Rating: Teen and Up
Relationship: Buddie
Characters: Evan Buckley, Eddie Diaz
Additional tags: pining, feelings realization, coming out, road trip, buddie in the desert, there was only one bed, unresolved romantic tension, 9x13 spec fic
Words: 2.5k
Sumary:
"It's not about … not wanting a relationship."
"Oh." Something about the way Eddie said it, hushed and hesitant, felt dangerous. A precipice loomed before them, and Eddie danced on tiptoe towards it. Buck wasn't sure what they'd find over the ledge, but he knew he'd hurl himself over, if only Eddie asked. "No?"
or
In the privacy of the desert, miles away from anything they know, Eddie opens up to Buck.
read on ao3
(thank you to @zinnydark for beta-ing!)
The diner felt more like a movie set than a real place. It had that timeless Americana quality to it, from the sunset yellow walls to the faded blue vinyl seats. Grease permeated the air, and Tina Turner crooned from a jukebox in the corner. The waitress who greeted them had a curly gray bun and red lipstick, and the menus she left them with felt like novels.
It was a welcome oasis after nine hours of driving. Buck was already perking up for the promise of a burger.
They slid into a booth by the jukebox, vinyl creaking underneath them. It drowned out the sound of their backs popping in tandem.
"You know I'll do anything for you, Buck," said Eddie after they'd ordered, "but next time we have to travel cross country, I will be taking a plane."
"No you won't," Buck countered. "You'd never leave me to drive thousands of miles on my own."
"Maybe," Eddie said. "Or maybe I'll just drag you on the plane too."
"You wouldn't dare."
"Kicking and screaming if I had to."
Easy banter lasted them until their burgers arrived — bacon and bleu cheese for Eddie, pesto and red peppers for Buck. It felt nostalgic in its own way. Very few things had been easy since Bobby passed; more often than not, everything simply crumbled apart.
But here, miles from anything and anyone, Buck thought he and Eddie had found each other again. That thing that fractured between them was mending, bit by bit.
Only now was Buck realizing how much he'd been missing Eddie. Even seeing each other every day, they hadn't been this in too long.
He smiled at Eddie, and Eddie smiled back. His eyes crinkled at the corners, sparkling where the last rays of desert sun scattered across them. A few stray strands of hair fell across his face, mussed from his passenger seat nap, and his cheeks bulged around a bite of burger. Ketchup stained the corner of his lip.
He could've been a painting.
Hastily, Buck looked away, tearing his eyes from Eddie's face and down to his own food. The distance, he reminded himself, had nothing to do with this. It couldn't, because this was nothing more than friendship. This wasn't love, because he wasn't in love with Eddie, so he didn't have to pull away. He didn't have to prove himself.
"So," Buck said, needing more than anything to fill the silence. "That Alex woman seems … nice."
Truthfully, Buck hadn't heard more than two words from her that didn't involve some sort of crisis management, but that wasn't the point, because Eddie had. Eddie'd had all kinds of conversations with her, conversations Buck wasn't privy to. Conversations that led to him trusting her with parts of his life that he used to trust to Buck.
That was fine, really. That was good. Eddie needed people, and Buck was all too happy for those people to not be him.
Eddie grunted around his burger and took his time swallowing. "Yeah," he said lightly, eyeing Buck's fries. He'd opted for coleslaw, like a liar. "She's great."
"Yup." Buck sucked his teeth. He pushed his plate forward, inviting. Eddie immediately reached over, stealing three fries at once. "She's um, she's good at her job. With the State Mental … Aaaa …"
"Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Team," Eddie rattled off. Of course he had it memorized.
"That!" Buck snapped his fingers. "She's very good. At that."
"Sure. Where are we going with this?"
"Nowhere!" Eddie's face scrunched in disbelief. "Okay," Buck capitulated, "I'm not saying anything, but. She's pretty, she's competent, you two … work well together, is all." He picked up a fry, jabbed it into the little cup of ketchup, and did not examine why his own words sounded so forced.
Eddie, for his part, just rolled his eyes. "Seriously? This again?"
"What do you mean again? When have I ever mentioned Alex before?" Buck was sure he hadn't touched on this point. Yet.
