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Eddie was following behind Buck and Christopher as the three of them wandered around the zoo for the third time in two months. He had told the younger man that he didn't need to give into Chris' demands to see the sea lions again if he didn't want to, but Buck had just grinned at him and told him that it was no problem. So here they were, walking through the zoo with Buck and Chris taking point, Buck matching his speed to Chris seemingly without a thought.
Eddie watched them from a few feet behind, trailing after them and listening to their chatter with half an ear. What he heard made his heart melt some more because Chris was firing one question after the other at Buck and the man answered them all as seriously as if he was talking to an adult and not to a kid. He was also not talking to Chris as if he was dumb, which a lot of people did because they saw his CP and thought the boy had a mental disorder as well as a physical one due to his sometimes halting speech when it was quite the opposite. Chris was smart as a whip, even if he had some trouble speaking.
Come to think of it, Buck never had, not even when he had first met Chris. From the first moment, he had taken the boy and his questions seriously and shown an amazing amount of acceptance, even though some of them were so outrageous that Eddie had a hard time keeping a straight face. Buck never had that issue and it warmed Eddie's heart that Chris had someone like that in his life.
It made Eddie wonder, however and had ever since that first day, how Buck could be so good with kids in general and Chris in particular as normally this level of comfort around kids and disabled kids especially was only there if someone was a parent themselves and Buck wasn't. The younger man never talked about any kids he had or where he might have gotten the exercise. Even when he sometimes looked at Chris with such sadness in his eyes that it made Eddie wonder. It was a conundrum and after knowing Buck for nearly a year and all the stuff they had shared so far, Eddie felt that he had the right to ask the younger man. He resolved to do so that evening when Chris was in bed, even if he acknowledged that he might not get an answer because while he felt he had the right to ask, he knew that he did not have any right to an answer if Buck didn't feel inclined. For now, he would enjoy spending the day with his two favorite people in the world.
9-1-1
It was later that night, that Eddie returned to the living room of his house after putting Chris to bed. He had a bottle of beer in each hand and was handing one of them to Buck as he sat down. The other stayed in his own hand and Eddie took a pull to steel his nerves.
"Everything alright?" Buck asked, proving again that he could read Eddie like an open book because he picked up on the older man's nerves.
"Fine," Eddie replied, taking another sip before clearing his throat. "Listen, there's something I've been meaning to ask you for some time..."
Eddie trailed off, not knowing how to word the question because he was not sure what the answer was and he didn't want to hurt his friend if his inquiry brought up painful memories.
"Out with it, Eddie," Buck said, his voice encouraging. "Whatever you want to know, you have my permission to ask."
Eddie took another moment to gather himself before he just blurted out, "How the hell are you so good with Chris? How do you always just know how much help he needs and wants? Not even I know all the time and I am his father. I mean it's not like you had practice before, is it?"
Buck looked at him gobsmacked at the question for a moment and Eddie could see the pain flash through his eyes before it vanished. He wondered if he had just imagined it before Buck broke eye contact and looked away.
"You're wrong," Buck replied, quietly, so quietly that Eddie was barely able to hear him.
"About what?" Eddie asked. "'Cause you really are much better at this than I can ever hope to be."
"About me not having practice," Buck answered with a sigh. "I do, I had ten years of practice."
"What?" Eddie breathed, not understanding what Buck was saying. He couldn't mean what Eddie thought he meant, could he? "What are you saying?"
"Her name was Jolene and she was our sunshine for ten years, just like Chris is yours. It's amazing how similar the two of them are, even if she had MS instead of CP. I see her so much in Chris, that it hurts sometimes," Buck sighed, his eyes distant as he was looking straight through Eddie, making the older man shiver at the pain in his friend's voice. He laid a hand on Buck's leg as he turned on the couch so that he was able to sit more comfortably while looking at the other man.
"I'm sorry you lost her," Eddie said, and that was the only thing that could have happened with the way Buck was behaving, even if he hadn't said it yet.
