Maybe one day they’ll get there.
But tonight it’s enough to just hold each other, to feel the solid, warm reminder that they’re alive.
It’s enough, for now, to just be together.
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buckleyblueyes · 3 years
Note
ahh that's amazing! thank you in advance. I got this idea into my head: what if there is this one time they're all on a call, and maybe it's something that hits a little too close to home for Buck, maybe it's playing on his fears and insecurities, but the moment Buck sees what they're dealing with he gets SCARED, and freezes, and subconsciously grabs Eddie's hand, because Eddie makes him feel safe. He is his best friend (who he's in love with, ofc) after all. Eddie is well. Surprised. Very much.
Anon! Thank you so much for your patience with this one! I know it's been ages since you sent it in. I hope it's worth the wait and that I did justice to your prompt! (CW: drowning)
Eddie feels Buck tense up beside him as soon as Bobby tells them where they're going: Splash Zone Water Park. They have calls to pools fairly often, and Buck always gets a little bit tense going into it, no matter how long it’s been since the tsunami. Eddie presses his knee against Buck’s in the truck, offering a silent comfort to his friend. Buck seems to push down his fears by the time they pull up to the scene, forcing himself to shift into Firefighter Buckley mode as they make their way through the park. Eddie lets himself be relieved, until they arrive in front of the wave pool.
Of course it’s the goddamn wave pool. Even worse, there’s a nine year old boy laid out on the stone patio next to the pool, dripping wet, brown hair plastered to his forehead. He’s unconscious, bleeding from the side of his head, and his chest isn't rising and falling like it should be. Buck freezes immediately at the sight, reaching out for Eddie with his right hand, and wrapping his fingers around Eddie’s left wrist. It takes Eddie a moment to realize that Buck is feeling for his pulse, grounding himself.
Eddie does his best to steady his breathing and heart rate once he realizes what Buck is doing. The sight in front of them is upsetting to him, of course it is, but he knows it’s worse for Buck. He’s not the one who walked around for hours not knowing if Christopher was dead or alive. He’s not the one who almost died himself (at least, not that day.) “It’s okay,” he murmurs quietly, so only Buck can hear. “I’m here, I’m alive. That’s not Christopher.” It’s purely a medical call at this point, so he makes no attempt to move away from Buck as Hen and Chimney begin administering CPR to the boy. His mother is crying, wailing, begging them to save him. His lips are turning blue. Buck’s grip on Eddie’s wrist is like a vice.
“We got a pulse!” Hen finally calls out.
Buck’s grip doesn’t loosen, but Eddie does hear him let out of a heavy breath. He twists his hand out of Buck’s grip just enough that he can slide his arm up, so Buck is no longer holding his wrist, but is holding his hand. He gives Buck’s hand a firm squeeze and finally hazards a glance up at the man in question. Buck is staring at their intertwined hands now, confused. At least, Eddie decides, he’s distracted from the drowning boy. He runs his thumb along the back of Buck’s hand, in what he hopes is a comforting gesture.
He knows they’re crossing some kind of line here, that hand holding in the middle of an emergency scene (even one where their presence turned out not to be strictly necessary) is not something that he’ll be able to brush off as strictly platonic. It doesn’t scare him like it used to, though. Maybe it’s because he watched Buck date Taylor, so he knows how much worse it would be to not have Buck, or maybe it’s all the therapy he’s been in since the shooting. Either way, Eddie’s not afraid anymore. He and Buck have been on the edge of something--or maybe everything--for months, so if holding Buck’s hand will help ground him, keep his mind from thrusting him back in time, then it’s a risk Eddie is willing to take.
Hen and Chimney are loading the boy into the ambulance--he is breathing again, still unconscious and probably severely concussed, but alive--when Bobby finally makes his way over to them. He takes in the haunted look in Buck’s eyes, and the fact that their hands are still tightly clasped together, and frowns.
“You boys alright?” He asks, but he’s looking at Buck.
Buck nods slowly. “I--Yeah. Just...Brought up some bad memories.”
“This was a rough one,” Bobby agrees. “I’m gonna take us off rotation for a while when we get back to the station.”
“Thanks, Cap,” Eddie says. Buck doesn’t say anything.
Bobby smiles in that warm, fatherly way of his, looking between them. “Take care of each other.”
As if there’s any universe where they wouldn’t.
Eddie doesn’t let go of Buck’s hand until they get back to the station, and only because he needs two hands to cook.
“I’m not hungry,” Buck says, still hovering in Eddie’s space.
“You were about to eat before the call came in,” Eddie insists gently. “You need to eat.”
“And you’re gonna cook for me?” Buck shakes his head. “I think I’ll take my chances with starvation.”
Eddie rolls his eyes, pulling out a griddle and a clean spatula. “I think I can handle grilled cheese, Buck.”
Buck’s mouth opens and closes in surprise. “Grilled cheese?”