"Not Alex," said Eddie, "my love life. First the bar, then the auction, now this? Why are you trying so hard to get me a date?"
Eddie was overselling it. Buck hadn't been that pushy. Had he? "You're my friend. Do I need some nefarious purpose to want you to be happy?"
"Do I need to date a woman to be happy?"
He didn't look at Buck as he said it.
I need you to date a woman, Buck didn't say.
Buck did say, "I just don't understand why you're so resistant to the idea of a relationship."
Eddie shrugged, fiddling with the cup of coleslaw on his plate. "Maybe I'm happy with what I have."
"But are you really satisfied with that? Just … being alone?"
"I'm not alone," Eddie insisted. "I have my son, my job — a purpose. I have my family, the 118. I have you."
Half of Buck's fry had already fallen into the depths of the ketchup cup. He kept jabbing what was left in there anyway, a half hearted attempt to dig it out.
"Buck?" Eddie ducked his head, leaning in until he caught Buck's eye by force. "I have you, right?"
The fry slipped from his fingers, finally given up for a lost cause. He didn't care.
"Yeah," he said, helpless to the pull of Eddie's gaze. "You have me, Eddie. At least," he added with a purposefully lopsided grin, "for the next four hundred miles, you do."
Eddie laughed. The sound of it melted the tension housed between Buck's shoulder blades.
"Right," he said, burger back in hand. "Once we're back home, all bets are off?"
"I might have to donate you to Ravi," Buck quipped.
Eddie chucked a fry at Buck, who swatted it out of the air. But he was smiling. They both were.
Back to being them. Back to being easy.
***
Conveniently, there was a motel on the same corner as the diner. The only other sign of life was a gas station. And that was all there would be for miles yet.
Buck handled filling the truck's tank while Eddie went to secure rooms. When he finished and Eddie hadn't emerged, he parked the truck and sat on the hood to wait.
It was a cloudless night. The sun had set during their dinner, though a smudge of orange still marked the western horizon, fading rapidly to an inky blue. Stars twinkled above, visible even past the motel sign with its neon glow and strip of yellow lights. They painted the sky in glittering constellations; if Buck concentrated, he could just make out the galaxy swirled over and around them.
You never got this view in Los Angeles. Buck knew people who had lived their whole lives in the city and never saw the stars.
"Stargazing?" Buck hadn't noticed Eddie approaching, his mind too lost in space. His voice was soft, his face softer, a fond smile gracing his lips. He settled in beside Buck without waiting for an answer, nudging him over to make room.
"You know," said Buck, "I never notice how much I miss the stars until I leave the city."
Eddie hummed. "Sometimes you don't know what's missing until it's right in front of you."
Buck looked sideways at Eddie. His gaze was fixed upwards, unfocused. Something dangerously wistful played along the corner of his lashes, the curve of his lips.
Buck snorted, if only to break the moment. "Okay, Guru Eddie. You get that one from Frank?"
"Shut up." Eddie pushed his shoulder playfully into Buck's, and Buck pushed back. "Got a room, by the way. They only have queen beds, but we're almost at the end of our budget so I figured we could share."
"Yeah," Buck said. "That's fine." It wasn't like they hadn't shared a bed before. There was no reason for it to be weird now.
He rolled off the truck and held a hand out for a room key, which Eddie obligingly handed over.
The room had a vintage feel, with patterned umber wallpaper and kelly green bedding. Buck claimed the side of the bed closest to the bathroom and set about on his nightly routine. Eddie joined him partway through cleansing, already clad in his basketball shorts and sleep shirt.
They settled in early with hopes of heading out before dawn the next day. The last leg of the journey was the shortest, and they were eager to get home — though, privately Buck thought he wouldn't have minded an extra day or two on the road, so long as Eddie was driving.
Night closed around them, dampening the light to a faint glow from the window. Buck lay on his back and listened to Eddie breathing beside him, waiting to drift off to sleep.
"Buck?"
Eddie's whisper was gentle, so soft Buck might have imagined it. Soft enough he could pretend he didn't hear it.
