An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Queer as Folk (US TV 2000)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Brian Kinney/Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk)
Characters: Brian Kinney (Queer as Folk), Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, POV Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk), Bottom Brian Kinney (Queer As Folk), Top Brian Kinney (Queer as Folk), Bottom Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk), Top Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk), Rough Sex, Gentle Sex, Internalized Toxic Masculinity, Just shy of slice of life, Porn with Feelings, Some Plot, Kinney Operating Manuel, impending 2008 recession
Summary:
Justin has flown to Pittsburg for a surprise visit, but finds a taciturn and moody Brian. Through tried-and-true methods as well as some new ones, the boys get through some growing pains in communicating what's going on.
***
Started as a short bit of smut, but thought too much about Brian's feelings.
It feels like a damning piece of information, one that makes Buck want to scrape every last bit of green from the earth until he uncovers the familiar warm brown that he’s looked for every time he’s felt lost to the point of never coming back. He doesn’t want any of the intermittent shades, flickering between green and hazel and anything but the brown that speaks of laughter and life and everything Eddie isn’t right now.
It hadn’t taken Buck long to corral him onto the couch after coaxing him up from the dining table, his heart breaking at the automatic way Eddie seemed to follow him, like his strings had been tied to Buck’s fingers and all Buck had to do was flick his wrist to make him move.
He’d gently cleaned off Eddie’s face while he sat obediently, staring somewhere beyond Buck’s shoulder with the blankest expression Buck has ever seen on him. Even with his fingertips grazing the salt-stiffness of his skin, Buck had known that Eddie was a million miles away, replaying the last moments he saw his squad. Maybe even replaying the helicopter crash that had secured their discharge back home.
Now, he watches Eddie’s chest rise and fall gradually as he sleeps, his breathing soft and silent as if he doesn’t want to take up space even like this.
Buck doesn’t see how he could — not curled into himself as he is, a wrestled ball of grief, mourning and pain carefully contained to only the destruction of himself, and everything he owns.
Nothing that belongs to Christopher, save for his father, has been touched.
The locked door had been the most peculiar part of the evening — because Eddie never locks his bedroom door. Hell, he hardly ever closes it, leaving it open for Chris to come in if he needs to, not wanting to risk not hearing him call out.
It had been one of those things that Buck learned during the couple weeks he’d crashed at the Diaz home, helping Eddie through his recovery. Even delirious from painkillers, it had been an uphill battle to force Eddie to close his door and let Buck take care of Chris, if he needed someone through the night.
But Eddie had locked it today — trying to protect his kid from the grief he holds close, from the pain that burst out of his chest in a flurry of broken glass and shattered anger.
If he looks closely, he can still see the white scuff of plaster over his knuckles, the smudges of blood drying a rust brown on his sweat-drenched T-shirt — two things Buck hadn’t had the strength to clean off without giving into the hot pressure building behind his eyes. Eddie’s hair is a mess from tugging relentlessly on it, and the two painkillers Buck had pushed into his hand will do nothing for the splitting headache he’s bound to have in the morning.
Buck has the sudden urge to strip all the evidence of the night away from him, to leave him as unharmed as the last time Buck saw him, but he doesn’t move from where he’s perched in the armchair, watching over Eddie as he sleeps.
Restless, he doesn’t sit for long, getting up to pad quietly to Chris’ room.
There’s a furrow that lives between Chris’ eyes even as he sleeps on, soft snuffles filling the room. For a moment, Buck just stands and looks blankly at the hastily discarded headphones on his desk, his laptop still open, a screensaver bouncing in all the corners.
Buck has only heard frantic fear in Christopher’s voice once in his life — while they were being swept away by crashing waves with no end in sight.
Tonight, he heard it again — fear for his dad, never of him. And Chris’ fear had resonated with the part of Buck that’s been trying to hold onto Eddie for months, only to realize that Eddie has been slipping through his fingers anyway — had slipped through his fingers.
He’d known it was a slippery slope, one with no traction, no grip, but he’d tried anyway.
Look man, you need to tell me if something’s wrong.
He seemed different.