“Maddie may have mentioned making it for you a lot growing up.” Eddie flushes slightly at having to admit he’s talked to Maddie about Buck. “I thought it would be comforting.”
Buck stares at him, eyes wide and mouth turning up into a tentative smile. “Yeah, it is.”
“Good,” Eddie smiles back. “Now, go sit down.”
Eddie bustles about the kitchen, pulling out the good buttermilk bread that Chimney always buys instead of the whole wheat bread that Bobby puts on the list, the pre-sliced cheddar cheese, and the butter. “After we eat, how about we video call Christopher?” It’s late in the afternoon, he’ll be home from school by now.
Buck lets out a long exhale. “Yes, please.”
Eddie flips the bread slices on the griddle and places the cheese slices on the toasted side. “Great.”
“I--” Buck starts. “I didn’t know how to ask.”
Eddie looks up from the sandwiches. “How to ask for what?”
“To talk to Christopher,” Buck draws patterns on the tabletop with his index finger. “I know I’m not--He’s not mine.”
Eddie doesn’t say anything at first, just plates up the sandwiches, brings them over to the table, and sits down next to Buck, who takes a small, tentative bite.
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“What?”
“You said Christopher isn’t yours,” Eddie picks up his sandwich, but doesn’t bite into it. “I don’t think that’s true.”
Buck is staring at him again, confused.
“Look, I don’t know what we are anymore, Buck,” Eddie admits. “Things are different between us now, and I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know that you love Christopher, and that he loves you just as much. If that doesn’t give you a right to call him, to reassure yourself that he’s okay, then I don’t know what does.”
“I…” Buck’s eyes fill with tears.
"It's okay, Buck." Eddie reaches over to wipe Buck's tears with his thumb. “Just eat your grilled cheese."
Buck does as he’s told, making it halfway through the sandwich in three bites. “You know, there’s no law that says we have to wait until we finish eating to call Christopher.”
Eddie raises a skeptical eyebrow, looking up from his own half-eaten lunch. “Will you actually finish eating if we call now?”
“Absolutely.” Buck takes a big bite to prove his point. “See?” He says, through a mouthful of food. Something so childish shouldn’t be so endearing, and yet, somehow it is.
Helpless, Eddie pulls out his phone. Carla answers on the second ring. “You better have a good reason for interrupting math homework.”
“I do.” Eddie assures her. “Can you put Chris on?”
Carla gives him a look, but does as he asks. Christopher is grinning--probably excited to have his math homework interrupted “Hi, Dad!”
“Hey, kid.” Eddie can’t help but return his son’s smile. “How’s the math homework going?”
Christopher’s smile falters slightly. “Oh, it’s good.”
Somehow Eddie doesn’t totally believe that, but it’s not important now. “Listen, I’ve got somebody here who wants to say ‘hi’, is that okay?”
The boy’s smile comes back even wider than before. “Is it Buck?”
“Yeah,” Buck says, loud enough that the phone can catch it. “It’s me.”
“Hand the phone to Buck, Dad!” Christopher is bouncing with excitement. “Hand the phone to Buck!”
He does, scooching his chair closer so he can still see the screen himself, and before Buck can even greet Christopher, the kid is launching into a monologue.
“Buck! Dr. Lassiter assigned us a big, semester-long project for science class, can you pleeeaaase help me with it? I want to build a model of the solar system, but it has to be totally accurate.”
The tension Buck's body has been holding onto since the phrase “water park” fell from Bobby’s lips is finally starting to fade.
“Absolutely. Do we want it to move?”
Christopher’s eyes widen on screen. “Yes!”
Buck laughs. “Well then, we’ve got our work cut out for us.”
Eddie smiles softly, as Buck and Christopher begin planning their project. He knows he must look like a lovesick fool, but to be fair, that’s what he is. He rests one hand over the crook of Buck’s elbow, and doesn’t miss the pink that appears across his cheeks.
“Alright, you three,” that’s Carla’s voice, “Somebody still has math homework to finish, and I’m sure you boys will have to get back to work soon.”
Eddie sighs. Carla is right, unfortunately. But Buck looks lighter than he has all day. “We better do what Carla says.”
“Will you come over after work?” Christopher asks. They won't get off until after Christopher will already be at school, so Buck will probably go to his loft after work. But Eddie doesn’t doubt now that Christopher has asked, Buck will manage to make it over to their house by the time Christopher is home from school. He wonders if it's too soon to ask Buck to sleep in his bed, instead of going to his loft at all. It's yet another line to cross, but at this point Eddie's lost track of all the lines they've crossed.
“You bet,” is Buck’s answer. “Now get back to your math!”
“Okay, dad,” Christopher says, rolling his eyes, voice dripping with sarcasm. It’s meant to be a joke at Buck’s expense, but Eddie can see the breath catching in Buck’s throat all the same, so he pulls the phone from his hand and takes over.
“Good-bye, Christopher! We love you!”
“Bye Dad! Bye Buck! I love you guys, too.”
Buck finds his voice again. “Bye Superman!”
