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kingofthecotas · 8 days ago

Text

postscript | ao3

future fic | ~1.5k words

love writing post-reconciliation with no idea how they got there

——

Marc gets in three and a half hours after he was supposed to.

Storms in Japan meant a delayed flight out of Tokyo, a missed connection in Doha, and landing in Rimini just after two in the morning. By the time he collects his bag, finds his car, and makes the drive home, he’s ready to sleep for the next twelve hours.

The house is mostly dark when he opens the front door, holding his breath as if that’s going to make him any quieter, and gently slides his keys onto the hall table. There’s a light on in the living room, though, and he slips down the hallway, leaving his suitcase by the door.

He hasn’t had enough time here yet, caught in the winds of a busy season, but there’s traces of him: Ducati cap slung on the coatrack; a pair of cycling shoes under the stairs, the decorative glass jar filled with the peppered colours of Aragón stones—they’d given it to him on the podium along with his trophy, said this place is yours, and he’d had to bite back tears.

He throws his coat over the banisters, over a BMW WRT jacket, and follows the warm light down the hall.

Valentino is sitting up on the sofa—well, propped up by his loosely balled hand against his cheek, knuckles pressed into his face. The throw blanket, the one he hates, is twisted around his thighs; Marc had snagged it from the household section of some English supermarket, and Valentino likes to complain that it shits fluff everywhere, it’s all over my sofa, it’s all over my jeans, Marc. His eyes are closed, shadowed in the lamplight.

Marc swallows a fond smile and kicks his shoes off, leaving them in the middle of the rug, before he slides himself onto the sofa beside Valentino and pulls the blanket over his legs.

Valentino blinks out of his doze, heavy eyelids and scrunched expression, but it all softens when he finds Marc next to him. “You’re back.”

“Shit journey,” Marc whispers. “You didn’t have to wait.” He always waits.

Valentino shakes his head. “I fell asleep watching the, ah, IMSA. Actually.”

“Of course.” The TV is dark, no laptop in sight, but Marc lets him have it. “Must have been exciting.”

“Mm.” Valentino yawns. “You must be tired. Very hard to be a MotoGP rider these days. All these first-class flights.”

“Terrible, yes. I’m comfortable here, unless your back cannot handle it.”

A smile cracks. Victory. “I am fine.”

“Good,” Marc says, and stretches up to kiss him.

The first time they’d done this again, pressed their lips together after nearly ten years apart, Valentino had shoved him against the wall too hard, overeager, and Marc had nearly headbutted him in the nose and they’d had to laugh at themselves—Marc thinks he would have cried otherwise, at how apart they’d grown, how they’d forgotten how to move together.

No such problems now; they aren’t starving for each other, trying to breathe it in after years of suffocating. It’s—and Marc never thought he would say this about Valentino—easy.

Marc usually runs hot, Valentino cooler, in a way that makes Valentino roll away in the heat of summer nights, grumbling get the fuck away from me, and curl around him as soon as the temperature drops again. His feet, under the blanket, find Marc’s legs.

“Vale,” Marc hisses, because he may as well have pressed an ice cube against his ankles. It’s late October, and Valentino’s core temperature appears to be the same as that of their fridge.

“We can go to bed.”

“You said you were fine.”

“I am fine.”

“Put some fucking socks on.”

Valentino just laughs into the top of Marc’s head. “Ah, you are tired. We should go to bed, yes? You must be stiff from the plane.”

Because he’s laughing, Marc acquiesces, downs blades. “Fine.” His arm is sore, and from the way Valentino is rubbing it, it must be obvious.

They might play at sword-fighting, feints and jabs that are incomprehensible to anyone else—Pecco had watched them bickering in Misano, forehead pinched, until Valentino accepted defeat with a delighted laugh—but in the quiet, between duels, it’s gentle.

“I can get the hot water bottle,” Valentino offers, “or I put the electric blanket on the bed while you were away. Is it bad?”

“Not bad,” Marc whispers. Just hard airport seats and the autumn-night chill. He’s got the rest of his life to get used to it.

“Come on,” Valentino says, soft now. “Ducati will not be happy if I am not taking care of their rider. Plenty of rest before the next race. You know how it is.”

“Oh, but I thought you were watching the endurance race?”

“Probably for the best, you know.” Valentino lets out an exaggerated sigh. “I might sign up to race in another championship if I am not careful.”

“Give you something to do, no?”

“Ah,” Valentino says, “but who would wait up for you with the light on?”

“Not you, you fell asleep.”

Another huff of laughter. Vale lets him get away with a lot these days, silent apologies Marc has already accepted for transgressions long since forgiven. Valentino’s eyes had been huge the first time, uncomprehending, what do you mean okay?

Forgiveness had always come easy to Marc, relatively speaking, even with Valentino. Especially with Valentino.

They peel themselves off the sofa, untangle the blanket—Vale picks a thread of fluff from his jogging bottoms with a sigh, then bends down to scoop up Marc’s abandoned trainers and a long-forgotten wine glass. Marc folds the blanket, places it over the sofa arm, waits for Valentino to head towards the hallway so he can follow. Glass on the hall table: they can wash it tomorrow. Shoes under the stairs. Suitcase left by the door.

“Who has your trophy?”

“Someone in the team.” Marc shrugs. “It will get home somehow.”

“Too many this year for you to keep track of, hm?”

“One hundred and eight,” Marc reminds him, sing-song, and almost relishes the flash in Valentino’s eyes. There’s no danger in it, not anymore.

“I will have to make Pecco work harder, then. We are training on Wednesday.”

“Promise I won’t run him off the track.”

“You are getting soft,” Valentino says with a smile that’s all teeth, but holds the door to their bedroom open and flicks the light switch.

“Like you?”

“Maybe.” And he says it like he doesn’t mind. “Brush your teeth, you smell like you have been on a plane for twelve hours.”

“I have no idea why that is.”

“Mm.”

When Marc is finished in the bathroom, quick shower, teeth brushed, shivering a little as he dries off, he crawls into bed and can’t hold back a sigh at the warmth beneath his skin.

Valentino watches him, so fucking smug—Marc used to hate that expression, used to grit his teeth and lift his chin against it, but now it’s closer to satisfaction, that he was right, that Marc needed something and he got to give it.

“This is the best thing we ever bought,” Marc says with conviction. “My favourite thing in the whole world, maybe.” Álex can laugh at him for having an electric blanket, my God, you’re old, but the heat of it against his arm is heavenly.

“Your favourite, hm?” Valentino smiles again, easy as breathing. “I will remember this.”

There’s no prodding, no you said it wasn’t bad, no see, I told you, wasn’t I right? No knife sliding through the chink in the armour.

“Eh, you are up there as well. Maybe third on the list.”

“So high?” Valentino stretches out his leg, lets Marc move closer. “There must be at least ten bikes you like more than me, yes?”

“It is close,” Marc murmurs, “but you have a lot going in your favour.” His hands find Valentino’s waist, his stomach—still toned, racing GT cars is no walk in the park—and he presses his cheek against Valentino’s outstretched upper arm.

“Yes?”

“Well, you put the blanket on the bed.”

“Ah, yes.” Valentino lets him shift, shift again until he’s comfortable, without complaint, and offers him a tired smile. It’s one of Marc’s favourite smiles, because it’s one just for him. “This is okay?”