The clues had been right there, with the way Eddie’s shirts were beginning to sag over his shoulders, the self-conscious way that he now pushes his food around, the smudges under his eyes that look darker every time Buck sees him. He looks more and more like a single breeze could blow him away, his feet unsteady on the ground he lives on.
The avoidance every time Buck tries to approach the topic, like he’s behind a barrier that Buck hasn’t felt between them in a long, long time — probably ever.
Buck lets the door gently fall shut, the sound of the latch not even a click in the still of the house as he goes back to the armchair.
There’s something here that Buck doesn’t understand — that Buck can’t understand because he doesn’t know what it’s like to live the life Eddie’s lived. But he can be here, holding vigil over him and knocking back the demons that prey on him in his most vulnerable moments.
It’s all he’s got right now, so as he settles in with a blanket across his lap, twisting the old fibers between two restless fingers, he thinks to himself that this will have to be enough.
For now.
------
Morning brings with it that headache that Buck had predicted.
Eddie’s barely able to crack his eyes open before he’s slamming them shut again, his groan piercing through the still of the house.
Buck hasn’t slept at all, spending the night scrolling through article after article about PTSD, trauma, finding counselors, looking at the VA’s website, and trying to figure out how they’re going to patch the drywall in Eddie’s bedroom.
A hysterical part of him wonders what new paint color Eddie will choose.
He’s scrolling through a scientific journal on emotional support animals when movement on the couch catches his eye.
Confusion is clear on Eddie’s face as he stirs again, straightening himself as he carefully cracks his eyes back open to land on Buck sitting a few steps away.
His eyes are still red, the skin underneath dark-bruised and puffy, and his hair is a rat’s nest but in the sun, he looks less gaunt, less likely to keel over from a single touch.
Buck sees the moment embarrassment settles in, because a flush fills Eddie’s face and he drops his eyes away, looking anywhere but at him.
He never wants Eddie to look like that, and never at him.
Slowly, Buck rounds the coffee table and takes a seat, only bare inches separating their knees. “Eddie,” he says quietly.
“Did you stay there all night?”
Buck ignores the question, knowing it’ll just fuel his guilt, but the silence that stretches between them is heavy with half-truths, desperation urging from Eddie to move past this, and Buck’s stubbornness to keep them rooted in place.
When Eddie goes to move, Buck reaches out and catches his wrist.
Too late, it occurs to him that touching Eddie right now is probably not a good idea, and reluctantly, he lets his fingers slip from the fast-beating pulse under them. But Eddie listens, and stays where he is, their knees locked together in an alternating pattern despite the inches that separate them.
Eddie’s head stays bowed, his knee bounces restlessly, and he looks like he’ll flee any minute now but he stays.
Buck knows what this feeling is, what the embarrassment and humiliation that’s colored Eddie’s cheeks a bright red is.
“The first day you came over after the firetruck bombing,” Buck starts.
Eddie’s clearly not expecting that, because his head shoots up, expression stricken.
Buck never talks about the firetruck bombing in anything less than a joke these days, but he remembers every bit of it in a way that’s nowhere near funny. The searing pain, the feeling of icy fingers crawling up his legs, the horrible, horrible feeling of losing sensation in his limb.
The fear when he woke up, and thought his leg was gone.
But above all, he remembers Eddie — giving Ali a chance to go home and shower during the hospital days, sitting with Buck during all the physical therapy that came after, bringing Christopher around to give Buck some semblance of direction in the clusterfuck that had become his life.
Buck plows on, the memories as vivid to him as technicolor, flitting across his mind in quick succession. “The first day you came over after the bombing, you had to pick my sorry ass off the couch and shove me into the shower. Hell, you had to wait in the bathroom to help me with my clothes because I couldn’t put them on and stay standing up. The second time, you had to watch me break from physical therapy, physically and mentally. The third, I blew up on you because I was mad at my body for not working like it was supposed to. The fourth—”
“Buck,” Eddie cuts through like he’s in pain for having to listen to this, but Buck doesn’t stop.