“So,” Eddie says, putting the phone down. “Do you feel better now?”
“Eddie…” Buck hesitates, dropping his hand down so it rests over Eddie’s. His skin is warm and rough and unlike earlier Eddie can actually enjoy the feeling. “Thank you.” He’s thanking Eddie for more than just the grilled cheese and the phone call, and Eddie knows it.
His answer is simple. He turns his hand over, and interlocks their fingers. “Always, Buck.”
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tripleaxeldiaz · 3 years
Text
never fallen from quite this high
read on ao3
There’s a knock at the door, but Eddie doesn’t hear it, focused instead on the pinks and oranges of the sunset coming through the window and trying to stop his mind from reeling like it’s been for the past week.
Because a week ago, when he broke up with Ana, she looked him in the eye and said, “I hope he makes you happy,” and he didn’t have to ask who she was talking about.
He knew. And that scared him more than any war zone or tsunami or lungful of mud ever could.
Another knock, one Eddie registers, but he still doesn’t move. Now he’s replaying the last conversation he had with the person on the other side of the door — when Buck had innocently, nonchalantly asked why he had broken up with “his perfect teacher” and his response, without a minute to let himself think, was “because of you”. The room became a vacuum, completely airless as they stared at each other, Buck slack-jawed and Eddie wide-eyed. He could have done a thousand things — explained himself, laughed it off, denied denied denied, anything.
Instead, he ran away, peeling out of the parking lot to put as much distance between Buck and his dumb ass as possible, drowning in the shame he brought on himself.
He should’ve known Buck would follow him anyway.
A third knock, a little louder and more deliberate, and Eddie’s fingers twitch, itching to let Buck in like his heart has been begging for for days — probably years, actually — only to be beaten into submission by his thoughts and reminders that Buck is good and he is not. That no matter how deep his feelings for Buck may be (which, as it turns out, are deep enough to brand themselves on bone), he refuses to taint him, will not spread whatever bad energy even his parents can see, not after watching Buck rebuild himself brick by beautiful brick until he loved himself half as much as Eddie does.
There’s scraping and jingling as the door is unlocked, and Eddie braces himself for whatever conversation is about to unfold. Buck walks into the room, curls loose from his post-shift shower, expression unreadable in a way that Eddie hasn’t seen in a while, not since he’d memorized every tick and twitch Buck makes. The last remaining rays of sunshine light him up as he comes to a stop in front of Eddie, wrapping him in an ethereal glow, soft and almost angelic, even with his arms crossed and his walls clearly up.
It’s a little unfair, Eddie thinks, that Buck looks this gorgeous, this inviting, when he can’t even appreciate it fully.
They stare at each other, a silent game of chicken while they each wait for the other to crack. Eddie won’t break, he can’t, because if Buck walks out of his life right now because he couldn’t keep his feelings in check, he knows there’s no way he’ll be able to put himself back together. Luckily, Buck moves first, sighing through his nose and sitting down on the coffee table across from Eddie.
“So,” he starts, “because of me, huh?”
The bluntness is enough to kickstart Eddie’s self-preservation instincts. “Let’s just forget it, Buck.”
“No, no way.” Buck scoots forward, pressing his knees to Eddie’s, preventing any kind of escape. “I don’t want to forget it or ignore it or pretend it never happened. But I would like an explanation.” 
The words get stuck in Eddie’s throat, undecided on whether they’re going to come out or retreat back in and hide themselves away again. He looks away and Buck follows, staying in his line of vision, looking smaller and sadder as the silence drags out.
He breaks it, finally, along with Eddie’s heart. “Was it something I did?”
Eddie sighs. “No, it’s not—”
“Because I did like her. She made you happy, so of course I liked her—”
“Buck—”
“And I didn’t mean to keep blowing off hanging out with you guys, it’s just— you and me and her— I was worried about it being weird and I know I shouldn’t have been but—”                                               
“Buck.” Eddie grabs his hands where they’re hanging between his legs, tries not to think about how Buck squeezes back even tighter instead of pulling away. “You didn’t do anything.”
“But you said—”
“I know.” He hadn’t even noticed threading their fingers together, but they’re here now and neither of them are moving, so he just squeezes again and takes a deep breath. “Ana was great, and I liked her a lot, but she didn’t...fit.” Because the hole Eddie thought he needed her to fill was already taken up, he just hadn’t let himself realize it. And he liked Ana — she was nice, pretty, safe, the epitome of the girl he should want, but she didn’t set his skin on fire with a brush of her fingers, didn’t flip his heart with an easy smile, didn’t make him ache for her.
She was perfect, but she wasn’t Buck.
“She didn’t fit, but someone else does?” Buck asks, like he hasn’t figured it out already, like Eddie hadn’t made it so blatantly obvious you could see it from space.
He nods anyway, confirming it. For Buck and for himself. “Yeah. You do. You fit.”