Marc closes his eyes, sighing at the brush of fingers on the back of his neck. His arm will be stiff tomorrow, but this will help, and he has ridden through worse. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Vale repeats, and his fingers curl through Marc’s hair. “I bought eggs for breakfast also.”

“You are getting soft,” Marc tells him, grinning loose and easy where it might have been sharp, once.

Valentino only smiles back, and the part of Marc that still gears up for a fight, buried deep but there, stands down. Three years of this do not erase everything that came before, but every minute they spend like this is another coat of paint over the bloody stain. That’s fine; he has time.

He’s got the rest of his life to get used to this.

#get your self indulgent fluff here #rosquez #motogp rpf #motogp fic #cara.fic #marc marquez #valentino rossi #i’ll put this on ao3 later i’m TIRED #title shoutout to my favourite poem ever. bears absolutely no relevance to this story

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buckevanley · 1 month ago

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any other bodily sense.

you can also read it here on ao3

The second Eddie steps into the dark, muggy parking lot at the end of his first twenty-four hour shift since a ladder truck blew up his best friend’s life, Maddie is calling him.

This strikes Eddie as odd for two reasons. One, he didn’t even know he had Maddie’s actual number in his phone. He’s gotten so used to hearing her calm, steady timbre over the radio during calls that her voice has more or less become synonymous with imminent emergency incoming in his head.

Two, he and Maddie have never really actively spoken on the phone before outside of that bubble of imminent emergency incoming, which leaves Eddie to assume that there’s only one thing she could be calling about.

He picks up on the third ring. “Maddie?”

“Eddie, hi,” Maddie’s voice rushes out on a sigh, relief staticky down the phone line. “Sorry, I know it’s late. Or, God–really, really early. I hope I didn’t wake you. Did I wake you?”

“Uh, no. No, you caught me at the perfect time, actually,” he says, looking around the slowly emptying parking lot as the rest of the shift shuffles off to their cars. The rain, which has been an endless droll on the station roof all day, finally petered off, leaving every surface shiny and slick in the streetlights starting to come to life. The heat is already starting to bake it off, filling his nose with the smell of wet, hot asphalt and steam.

He sniffs, staving off the tickle of a sneeze. “What’s up? Is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything’s fine. It’s just–,” she takes a breath, and it’s so different from her usual steadiness that the muscles in his shoulders pull tense, like his body knows the answer before she even says it. “It’s Buck.”

Eddie grimaces, suspicions confirmed, and immediately kicks into gear. He takes long, wide strides across the parking lot to get to his truck, pinching the phone between his cheek and shoulder to dig for his keys in his pocket. “What happened?”

“We just got back from the ER. He’s fine,” Maddie adds immediately, like she can hear the way Eddie’s stomach shoves its way up into his lungs. “He’s okay, it’s just a bad cold. But he’s running a pretty high fever, and with it coming on so recently after his surgery,” her voice trails off, and Eddie puts two and two together easily.

“You were worried it could be something worse,” he finishes for her. Postoperative fevers aren’t unusual—Eddie had his own rough go of it after the surgeon pulled three bullets out of him overseas. He remembers the shivering, the pins and needles, the misery of his body stuck in overdrive while it slowly tried to pull itself back together—but it must be a bad one if it’s got Maddie worried enough for an ER trip. His mind helpfully fills in the blanks on potential complications, all of them scary, none of them pleasant.

“Yeah,” she replies softly. He hears a little sniff, and he can almost see the way her brows pull together as she tries to stave off the tears, nodding.“Yeah, he just spooked me, is all.”

Eddie doesn’t waste any time. He hauls himself into the truck in one, swift movement, the handle wet beneath his fingers. “What do you need me to do?”

“Come over? To the loft,” she asks, then laughs a little. The sound is tired, but helplessly fond. “He wants to sleep in bed, and I can’t carry him up the stairs.”

Well, okay. Neither can Eddie. But somehow he doesn’t think she would appreciate that sentiment right now, when she’s so clearly trying to make her little brother less miserable in an already pretty fucking miserable situation. A tight knot, hidden and tucked snugly against the underside of his sternum gives a ferocious little tug when he realizes that he was the person she thought to call to make that happen.

And he would try, if it really came down to it. He would carry Buck up those god awful stairs, leg cast and all, if it meant that his best friend was just a little less miserable.

Eddie would’ve picked that ladder truck up and thrown it down the street for Buck, if it was within his power.

“Curse of being short,” he jokes instead of saying any of that, and it earns him a scoff of protest, light with surprise. It’s a genuine thing, though, and helps that knot in his chest loosen, just a little. “Give me a few minutes to pick up some things. I’ll be over in ten.”

On the drive over he calls Pepa, explaining the situation and letting her know that he’s going to have to pick up Christopher in the morning instead of tonight. He feels bad that she had to stay up so late waiting only for him to call off at the last minute, but she swiftly assuages his guilt, citing that she’s happy to let the little boy sleep.

“We’re fine here, Edmundo. Don’t worry about us,” she says, tone steady and patient, and he feels like he can breathe a little easier for it. “In the morning I will have some caldo de pollo for you to bring to your boy. It will help him feel much better.”

At first Eddie thinks she means Christopher. But before he can open his mouth to correct her on the fact that Buck is not his boy, just a good friend and work partner, Pepa is wishing him goodnight and ending the call with a long, overexaggerated yawn. Eddie snorts, wishing her a good night and ending the call with a press of his thumb.

In the following silence, he can’t help the sound of disbelief that huffs out of his lungs, shaking his head.

Buck. His boy.

He sits with that thought as he drives, tires swirling through the steam drifting listlessly off the sleepy, wet streets of LA. A slow seeping warmth begins to spread from where that knot is pulling loose in his chest, making its way into his limbs, buzzing and heavy. Grip on the wheel tightening, he feels the muscle jump in his jaw.

Despite the fact that it feels like sinking, it’s not claustrophobic. If anything, it feels snug, like stability. Like being held.

He doesn’t know why that scares him so much.

By the time he parks and is walking up to the loft, he’s literally shaking out his arms to get rid of the feeling. He stops as soon as he realizes, feeling silly. Eddie takes the stairs two at a time to get to Buck’s floor, his gym bag bumping against his hip where it’s swinging from his shoulder. He manages to wrestle the feeling back down by the time he makes it to the door.

He knocks, even though he has a key, but with Maddie inside it just feels better to knock. Like he’s offering her some control in a situation she already has very little over. Her brother is sick and hurting, and she’s the one who has the power to open the door and let Eddie in to help. He can give her that, at least.

He doesn’t have to wait for long. He’s barely lifted his knuckles from the wood when the door is swinging open to reveal Maddie on the other side, looking both so elated and so deeply tired that Eddie’s heart aches a little at the sight of her.

“Thank you for coming,” she says the second she opens the door, stepping back to let him inside. “Really, Eddie. I mean it.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” he replies, aiming for joking as he steps carefully inside while she shuts the door behind him. Setting his bag down by the island counter, he turns back to her, running his palms down and back up his thighs to stop himself from wringing them together. “Not until he’s up those stairs. How’s he doing?”

“Better now with the Tylenol I just gave him,” Maddie says, keeping her voice soft. She runs a hand through her hair, holding it back out of her face as she fills him in with a sigh. “They said everything looked okay with his stitches, no signs of infection or bad drainage. We’ve been really careful about keeping the cast dry when he showers, so there’s no irritation from water damage. It’s terrible timing, but it really is just a bad cold. There’s not much else we can do but fill him up with cough medicine and hope he doesn’t chew his own leg off from boredom.”

