#the other 25% is my general eddie emo-ness

[tripleaxeldiaz]

don’t wanna hand you all my trouble (don’t wanna give you all my demons)

TW: descriptions of nightmares about eddie's time in afghanistan, description of a panic attack

read on ao3

The nightmares don’t start after Afghanistan. They start when Eddie is seven and there’s a monster under his bed.

It wakes him from a dead sleep, and he swears he can hear the scratch of claws on the hardwood, the gnashing of teeth just beneath his head. He yells for his mom, who comes racing in like a knight in shining armor, even if her armor is just a bathrobe. She scours the underside of the bed and finds nothing, but stays with Eddie until he’s asleep again. He knows if that thing comes back, she’ll protect him no matter what.

He yells for her every time, and every time she comes.

Until one night, his dad comes instead.

That night, he sits Eddie on the edge of his bed, tells him that monsters aren’t real, and that boys shouldn’t yell for their mom every time they’re scared. That boys will one day turn into men who will have to fight off truly monstrous things on their own, so it’s best to start now so Eddie is prepared.

He stops yelling for his mom, but the monsters don’t stop coming.

They change as he gets older — from creatures in the night to fears of losing his friends or his family to worries about failing classes to worries about his future. Sometimes they’re so abstract he doesn’t remember details beyond the ice cold terror in his veins. They wake him every time, sometimes several nights in a row, and every time he fights the urge to yell, to find comfort somewhere other than himself. Reminds himself that he’s a man, and that men have to save themselves. He breathes deeply, tries to slow his racing heart and go back to sleep. He gets better at it, at calming himself down, until he eventually forgets he ever needed someone else to help him in the first place.

Then he goes to war. He sees the monstrous things his dad warned him about, and he’s not even close to prepared.

By the time he comes back, he’s seen and done things that would keep the scariest, gruesomest monster from sleeping soundly. He’s left chunks of himself behind in sand dunes and medic tents, drying into dust, disappearing into the desert. And he’s waking up in a cold sweat almost every night, mind foggy with images of the people he couldn’t save, everything he did wrong. But he still can’t make himself cry out for help, because he still remembers that he has to save himself. Even more so now, because saving himself means saving the people he loves from being exposed to every terrible thing that he sees every time he closes his eyes. 

