The fact that buck had a whole fucking panic attack after masking so hard to make it seem like he's doing okay after that meal with Eddie and Chris, kills me. I don't think you understand how hard that was for him. The whole, "please don't think I'm not okay, I promise I'm okay. Look! I can smile and laugh and hold myself together like a normal person, things are fine. Nobody needs to know I'm breaking down and can't seem to put myself together again," it's painful to watch because it's so obvious that he needs help and he's hiding it well enough from everyone else since according to 9x14, nobody else seemed to notice that he wasn't okay. His own sister (though we don't know for sure bc we haven't seen a Buckley Sibling Bonding moment yet) doesn't seem concerned for his well-being to the point that she's like Eddie and ringing his doorbell to get him to open up (in more ways than one). Fuck. But for Eddie to just find out that Buck didn't attend his therapy session via slip up from an unknowing Chimney and be hot on his tail for it immediately asking why he canceled his therapy session, and has to pretty much pry outta Buck about his rescheduling of said appointment - I'm dead over this. Eddie cares so fucking much and he's so attentive to him and sure he's his best friend and family, but so is everybody else. Nobody else is at his door with his favorite foods and child trying to cheer him up or keep him company after the shit that they all know went down during his and Eddie's trip back home, or trying to encourage him to talk to somebody who could help him sort through the mess he's going through. Buck is hiding this from everybody but the one person who sees and knows him, refuses to give up. Even during the end scene, where they had dinner and Eddie is prepping the salad, you can see on his face that he's worried and he only says what he says because he thinks it's what Buck wants to hear; for him to think that his mask is doing its job of being convincing enough to fake that things are dandy. You even see it in his eyes as he gets into the car and looks back at the house, at Buck. He knows that man is not okay. One could even say, he sees himself because he's been in his shoes at one point. He knows how it feels to bottle and shove your shit down and hide from the world and pretend that everything is okay when it's not. He's going to keep such an eye on him from this moment forward. And Buck taking those pills the second they left, barely holding on by a fucking thread; shaking, nearly hyperventilating, likely on the verge of straight collapsing from the weight of holding it all together...after everything he's been through and I'm not just talking about the kidnapping, I'm talking about since Bobby's death, everyone not truly accepting that he's changed or grown, still trying to find who he is as a person, all of it - it's so much and it's so heavy and it's so exhausting to try and keep it together. He's going to try so hard to try and convince everyone in his life that he's fine and that things are okay, but at some point -and I think it's gonna be soon tbh- he's going to fall apart and Eddie is going to be the one to be there to help and work to put him back together, much like Buck did for him when he found out his entire troop had died.