“Easier said than done,” Eddie says, leaning back against the counter. After a moment his brows draw together. “You said we?”

“Me and Evan, yeah,” Maddie nods. Her cheeks color a little, but she smiles as she tells him, “Chimney’s been helping me out with bringing meals over, too. Oh, and sometimes Josh comes by after work and we play cards.”

“What happened to Ali?” It’s out of his mouth before he can think about it, and he watches something in Maddie’s eyes shutter closed like a steel grate. She opens her mouth to answer, but is interrupted by the sound of snuffling from around the loft stairs.

He exchanges a quick glance with Maddie, eyebrows raised. She only shakes her head, mouth pressed into a thin line, and that’s all Eddie needs to confirm his suspicions about the noticeable lack of girlfriend in Buck’s apartment at the moment. He’s a little relieved, if he’s honest. Ali was nice enough, but Eddie always quietly thought there really wasn’t a lot that she and Buck had in common, besides surviving a 7.1 earthquake.

It’s easy to push up off the counter and give in to gravitational pull in his chest, the one that pulls him around the loft stairs like a needle compass to true north, to see his best friend bundled up on the couch, groggily sitting up and blinking awake, slowly emerging from underneath a fuzzy purple throw blanket that’s tucked underneath his chin.

Buck looks, to put it nicely, like warmed up roadkill. It’s only been a week since he left the hospital, and the nasty scrape on his forehead is still healing, purplish green bruising skating down his temple to his chin like an oil spill. The fever is a bright red stain high up on his cheeks, and the soft pink of his mouth, half open already since he can’t breathe through his nose, drops a little further in surprise. He blinks up at Eddie, eyes owlish and blue. “Eddie?”

It’s more of a croak than his name, but Eddie thinks it might be one of his favorite sounds in the world.

“Hey, bud,” he says, way softer than he means to, and moves to sit down on the coffee table. He feels a smile pull across his face, and a real one at that. It’s the first time that he hasn’t had to force one in days. “How are you feeling?”

“‘M fine,” Buck manages, and Eddie winces internally at how congested he sounds. Sniffing uselessly, Buck shuffles a little under his blanket. He swallows before finding his voice again. “What–what’re you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood. Thought I’d pop in and see how you were doing.” At Buck’s somewhat glazed, disbelieving stare, Eddie relents. “Maddie called me. Said you weren’t feeling great, and that you needed some help getting up those stairs.”

At that, Buck frowns, brows drawing in. It looks like it might sting, the way the scab by his eyebrow pulls. “You're not gonna be able to carry me.”

“Why not?”

“You’re too short,” Buck states, like it’s obvious. Eddie’s unable to muffle the miffed noise that kicks out of the back of his throat.

“I am not,” he protests, and it only sounds a little like he’s whining. “I’m six foot!”

“An’ I’m six two,” Buck replies, like that somehow trumps all of Eddie’s firefighting and military experience. He opens his mouth to say as much, but Buck is busy shimmying the blanket back to reveal the awkward, clunky cast that will be chaining him down to that couch for the next three months. “‘Sides,” he says, “can’t carry me with this thing. Too heavy.”

“Your cast does not weigh a ton, Buck,” Maddie says, crossing over from the kitchen to come perch on the armchair. From her tone it sounds like they’ve had this conversation before.

“Does too,” Buck mumbles back, so sullen that Eddie has to bite back a smile. “Weighs two tons, probably. No way we make it up the stairs.”

“Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you begged me to call Eddie to come carry you, then,” she replies, and Eddie’s brain trips over itself as every thought comes to a screeching halt like a comically long record scratch.

“Maddie,” Buck whines. “You’re not s’pposed to listen to me. I was loopy on cough medicine.”

“You’re still loopy on cough medicine,” she reminds him, sounding not sorry at all as she leans over and presses a kiss to the side of his temple that isn’t scraped to shit. Buck turns into it like a flower towards the sun, letting his sister card her fingers gently through his hair. “But look, Eddie’s here now, see? You’re welcome.”

“Thank you,” Buck grumbles out, and Maddie rolls her eyes in a way that is both long-suffering and inexplicably fond. She leans back, and Buck peeks over at Eddie, almost like he’s shy. “Hi, Eddie.”

“Hey, Buck,” Eddie hears himself say, faintly, because his body is currently trying to manually reboot from the blue screen Maddie just caused.

Buck asked for him. Buck could’ve asked for anybody. Any one of the 118 would’ve picked up Maddie’s call and come running, but Buck didn’t ask for that.

He asked for Eddie.

Eddie is not going to lie. It’s no secret that he hasn’t exactly been the most present, lately. He never, ever lets it interfere with his job, because he loves being a firefighter and he cares about the people he works with too much to not give them his everything. He trusts them implicitly to have his back out in the field, and Eddie would rather walk on hot coals in bare feet than let any of his team think he doesn’t have theirs.

But outside of the job—when he’s not Firefighter Diaz, and all the adrenaline and focus drains out of him, and the only thing he can manage is a threadbare goodbye in the locker rooms before he’s shuffling off at the end of a shift like a goddamn zombie, limbs still moving despite the fact that his skull feels heavy and hollow—when he’s just Eddie?

Who would ever want just Eddie?

“Right,” he says, swiftly cutting off that train of thought at the knees. He sits up a little from where he was leaning on his elbows and points at Buck, who blinks at his finger. “We need to get you in bed.”

“I already told you,” Buck groans in a way that sounds suspiciously like Christopher, slumping down to burrow deeper underneath his blanket. It might be Maddie’s, actually, because Eddie doesn’t think Buck has ever owned a single throw blanket in his entire life. Eddie plans on rectifying that immediately. “There’s no way you guys can carry me. You’re—”

“Too short. Trust us, Buck, we know,” Maddie cuts him off. She raises an eyebrow at Eddie, eyes narrowing pointedly. “Some of us have been told twice.”

And yeah, okay, Eddie deserves that one.

He’s surrounded by Buckley sass on all sides tonight, Dios help him.

“Alright, then,” Eddie says, standing up. Thinking quick on his feet, his eyes dart around as he takes in the shape of the living room. After a moment, he gets an idea. “Here. Maddie, help me move the coffee table?”

“Oh! Uh, sure,” Maddie’s quick to hop up and help Eddie move the table out of the way in the kitchen. The side table quickly follows that too.

“Okay, what’s happening?” Buck asks, shuffling to sit back up as Eddie takes the stairs two at a time up to his bedroom. He calls, voice strained and craggy,“Why are we tearing apart my living room?”

“Well, I figure if we can’t bring you to your bed,” Eddie reasons as he comes back downstairs to plop Buck’s comforter and obnoxiously big pillow that he insists helps support his neck right onto his lap. Buck stares, eyes wide and bewildered, and Eddie smiles at him, shrugging. “Then we can bring your bed to you.”

A few minutes later—with some surprisingly efficient coordination between the two of them and a very good demonstration of geometry skills on Maddie’s part—Eddie and Maddie manage to drag Buck’s king size mattress, sheets and pillows and all, down the stairs and situate it so it’s pressed right up against the couch. Now all Buck has to do is carefully slip down and shimmy a little to get in the center of the mattress, just how he likes.

Which he does, almost immediately. The second his head hits the pillow Buck is conked out, mouth open and snoring even before Maddie is finished making sure his cast is properly elevated with some more pillows stolen from the couch.