“No, I need you to listen to me. All of that was one month in all the years we’ve known each other. The first year.” Carefully, he reaches forward to grasp Eddie’s shoulder, urging his best friend to look at him. Eddie’s pulse beats a little quicker under his thumb, and for one moment, Buck can feel the phantom touch of his best friend’s hand over his own shoulder, easily saving him from a path of self-destruction and guilt. And now, it’s his turn to do the same. “Eddie, this is who we’ve always been. You’ve been there for me, every time I needed you, without judgment, even in the middle of your own grief. Now, let me be here for you, okay? It’s just me.”
There are a million other words that Buck could use to describe how much it means to have Eddie open up to him, but all of them feel too raw, too sharp with vulnerability. They feel jagged where they lay on Buck’s tongue, ready to give them to Eddie if he needs more convincing about how much Buck wants to be here.
He doesn’t though. Eddie looks at him like he’s insane, a little bewildered, a little confused, but there’s no mistaking the gratitude hidden in his expression.
And there’s no mistaking the surprise, either, which hurts more than Buck expects — a product of what Eddie’s come to learn, but something Buck wants to erase from him.
“I’ve got your back,” Buck whispers, reiterating the promise that’s been a guiding light for him over the years.
His hand slips from Eddie’s shoulder as he takes in Eddie’s eyes.
They’re turning green again.
Buck now knows what that means, and he forces himself to get up from the coffee table and pad to the kitchen, flicking the coffee switch. The rush of water pouring into the carafe fills the silence, but he keeps an ear out for Eddie, his heart breaking when he hears a lone sniff, a whispered curse floating with the dust motes.
It takes another few minutes for him to hear the shuffle of socked feet heading down the hallway, the familiar creak of Christopher’s door hinges, then the soft click of the bathroom door.
Buck wonders what it says about him that he can recognize all the sounds in this home with more familiarity than his own house.
The idle wait filters Eddie’s words back to him, and in the bright rays of sunshine streaming through the kitchen windows, their weight seems all the more heavier, leaving dark shadows at the table Eddie and Chris normally sit.
Buck tries not to take that as an omen as he stares at Eddie’s chair, covered in shadow.
Everyone I saved, they’re all dead
Shot herself last August
That I’m never gonna feel normal again
The click of the coffee machine turning off flinches him away from his thoughts, and mindlessly, Buck prepares his and Eddie’s mugs.
It doesn’t take long for the other man to pad in behind him, this time managing a faint smile as he meets Buck’s eyes. There’s still toothpaste stuck to the corner of his mouth, and Buck hides his smile behind his mug as he studies his best friend.
His hands are clean where they grip the mug tightly, as if trying to absorb every bit of heat from it, and he’s changed into a new shirt, but he still looks off-kilter, like one touch could blister him into a million pieces.
Buck’s thumb taps restlessly against the side of his own mug as he waits for Eddie to say something.
“I scheduled another appointment with Frank today,” Eddie says. “He managed to fit me in for...for an emergency session.”
Eddie won’t admit it to himself right now, but Buck knows that’s a sign of growth — because Eddie from five months ago would’ve run for the hills at the thought of needing any sessions, let alone extra ones. Pride swells in his chest and Buck fights to keep it off his face, lest he make his friend self-conscious.
“Want me to drive you?” A thousand expressions flutter across Eddie’s face, and Buck reads the knee-jerk response to say no, but he also reads the hesitation to say yes. “Come on. I’ll drop Chris off at school, you at therapy, get a couple things done, pick you up and then…we’ll see.”
“Shouldn’t you go home? Or work?”
Buck doesn’t tell him that he called out sick.
“Nah, I’m not on shift today.”
Buck braces himself for Eddie to throw more arguments about why he shouldn’t be here, rehearsing his response to every single one, but to his surprise, the other man doesn’t give him any.
“Okay,” Eddie answers quietly. Too quiet for the man Buck knows, and even that tenor breaks his heart.
But it’s an affirmative sign, and a step in the right direction, so he lets it slide as they share the tentatively peaceful moment in silence.
------
“Where are we?”
“The middle of nowhere,” Buck answers, entirely honest as he drags a large blanket out of the back of his Jeep.
They still have two hours before they need to pick Christopher up from school, and Buck’s taken advantage of the time to drive them to a little nook he found a couple years ago.
The sea winks at them from across the rocks, and Buck hands Eddie their bag of takeout as he locks the car.