Buck’s eyes widen just a little, his face still unreadable but edging towards something like joy, only to crumble again as he searches Eddie’s face. “But that’s...bad? You don’t want me to fit.”
“No, Buck, I—” I need you to fit so bad I can’t breathe. “I want you to be happy.” More than I want myself to be happy. “I just don’t know if I can make you as happy as you deserve to be.”
Buck’s reaction is instant, without hesitation, like he knew what Eddie was going to say and already had an answer. He disentangles their hands and instead of leaving, like Eddie feared, he brings them up to either side of Eddie’s neck, thumbs resting on his jaw and holds him still so he can’t look anywhere but at Buck. 
He doesn’t want to look anywhere else. It should be scary, but it’s not. It’s liberating.
“I don’t know if you know this,” Buck starts, voice low and just for Eddie, keeping secrets from the shadows that have crept into the room, “but I’m an expert at leaving when the going gets tough. Every relationship I’ve ever been in — even Abby — had me fighting some part of myself that wanted to run away as soon as things got a little hard.” He takes a breath and his eyes blaze brighter, full of conviction and absolutely mesmerizing. “I never had to fight myself for you. You and Chris fit for me too, and I am happy, happier than I ever thought I would be, because of you.” 
Eddie swallows, lost in the determined, deep blue that is so uniquely Buck, and feels his walls start to fall apart.
“I’m not gonna be good at this,” he whispers — confesses — in the stillness of dusk.
“Neither will I. We’ll learn together.”
“What if I stop making you happy?”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
Eddie opens his mouth to argue again, to keep up the facade of the fortress he built around himself that he knows Buck has broken through, but something stops him. Some part of him that’s long been buried, something he thought he lost in the sands of Afghanistan, emerges from its hiding place and whispers Take it. Take him. He loves you. Let yourself be loved.
And it’s easier, then, to lean in instead of fight against. His hands frame Buck’s face, mirroring each other, and he hardly has to pull before they’re meeting in the middle. Buck’s lips are perfect, softer than he imagined but still firm and getting everything he wants, and he tastes like mint and sunshine and home. Eddie’s already trying to figure out how he can make sure he kisses Buck like this every day for the rest of his life.
Judging by the enthusiastic reciprocation and small, happy sounds he keeps drinking up, Buck’s on the same page.
They only break apart because they have to breathe, but they don’t go far, foreheads resting together, noses brushing. And as happy as he is, Eddie’s still a little scared — scared that this is all temporary, that it won’t work out, that he’ll lose one of the most important people in his life when he inevitably makes the wrong decision or does the wrong thing.
But then he hears it again, the long forgotten voice, saying He loves you. He won’t let you go and he won’t let you forget. 
The last reservations Eddie has break away, and they fall back in, slotting together like puzzle pieces, drenched in moonlight and peace and hope.
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extasiswings · 3 years
Text
Get in, clowns.  We’re going to the circus.  On ao3.
Eddie’s palms are sweaty.
It’s warm outside, the sun beating down on the park bench where he’s sitting, but it’s the nerves that have his hands clammy as he turns his water bottle over between them.  
When Buck had walked in the house earlier, he’d taken one look at Eddie and rolled his eyes before shoving him back into his bedroom.
“You can’t wear that,” Buck said, rifling through Eddie’s dresser.  He emerged with Eddie’s tightest pair of jeans and shoved them at his chest before turning to the drawers with shirts.
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Eddie asked, baffled as he looked down at himself and then, skeptically, at the jeans.
“You look like a dad.”  Buck’s voice went muffled for a moment before he made a noise of victory and pulled out a deep red, long-sleeved shirt that Eddie’s pretty sure is at least a size too small. 
“Kind of hard not to.  Since I am one and all.  That’s not exactly a secret.”
“Yeah, but you can look like a hot dad who is making an effort instead of a regular dad going to the grocery store or something.  You’ll thank me later.”  
After Eddie had changed and walked out of the bathroom, Buck’s face shifted—Eddie could have sworn his eyes darkened, that his voice was rougher as he pronounced Eddie much better.
So Eddie knows he looks good.
But his palms are still sweaty.  He uncaps the water bottle and takes a sip more to have something to do than because he needs it.  And then he starts drumming his fingers against his thigh, needing something to occupy them, some way to move.  
He’s tempted to pull out his phone, to reread the latest texts from Bobby or even the shameless teasing in the group text that Buck started with his sisters—and boy, was that a mistake, putting the three of them in touch, because Eddie never in a million years would have told them he was going on a date if he hadn’t done it by accident because Buck’s direct messages happened to be right below the group—
He’s still not sure he should be, is the thing.  Dating.  He still feels like he can’t quite breathe right when he thinks too hard about it.  Can still play that last dinner with Shannon over on loop, from her asking for a divorce to the implication that really being with him again would be so terrible she would have to run for the hills and leave their child behind.
He didn’t exactly have great self-esteem to begin with.
Eddie wipes his palms on his jeans—he’s in the middle of debating whether it’s bad parenting to make up an emergency involving your kid to get out of a date, when—
“Eddie!  Hi,” Ana greets, walking up the path.  