“Wow,” she says, sounding genuinely impressed a few minutes later when she and Eddie settle at the kitchen island. “I think that’s the fastest he’s gone to sleep since he got home.”

Eddie just finished turning the lights down low to let Buck sleep, and she presses a warm mug into his hands the moment he sits down. He cradles it gratefully, the sweet warmth of cider filling up his nose a pleasant surprise. There’s a specific kind that Eddie likes from a small farmer’s market that pops up by the firehouse every so often. He didn’t know Buck still had some.

“Seriously?” he asks, surprised, and she nods around a slow sip from her own mug.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Buck doesn’t exactly know how to sit still,” she says, and he can’t help the laugh he lets out, air leaving his nose in a soft huff. Maddie smiles at him. “That hasn’t changed much since he was a kid. God, he used to toss and turn for hours. Especially when he was sick.”

“That’s a little harder to do with a full leg cast,” Eddie points out, and she hums in agreement.

“The only way I could get him to sleep is if I let him sleep in bed with me,” she admits, gaze drifting over to where Buck is starfished out on his mattress. Her eyes are warm, if not a little sad. “Then at least he would stay still, otherwise I threatened to kick him out if he kept wiggling around. But he’d go right to sleep, curled up next to me.”

Eddie can picture it. The two of them, small and young, huddled together beneath a blanket, Maddie’s arm curled around Buck’s shoulders, his nose pressed into her hair. Offering the delicate heat of their own bodies to create a bigger, better warmth together.

“He always got me sick afterwards, too. But I didn’t mind,” Maddie says, smiling a little. She adds, quieter, almost to herself, “I think he always sleeps better, knowing somebody he loves is close.”

Unbidden, Eddie thinks of all the times he’s watched Buck drop into bed in the bunkroom and not move an inch. Stretched out on his stomach in a way that is sure to give him back problems later on, sheets pulled haphazardly up around his waist, clinging to his pillow.

He thinks about how many times he’s watched Hen pause to adjust the sheets until they were pulled up to Buck’s ears as she passed by to go to her own bunk. How many times he’s watched Bobby turn off the lamp by Buck’s head if he forgot to before he fell asleep. How many times Eddie himself has absentmindedly straightened out Buck’s boots while he unties the laces of his own, watching his friend’s back rise and fall every time he breathes.

Not once, during any of those moments, did Buck ever stir.

“My mom would quarantine us as kids. My sisters and I,” Eddie says. He doesn’t even mean to, but then Maddie’s turning those big, brown eyes on him, attentive and open and listening, and he just keeps going. “Five people in one house like that, no way was she dealing with three sick kids at once. Four, actually, if my dad caught it too.”

Maddie laughs at that, and Eddie smiles at her. He tells her, “Problem was, there were only two kids' bedrooms, right? Mine, and the room my sisters shared. So whoever got sick got stuck in my room, and the other two would have to share Sophia and Adriana’s. And my mom—she treated any illness like it was the worst thing to ever happen. Even if it was just a cold, it might as well have been la plaga de la muerte. We weren’t allowed anyone near that bedroom, and whoever was stuck inside wasn’t allowed out until their temperature was back below a hundred degrees.”

“What about eating? Like breakfast and dinner?” Maddie asks, and Eddie shrugs.

“She’d leave a tray at the door. Food, water, meds, she’d drop it off and knock.”

“And what about going to the bathroom?”

“Alright, she wasn’t that crazy,” Eddie laughs, and Maddie holds up her hands in mock surrender.

“Okay! Okay, just making sure,” she says, and watches him while he takes a slow sip from his mug for a few beats. The cider warming his belly, he almost misses it when she asks, “Did your parents really just let you deal with being sick alone like that?”

“Not always,” he says. “My dad had this trick, to help with congestion. He’d take a washcloth, soak it in hot water, and then drape it over your face so you could breathe in the steam and alleviate some of the pressure. It worked, at least for a few minutes anyway. He didn’t do it a lot, didn’t want to get caught by my mom, I think. But I remember him sitting with me, sometimes. Just holding my hand.”

He thinks about being six, and seven, and nine years old, alone in his bedroom, shivering ferociously while his body fought off the illness. He thinks about the relief he felt, blindly clutching at a big, calloused hand in that warm darkness where he could finally breathe again. He thinks about dreading the moment when the washcloth went cold, and his father’s touch would slip away.

“I don’t remember when he stopped doing it,” he says, and knows it’s a lie the second it’s out of his mouth. He knows exactly when. It was the same time Ramon sat him down and told him it was time for him to step up, to become a real man. “I was ten, I think.”

“That’s—” Maddie starts, then stops, and something about her tone makes him look up. She’s already looking at him when their eyes meet. There’s no pity, in her gaze. Just heaviness, and a profound sense of understanding.

“That sounds really lonely, Eddie,” she says gently, and Eddie thinks it should feel it like a punch to the gut. If it was anyone else saying it, he's pretty sure the gravity of that statement would have him doubling over in his seat.

“It was,” he admits quietly, surprising himself.

Eyes hot, Eddie blinks, suddenly finding it very difficult to continue meeting her gaze. He looks over at where Buck is sleeping, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath the comforter. He finds himself trying to match his own breathing to that steady rhythm, seamless and slow.

“The truth is I would’ve given anything to have someone stay with me, like you did for him,” he says, looking back at her, and Maddie’s whole expression crumples in on itself, her lip wobbling a little as she nods. She reaches out across the counter, palm up, fingers open. Offering her own warmth out to him.

Eddie slides his hand into hers without a second thought, squeezing tight. She squeezes back, and the heat created between their palms makes Eddie feel steadier than he has in months.

They stay like that for a few minutes, just holding on to one another, until Maddie’s phone chirps from the kitchen counter. Sniffing a little, she pulls back and reaches for it, not without giving his fingers one last squeeze. Eddie does her the courtesy of not pointing out the stray tear that’s running down her chin, too busy wiping at his own.

“Shit,” Maddie says succinctly, and Eddie looks over at her in alarm.

“What?”

“Chimney just texted,” she says, grimacing at her phone like it just personally insulted her. “He’s asking if he should bring over breakfast tomorrow. I completely forgot to tell him I have a shift in the morning.”

“In the morning?” he repeats, and she nods, expression turning sheepish. She looks a whole awful lot like Buck, when she’s smiling like that. He checks the time on his phone. “Maddie, you need to go home and sleep.”

“I was going to!” She stresses, just barely catching herself from raising her voice. Her eyes dart over to where her brother is still sleeping soundly before she turns back to him, leaning in with a half stage whisper. “I was going to. But then everything with Buck came up, and I—”

She cuts herself off with a huff, running a hand through her hair as she shakes her head. “You didn’t see him earlier when I got back. He was so sick, Eddie. His fever was so bad he couldn’t even get up to get to the medicine cabinet. I can’t just leave him here alone. What if—”

“I’ll stay,” Eddie offers, automatically. Easily. “I can stay with him tonight.”

“I can’t ask you to do that,” Maddie says. “What about Christopher? Don’t you need to pick him up?”

“You’re not asking. I’m happy to do it,” he says, already waving away her concerns as gently as he can. “And tomorrow’s Saturday anyway. Pepa will be happy to hold on to Chris for a little longer. She and my tío Paco will make him migas for breakfast and ruin my chance of ever getting him to eat my omelets again.”