“Come on,” he says, beckoning Eddie to follow. His friend’s footsteps fall lightly behind his own, grass, gravel and sand crunching under their feet. Eddie doesn’t put up an argument or ask any more questions as they pick their way down a small slope to a nook hardly the size of Buck’s living room.
There’s a private alcove here, a small beach where Buck comes to think, especially those nights when he can’t fall asleep. It would be presumptuous for him to think that he’s the only one who knows about it in a city of four million people, but in all the time he’s been coming here, he’s never seen anyone else here.
He finds the huge flat rock near the sea, big enough for three people to sit in a line with their feet dipping into the waves crashing against the rocks.
“Here we are,” he says proudly, clambering onto the surface and spreading the blanket out. He holds a hand out for the bag so Eddie can climb on next to him.
There’s enough room for them to sit next to each other cross-legged, the late-day sun shining down on them. Like this, they don’t feel the waves, but with each crash of them against the rock comes a spray of water that dampens the edges of the rock.
“How did you find this place?” Eddie asks, staring warily at the takeout box Buck hands him like the sight of it turns his stomach.
“Too many late night drives after the tsunami,” Buck snorts, pointing up in the direction his Jeep is. “There used to be a sign there about a beach nearby, but I saw this slope and decided to follow it.”
“In the dark?” Eddie’s eyebrows lift as he looks around them. “You come here at night?”
It’s not disapproval, per say, but the concern in Eddie’s voice that makes Buck pause around a mouthful of kung pao chicken and turn his way, reading the skepticism in his friend’s face.
Buck looks around as he swallows his bite, parsing what makes Eddie look that way.
It’s isolated, and at night, Buck knows that there’s hardly a sliver of light anywhere. Anything could be hiding in the shadows, and it’s so far away that no one would hear him if he were to yell for help.
They watch too many true crime documentaries, Buck thinks to himself.
“I’m careful,” is what he says instead, pushing Eddie’s chopsticks towards him in a silent plea to eat. Eddie doesn’t say anything else, but he takes them, opening his box with trepidation, despite the fact that Buck bought lunch from his favorite restaurant.
They eat in silence, knees pressed together. Buck keeps sneaking looks at Eddie as they eat, but Eddie picks at his food, staring off into the horizon.
“Eddie,” Buck prods after he’s gotten through half his food and Eddie’s barely picked up a bite of his chicken. “Eat.”
Eddie obeys, and Buck can’t help but think back to the puppet metaphor from last night, where his words are yet another flick of his wrist.
But at least he’s eating, and Buck’s reluctant to take that away from him.
“Frank wants me to talk to a PTSD specialist. Or other veterans,” Eddie says after a while, surprising Buck. He abandons scraping off the last grains of rice off the bottom of his box, setting it off to the side before leaning back on his palms, looking at his friend’s profile in the sun.
Eddie looks untouchable like this, the sun taking away the harshness of the bruises under his eyes and leaving his skin glowing. Despite that, all Buck can see is the bereft, endless grief in his eyes, the shattered brown of his eyes like stained glass, the paleness of his face under the stained-red cheeks from crying so hard last night.
“Yeah?” he prompts when Eddie doesn’t say anything else.
“Yeah. He has a friend at the VA who runs a group therapy session every Wednesday, for veterans with depression and PTSD. Anyone can come but…”
Buck waits him out, sitting up to press his shoulder against Eddie’s in silent encouragement.
“Anyone can come, but it’s mostly for people who lost their squads,” he finishes quietly. “Whether during their enlistment, or…after.”
The way I did goes unspoken.
Buck takes another risk and drops his hand over Eddie’s, hanging on tight. His eyes are turning that particular shade of hazel-green again, but this time, Buck doesn’t look away. He gives Eddie his space, but refuses to budge.
The silence is peaceful, and Buck breathes in the slight tang of salt mingled with the woody scent of Eddie’s sandalwood cologne in the air as he waits for him to talk again.
“Remember when we got taken hostage?”
Buck’s food turns to lead in his stomach, weighing him down until he feels he’ll never break the surface again. But he knows Eddie has a point in bringing it up today, because they’ve strictly avoided talking about any of the trauma-ridden situations they’ve been thrown into.