"Me too," Buck whispered, tears gathering in his eyes. "I miss them every day."
"What happened?" Eddie asked gently. It seemed as if Buck needed to talk to someone about them. None of the others on the team seemed to know that Buck had a family which showed that the younger man had kept quiet about them since he had joined the team at least.
"Drunk driver ran a light and T-boned our car on the passenger side. Neither Jolene nor Sarah had a chance as he drove one of those massive SUVs. Each morning, I wish he had come from the left..."
Buck trailed off, the tears spilling over and Eddie's heart stuttered in his chest at the implication. Buck wanted to trade places with his girls. He could understand him all too well. Should he ever lose Chris, he would not be able to go on. It was bad enough that he had lost Shannon, but Chris as well? Yeah, he wouldn't be standing. He'd have eaten his own gun the moment he was home from the funeral.
"How were you able to go on?" he asked because of those thoughts.
Buck laughed mirthlessly.
"I didn't, not really, I was too much of a coward to kill myself, so I fled as far away as I could. Went and joined the SEALs just so that I could shut off my brain and hoped I would die while doing something good. When I was assigned my team, my CO saw how much I was struggling and he put me into therapy so fast my head was spinning. I owe Neal my life. Without him, I'm sure I would have done something stupid that would have made it possible to join my girls," Buck replied. "There are still days where I want that, but with Chris in my life, even if it sometimes hurts how similar he is to Joe, it gets easier and they become less and less."
Eddie squeezed Buck's leg in sympathy, smiling at the younger man, even if it was only small and sad.
"You can see him whenever you need, alright Buck?" Eddie asked. "Day and night."
Buck looked at him, searching his face for any sign of deception and he smiled a bit in gratitude when he found none.
"Thanks, Eds," he said. "You have no idea what this means to me."
"Don't mention it," Eddie replied. "You are one of the most important people in my life and I don't want to lose you. Also, Chris would be devastated if we lost you so you need to be careful with yourself. You have something to live for again if you want it."
Buck blushed at the words and breathed a sigh of relief at having shared this part of himself with Eddie. He looked at the older man, the blush still high on his cheeks when suddenly Eddie's eyes widened in realization. Buck had no idea what his friend had realized and he only raised a brow in question.
"Oh my god, are you Daniel Thornton?" Eddie asked and Buck froze, looking like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. His reaction told Eddie everything he needed to know, however, so he wasn't fooled when Buck stuttered out, "Who?"
"Oh my god, you are? I thought the names Sarah and Joe, short for Jolene, sounded familiar. Add in the fact that Joe has MS like your daughter had!"
Buck's shoulders slumped in defeat, knowing the game was up.
"I am. Please don't tell anyone?" Buck practically begged. "The others make enough fun of me for always writing in my notebook. I don't need more teasing. Thank you very much."
"Can we at least tell Chris? He would get a kick out of knowing the author of his favorite book series," Eddie replied instead. He had no intention of telling the rest of their team as he had heard how much the others teased Buck for being wrapped up in his notebook for most of their downtimes.
"I don't know," Buck sighed. "I met a few of my favorite authors and not one of them lived up to what I imagined them to be. I really don't want to disappoint him."
"You won't," Eddie denied. "You could never disappoint him. He loves you already so much. This would only make him love you more."
The conviction in Eddie's voice was amazing for Buck to hear, but he was still hesitant. He didn't want to become another disappointment to the boy he had come to love nearly as much as Joe. He knew that if he lost Chris, too, there would be no coming back. Therapy or no therapy.
"I'll think about it," he finally relented and Eddie smiled at him.
"Thank you. Also thank you for trusting me with everything you did today. If you want to talk about them at any point, I am more than happy to listen, okay? And if you are not yet ready to talk about them with me, that's fine, too."
Buck's answering smile was trembling, but it was there for which Eddie was glad. He pulled the younger man into a hug into which Buck just melted.