“Are you sure?” she asks, worrying at her bottom lip. Carefully, Eddie reaches out across the counter and holds out his hand just like she had before, palm up. She interlaces their fingers without a moment of hesitation, and he squeezes tightly.

“I’m sure,” he promises, and after a moment she nods, squeezing back.

Maddie leaves shortly after that. Eddie helps her gather up her purse and other things while she tiptoes around the mattress in the living room to kiss Buck’s forehead and whisper goodbye. He snuffles a little in his sleep, turning towards her voice, but otherwise doesn’t stir.

She hugs him tight before she goes, which stuns Eddie for all of two seconds before he’s folding his arms around her, her hair tickling his chin. She makes him promise to call her if they need anything, even if it’s in the middle of the night, and then she’s gone out the door, leaving only the warmth of her embrace in her wake.

And then it’s just Eddie, standing in the entryway of the loft, his best friend sleeping soundly behind him.

The first thing Eddie does is text Pepa that he’ll be a little later in picking up Chris in the morning. It’s late enough now that she’ll have gone to sleep at this point, but he trusts she’ll see it when she wakes up, and that’s enough for him. He also asks her to send him her migas con huevos recipe, which he’ll no doubt butcher the shit out of, but it’s something he and Chris can do over the weekend together. Maybe they can bring Buck over the leftovers, if they’re not burnt.

The second thing he does is shower. Maddie was polite enough not to say anything when they hugged, but he knows he’s more than a little ripe after coming off a twenty-four hour shift. He uses the upstairs bathroom in an attempt to keep the noise down. Buck, who’s currently snorting like a war horse in his sleep, doesn’t seem to mind.

Rinsing off the sweat and worry of the day, he only feels a little bad about using Buck’s body wash. It’s a nice smell—sandalwood, and something that kind of reminds Eddie of orange zest and fresh oatmeal.

Stepping out of the bathroom in a towel, it dawns on him that he doesn’t have a change of clothes. He has his street clothes that he could change back into, but he’s not exactly thrilled at the idea of sleeping in jeans tonight.

So instead, he just digs out a pair of sleep shorts from Buck’s dresser and a T-shirt that he doesn’t think Buck will mind him wearing. It’s a little big in the shoulders—with a faded image of Bruce Springsteen’s fingers curled around the neck of his guitar plastered on the front, a silver bracelet drooping over the back of his hand—but it’ll do.

Stopping at the bottom of the stairs, Eddie doesn’t know what to do with himself, for a moment. He can’t turn on the TV with Buck sleeping in the living room, not that there’s much of anything he’d be interested in watching at this hour. Plus, Buck doesn’t have Hulu so he can’t put on old baseball reruns on ESPN.

He briefly considers making himself a cup of coffee, or some more of that cider, but ultimately decides against it. The day has been long, and only made longer by Maddie’s sudden call, so Eddie decides to follow Buck’s lead and crash.

He fishes around in his gym bag until he finds his earbuds, then moseys over to the couch after turning off the lights, using the dim glow of his phone screen to lead the way. Taking up the throw blanket Buck abandoned for his comforter, Eddie gets himself situated on the couch, tucking one earbud into his ear. There’s a mystery podcast that Buck has been raving about for a while, and Eddie thinks it’ll make the perfect background noise to fall asleep to.

Turning on his side to get comfortable while the host starts up a lulling, ominous monologue about strange weather phenomena in his ear, Eddie takes a minute to catalogue Buck’s sleeping form below him, slack jawed and snoring. His head is turned away from Eddie, so he can just make out the light stubble on Buck’s jaw. His hair is going to be a wild mess come morning, and Eddie smiles a little at the perfect little curl he can see resting against Buck’s pillow above his head.

Because he’s unable to flip flop around like a restless pancake, Buck’s taken to fidgeting with his arms. He’s got one hand up by his head on the pillow, the other arm is stretched completely out across the mattress by Eddie’s head on the couch. His palm is up, fingers splayed out. Reaching, even in sleep.

There’s a small, white scar that curls around the bone of Buck’s wrist. A biking accident, from when he was young. He can’t see it well, but Eddie knows it’s there. He remembers watching Buck thumb at it when he told him, during a slow moment between calls at the firehouse.

Carefully, so carefully, Eddie reaches out and traces his fingertips over that line, following it to the delicate, paper thin skin over the vein of his wrist, and then up to the life lines of Buck’s palm. Reflexively, Buck’s nerves react to the touch, his fingers curling around Eddie’s in a lax hold. Strangely, Eddie feels his face flood with heat, warmth spreading all the way to the tips of his ears.

For some reason, he doesn’t let go. He ghosts his thumb over the warm skin of Buck’s knuckles, eyelids starting to get heavy as he keeps up the slow, hypnotic motion.

Maybe Buck’s not the only one who sleeps better, knowing that his loved ones are close by.

Some indeterminable amount of time later, Eddie is pulled out of his doze by the faint feeling of a warmth pulling away, leaving his fingers cold. Half awake, he reaches for it, but only finds more empty space.

That gets him awake. Blinking open his eyes—it’s harder to orient himself with the podcast host talking about frogs raining from the sky somewhere over Serbia in his ear—it takes his sleep-addled brain a minute to understand what he’s looking at.

Buck, who has so far been sleeping like the dead, is sitting up ramrod straight in the dark, not moving.

“Buck?” Eddie rasps. “You okay?”

Buck doesn’t answer, which has Eddie’s pulse spiking oddly up into his throat. He rips out the earbud and sits up, straining to turn the lamp on behind the couch so he can see what’s wrong. He twists back around to see that Buck’s eyes are open, staring off into the middle distance with his eyebrows raised, like he’s waiting for something to happen.

Eddie’s just about to ask again when Buck’s whole face contorts, and suddenly he’s letting out the most ear piercing, earth shattering sneeze that Eddie has ever heard in his life. It has him startling like a horse at the sight of a snake—he nearly jumps half a foot in the air from the sheer power of it alone.

And Christopher thought Eddie’s dad sneezes were bad.

“Jesus Christ, Buck,” he gasps, unpeeling himself from the back of the couch, one hand clutched over his chest to calm his racing heart. He laughs, a little strangled by the unnecessary adrenaline. “You couldn’t warn a guy first?”

“S’rry,” Buck slurs out, so muffled by his hands that Eddie can barely hear him. “My bad.”

“Hey.” Eddie moves forward immediately, setting a hand on Buck’s shoulder when he leans forward, hand cupped around his face. “Hey, you okay?”

“Need a tissue,” Buck kind of gurgles, pulling his hands back a little and oh, yep. Yes he does. Eddie quickly throws off his blanket and hops up, hurrying over with the box off the coffee table and plopping it into Buck’s lap.

“How are you feeling?” he asks after nearly half the tissue box has been demolished, the evidence filling up the bathroom garbage can that Eddie quickly grabbed once the post-snot eruption nose blowing tornado started.

“Guh,” Buck replies eloquently, flopping back down onto his pillow. He lifts his head back up a little after a moment, looking muzzy but more alert. “What time is it?”

Eddie gives a cursory glance at his phone. “It’s half past eleven.”

Buck groans, flopping back down with more conviction. “Where’d Maddie go?”

“She went back home to sleep before her shift tomorrow morning.” Eddie perches on the arm of the couch to look down at Buck, crossing one arm over the other. “You’re stuck with me for the night.”