His fingers tighten around Eddie’s.
They haven’t talked about the shooting since Eddie was discharged from the hospital, and have strictly avoided talking about the hostage situation. They shouldn’t be avoiding it, but Buck can’t bring himself to talk about the debilitating fear of losing Eddie with Eddie — with anyone really, because it’s not something he understands, not something he can expect anyone else to understand.
And he’s afraid of what he’ll find if he looks too closely at it.
“Can’t forget it,” Buck says, looking away from him, even with all their points of contact. He knows Eddie will read him like a well-read book no matter what, but he knows better than anyone that eyes don’t lie, least of all his.
He remembers the fear that had nearly paralyzed him from inside out at the sound of yet another bullet discharging, and above everything, he remembers the fear of not being able to get to him in time. He remembers the flash of lights around Eddie’s bent over figure, remembers the absolute relief that had flooded him at knowing that Eddie wasn’t shot, threatening to buckle his knees under him.
That Eddie wasn’t shot this time.
“Bullets don’t bounce off of me, Buck,” Eddie had said once, during a scathing argument after he left the 118 — the only one they’d had about it.
Those words had shut Buck right up, because he was right. The shooting was Eddie’s fourth gunshot wound, and that too, nowhere where they’d expect to be hit with one — the fucking streets of LA, in broad daylight.
He couldn’t blame him for wanting to get off the streets after that — couldn’t blame him for doing anything to keep Christopher away from the possibility of losing his last living parent.
So Buck had swallowed every bit of loss that he felt at not having his partner by his side, and moved past it — or so he thought.
In the weeks following Christmas, he’d watched Eddie carefully — the smile that didn’t reach his eyes when Buck told Chris about something that happened at work, the swirl of concern and self-deprecation in his eyes every time Buck showed up at his house with bruises that could’ve been prevented if Buck wasn’t trying to do a temp’s job alongside his own.
Nothing Buck said ever erased that look from Eddie’s eyes, but he kept trying anyway.
“When Dominic took you and left…” Eddie hesitates and Buck straightens further, turning his body to look at him. “Mitchell had a gun, right? And I should’ve been scared of it, but…I wasn’t. After you were gone…it was like my mind just told me that there’s no reason to be scared anymore.”
It’s not the whole truth, but a buzzing rises up in Buck’s ears as he reads between the lines for what Eddie’s trying to say.
“I told him to shut up,” he says, laughing humorlessly. The sound grates down Buck’s spine, so unlike the man he knows. “I told the guy with the gun to shut up.”
Buck isn’t laughing. He doesn’t feel like he could ever laugh — humorlessly or not — about it.
“Eddie,” Buck chokes out, eyes hot.
He doesn’t even know what to feel. The mental image of Eddie standing fearlessly in front of the guy with the gun because he’s so unconcerned about his own life is terrifying.
“I know,” Eddie whispers, setting his food aside. “I never wanted him to shoot me, but that’s…that’s why I started going to Frank. Because it scares me how little I actually care what happens to me as long as Chris is okay, or if you’re okay, or literally anyone else is okay. I needed to go there, for myself.”
“And I’m proud of you for it,” Buck says. “But God, Eddie, losing you would kill me.”
It’s more honest than they’ve been with each other in months. As soon as he says it, he wants to swallow the words from between them, like he’d never said anything at all, but it’s the God-honest truth.
A truth that grates on the silence between them.
“Yeah. Losing you would kill me, too,” Eddie returns, just as strongly as he’d told Buck that he wasn’t expendable. For the first time since they sat down, Eddie looks at Buck, fiddling with the chain around his neck, thumb smoothing over the round St. Christopher’s medallion. “That’s why I’m going to therapy.”
Buck nods, the look in Eddie’s eyes stirring something that Buck tried to make dormant when Ana came back into Eddie’s life, and further when Taylor came back into Buck’s.
He turns to look out at the horizon, the water rippling under the harsh sun. The waves wash over the rocks with reckless abandon, a little how the churning in Buck’s stomach feels.
