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bleeedingheart · 4 months ago

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for the soft fic meme, 12 for buddie?

A little coda to "Invisible"—set decidedly before "Contagion!" 12. ‘you could say I’m fond of you.’ * Buck fucks it up after, like, a month. He knew he was gonna. It’s just that most of the time the only people he talks on the phone to are Maddie and his parents—like any self-respecting millennial, he texts everyone else. And when you say goodbye to your mom or your sister or your adorable tiny niece, you say something like “okay, bye now, love you.” It’s just habit, honestly. If he talked on the phone more often to more people, it wouldn’t happen at all. He’s talking on the phone a lot now. Eddie started it literally on the drive to El Paso—Buck was still standing on the street, his heart a miserable bruise in his chest, and then his phone chimed and Eddie was FaceTiming him. Buck opened it, all like, hey man, what’d you forget, but Eddie was just grinning at him from behind the wheel, eyes on the road and not the camera. Dude, Eddie said. I know it’s just drizzling, but you’re gonna get soaked if you don’t go inside. So Buck rolled his eyes and wiped the California rain off his face and went inside, and he slowly and inefficiently unpacked a box of silverware while Eddie complained about the price of gas and asked him about Pilot stations vs Loves vs Texacos, and Buck did his best impression of a normal person whose best friend was in the act of leaving him, even though his heart was pulsing in his throat like he’d swallowed one of those Looney Tune ticking time bombs, and surely that wasn’t normal at all.

Anyway, now they’re always on the phone. Eddie calls first, usually—Buck’s eased up on the restriction a bit, but at first he was determined not to be too clingy, so they waited on Eddie’s schedule, whether Eddie needed him, wanted him, or whatever—but it turns out Eddie needs him all the time. Wants him all the time. Wants to talk to him all the time. Whatever. Buck talks to Eddie while he shops for groceries, while he cooks dinner at the firehouse, while he’s cooling off after a run.

He gets access to all these aching pieces of Eddie’s life: a glimpse of the backseat of Eddie’s new car, little flash of Eddie’s local Albertsons, peeling wallpaper in Eddie’s new living room that looks nothing like the pictures. And he hears about conversations with Chris (so much better already,) and conversations with Eddie’s mom (bad, not that Buck can say so,) and Uber rides that went well and Uber rides that went bad, and recipes Eddie tried that went wrong, and recipes Eddie tried that went right, and whether there’s mold in the bathroom and whether Eddie needs to hire someone to put in new windows or whether he can do it himself, and—yeah. It’s almost normal, if Buck and Eddie normally lived their lives on FaceTime.

So Buck’s guard is down, which is why when the bell rings and Eddie’s mid-rant about airport security (loitering in the cell phone lot at the El Paso International Airport waiting for a ride to come in,) he fumbles his coffee cup and says “gotta go, okay, love you, buh-bye.”

He hangs up before he even hears himself, and then feels his ears heat up all the way down to the rig. That was so embarrassing. Like calling the teacher mom. Like calling Cap dad. Ugh. He’ll have to explain to Eddie that it’s just because of the Maddie-Jee-parents phone thing. Later.

But later, after the next three calls, when Eddie calls to complain about people coughing in the Uber without masks again, Buck somehow totally forgets to say anything. And then Eddie gets another ride, and he has to go, and Buck fucking. Does it again. “Be safe, love you, bye.” He hears Eddie’s surprised laugh before he fumbles to the hang-up button, and his stomach goes watery and weird.

It’s not that weird, is the thing! Obviously he loves Eddie, they’re best friends. It’s just one of those dumb things, that he doesn’t usually say it to his friends. Probably a toxic masculinity thing, if Hen’s right about that. He should be telling all his friends he loves them. He just hates the idea that Eddie might, like—get the wrong idea. It’s not stupid to think that. Maddie thought that. Tommy thought that. Buck has to be careful, really careful, or Eddie’s going to get weirded out and stop giving Buck even these little half-real glimpses into his life.

“I love you,” he tells Hen in the rig on their way to an apartment fire.

Her eyebrows raise. “Oh-kay. You know something I don’t know?”

“No,” Buck says with kind of a forced breeziness. “Just telling my friend I love her.”

“Sure,” she says, still sounding doubtful. “I love you too?”

“What about me,” Chim asks, kicking Buck’s chair with the side of his boot. He and Hen give each other one of those best friend looks that Buck is used to but can’t decipher.

“Uh, duh,” Buck says, even though he’s tempted to say Eh, depends whether you name my nephew after me, because he’s trying to prove a point, here. “What about Cap?” Chim prompts, and Bobby raises his eyebrows from the front of the rig.

“Obviously I love Cap,” Buck says, like that isn’t the most awkward sentence to ever come out of his mouth. Bobby sort of winces back at him, but he looks touched, too? It’s a very Midwestern kind of look.

“What about Ravi,” Chim asks, snapping his gum, and Buck’s stomach sinks because, like, he really likes Ravi, he trusts Ravi with his life, he thinks he and Ravi honestly should become better friends, but like, does he love him? Uhh, well—but Ravi immediately shakes his head, not looking up from his phone. “Leave me out of this one,” Ravi says mildly. “Freaks.” “What brought this on?” Hen asks.

“I keep accidentally telling Eddie I love him,” Buck says. “That’s not weird, right?”

He gets laughed at for the rest of the shift.