The anxiety in his chest twists tighter as he gets up from the bench and waves.
“Hey.  You, uh—you look really nice,” he says, because it’s true and also the easiest thing he can remember from the last time he did this.  
Ana smiles.  “So do you.”
There’s a pause that lingers a little too long and then they both start trying to speak at once, cutting off abruptly when they realize.  Eddie rubs self-consciously at the back of his neck.
“Should we walk?” Ana offers, nodding down the path where it leads into the trees.
“Sure, yeah,” Eddie agrees.  
It’s actually not...bad.  She asks him about work and that’s a safe enough topic that he’s comfortable spending a few minutes telling her stories from the station.  She shares a little about the challenges of virtual teaching.  And then she asks about Chris, and, well, that’s an easy subject—Eddie could talk about Chris all day.  
He just finishes the story about the actual building of Christopher’s skateboard—which involved no small amount of comical trial and error on the part of two decidedly not Chris-sized grown men—when Ana gets a thoughtful look on her face and glances sideways at him.
“Can I ask you something personal?”  She asks.
Eddie rocks back on his heels and hooks his thumbs in his pockets.  “Sure.”
“How long has it been for you?”
Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up.  “Since...the last time I dated?”
Ana nods.
“Well…” He wets his lips to stall.  “The last person I dated was my wife.  And I’m not sure it was really dating in the same way after we were married so...I guess...eleven years give or take?”
He laughs and he can hear the edge of self-deprecation.  “That obvious I’m out of practice?”
“No,” Ana says.  “No, that wasn’t—it’s really not actually. Although it does explain some things.”
“Things?”
She bites her lip.  “Nothing bad,” she insists.  “Just—”
“Have you ever been on a date where the other person talked about their ex the whole time and it was kind of obvious they still had feelings for them and you couldn’t help wondering why they weren’t with the ex when they clearly wanted to be?”  She asks.
Eddie blinks, scrolling back through their conversation trying to think—he’s pretty sure he hasn’t mentioned Shannon except for the once.  And he’s not still—
“In high school, maybe?” He answers.  “But I’m not sure—”
“I was trying to figure out if you and Buck ever dated,” she clarifies, and Eddie stops in his tracks, his mind shorting out as he takes that in.
“I—what?”
They’re back at the parking lot anyway, and although they could take another loop around the park, Ana stops by the closest bench and smiles as she leans against it.
“Look, I like you, Eddie,” she says.  “And if I’m totally off base and you want to see me again, I will definitely pick up the phone.  But if I’m not?  I couldn’t not say something.”
“Buck’s my best friend,” Eddie replies.  His head is swimming but it surprisingly doesn’t feel bad.  More like he’s been handed the clue card for a puzzle he was trying to solve and while the pieces haven’t quite come together fully, they’re getting there.
“You talk about him like he’s your partner.  Like the three of you are a family.  And when you talk about him you look like…”  Ana shakes her head and laughs, but it’s not unkind.  Just soft and maybe a little longing.  “I would love for someone to look like that when they’re talking about me.  Thinking about me.  So, I thought you should know.  Just in case you didn’t.”
Another puzzle piece falls into place and Eddie sucks in a breath.
“I do like you,” he says.
“Yeah...but you’re in love with him.  Right?”  Eddie’s quiet and Ana nods.
“I’m gonna go,” she decides.  “This was nice, for the record.  Maybe we can do it again.  As friends next time.”
“Ana—” Eddie calls after her.  When she looks back over her shoulder though, he’s not sure what to say except, “...thank you.”
“Let me know how it works out?” She asks.  “I’m a little invested now.”
Eddie laughs and runs a hand through his hair.  “Yeah...sure.”  
He drives home in a daze, so much of the past two years—maybe even longer—suddenly thrown into new light.  Everything he’s been afraid of, everything that’s been holding him back—all of the baggage and insecurities that Shannon left behind, that have made him feel like he’s not good enough, like he can’t be a partner to anyone—
He never stopped and looked too hard at what he already had.  What he was already doing.
What he has.  What he is doing.   
With Buck.
In the stark glare of hindsight, it’s easy to see—he was still married when they met, was worn down and bruised and not looking for anything.  He needed a friend and Buck slipped in to fill that void and Eddie...put him in a box.  Put them in a box.  Carefully compartmentalizing every aspect of his life because it was easier that way, because it allowed him to sort through the tangled knots of expectation from any number of other sides, any number of other identities—husband, father, son.
There was no baggage attached to friend.  No forgive and forget and take your wife back because kids need their mothers or you’ll drag him down with you or I wasn’t enough.
There was just...Buck.  Present.  Supportive.  Caring about him.  Believing in him.   The real him—masks off, walls down, warts and all.   