He wouldn't, though. He wasn't wired for it, not with the way his entire being shifted around Eddie, constantly reorienting to stay within his orbit. If he hadn't heard Eddie he would've felt him, felt the air shift from his lungs, felt his lips move in the dark. Even with the respectful foot of space between them.
"Yeah?" Buck whispered back.
"It's not about … not wanting a relationship."
"Oh." Something about the way Eddie said it, hushed and hesitant, felt dangerous. A precipice loomed before them, and Eddie danced on tiptoe towards it. Buck wasn't sure what they'd find over the ledge, but he knew he'd hurl himself over, if only Eddie asked. "No?"
Eddie shook his head. Buck turned his own to look. His profile was dark, backlit by the soft glow penetrating the cheap curtains. Reds and blues from the motel signage, yellow spilling over from the diner.
Buck waited for him to speak. When he didn't, he prompted, "What is it then?"
Eddie swallowed audibly. "Alex is … nice. She's capable, and pretty, and we get along well."
"Okay," Buck said softly, not sure where this was going.
"But she isn't." He turned his face toward Buck, eyes glinting in the dark. His mouth hung open, working over whatever would come next. "She's not … a man."
Buck blinked, and thought he could hear it. His mouth went dry and his heart hammered as if he'd taken a ten story fall. A leap.
He nodded vaguely.
"Okay."
Eddie didn't look like it was okay. The line of his neck was taut, and his jaw worked. He lay almost too still under the sheet, strung like a livewire.
"Is that … weird?"
The words called to mind Buck's old loft. The warm lighting, the industrial appliances, the exposed brick. A couple of beers shared, secrets spilled between friends. Buck remembered Eddie's warmth, his easy embrace that day that he came out.
He twisted so all of him faced Eddie. The movement brought them a few inches closer. He longed to reach out, to lay a hand on Eddie's shoulder, to take his hand, feel his arm through the sheet, cup his jaw.
He settled for simply placing his hand on the bed between them, and watched as Eddie softened.
"Of course not," he said on a breath. "Eddie …"
Eddie nodded, blinking rapidly, and shifted to mirror Buck. His hand came to rest next to Buck's, close enough that a twitch of the pinkies would have them touch.
"How long?" Buck asked. It wasn't the right question, not by a long shot, but he couldn't help himself. He had to know.
"A while," Eddie admitted. "Since Texas. Maybe before."
Something in Buck sank. Since Texas … a year, then. More. All that time and Buck had no idea. He was supposed to know everything about Eddie, but he didn't know this.
Eddie hadn't told him.
"I don't know what this means," Eddie said, and it sounded more a confession than anything else uttered that night. "I'm not … sure."
"You're not sure?" Buck echoed. "What aren't you sure of?"
Eddie took a steadying breath. "I don't know," he said. "It's new, but it doesn't feel new. It doesn't feel right, but it doesn't really feel wrong either. And I can't stop thinking about — about it, but I don't know how to tell, for sure."
"I see." Buck cursed the night, that it mired Eddie's face in shadow. Only the whites of Eddie's eyes caught the light, his shape outlined in the backglow. Buck wanted to see him, to trace every twitch and expression. "You want to know how to know."
"How did you know?"
Buck turned that over. His tongue formed a name, but the space between them had become something sacred; invoking the name could shatter it. So he said, simply, "I was kissed."
"And that was it?"
"Yeah," Buck said. "It just … it made sense. It made me make sense."
Eddie nodded. "Just a kiss, then?"
His pinkie twitched.
Buck's breath stuttered. The room spun around them, the space between them reduced to inches. The air between them danced, charged, exchanged on congruent exhales.
Buck drifted, was drifting, tethered to Eddie on a collision course.
He was going to kiss Eddie.
It struck him then that this could never be any meaningless kiss. Not on Buck's part. Millions of those ran through his mind; none of them were like this. None of them had that pull, that desperate urge that thrummed beneath his fingertips, touch him, touch him now, pull him close, closer, closer.
There was a gravity here unlike any Buck had experienced before. Eddie, a black hole, and Buck caught in his orbit, helplessly sinking in. Once he passed the event horizon, there could be no turning back.
So he turned away.