"Thank you," the younger man breathed.
"Now, do you wanna stay a bit longer and watch some TV or are you itching to get back to writing?" Eddie asked, finally knowing just what had Buck leaving so early some evenings. He had wondered as the younger man always denied that he had met up with any women when one of the others on shift was teasing him.
"I can also write here while you watch some TV if that's okay with you," Buck replied shyly. "I have all of my stuff online. I would just need to get my laptop from my bag."
Eddie smiled at him, knowing that when Buck was writing online, he wouldn't be able to code his work as he did at work. It showed a great deal of trust that Buck had in him and he promised himself that he would never betray that trust.
"That's fine. You can come over to write any time you want, too, if you don't want to be alone," he said and smiled at the younger man. Buck smiled back and jumped up to grab his laptop from the bag by the door as well as his notebook. Soon he was engrossed in the world of Wenniara, a school of magic starting at age five where quite a few of the kids, and especially some of the main characters, had some disability, but the disability or how they learned to deal with it, was not the focus of the story. Due to that, the stories were all-time favorites of Chris. There were a few series that all played in the same world, only the ages of the main characters were different so that more kids could relate to them and no one from age five to well above teenhood thought the universe was not for their age group.
"How did you start writing?" Eddie asked some hours later, paying more attention to Buck's writing than to the TV. He knew when Buck had started publishing after all. While he was not reading what the younger man wrote, just watching him fall into this world he had created was amazing.
"Huh?" Buck asked intelligently, drawn from his head for which Eddie apologized quietly. "Oh, my therapist thought it might be a good idea for me to write out the adventures Joe will never have now."
Buck shrugged and Eddie's heart constricted at the words. He had figured something like that, but to have it confirmed...
"Also, Joe loved fantasy and the Harry Potter series. We used to spin stories of what she would do if she went to Hogwarts."
The smile on Buck's face was wistful and Eddie's heart melted at the sight and the sentiment of keeping the girl with Buck this way. It was truly beautiful and he said as much.
"Why did you choose the name you chose?" he asked after a moment of silence.
"Well, Daniel was my brother. He died when I was one and the bone marrow transplant I was made for failed. And Thornton was Sarah's maiden name," Buck replied. "I wanted to honor them both, especially since both my parents and Maddie never mentioned Daniel to my face after he died. I didn't even know I had a brother until I joined the SEALs and they did a full medical background check."
"Dios!" Eddie gasped as yet another thing he hadn't known about Buck was revealed. The nuggets Buck had dropped around him about his home life made Eddie want to go and hunt down the Buckley parents for sport and also give Maddie a piece of his mind.
Buck just shrugged and went back to writing, while Eddie pretended to go back to his TV show. In truth, he thought about all the things Buck had ever told him about his parents and his life before LA. Now that he thought about it, a lot of the changing jobs could be explained by Buck moving whenever his daughter needed another doctor and most of the jobs had decent health insurance. While none of them were as good as the military or firefighting, they would cover a lot of what someone who had a dependent with MS would need and be far less dangerous. He knew that because he had looked into all of these careers as well before deciding to re-enlist on a quest to give Chris the best care he could. Not that Shannon had acknowledged it. For her, he had just re-enlisted without thinking about it. While he hadn't talked about it with her, he had done the necessary research. He could acknowledge, however, that he should have talked to her before re-enlisting, even though he knew exactly how that conversation would have gone.
"Did you ever think of going into firefighting before you went for the SEALs?" Eddie asked after another half hour of silence.
"Once or twice, but I had Joe to consider and we needed more regular hours for her. Also, I just couldn't bear to miss more of my daughter's life than I had to or any bedtimes after we got the diagnosis. All the jobs I worked made that possible when firefighting would not have," Buck replied, shrugging slightly.
"Yeah, missing bedtime was the worst, especially retrospectively. I missed so much with Chris, but I had already been in the Army and had intended to make it my life when I met Shannon. I was due to ship out when she fell pregnant. There really wasn't much I could have done," Eddie sighed thinking of all the people that had berated him for his decision to leave his wife and child behind.