* The thing is, it does actually bother Buck. Like, he’s into dudes now. He doesn’t want Eddie to think Buck’s into him. That’s important—has been since the beginning. Nothing changes between the two of them. Buck is determined not to change anything between them. Because it would be easy, right? Everybody else thinks so. It would make sense for Buck to be this pathetic loser in love with his straight best friend, haunting his house just like he haunted Abby’s house. And he’s not. He loves Eddie in a totally normal way. He loves Eddie in the way that Eddie could love him back.

So the next time Eddie FaceTimes him, Buck’s determined to make sure Eddie gets it. He doesn’t get his chance right away, though, because before he can open his mouth, Eddie’s putting a finger up to his lips, and Buck’s jaw snaps shut. Eddie flips the camera around, and there’s Eddie’s new living room, and Eddie’s old couch, and there’s Chris, passed out with his Switch in his lap. Buck’s heart clenches like a fist.

Eddie flips the camera back around, and walks quietly out of the living room—he’s not looking at the camera, but Buck gets a glimpse of the small, private smile on his face anyway. See, it’s shit like that—how is Buck supposed to risk that? Eddie slips out the front door, and then settles down on the stoop, the late afternoon Texas sun turning his hair gold around the edges.

“You got him back,” Buck guesses, and Eddie smiles at him, huge and happy like Buck hasn’t seen in months. “I got him back,” Eddie confirms, and Buck whoops and punches the air, which means he also accidentally drops the phone.

“Tell me,” Buck demands, when Eddie stops laughing—not at him, but with him, giddy with his own success. “Tell me everything!”

“You were right,” Eddie says. “I just needed to show up.” Then he tells Buck the rest of the story—how he drove out to Lubbock, how Chris threw up and Eddie stepped up, how Chris hates chess, how it was easy, in the end, to draw a line in the sand with his mom. Buck is so, so happy for him, for them, for his Diaz boys, which makes it so weird that his chest just hurts the whole time Eddie’s telling him the story.

“I knew it,” Buck says when Eddie wraps it up. “I knew he missed you.”

Eddie’s still smiling with all his teeth, looking almost embarrassed about it. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, he did.”

“I love that,” Buck says, or—well, okay. That’s what he means to say. What he actually says is “I love you,” a stupid slip of the tongue followed immediately by a weird hot lurch in his chest. “Wait! No.” “No?” Eddie asks. He’s laughing, thank god. “No,” Buck says firmly. “That’s too bad,” Eddie says. “I’m kinda fond of you.” “I,” Buck says, choking a little on his desire to correct the record. “Eddie! Obviously I—I mean, like—you know what I mean!” “You don’t love me,” Eddie agrees, and dramatically claps the hand not holding the phone to his chest, like he’s been shot through the heart.

“I love Hen,” Buck says, and he knows that’s a miss as soon as it comes out of his mouth.

“Oh sure,” Eddie says, and he’s actually giggling, the phone shaking in his hand. “Me too.”

“Eddiiiie,” Buck says again, stretching out the word in a little bit of a whine. Okay, whatever, time to give explaining his best shot. “You know, I like—most of the time I’m talking to Maddie or Jee on the phone, when I talk on the phone? And it’s, like, it’s habit.”

Eddie’s looking at him like he’s crazy, but also like he’s a cute animal video. “Have you seriously been stressing about this? Over a couple of I love yous?”

Buck’s throat is dry. He swallows and it clicks. “I—I don’t want to make it weird, that’s all.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, and loses the cute animal video face. “It's not weird.”

Buck is going to crawl into a hole and die. He’s gonna find a shovel, dig a hole, and crawl into it. “It’s not?”

“No.” “I, um.” Buck feels weirdly shaky, even though this conversation isn’t a big deal and he knows he should be celebrating Eddie and Christopher right now instead of getting all adrenalized over nothing. “I thought it might be.” “You’re crazy,” Eddie says warmly. “Tell me more about how you love Hen.” “Shut up,” Buck says. “I told everyone I loved them.”

“Wow,” Eddie says. “Even Ravi?”

“I could love Ravi,” Buck says defensively, because he actually probably could! He and Ravi have been hanging out more lately! He’s getting into frisbee golf! “Ravi’s great,” Eddie agrees. “When’s his birthday?” “I don’t know, I’ll have to check your Facebook,” Buck says, and Eddie laughs, and the camera shakes with the movement. When Eddie readjusts, he brings it back closer to his face, and Buck can see the way his eyes are turning a little gold in the sunlight, too.

“Okay,” Buck says, “Enough of that. Tell me more about how Chris is doing.”

Eddie smiles at him. They talk about Chris for a while, then about Eddie’s plans for what he’s gonna make Chris for dinner, then about Buck’s upcoming weekend plans with Maddie and Chim. Eventually the sun starts to go down in El Paso, and Eddie says: “Alright, I should probably let you go.”

“Okay,” Buck says, even though he doesn’t want to hang up. “Don’t over-salt the pasta water.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “I won’t.” Then he gets a sly grin on his face, which is the only warning Buck gets before Eddie says: “Love you, man.”

Buck’s heart somersaults in his chest. “Love you, too,” he gets out, and Eddie’s back to laughing at him as he hangs up.

Buck stares at his dark phone, then taps it anxiously against his knee. It’s not weird. Eddie said it wasn’t weird. If it’s weird, Eddie’s being just as weird as he is.

“I love him,” he says aloud, reassuring himself that it’s fine. No one’s around to hear him; it makes Buck shiver anyway.

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