“Oh,” is all Buck says to that for a beat. “You don’t–you don’t have to do that. Isn’t it your day off with Chris tomorrow?”

“Chris is with Pepa,” Eddie says, pointedly ignoring the way the genuine care in Buck’s voice makes his stomach do a complicated somersault maneuver. “And I do have to, actually. I’m under strict orders to keep an eye on you, otherwise your sister will skin me. Probably turn me into a rug or something.”

Buck is quiet for a long moment, absorbing this. Eddie watches him worry at his lip, a little chapped from being sick and dehydrated. He thinks that Buck and Maddie’s habits are practically interchangeable, at this point.

“She wouldn’t make you into a rug,” Buck says eventually, expression surprisingly serious when he looks up at Eddie again.

“Oh no?” Eddie quirks an eyebrow. “What would she make me into, then?”

“She’d make you into something useful, like a blanket or–or a petticoat,” he says, then honest to god giggles at his own joke. “An Eddie-coat.”

“A what?”

“An Eddie-coat,” Buck reiterates, a slow, pleased smile spreading across his face like butter. “She’d make you into an Eddie-coat.”

There’s a moment where neither of them says anything. Eddie stares at him, and Buck immediately breaks first, devolves into nasally, semi-delirious laughter.

Valiantly fighting off a smile on his own face, Eddie rolls his eyes skyward. “Proud of yourself for that one, huh?”

“You are too. Don’t act like you aren’t,” Buck beams up at him. “You think I’m hilarious.”

Eddie purses his lips, cheeks warming, unable to fight back the smile this time, and Buck starts laughing all over again. He gets a little wheezy at the end, and Eddie winces when it turns into a wet, ugly sounding cough.

“Alright, funny guy,” Eddie says, pushing off his perch. “Where’s that thermometer? We’re checking to see how cooked your brains are.”

“Kitchen drawer. And my brains aren’t cooked,” Buck protests, propping himself up on his elbows as he watches Eddie root around his kitchen drawers. “Just, like–lightly sautéed, I think.”

“Uh huh.” Eddie comes back over, brandishing the thermometer above his head triumphantly. “I’ll be the judge of that. C’mere.”

It’s easy to drop down onto the mattress and scooch close, careful not to jostle Buck’s cast too much. They’re practically pressed hip to hip, Buck’s shoulder fitting snugly into the crook of Eddie’s collarbone while they both peer down at the little device in Eddie’s hand. He’s hyper aware of Buck’s breathing when the thermometer beeps, declaring that it’s ready for use.

“Here,” he murmurs, pulling back a little. He misses the contact almost immediately, but then something—happens.

Buck looks up at him through his long, honey colored lashes, and he’s opening his mouth to let Eddie check his temperature, and Eddie physically feels it when his heart trips over itself and falls flat on its face.

And just what the fuck is that all about?

Vaguely feeling like he’s been plunged under water, Eddie tucks the thermometer under Buck’s tongue, who lets him do it without complaint. They wait the few minutes it takes for the thermometer to beep like that, just watching each other.

“What’s the diagnosis, doc?” Buck asks after the thermometer beeps and breaks the silence. “Am I gonna make it?”

Eddie squints at the number on the tiny screen. “No cooked brains,” he confirms. “Still a little warm, but that’ll go down with some more meds and sleep.”

“Oh thank god,” Buck sighs, sagging against Eddie’s side, head dropping down to rest on his shoulder. He can feel Buck’s smile through the thin shirt sleeve. “I don’t know what I’d do with cooked brains and a broken leg.”

Barely breathing, he slides his palm up and down the length of Buck’s spine, turning his head to hide his smile in his friend’s hair. “Somehow, I think you’d manage.”

Eddie feels a little bit like he’s getting away with something, here.

They don’t do this. Sure, the occasional slap on the back or shoulder squeeze is fine. Normal. Sometimes Buck’s knee will brush Eddie’s in the engine and Eddie won’t pull away. But none of that leaves Eddie’s mouth dry, or like he’s suddenly too big for his skin, or like he weirdly doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

“How are you feeling?” Eddie asks for what feels like the thousandth time tonight, keeping up that steady movement of his hand up and down Buck’s back.

Buck sniffs dejectedly, shrugging, and Eddie dutifully hands him another tissue from the box.

“What can I do?” he asks, pulling back a little to give Buck some space while he blows his nose.

“Unless you can get me some new sinuses, not much.” Buck tosses the tissue in the trash can, his nose already turning a shade of red that let’s Eddie know it probably hurts like a bitch to blow. “Feels like my whole head is a cork in a champagne bottle.”

Eddie hums, chewing on the inside of his cheek for a moment. His thoughts drift back to the earlier conversation in the kitchen with Maddie, how easy it had been to share those memories with her, as painful as they are.

Then he remembers Maddie’s hand squeezing his, the earnest understanding on her face as she met his eye, and he thinks that maybe that pain can be useful for something after all.

“Can we try something?” he asks.

“Uh.” Buck pauses, tissue half raised to his nose. “Sure?”

“Great,” Eddie says, patting him on the back before standing up. “Take off your shirt.”

“What?” Buck startles, staring after Eddie with wide eyes as he pads around the stairs and into the bathroom. His hands press instinctively to the grey zip up he’s wearing. “Wh–what do you mean take off my shirt?”

“I mean, I’m going to put a wet washcloth on your face, and I don’t want your shirt to get soaked,” Eddie explains, coming back around to lean on the railing of the stairs. “Where are your washcloths, by the way?”

“In the upstairs bathroom, second drawer down.”

When Eddie comes back down, washcloth in hand, Buck hasn’t taken off his shirt. In fact, he’s pulling the sleeves of the zip up further down his hands. His mouth is pulled into a tight, small frown.

“Buck?” Eddie pauses. “You okay?”

“What is it supposed to do?” Buck asks, and if Eddie didn’t know any better, he’d say it sounds a little bit like he’s stalling. “The washcloth, I mean. How–how does it work?”

“Oh,” Eddie blinks. “I was gonna soak it in hot water and then kind of drape it over your face. The steam is supposed to help with the pressure, I think. So your congestion will clear up and you can breathe better.”

Buck is quiet for a long moment, nodding as he takes this in. He won’t look at Eddie, picking anxiously at a stray thread on his sleeve, teeth caught on his lower lip.

“Hey.” Eddie comes to sit down at the edge of the mattress, ducking his head so he can meet his friend’s downcast gaze. “What’s going on?”

“It’s not pretty,” Buck blurts out. He looks up, his voice pinched with distress. “The road rash, it—it’s pretty much healed up but it’s not gone yet, and I don’t—” he cuts himself off with a sharp intake of breath. He shrugs mutely, staring down at his hands.

After a moment, Eddie sets a hand on Buck’s shoulder, thumb finding the crook of his collarbone like a magnet clicking into place. Naturally, easily.

“I’m a paramedic, Buck,” he says, “I’ve seen way worse than a little road rash.” He smiles gently when Buck huffs, shoulder jumping under Eddie’s palm. “And I can take my shirt off too, if it helps,” he offers, teasing, and that’s enough to make Buck crack a smile. It’s small, but it’s real.

“That’s okay,” he says, cheeks going a little pink, and Eddie’s really going to have to schedule a visit with his cardiologist, if his heart keeps flopping around in his chest like that. “You can keep your—wait. Is that my Bruce Springsteen shirt?”