"Yeah, so." The words came too loud, echoing in the cracks of the motel ceiling. "When, when we get back to L.A. we should totally, uh, find a guy for you to kiss. Oh, we can go back to that bar we went to with Ravi! A-and now that I know what you're actually looking for, I can wingman way better this time."
Even to his own ears his voice rang hollow. The sheets rustled beside him, nearly drowning out Eddie's mumbled agreement, and the room fell silent.
Regret washed through Buck, pinning him in place. The space between them may well have been the desert that surrounded them, expansive, unyielding. He had a feeling it would take just as long to cross.
For the first time, Buck let himself think of Eddie and want. God, did he want. He wanted Eddie. He wanted the little spot he'd carved in Eddie's heart, in Eddie's life. He wanted that spot to mean something.
He wanted to mean something.
Long minutes passed before Buck could drag his eyes from the ceiling. Eddie's back was to him, sheets drawn up to his ears, hair haloed in the neon glow of the vacancy sign.
Maybe they should've shelled out for separate rooms after all.
if 9x13 goes without even a smidge of a mention from anyone about telling tommy about what happened to buck, the rest of the post is a part of the dialogue (just the dialogue, mind you) I would imagine a post-episode bt (post making up) fic would look like
*may come off as 118 critical because it is with the speculation that tommy is not told about what happened to buck at all
“Tommy, what’s wrong?”
“Everything’s fine, baby.”
“Clearly, it isn’t.”
“Did you take your meds, yet?”
“We promised to talk to each other. Even when it’s hard. Especially then.”
“I don’t want to make it about me, Evan.”
“Well, I do. If something is bothering you, I want to know.”
“Baby, I can handle it.”
“I know you can. Doesn’t mean you have to.”
“...You should be focusing on recovering, not whatever issue I’m having.”
“Tommy, trust me. I’m not going to be able to focus on anything else when I’m worried about you. You’re always willing to drop everything for me, why is it so hard to believe I’m the same when it comes to you?”
“It’s stupid. I feel stupid feeling like this.”
“Tell me.”
“They didn’t tell me what happened to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you got kidnapped. When you got fucking starved and tortured all alone out there. They didn’t tell me anything.”
“That, I don’t... but you were there when I woke up.”
“Because I only knew what happened after everything was over. And even then, I had to figure it out myself to hear about you landing in some hospital out of state. You almost died and they didn’t even tell me you were in trouble.”
“Oh, babe. I’m here. I’m okay.”
“I almost lost you. And they couldn’t pick up the phone to ask me for help, or just let me know you were alive — I don’t know if I can forgive them for that.”
Eddie processes this for a moment, all while moving this way and that for the nurse’s vital checks. “Okay, wait… what about my friend? Is he okay?”
The nurse pauses, stepping back from the bed, and shares a look with her attending. “What friend?”
“Buck,” Eddie says, starting to get frustrated. “Evan Buckley. Six-foot-two, big guy, kind of hard to miss. We were driving home to Los Angeles.” At their silence, he urges, “Someone ran us off the road.”
The doctor and the nurse share another look, this time marginally more worried. “There was no one else in the car when they got to you,” the doctor says, and Eddie’s ears start ringing.
~
Or: In which Buck gets taken from Eddie, and neither of them stop fighting to get back to their family.
With all the talk of finding one's way back home and fighting for it to get there
What if they play "I'm coming home" (pt II) by Skyler Grey when Buddie falls into each other's arms at the end of 9x13 as a direct contrast/continuations of 3x03's "Wait for me to come home"
Maddie surveys the bleak options in front of her and sighs. Hospital cafeteria food is certainly not what she had in mind for the meal she'd share with Eddie when she finally cashed in on their bachelor auction date. And she wasn't planing to fly out to New Mexico for it, either — but most of all, she really didn't think her brother would be missing in action when it happened.
When Eddie called her with the news, she dropped an exorbitant amount on a last-minute flight to Albuquerque. Buck's worth it — they're both worth it. Eddie needs someone to be here for him, too.
After shelling out $15 for a halfway-to-wilted premade ceasar salad for herself, and grabbing a glass of cranberry juice for Eddie, Maddie starts the trek back to his room.