The longer Eddie thinks, the clearer things become.  His mind flips through memories like a scrapbook—panic attacks and phone calls at two in the morning, nights on the couch playing video games with Christopher and the slower, lingering moments with just the two of them after they put him to bed, all those months sharing a bed in Buck’s apartment while he despaired over being away from his son and Buck reminded him he was a good dad—
How many of those nights had Eddie wanted to kiss him?  How many times had he felt that buzz under his skin, the whisper of it would be so easy, only to shove it down because it was too dangerous to deal with.  
And when he thinks now about the future, about having someone in his home, in his bed, in his life, when he pictures it, all he can see is Buck.
It feels right.
“I love him,” Eddie says out loud, tasting the words on his tongue, letting them linger.
I love him.
His pulse spikes with his anxiety, but it calms down as he sits with it.  Because he knows Buck’s not going to leave.  He trusts that.  Buck’s seen him at his worst and none of that has ever driven him away.  So maybe…
Eddie’s mind flicks back to earlier in the day, to the dark heat in Buck’s gaze as it dragged over him before he looked away.
...yeah.  They’ll be okay.
He’s home before he even really registers and takes a few slow breaths before he shuts off the truck and gets out.  When he steps through the door, it’s a strange feeling.  The space is familiar but not.  More...settled somehow.  Home.
Home.
Eddie closes the door behind him and follows the sound of running water to the kitchen.  He stops in the doorway, leaning against the frame, and spends a moment just watching Buck scrub potatoes in the sink until the other man glances up and notices him.
“Hey,” Buck greets.  “Chris is reading in his room, I’m just working on dinner.  How was the date?”
God, I love you, Eddie thinks, and nearly has to bite his tongue to keep it to himself.
Yeah.  It’s right.
He shrugs.  “It was fine.  Ana’s nice.”
“When’s the next date then?”  There’s an odd note in Buck’s voice that makes Eddie push off the frame and step closer. 
“There’s not going to be one,” he replies.  “Ana’s nice...but I don’t want to date her.”
Buck stops.  Shuts off the water and turns, leaning back against the sink.
“No?”  Buck’s brow furrows.  “It’s not—do you still feel like you’re not ready?”
“No, it’s not that,” Eddie replies.  “I do think I’m ready.  But with the right person.”
His heart is pounding in his chest, but it’s not fear.  More...anticipation.  
He swallows hard.
“Ana said something that made me realize that...I don’t want to start from scratch with some stranger.”
Eddie takes another step closer and Buck inhales sharply, emotions shifting across his face too quickly for Eddie to name them all.
“Eddie…”  Buck sounds hoarse, a little disbelieving.  He leans forward for a moment before shaking his head, clearing his throat.
“I can’t—I need you to be specific,” he says.  “Because I can’t make assumptions here, I can’t—”
Eddie kisses him.  Steps in far enough that Buck’s body presses flush against his, slides his hand around the back of Buck’s neck, and kisses him.  Buck makes a small noise and grips him right back, his hands curving around Eddie’s hips nearly tight enough to bruise in sharp contrast to the way Eddie’s mouth feathers against his, soft as anything.  
“Specific enough?”  Eddie breathes, staying close enough that their lips brush again.  Buck surges up and uses his grip on Eddie’s hips to turn them, pinning Eddie against the counter as he kisses him again in response.  Once, twice, three times, and Eddie shivers.  
He hasn’t been kissed in so long, hasn’t been touched with intention like this—he’d forgotten what it felt like.  His body floods with heat as Buck’s hands slip under his shirt, spreading wide over his rib cage, and he parts his lips eagerly for Buck’s tongue.
Down the hall, a door closes, and Buck jumps back, Eddie slumping against the counter to keep himself upright.  Buck is flushed and panting and Eddie’s pretty sure he can’t look much better, too warm and electric, wanting, wanting, wanting—
Both of them catch their breath and watch the door, but Christopher doesn’t appear.  After a minute Eddie catches the faint sound of a toilet flushing and he looks back at Buck.  
And he laughs.  It bubbles up from his chest like champagne fizz, bright and warm and right, and apparently it’s contagious because Buck starts up as well, stepping in again and sliding his arms around Eddie’s waist, ducking his head to laugh breathlessly against Eddie’s neck.
When they calm down, Buck stays close, his lips feathering over Eddie’s pulse.  Eddie hums and closes his eyes as he tips his head back to give Buck better access.  
“I’m in love with you,” he says.  “In case that wasn’t clear.”
Buck’s lips curve up against Eddie’s skin.
“Well that’s convenient,” he replies.  “Since Chris was asking me earlier why you couldn’t just date me if you were going to date again.”
Eddie’s startled into another laugh.  “Really?”
“Really.”
Eddie grins and opens his eyes again.  “Hey Buck?”
“Yeah?”
“Go out with me?”
Buck snorts and pushes him out of the way so he can go back to the potatoes.  
“Help me finish getting dinner together and we’ll see.”  But the second Eddie turns away, Buck snags him by a belt loop and reels him back in for another kiss.
“Yes,” Buck says.  “Yes.”