“It’s just…hard to process,” Eddie tries to explain. “Knowing that my squad came home with just as many demons as I did, and we all tried different ways to escape them. If I hadn’t thrown my whole life into raising Christopher and scraping every dollar to give him the childhood that he deserves from a father that was absent most of life, who knows where I would’ve been?”
Buck gets that — because in so many ways, Eddie doubles down on making sure that Chris is as protected as he can be while leaving himself completely open to take anything that comes his kid’s way. There isn’t a single demon of Christopher’s that Eddie hasn’t been there to help him fight.
But when it comes to Eddie’s demons, that’s when Buck worries — and last night revealed a new one that Buck has no hope of understanding, ever.
Or rather, it was a new form of a demon lying vacant in Eddie’s closet, but that doesn’t change that everything he learned about his old squad would haunt Eddie for years to come. It would always be a thought in his head.
“Eddie,” he starts, giving voice to the thought that’s been prodding at his mind for hours. “Is there…should I be scared for you? More than I already am?”
Eddie’s quiet as he turns Buck’s question over in his head, turning away when Buck looks at him, and when the silence begins to add to the pit of anxiety in his stomach, Buck can’t help but push.
“Come on, Eds. It’s just me,” Buck whispers.
“No, Buck, it’s not—” Eddie cuts himself off before he can continue the sentence, and Buck, despite the actual question he wants the answer to, can’t help but push to know what he was about to say.
“It’s not what?”
Eddie doesn’t say anything.
Gently, Buck nudges his knee, and the point of contact seems to break him out of whatever he was thinking about.
“It’s not like that,” Eddie says quietly. “That’s the second time you’ve said that but…you’re not — and never have been — just anything, okay? Don’t say that.”
Buck’s…
Honestly Buck doesn’t know how to react to the words, and he’s pretty sure it shows in the way he blinks owlishly at his best friend.
He swallows the lump of emotion in his throat, clearing it before the pressure in his eyes can break open. “Then tell me. Should I be scared for you? Is this…is this something we need to get you more help for?”
Buck’s never been one to beat around the bush, but he physically can’t put the idea of suicide in the same sentence as Eddie’s name without feeling like he’s about to lose his whole lunch.
It’s selfish, he knows, but he knows that Eddie hears him anyway — it’s in the way he turns his palm in Buck’s grip to slide their hands together, a thumb absently brushing over his knuckles.
“Maybe last night, my answer would’ve been different,” Eddie says, looking Buck in the eye. “But no, I’m doing okay. Frank is watching me carefully, and…”
“You have me,” Buck cuts in. He knows that if he were to look in a mirror, his eyes would look wild, pressing and pushing, but this is something he refuses to budge on. He already knows that he’s about to bunk at the Diaz house for the next few days to get rid of the anxiety that’s threatening his whole resolve.
“I have you,” Eddie agrees, the first soft smile rising to his face. Buck squashes the urge to capture it forever as he grins back with relief, his fingers tightening where they’re now slotted between each of Eddie’s. “I’m okay, Buck. I promise. I just need time.”
Time is the one thing that they’ve never had on their side, but Buck would go to the ends of the Earth to make sure Eddie had it.
Buck releases a slow breath, and nods as encouragingly as he can manage. “Take all the time you need. I’m not going anywhere.”
The words seem to crack the lingering tension between them, and Buck turns so they’re sitting side by side again, sneaking a look at his watch to make sure they won’t be late to pick Chris up.
Eddie’s shoulders relax where he’s pressed against Buck’s, but he doesn’t let go of his hand, thumb still tracing absent patterns. Each stroke of his thumb soothes another edge of the anxiety in him, and Buck sucks in another breath of salty sea air and his friend’s cologne, letting it center him.
“I still think this is a prime spot for serial killers,” Eddie says suddenly, randomly — so random that Buck bursts out laughing. Despite himself, Eddie smiles too, which feels like the real win. “Don’t come here alone, next time. Especially at some god-awful time where it’s so dark you can’t even see your hand in front of your face.”
“You’ve been watching too many serial killer documentaries,” Buck tells him, smirking as he remembers the laundry list of crime shows they went through during Eddie’s recovery.
“There’s a spot in your own apartment building, on the roof. It’s like this little balcony, but someone’s set up two chairs there, probably to sit and watch the moon.”