"Where the hell are the purple elevators?" she mumbles, turning around to backtrack down the hallway she swears she took to get here.
Which is when her phone vibrates in her pocket, of course. She makes sure she's got a secure grip on the cafeteria tray and digs it out.
Protected number.
Her eyes narrow. Maddie hates answering unexpected phone calls, especially the ones where she can't see who's calling — she gets enough of that at work. But Buck is missing. It could be … anyone. It could be news.
She sets the tray down on the empty nurse's bay — despite her first-hand experience with how much doing that annoys the nurses — and answers the call, terrified that this is the moment she learns that Buck is …
"Hello?" she greets, tentatively, ready to hang up if it's a scammer or a debt collector or a robo-call.
"Maddie?" Buck's panicked voice replies.
"Buck?" There's a moment — a split second — where she's frozen where she stands, but then the next thing she knows, she's running, tray abandoned behind her.
"Maddie — I-I don't think I have much time, I think —" Static fills her ear.
"Fuck," she whispers, pulling the phone away to look at the screen. It's still connected, thank god. She puts it back to her ear.
"— is coming back, but I-I'm in a barn. It's, it's old, like, wood, falling apart." There's static again. "— knocked me out in the car and I — I woke up wearing someone else's clothes," he says, a slightly hysterical edge rising in his voice.
"Take a breath. Do you know where the barn is?" she asks, out of breath from the running. A sign ahead points to the purple elevators, finally, but she doesn't want to risk the call dropping, so she opts for the staircase instead. "Are there any windows? What can you see?"
"They're boarded up, and — I, I don't know, Maddie, I don't know where I am," he says, his voice on the edge of sobs.
"Are you hurt?"
"I feel funny, I don't know — Maddie, my head's all, all jumbled. But, I'm — I'm trying —"
She forces her feet to keep climbing, pushes her brain into dispatcher mode.
"Buck, hey, keep breathing for me, okay? Did you see who took you?" she asks. "What did they look like?"
She heaves open the door on the second floor, and is relieved to recognize what she sees. Eddie's just down the hallway, if she can just get to his room —
"It was a — a woman," Buck replies, his words slurring together slightly. A woman. Maddie unconsciously rubs at the scar at her throat, then shoves the thought of her own abduction out of her mind as best she can. She needs to just focus on Buck. "I'm coming home, I need to come home. Chris needs me."
"Chris is —" with the Wilsons, she doesn't say, because static cuts her off. Stupid spotty hospital phone service. "Fuck!"
"I — I, you can't let Helena and Ramon take him, tell him I'm coming," Buck says, voice full of resolve despite how much it wavers.
"Why would Helena and —" Maddie cuts herself off. She's wasting precious time. She makes herself focus as she runs down the hallway, dodging around a hospital bed. "Buck, anything else you can tell me about who took you? What do you remember about the accident?"
"She had a truck," Buck says. "Ran us off the road. Ed —" he hiccups. "Eddie was driving. Big flood lights on the truck, like — oh god." His voice shifts on the last words and a chill rushes through Maddie's limbs, despite the exercise she's getting sprinting through this hospital.
"What? What's wrong?" She turns down the hallway, and she can see Eddie's room. It's right there.
"I think she just got back," Buck whispers. "Tell Chris I love him, I'm — I'm coming home. I'm not giving up, I'm going to fight."
She comes to a stop in the doorway to Eddie's room, panting. "Buck, wait I've got —"
The line goes dead.
"— Eddie here …" she trails off, making eye contact with a startled Eddie, sitting up and alert in his hospital bed.
"Was that —?" Eddie sits up as much as he can.
"Buck," Maddie says immediately. "He — I was trying to get here so he could talk to you — damn it." She looks down at her phone and pulls up the call log. "I need to talk to the police. He's —"
"Where is he?" Eddie asks. He pushes off his blanket and lowers the guard rail on his bed, ready to go.
"Hold on," Maddie says, turning away from him and digging in her purse. She talked to the deputy who was hanging around the ward when visiting hours started this morning. His card is in here somewhere — Got it. She balances the card on the windowsill and looks out at the parking lot while she dials the number.
"BernCo Sheriff's office."