“Uhm.” And now it’s Eddie’s turn to feel uncomfortably hot, apparently. He hopes he’s not catching Buck’s cold already. He pulls back, nodding. “Yeah, I didn’t have any clothes to change into after work, so I borrowed one. If that’s okay.”

“No, no—um,” Buck waves a hand awkwardly, face turning beet red as he gestures at Eddie’s person. “You’re good. It—yeah, it looks good. On you. You’re good.”

“Thank you.” Now that they’ve both successfully embarrassed the hell out of themselves, Eddie motions with the hand holding the washcloth towards the bathroom. “I’m gonna—go get this wet.”

“Yep,” Buck says, nodding like a bobblehead. “Yeah, go right ahead.”

“Great,” Eddie says, then all but flees to the bathroom.

A few deep breaths and a pointed glare at his reflection in the mirror to fucking get it together, Diaz , later, Eddie leaves the washcloth in the sink with the hot water running, letting it soak while he comes back out to help Buck to stand up, careful not to let him twist or bump his cast in an awkward way while he gets his footing, leaning heavily on Eddie’s shoulder.

He carefully does not react when Buck’s shirt comes off. Just stands steady while Buck shrugs out of his zip up, then keeps a firm hold of Buck’s back, acting as a dutiful crutch while his friend slowly works the black T-shirt off one sleeve at a time, and then pulls it up and over his head.

There’s a violent roadmap of healing scrapes that starts on the pale skin of Buck’s hip and glides all the way up his torso, just stopping shy of the curve of his armpit before continuing on the soft, vulnerable underside of his arm all the way up to his elbow. If he wanted to, Eddie could trace the exact line of where Buck's body dragged when the truck skidded on its side.

“Maddie cried, the first time she saw it.” Eddie drags his eyes up to see Buck already watching him. He smiles, sad. “She tried to hide it, but I—I think I scared her pretty good.”

“She’s your big sister, Buck. She’s always going to worry about you,” Eddie says, carefully helping Buck slide his good arm around his shoulders, hand wrapping around Buck’s wrist, the other securely on Buck’s hip, careful not to press his fingers into any bruises.

“And you don’t scare me,” he adds, softer, and Buck looks over at him, something so painfully earnest and open in his expression that Eddie wants to fold himself around his friend like a protective layer and shield him from all the awful in the world.

Maybe Buck was onto something, earlier. Because from where he’s sitting, being made into an Eddie-coat doesn’t sound so bad right about now.

The shuffle into the bathroom is a slow one, but with the warm line of Buck’s body pressed from hip to shoulder against him, Eddie finds he doesn’t really mind.

After some debate, they get Buck situated on the bathroom floor with a pillow for him to sit on with Eddie sitting on the lip of the tub, Buck’s back against Eddie’s shins so he can easily tip his head back and rest against his knees.

“You ready?” Eddie asks, unballing the washcloth carefully after wringing out the excess water in the tub behind him. It’s just a little too warm against his fingertips, steam coming off the fabric in fleeing, wispy curls.

“Mhm,” Buck nods. He cranes his neck a little to look up at Eddie, squinting a little. “Am I supposed to do anything specific, or–?”

“Nope,” Eddie replies, smiling down at him. “Just close your eyes and breathe. The steam will do all the work for you.”

“Okay.” Buck wiggles a little more to get comfortable. He lets his eyes slide shut, murmuring, “go ahead.”

“Alright. Hold still.”

Very gently, Eddie drapes the washcloth over Buck’s face, making sure that it covers his nose and eyes, smoothing out the edges on Buck’s forehead, just against his hairline. He makes sure it doesn’t sit too heavily over his mouth, just in case Buck starts feeling claustrophobic.

A few stray water droplets immediately race over the curve of Buck’s chin and down his neck, pooling in the hollow of his throat. Eddie chases after one that slips down his cheek, stopping it from rolling into his ear with a soft swipe of his thumb.

“How’s that feel?” he asks after a moment.

Buck shifts, voice a little muffled. “It’s okay.”

“Okay?” Eddie echoes. “Not too hot, or anything like that?”

“Mm-mm, it’s good.” Buck takes a deep breath, then lets it go slowly, steam billowing off the fabric like a sleeping dragon lay beneath. After a second, he asks, “Can you shift forward a little? My neck kind of hurts.”

“Sure, here.” Carefully, he cradles Buck’s head in his hands and shifts his legs forward more, so Buck can lean back fully against his shins. Eddie gently starts massaging Buck’s temple with his thumbs, using slow, sweeping motions against the pressure he knows is built up there. “That better?”

“Yeah,” Buck sighs, melting into it. “Yeah, that’s perfect. Thank you.”

They stay like that for a beat, Eddie keeping up his ministrations before Buck’s curiosity is piqued enough for him to ask. “Where’d you even learn this from?”

“Old Diaz family trick,” Eddie tells him, mouth quirking. “Waterboard your children while they’re ill so they can’t fight back.”

That earns him a proper laugh, genuine and surprised and endearingly nasal, and the sound is so sweet that it warms Eddie straight through.

After a few minutes of quiet, Buck sniffs, sounding clearer than he has all night. He takes another deep breath, much easier this time. “Oh, wow,” he says. “It really does work.”

“See? What’d I tell you?” Eddie smiles, pleased. “You gotta trust me on these things, Buck.”

Buck curls his arm around Eddie’s leg, fingers warm against the skin of his shin. Not squeezing, just holding on, thumb mirroring the sweeping motion of Eddie’s against Buck’s temple. It’s the same spot, Eddie registers distantly, where Buck’s surgery scar is hidden beneath his cast.

“It’s you, Eds,” Buck murmurs. “I always trust you.”

Eddie is suddenly so thankful that Buck cannot see his face, because it feels a little bit like he just got kicked in the chest by a mule.

If he had been standing up, the force of it would have him bowing over. Instead he just sits there, staring down at his friend’s covered face with equal parts amazement and terror, and that’s when it hits him.

He’s afraid of it—this implicit trust that Buck is so willingly giving him. Eddie is terrified of it, and the force of it startles him, but he doesn’t shy away. In fact, he welcomes it, feeling almost dizzy with relief. Because for the first time in his life, Eddie is wanted not for what he can give, or what role he can fill, or how well he can provide.

Buck asked for Eddie because he is exactly that—just Eddie.

The truth is ever since Shannon passed Eddie has had a hard time with feeling—not needed, but. Something close to it. A word like wanted feels like too much, too selfish. Useful, maybe.

He couldn’t stop her from getting hit by that car that day, couldn’t even ease her pain, because by the time he got there there was no more pain for her to feel. The best he could do was twine their fingers together, clutching helplessly in a desperate attempt to give her his warmth, even as she grew colder by the minute, and stand there and listen to her tell him how much she wanted to stay, even as she was in the middle of leaving.

Eddie couldn’t stop the ladder truck from blowing up, either. He could only stand there and watch as Buck came to, blood gushing down his face with grime caught in his fluttering eyelashes. He’d never felt more helpless than when he watched his best friend realize he was crushed under nearly fourteen tons of lifesaving equipment and metal, while Bobby talked down the bomber not even ten feet away.

He couldn’t stop Buck from needing surgery, or the fever and illness that followed. But Eddie can be here, in the aftermath. He can fetch tissues for his friend’s poor nose, and drag Buck’s bigass mattress down the stairs so he can sleep more comfortably, and he can use the tricks from the rare moments he received his father’s warmth in childhood and make that old, familiar achy pain into something useful, something good.