"No there isn't. And anyone that says otherwise is an asshole that doesn't know shit. None of the military branches is a normal job where you can just quit whenever you feel like it," Buck said roughly.
"Why did you leave?" Eddie asked. He knew that Buck knew why he was no longer military but as he hadn't even known Buck had served until that evening, he also had no idea why he had stopped.
"Injured out," Buck replied shortly and Eddie left it at that, especially as Buck had admitted earlier that he had hoped to die while in service. He didn't like talking about the injury that ended his career either, even though he was regularly forced to because some asshole on shift brought it up. Now that he thought about it, he remembered that all the times Buck was there, the younger man had done all he could to redirect the conversation.
"Thanks, by the way, for making sure that the conversation never stays long on my service," Eddie said after that thought. He really was grateful because he hated how people treated him regarding his service. He also understood why Buck never said anything about serving, too, as he was pretty sure that the other man wouldn't want to talk about his experiences and the reasons he had joined up in the first place, never mind not being allowed to talk about most of it as he had been special forces and not just a regular medic like Eddie. And even Eddie wasn't allowed to talk about all he had witnessed over there, which some of the people they worked with just didn't seem to get. It was infuriating to Eddie and he knew that it would be even worse for Buck as most likely literally everything he had done was classified.
"It's nothing," Buck mumbled, blushing.
"No, it's not nothing. Every time they bring it up, it calls up trauma for the both of us, even if they don't know it, so really, thank you for having my back there, too, cause I know that you could just walk away while they would just follow me around," Eddie replied, paying much more attention to the blush on Buck's cheeks than he probably should. "You had my back since day one and both Chris and I are really grateful for that."
"I was a brat that first day," Buck said, the blush rising higher because of how ashamed he felt of his actions.
"No, you were afraid that you would lose another family you had made for yourself. Even before I knew about Joe and Sarah, I saw that you were afraid of being left behind and it was an asshole move from Bobby not to tell you that he had hired me and done so to be your partner," Eddie replied, shaking his head. "Especially since he knew you and had seen how poorly you had dealt with being left behind."
"I still can't believe I trusted Abby," Buck scoffed. "I mean I should have seen from the start that I was just some midlife crisis for her. And how she even got my number should have rung so many alarm bells, it's not even funny."
The laugh Buck left out was so self-deprecating that it made Eddie's hackles rise. Earlier he had thought about giving Maddie Buckley a piece of his mind, well Abby Clarke was also on that list for how she had handled her departure from Buck's life.
"I should have just stayed with one-night stands," Buck went on when Eddie remained silent.
"No, you needed a connection to someone outside the station, especially after your first loss on the job and she was there. You liked talking to her and that is okay, more than okay. She was at fault for hanging onto you despite having no intention of coming back," Eddie replied roughly.
"Well she did tell me not to wait for her," Buck defended Abby as he always did.
"And then she continued to call and text you like before until she didn't need you as a safety blanket anymore at which point she started ghosting you like a twelve-year-old instead of telling you that you were over," Eddie shot back. "Nothing of that is your fault. She made you believe that things were more serious for her than they really were and that is on her. It's also on her that she used you."
"Maybe I liked being used," Buck replied, his shoulders hunched up a bit to make him a smaller target.
"No, you like being useful. There's a difference. Also, you are used to being discarded when you are no longer useful and I blame a lot of people in your life for that, your egg and sperm donors first and foremost."
Buck snorted at the description Eddie used for his parental units and he had to admit that they were that and only that. Even parental units seemed much too nice for them given how little a role they had played in his life.
"Thanks," Buck said as he was not sure what else to say to that. "For being there for me."
"Any time, Buck, any time," Eddie replied and he meant it. It didn't matter what other secrets Evan "Buck" Buckley was hiding, he would always be there for him.