"Hi," Maddie says, voice shaking the way it never does at work. "My name is Maddie Buckley. I spoke to Deputy Blake this morning. My brother, Evan Buckley, is missing, but he just called my cell."
It only takes a few minutes for her to recount as much as she remembers from the call.
Eddie's rustling gets louder, so she turns around, finding him awkwardly pulling on a sock with one hand.
"Eddie!" she hisses. She gives him her sternest former-nurse look. It'd be easy for him to further injure himself — he's got a broken rib, another couple of bruised ones, and a cast on one wrist.
Eddie just ignores her, keeps struggling to get dressed. Whatever — if he's not going to listen to her, she's not going to watch him suffer. She turns back to look out the window again.
When she goes over the part of the call where Buck said, "Chris needs me," Eddie's rustling stops.
"Thank you. I — I hope you find him," she says, then ends the call. Why couldn't Buck get abducted in LA, where she has the resources to help in an emergency? She pictures him in an abandoned barn somewhere in the middle of the desert, haunted by a shadowy female figure. In her imagination, the kidnapper looks just like Amber. She blinks the image away, turns back to Eddie.
He's sitting on the edge of the bed now, eyes wide and expectant.
"They're going to try to trace the number," Maddie tells him. She slumps in a visitor chair and thinks idly of the lunch tray she abandoned downstairs. She isn't hungry now anyway.
"We're getting out of here."
Maddie laughs humorlessly. "Uh, no we're not. There's no way they'll discharge you."
"I'll sign an AMA."
She gawks at him. "What?"
"Fuck," Eddie says. "Fuck, okay, I've got to —" He looks around the room a little frantically. "Phone, I need my phone."
"Here." Maddie spots it tucked under his wallet on the nightstand and retrieves it for him. "Buck's phone is turned off."
"I know," Eddie says grimly. "I need to call Christopher."
She rests a hand on his forearm. "Don't you think it might be best to wait?"
Eddie bristles, eyebrow furrowing. "He's going to want to know Buck's okay."
"Eddie, think about it for a second." She squeezes his arm. "We don't know that Buck is okay. Or that he's going to be …" She swallows hard against the pressure in her throat. "What if … god forbid. But what if … he doesn't make it?
Eddie stares her down, his jaw clenched so tightly the muscle at his temple flexes. He takes a breath in through his nose and out through his mouth before he replies. "Then Chris deserves to know that he was the last thing on Buck's mind. That getting home to him was that important," he says through gritted teeth.
A tear races down Eddie's cheek and he reaches up with the shoulder of his cast-laden arm to wipe it away.
Maddie wishes she knew Eddie better, knew him well enough to understand what he needs right now. If Buck were here — well, if Buck were here, Eddie wouldn't be furiously wiping tears off of his face. But Buck would know what to do.
It's silent between them for a moment, and then the sound of the blood pressure cuff automatically inflating fills the room. Only — it's not on Eddie's arm anymore.
"Hang on a sec —" Maddie says.
"I already called the nurse. I'm going to get changed." Eddie moves to get up, grimacing from the pain.
"Wait!" She goes to stop him from yanking on any of the tubes and cables he should be hooked up to, but it's not just the BP cuff he's removed. "Your — IV… Eddie."
"I'm a professional," he says, waving her away. "And plus. I think I know where this barn is."
"Why didn't you — Eddie!" She scrambles to her feet. This — changes things. At least a little bit.
After Nashville buddie takes the long way home. Road trip and everything, they're excited and the road has been super fun. But they need to settle down for the night, in comes only one bed motel.. something happens between them there in the small room on that single bed. Something charged, but they don't really get to talk about it. While at the motel they somehow manage to piss someone off cue the crash, which is obviously targeted leaving us with buck getting kidnapped. Then they're both going through the horrors thinking they'll never see each other again. Eddie finds Buck in a dramatic reunion slowly leading into Buddie canon. And then Buck has lasting effects from the kidnapping ... they fed him drugs and he's having withdrawals maybe (IV drip and all). He's trying to hide it but eventually has to go on sick leave...
"buck gains 'new cognitive abilities' where he can tell when people or lying" "he can read people better" absolutely not !! he officially gets diagnosed with adhd