So the nightmares don’t start after Afghanistan. But they don’t get any easier, either.

~~~~~~~~~~

He gets a few years of peace. Maybe less peace and more pure exhaustion from working nonstop and raising a kid on his own. He rarely falls into a deep enough sleep to feel rested, and there are still some nights where he wakes up to a vague feeling of panic sitting like lead in his stomach. 

The whirlwind of moving halfway across the country and starting his life over again keeps him just as tired. They’ve been in Los Angeles for six months before Eddie finally starts to feel settled. Chris loves his school, they have Carla, and Eddie has the 118. His new family and his new...Buck. For the first time in a while, he feels like he’s on his way to something like happiness.

So of course, one day, one seemingly good day where calls are light and Buck keeps shooting sunny smiles his way, he goes to take a nap in the bunks and is met with blood and screams. He’s trying desperately to move nameless bodies to safety, but he’s not fast enough, not strong enough. They’re screaming his name now, trying to get his attention as they’re picked off one by one. They get louder and louder and louder until—

“Eddie!”

He wakes with a start, doesn’t see bodies any more, just Buck, his brow furrowed in concern, hands held out placatingly towards Eddie. His head whips side to side a few times, remembering he’s at work and he’s safe. He sits up on the bunk, still shaken, crossing his legs as Buck moves to sit down beside him, slowly, like he’s waiting for Eddie to tell him to leave. Eddie doesn’t.

“Sorry Buck, I didn’t mean—”

Buck shakes his head. “You don’t have to apologize. Are you okay?”

It’s been a while since anyone has asked him that.

“I’m fine, just a bad dream.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

No one’s ever asked him that.

And the thing is, his first instinct is to say yes. Because he does — he wants to expel some of the pent up terrors so that maybe he can sleep soundly again. He wants to drain it from his mind, watch it all swirl down the sink and into the ocean, get rid of it for good. 

But he knows it’s not that easy. And he still hears his dad’s voice telling him to save himself.

“I’m alright man, but thanks.” Buck doesn’t look like he believes him, but he lets it go, heads out of the bunk room with one last glance at Eddie, brow still furrowed. The door shuts behind him, and Eddie falls back on the bed. Lays there for another 30 minutes but can’t fall back asleep.

He stops napping at work after that. It’s easier to deny the nightmares when no one can see them.

But then Shannon comes back. Then she’s gone for good. Then Buck gets crushed by a ladder truck. Then he almost loses Chris and Buck to a tsunami.

Suddenly real life is more of a nightmare than anything he sees in his sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~

The solution, it seems, is exhaustion. After back to back shifts, after staying up with Chris as he cries through his own nightmares, Eddie is able to sleep for at least a few hours at a time. He hesitates to call it “peaceful”, but he doesn’t hear any screams, at least. 

But as Chris slowly starts sleeping through the night again, he has to find other ways to tire himself out. Sometimes it’s a midnight workout in the living room, sometimes it’s deep cleaning the kitchen at 1:00am. Sometimes it’s just staring listlessly at the TV until his eyes are too heavy and he passes out on the couch, woken by sunlight and reruns of Golden Girls. It’s not perfect, it’s probably not healthy, but it keeps him rested enough to make it through the day, and he doesn’t feel ice anywhere.

He should have known it was too easy, too good to be true.

He turns off the TV, spreading a blanket over Buck where he’s dead to the world on the couch, passed out halfway through the baseball game they were watching after Chris went to sleep. His curls are soft on the pillow and he looks relaxed like this, far more relaxed than Eddie can ever remember seeing him when he’s awake. It’s overwhelmingly tempting to run his fingers through those curls, trace down his jawline, over his birthmark, but Eddie shakes the thought from his head and quickly heads toward his room. He sticks his head into Chris’s room, smiling as he hears his heavy breathing, sees him star-fished on his bed. As he gets into bed himself, he can’t help but marvel at how normal tonight was. His best friend and his son eating dinner together, watching a movie, sharing easy jokes and laughter like the past few months hadn’t scarred the both of them, physically and emotionally. And Eddie got to witness it all, felt a contentment settle in him that follows him as he closes eyes, that almost makes him forget what can happen when exhaustion isn’t forcing him to sleep.

Almost.

He feels the bullets whizzing past him, feels the scratch of sand underneath his hands. He looks around at the carnage, but the bodies aren’t nameless this time. It’s his platoon, the 118, Shannon, Christopher. Buck. They’re all lying motionless and it’s his fault, their blood is staining every inch of him and he can’t scrub it off. He hears screaming and crying, doesn’t realize it’s his own until his throat is raw and he tastes salt. He failed again, and no amount of tears will fix it.

He’s still crying when he wakes up, gasping for air, still feels sand between his fingers. He tries to calm down, taking shuddering breaths in and out, but it’s too much and not enough and he feels light-headed. He hears movement down the hall and quickly slips out of bed and into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him, sinking to the ground. He’s shaking so bad his teeth are chattering, and he clamps a hand over his mouth as another scream threatens to fall out of him without his permission. 

This is far and away the worst he’s ever been after a nightmare, and he’s not sure what to do. He feels even more lost and helpless than usual, and he has no idea when it will stop.

The first knocks are so soft he misses them, mistakes them for his body shaking the door as he leans against it. The second knocks are louder, a little more urgent, followed by a twist of the doorknob.

“Eddie? It’s me, can I come in?”

Eddie doesn’t answer, just shifts to lean against the bathtub so the door can open. The knob turns again and there’s Buck, looking wide eyed and a little scared himself, like he too just woke up from some horror in his sleep. Eddie meets his eyes and sees them soften as he takes him in — he’s not sure what he looks like, but his face feels puffy and he can feel dried tear tracks, so it’s probably not pretty. He looks away as Buck moves towards him, sliding to sit next to him against the bathtub. He’s close but they’re not touching, which is good because Eddie is fighting down another wave of agony, another scream is trying to claw its way out, and he doesn’t think he can handle any kind of interaction just yet.

Buck must feel it too, somehow, because he waits. Doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t say anything, just waits.

Eddie calms down — not completely, but enough to feel like he can function — and leans his head back against the cool edge of the tub, taking a deep breath. He chances a look over to Buck and sees him watching. He tries to smile, reassure him that this is nothing, but it feels like more of a grimace. It’s too much this time, even for his well-conditioned brain, and he can’t fake it.

Buck’s eyes search his face, and Eddie sees his hand twitch toward him out of the corner of his eye. 

“Can I touch you?” Buck asks softly. Eddie freezes — he hadn’t ever really considered that that’s a thing you can ask at a time like this, something he could say no to — before nodding, because his whole body is still buzzing and he thinks Buck might be able to ground him. 

He usually does.

Buck reaches his hand out slowly, wrapping long fingers around Eddie’s before sliding them together. He brings Eddie’s hand into his lap, holding it between both of his, slowly tracing his thumb over Eddie’s knuckles. He still feels like a live wire, but he doesn’t want to scream anymore. He meets Buck’s eyes and sees understanding and sadness and other things that Eddie’s always hoped to see but can’t process right this moment. He hopes he’ll get to see them again soon.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

There’s that question again. 

And Eddie does, actually truly does. It’s clear he can’t save himself like he’s been told he’s supposed to, and maybe he shouldn’t have to, so he wants someone’s help. He knows Buck will help him, will protect him from whatever he can’t handle on his own.

He always does.

But Eddie’s tired and ripped open and doesn’t want to think about or relive anything right now. He squeezes Buck’s hand where it’s still tightly clasped. 

“Not yet. But I will.”

Buck’s shoulders relax just a bit, like he’s relieved it wasn’t an outright refusal. They stay on the ground together until Eddie moves to get up, holding tighter when Buck tries to disentangle their hands. They walk towards Eddie’s bed together, and Eddie scoots to the far side, still not letting go.

“Will you stay? Please?” Eddie asks, whisper loud in the quiet room.

Buck pauses for a moment before climbing in as well, settling under the covers on his side, facing Eddie. Buck looks nervously down at their hands then back up to Eddie.

“Can I—”

Eddie’s grabbing Buck’s shirt before he finishes, pulling them as close together as possible, wrapping his arms around Buck’s waist and burying his face in his chest. Buck doesn’t hesitate to press his face into Eddie’s hair, hands rubbing is back slowly, soothingly.

“Of course I’ll stay, Eddie. I’ll stay as long as you’ll let me. I promise.”

For the first time in too long, Eddie falls into a dreamless sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~

The next morning, he talks. Not much, but more than he has since he was seven. He feels a little less tense afterwards, breathes a little easier.

The next day, he talks more.

The next week, more.

So on and so on.

And Buck stays. Just like he promised.