And it’s right.           
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Here’s the thing about Buddie (why no other ship with these two can ever float)...they are constantly, and from pretty much the very beginning, fulfilling the one thing the other is desperately looking for. Hear me out:
Eddie’s story so far is about finding a partner. Shannon was ready and right there, but he wasn’t and by the time he is, and she’s back in his life she’s recognized that’s not what she wants. His own parents might have been able to shift his course if they’d been supportive but they were the opposite of that. Trying to convince him that he’s doing everything wrong and they’re the ones who deserve to look after his kid.
Ana is -- a cardboard cutout of a character -- but what little the show has given us has kept her removed from being any kind of support. There’s some dating (that revolves around math homework? Apparently? I guess this is a kind of support???) but we don’t actually see her interacting with Chris, we’re just told that she used to be a favourite teacher of his. Eddie gets shot and she sits in his hospital room. That’s it. She has one line, something like, ‘Any news yet doctor?’ and then is mute again, smiling beatifically at Buck when Eddie wakes up (and stepping aside, so as not to stand in between which, nice directorial choices there, nice metaphor), and then cheering at a welcome home party for Eddie. So...not much of a real partner there.
Then there’s Buck. Their initial friction ends with: ‘You can have my back any day’ and, ‘Or, you can have mine’. It’s humorous, but also that’s the thing that makes them more than teammates. Either one of them takes a risk, the other’s got them covered, this is common in the found family that is the 118 true, but the juxtaposition of Eddie and Buck, vs Chim and Hen reveals they’ve got a bit more invested in the other. ‘You wanna do a rope rescue?!” fine then, I’m gonna be the one holding your line. You wanna save your ex’s fiance from this unstable train car? I’m pissed at you, and you’re an idiot, but stop arguing with the Cap and just do it and I’m gonna be right here by the window when you get through’. ‘Oh, you’re having a mental breakdown working out some deep-seated issues trying to pull this metaphorical (but also very literal) weight off a victim while everything burns around you? I will be the first person on the line to help you lift’. ‘Hey, you’ve fallen down a well? I’m going to dig through the earth with my hands while the team tries to figure out if there’s a better way to save you’. ‘Oh, you got gunned down by a sniper in the middle of the street? Imma pull you under this firetruck to safety, hike you over my shoulder and then ride with you to the hospital, no big. Just stay with me’.
Buck sees Eddie struggling to look after Christopher and introduces him to Carla, who helps Eddie sort everything out, including Christopher’s school. Pretty sure if we compare all the scenes where Eddie’s talking about how he’s struggling (not many, I know) there’s more of him talking to Buck than there are of him talking to Bobby. He tells his therapist he doesn’t want his kid to be like him: constantly repressing and not talking about his feelings. In the same ep a few minutes later, there’s Buck going, “time to talk about FEELINGS”. Eddie needs a partner to go on a treasure hunt? Forget his cardboard girlfriend, his first choice is Buck. The same Buck who Christopher runs to when he wants a safe space that isn’t home. Who talks to Christopher after Eddie’s shot, and then is repeatedly shown taking care of Christopher throughout the ep. When Eddie wakes up, you know his first thought is Christopher and Ana’s right there. His girlfriend, Ana. Does he ask her how his kid is doing? Apparently not, he waits until Buck takes over to ask, and then have a video call. This was a choice. If they wanted to strengthen Eddie/Ana, this moment could easily have been given to her, it wasn’t.
Let’s talk about Eddie during the lawsuit arch. His grocery store meltdown and the grudge he holds when Buck returns to the 118: it’s the first time Buck wasn’t acting like his partner. The lawsuit, initiated by Buck, exposed Eddie and Christopher and the 118 (who Eddie needs as an extended family almost as much as Buck) to ‘a lot of eyes’ (judgement) and stress. ‘Your actions affect other people, that’s what it means to be part of a team’. It also prevented Eddie from reaching out to Buck because they can’t be in contact: ‘Do you know how much Christopher misses you? ... what if I needed to be bailed out of jail?’ What’s interesting is how quick Eddie is to trust Buck again. Given how long it took him to forgive Shannon, his actual wife who he admits he abandoned first, you’d think he’d have more of a problem with Buck. That there would be some residual friction even after they manage to patch things superficially. But no, 7 eps later they are so much back to trusting each other that Eddie puts Buck in his will. Why? Because Buck hears everything that Eddie says and meets it: ‘you’re right’ and ‘I’m sorry’ and whatever he needs to do he’s willing to earn that trust back. We never had that discussion between Eddie and Shannon, there was too much between them that they wouldn’t/couldn’t hear the other.