Eddie can be good.

Maybe he always has been.

Buck certainly seems to think so. Maddie, too. So maybe it’s time Eddie starts believing it himself, if only a little.

The washcloth has cooled some, in the time it took Eddie to work himself into and back out of his miniature panic spiral, the steam no longer fleeing the fabric as rapidly as before. Eddie decides to relieve Buck of its weight before it can get too uncomfortable.

“Buck,” Eddie says softly. “I’m going to take off the washcloth now, okay?”

Buck doesn’t answer, the slow, even rise and fall of his chest telling Eddie that he’s probably dozing under there. Even dragons need their beauty sleep. At least he’s not snoring yet.

“Buck?” he asks, a little louder. “You with me?”

Buck’s answer is an incomprehensible, sleepy mumble. Eddie huffs a laugh through his nose, taking that as permission, and gently peels back the lukewarm washcloth from his friend’s face. He leans over and hands it up on the tub spout to dry before taking Buck’s head back up in both his hands, gently scratching at his scalp in apology for jostling him.

Buck’s head is a heavy weight in his hands, and Eddie takes a few seconds to just take him in. His cheeks are still flush, more from the heat of the steam than the fever, now. Droplets of water have beaded on the sloping bridge of his nose and across the delicate skin below his eyes. It reminds Eddie of the constellations in Christopher’s favorite astronomy book as a kid—the one with holes punched in the pages that you can shine a light through and project them onto the ceiling.

The proximity to the steam has made the edges of Buck's hair curlier than it already was, and Eddie's heart gets all sorts of warm behind his ribs because it reminds him so much of Chris's hair, too. He cards his fingers through it, and Buck hums, a warm, happy sound, and Eddie wants to be the one responsible for Buck making that noise for the rest of his life.

He’s not really thinking when he leans down and presses his lips to the unscathed skin on Buck’s temple, checking his temperature the same way he’s done a thousand times with his son whenever he’s sick. Buck’s skin is warm and damp, but no unnatural heat is rising off him. It’s safe to say his fever’s finally broken. Feeling triumphant, Eddie presses a satisfied, lingering kiss to Buck’s hairline, smiling a little to himself.

“Eddie?” Buck whispers.

Oh, is the first thought Eddie has as he freezes in place, lips still brushing against Buck’s skin.

The second, much more important thought he has is, oh no.

Eddie’s breath stalls out in his lungs. He pulls back, eyes wide, and finds Buck staring right back.

“Hi,” Buck breathes. Up this close, he can see the starburst pattern in the blue of Buck’s irises around his pupil. It almost reminds Eddie of a nebula, or a flower. Light and life, blooming out. Reaching, reaching, reaching.

Eddie opens his mouth, but his voice is being strangled somewhere beyond his back molars. He shuts it, swallowing. He whispers back, “Hey, Buck.”

“Sorry I fell asleep on you,” Buck says, and it’s so not what Eddie was expecting that it bursts the bubble of anxiety that was forming inside his lungs, and all the air it was holding back leaves in a rush of relief.

“That’s okay,” Eddie replies. He thinks he’s going to let Buck fall asleep on him whenever he wants for the rest of his life, forever. “I don’t mind being a pillow.”

“Um,” Buck blinks a few times, Adam’s apple bobbing. When he finds his voice again, it’s low, a little grainy from his illness. It makes Eddie’s stomach flutter. “Did—did you kiss me, just now?”

Tongue like a balloon in his mouth, Eddie nods. “I was checking your temperature,” he explains, like that excuses anything at all. “Dad habit. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Buck says quickly. His eyes dark down to Eddie’s lips, then back up, lightning quick. He asks, voice soft and small, “Can you check it again?”

Eddie feels his eyes go as wide as dinner plates. “You want me to?”

“Yes,” Buck says, nodding frantically. “Yes I want you to.”

So Eddie does. He checks Buck’s temperature above his left eyebrow, then his right, the bridge of his nose and each eye, both cheeks and even the divot of his chin. He kisses all of those little drops of starlight right off of Buck’s skin, savoring their taste, amazed that he’s even allowed to at all. Even more amazed when Buck chases after him and their nose knock, and then Eddie kisses it again in apology.

They’re both smiling when he pulls back, giggling like children. Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever going to get over how brilliant Buck’s smile is, bright and pleased and perfect. He’s pretty sure his own smile makes him look like an idiot.

“You ready to get off this bathroom floor?” Eddie asks, failing to beat back the giddiness trying to escape his every pore.

“Actually,” Buck says around a yawn, arching his back in a stretch before turning his nose to nudge against Eddie’s bare knee, eyes sliding shut. “I think I’m good right here.”

Eddie’s smile only gets bigger. “You don’t want to wait until you’re back in bed?”

“Can’t hear you. Too busy sleeping.”

“Oh really?” Eddie muses. “After all that trouble Maddie and I went through to drag that mattress down those stairs?”

That makes Buck open his eyes again, and then Eddie watches as his best friend’s expression sort of just—melts, lip wobbling for half a second before he catches it, swallowing hard.

Eddie’s smile starts to slip. “What?”

It takes Buck a few seconds to find his voice. When he finally does, his expression is so painfully sincere that it looks like it hurts.

“You made me a couch-bed,” he says simply, staring up at Eddie in such awe that Eddie can’t help it. He laughs, soft and relieved, and feeling infinitely lighter than he has in months. Before Buck can get the wrong idea, he leans down and presses another kiss right against the strawberry pink of Buck’s birthmark.

“It’s you, Buck,” he says, shrugging, a fond smile growing on his face as he stares down into those big, earnest baby blues. “It’s always you.”

That seems to do it for Buck, because the next thing Eddie knows he’s being pulled down and Buck is surging up and crushing their mouths together in a kiss. The angle is awkward, and their noses bump together hard enough that Eddie’s eyes water, but he doesn’t even care because Buck’s lips are warm against his, and everything about it is goofy and wonderful and perfect but there’s just one problem.

“Oh, no, Buck—come on,” Eddie rips himself away as soon as he remembers, leaning back and wiping at his mouth as Buck laughter fills up the tiny bathroom. He groans, “You’re going to get me sick.”

“Sorry,” Buck says, not sounding sorry at all, the bastard. “Couldn’t wait.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Eddie shakes his head, pinching Buck’s side playfully till he twists, swatting at Eddie’s hand with a gasped out laugh. “C’mon, let’s get you in that couch-bed.”

“Only if you be my pillow,” Buck replies, practically beaming, and who is Eddie to deny an injured man what he wants?

Buck is out like a light the second Eddie gets him back into some warm sleep clothes, and Eddie can’t help but smile at the way his friend sighs like an overworked puppy when he finally settles down into bed, feeling all kinds of gooey and fond at the sight of him.

In the morning they’ll talk about it. They’ll have to. But for now, Eddie is content to turn off the lights in the loft and crawl into bed beside his best friend, his partner. His boy.

The second he settles, Buck shifts, turning his head to tuck his snotty nose against the hinge of Eddie’s jaw, and in that moment Eddie doesn’t even care if it gets him sick, so long as he can keep being the warmth that Buck reaches for in sleep.

#also uploading this to tumblr in case people missed it over on ao3 #this is my first 911 fic ever everyone cheer and clap :)#title is from a lovely poem called elegy with steam by william fargason #kylie writes #buddie #buddie fic #911 fic

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