Buck’s brow furrows. “How do you even know that?”
Eddie shrugs, looking sheepish. “I found it during quarantine — needed out of the house after a nightmare.”
Buck frowns at that. They’d been sharing a bed, and there hadn’t been a single night he’d noticed Eddie gone.
Eddie picks up on his apprehension, because he turns to Buck. “I wasn’t ready to talk about any of it then. Not even with you. Honestly, I don’t even think I knew what it was, but I’m here now, and I’m trying.”
“I know,” Buck says quietly. “I just hate that you’ve been suffering for so long, alone.”
Eddie shakes his head, smiling so fondly Buck’s heart hurts with it. “I’m not alone when I have you.” He holds up their joined hands with a wry twist of his mouth. “I’m just going to take your hand more, let myself believe I have people that care about me and want me to do well for me.”
“Damn right you do,” Buck chokes out. Eddie’s phone beeps with a preset alarm, and Buck looks at his own watch. They have to get going if they want to beat the traffic outside Christopher’s school.
He reluctantly unfolds himself to stand on wobbly legs. The blood rushing back to his toes makes him wince, but he ignores it to tug Eddie up with their still clasped hands, squeezing once before letting go, his fingers already cold.
“Come on, let’s get Chris and go home.”
“Yeah,” Eddie smiles, marginally relaxing a little more at the thought of his son.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” Eddie says as he folds up the blanket.
Buck gathers their takeout containers, and nods. “Yeah. I won’t come here without you, now that you’ve put the fear of God into me about this place.”
Eddie looks satisfied at that as he laughs quietly, nudging Buck’s shoulders as they pick their way back. “I’d rather not see you on the morning news because you wanted some peace at three in the morning. I’ll show you the spot I found. I know it’s not the same as having this little beach to yourself, but it is safer.”
Buck nods, carefully walking past the last turn of rock before turning to make sure Eddie’s behind him.
It’s far lighter between them as they walk back to the Jeep than it was when they came, and Buck feels a sense of pride swell in him as he studies his best friend. Eddie looks…freer, for lack of better word, than he had when they’d first pulled up here.
One break from reality was never going to take the devastation that had wracked Eddie last night away, but it managed to dull the edges of it enough that Eddie looks like he can breathe easier now.
There’s something about the sea that did that, and Buck knew that from experience. It’s as if each crash of the waves breaking against the rocks took yet another worry from him, carrying it away with the salt in the air.
Buck had lost that solace after the tsunami, and there were still days where the tang of sea salt triggered him something fierce, but more often than not, he was recovering the peace he’d felt during his surfing days. He’s glad that he could share a little bit of that with Eddie today.
Buck smiles to himself as he climbs into the driver’s seat.
Things might not be completely okay right now, but for the first time since last night, Buck has full hope that they will be.
When he looks in the passenger seat, Eddie smiles back.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Merlin (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Merlin/OMC
Characters: Merlin (Merlin), Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Additional Tags: Reincarnation, alternative ending, Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Post-Canon, Post 5X13, Love, Romance, Jealousy, Sad, anst, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort
Summary:
Arthur dies, but before he does, be confesses his love for Merlin.
He comes back only to experience the heartbreak that is seeing Merlin in love with someone else.
summary: Any thought passing through Merlin's brain crashed to a halt and for a second, but the blissful moment was halted by the high pitched whine that broke out of his throat. He pulled back sharply, unable to stop the look of horror creeping up his face. Arthur however, looked completely nonplussed now, any hints of fear had disappeared...
How to Reveal You're a Warlock
summary: "I- I'll go. I'll never return. Just- I never meant to hurt you, Arthur. I'd never do that." Before Arthur could even conjure up a coherent thought Merlin had disappeared, forgetting to close the door behind him.
How to Talk a Warlock Down
summary: “What’s going on?” Arthur asked, trying to keep his voice steady. He didn’t see scenes like this often, and even with all the death he saw in battle, it unnerved him. Situations like this were different; in battle it was kill or be killed, but now there was a chance that someone could be saved, someone good. He just hoped he wasn’t as close to the person up there that he thought he was."