From the other side of it, Buck needs a family. He needs to feel that he has people who will stick with him come what may. For as much as he invests and tries to make this the 118, we know that there’s some work there still, mainly because of Bobby and Chimney. Bobby, who we see is periodically incapable of seeing Buck for Buck, and gets overprotective and overbearing. By putting him on light duties he’s taking the family away from Buck, which is why Buck’s response is so extreme. Chim because of the complication his relationship with Maddie offers, obscuring his ‘allegiances’ (as we see with the Buck Begins arch’), but this makes it hard for Buck to feel like he’s fully got them in his corner, there’s a ‘but’ inherent in their relationship. And he’ll always love Maddie, but he’s still working on relying on her because she abandoned him once, and finding out she kept such a big secret from him is a further complication. (not sh****** on these characters, btw, I love them, but it complicates the relationship from Buck’s perspective).
His girlfriends are no different. Abby, given what she’s been going through in her own life, is not ready to be there for yet another person, which is why I think she doubles down on peacing-out so hard on Buck -- she feels guilty but also it’s everything she does not want at this moment. She’s trying to find herself, she doesn’t want to be there for someone else. Ali isn’t comfortable with the dangers of his work, and Taylor is basically early Buck -- focused on herself and her job and her own needs. All that is great, but it’s not what Buck needs right now. Aside, but this is sort of what I see in what’s likely to be the inevitable Taylor/Buck relationship: Buck is going to be her Abby. I really hope we see him get to a place where he can end things for himself, because that would be a step forward for his character.
In contrast, there’s Eddie. Because he’s Eddie there’s no loud gestures, just constant and repeated demonstrations of support. I always thought it was interesting how they wrote that early ep where Eddie’s abuela is hurt. (not tinfoil hatting, I just thought it revealed something neat about his headspace). Because Eddie’s worried and Buck’s right behind him coming into the hospital. Eddie is introducing Buck to his family as his family: this is tia ... Peppa. Just a little thing that illuminates where Eddie’s head is at, and I wonder if the writers would have written him so wrapped-up in his family if it had been a different character with him?
There’s that little moment pre-tsunami where Bobby’s talking to the 118 about how they have to be there for Buck, and the camera shows Eddie frown to himself and then a few scenes later he’s demonstrating that he (1) clearly has a key to Buck’s place, (2) is planning to deal with Buck’s depression with a wrecking ball, aka, over-exposure to the literal ray of light that is Christopher Diaz. This always felt to me like Eddie going, ‘hey, I know what helped me deal with my depression and ptsd etc when I got back from Afghanistan, I bet it will help you too’.
The tsunami arch is Buck desperately trying to find Christopher, yes, but lets not forget it’s also Buck desperately trying to hide the fact that he lost Christopher from Eddie. It’s literally the worst thing he could do, and how can he tell Eddie because obviously the only result is his losing Eddie forever, too. But he does it. The writers give us this moment where Buck stands up and starts to explain. I love this, because of course it shifts things between them. After you’ve admitted the worst possible thing to someone, anything else becomes small, and more manageable. We see this in the way that Buck talks to Eddie after. The kitchen convo, he takes a breath and dives in: ‘if you can’t be honest with your therapist at least me honest with me’. He’s a lot more comfortable making himself vulnerable to Eddie, because he’s done this once already and what was Eddie’s reaction?
‘There’s no one I trust with my kid more.’ ‘A natural disaster happened, Buck.’ And in that same conversation, Eddie unknowingly gives Buck the words to express what he’s needed all this time, that he’s never gotten. ‘I love him enough to never stop trying’, so in S4 Buck’s able to say to his parents, ‘You gave up on us’, and when they ask what else they were supposed to do? ‘Love us anyway’.
We see multiple people trying to support Buck when he’s on light duty, trying to explain that he’s more than this job. But Buck wants to help people, he needs to feel useful in a more direct way than being a teacher, or a 911 operator etc help people. And he’s not suited to being a medic or a doctor, he’s got to throw his whole body at a problem, and despite their best intentions, trying to explain that he’s more than the job (very true) without saying other jobs that might satisfy that need can’t allay Buck’s fears. We never hear Eddie considering that Buck won’t come back, his position is always that Buck needs to trust his captain, and as a result we never see how he’d speak to Buck about not being a firefighter, he never doubts that Buck will be back. But we do get to see his reaction after Buck’s rescue in Buck Begins, which is solid and supportive, “I know”, rather than being angry at the risk that was taken.
Eddie’s made Buck a part of his family, as demonstrated by the video game nights they share with Christopher, how Buck is at home in Eddie’s house (’Uh, this is Eddie’s house so I’m not exactly a guest’), how he invites Buck to help chaperone his kid’s first sleepover, how apparently a playdate with Hen and her kid and Eddie and Christopher also includes Buck. How he confidently tells Buck, ‘We’re family’ when Buck’s over-identifying with Red and worrying about being left behind -- and he can be exactly that confident, apparently, because by this point he’s gone and made Buck Christopher’s legal guardian.
There’s not enough space in this series (short of creating another spinoff series and then doing a crossover) to write a female character who is so well developed and complex, and so inextricably woven into either character that she can believably compete with what Buck and Eddie are to each other. No other relationship will be able to compete, because the writing has been winding them around each other from the start.
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