Word Count: 5,815
Warnings/Spoilers: This chapter refers to alcohol abuse, descriptions of injuries as a result of violence, and includes a discussion about veteran suicide statistics.

When they weren't on-shift and Christopher was at school and Buck couldn't stand being idle because being idle meant he started thinking and once he started thinking – well, it was just better to not have the time to think – Eddie started turning up at his apartment. Ostensibly, it was to teach Buck how to cook more dishes because Bobby was the best chef in the house and Buck, by far, was the worst.

"It's because my parents never taught me," he protested, almost a week after the aborted attempt at visiting the aquarium. Eddie shook his head at Buck's miserable effort at peeling carrots upside-down and back-to-front and what did it even matter as long as the carrots were peeled?

"Yes, I do believe we established they were less than stellar considering how quickly you and Maddie both left after graduating high school," Eddie pointed out, reaching for a knife to dice the potatoes. "You don't really talk about them much, though."

Buck frowned, focusing on the carrots so his hand didn't slip and then he sliced his hand open because wouldn't that just be perfect. He might've stopped the blood thinners but that didn't mean he didn't still bleed a lot and he hardly needed his apartment to turn into something out of a horror movie. "What's there to say? Our mother was a ghost and our father was a monster. It's a wonder Maddie and I aren't werewolves or vampires."

"A menagerie of horror?"

Like everything Buck never wanted to talk about, he sought the deflection instead. "Hm. Not like that call to the Haunted House on Halloween. They needed to tone down the tomato sauce."

Eddie snorted, tossing the cubed potato into a pot and dousing them in water. "So your father-?"

Buck paused, lowering the peeler to the chopping board. It really would be too easy to injure himself talking about stuff like this. Stuff he kept even more buried than how he felt after the tsunami, stuff he kept even more buried than his feelings for Eddie. And it was buried for many reasons but one of the key reasons was Maddie. He didn't know what she'd told Chimney and he wasn't about to start talking now in ways which might affect her. And if Eddie was going to keep pushing, the Buck was going to say something he'd regret.

"Is there a point to all this dredging?" he said, his voice tight as he stared at the half-peeled carrots with a venom he hadn't expected.

Eddie must have realised he hadn't really been joking before because the pot settled against the counter a little too loud. "I- No, I just-"

"Then can we please talk about something else," Buck requested and it was clear from his tone it wasn't a question.

Eddie complied after a pause of undeniable awkwardness where Buck tried to breathe past the barrage of memories that even mentioning his father brought upon him. He switched to some new TV show he'd started watching that Christopher was enjoying, but there was an uncomfortable tension that lingered in Buck's shoulders long after Eddie had left to collect Christopher from school and he didn't answer Eddie's call that night when he saw the name flash across his phone.

The description of his father as a monster was, perhaps, harsh in hindsight. He wasn't like Doug, but he did use his words and those words were still seared into Buck's thoughts and his memories and his anxieties. The mention of his mother as a ghost was accurate enough, though. Buck was pretty sure he'd made national news after the truck incident and she hadn't gotten in touch to check on him. Neither of them had. He wasn't even sure if they knew Maddie had killed Doug, and the more he thought about them, and how absent they were from his life – by choice, by request, by demand? He wasn't even sure anymore – the louder the whispers in his head got. He could hear the gruff voice of his father's disappointment, the sneer in his tone, and Buck couldn't focus, couldn't think, couldn't breathe because he so carefully kept all those hidden away. He wanted to tear at his hair and scream because it wasn't meant to be like this when he was awake. It wasn't meant to be like this after he'd hung out with Eddie.

He ignored whatever meal Eddie had been teaching him to make and scavenged through his fridge instead, deciding a liquid dinner was the best way to silence the noise. Maybe that was why he belatedly realised he couldn't feel his fingers and his eyelashes kept tickling his skin every time he blinked. There were four beers on his coffee table – at least, he thought there were four, there might've been eight – and he'd lost count of how many tequila shots he had when he'd stopped using a shot glass after the second. But his attention kept wandering back to his eyelashes and how irritating they were and he almost considered pulling each one out, but that hurt and his head hurt and why was there all that knocking at the door? Wouldn't someone let his neighbour in?

"Evan, let me in."

Oh. Someone wanted him?

He stumbled to his feet and staggered to the front door, leaning heavily against the frame as he surveyed the small bundle of brunette annoyance that was his older sister.

"What the hell, Buck?" she said, poking at his chest while he blinked dumbly at her. "You're drunk?"

He shrugged, waving his latest bottle around and wondering which version of Maddie he was meant to be looking at when there were several drifting in and out of focus in front of him. "I'm getting there."

"Jesus," she muttered, swiping the beer bottle from his swaying hand and swallowing a mouthful. He almost complained about the loss but she glared at him so fiercely that he held off. Barely. "Time to get you to bed, then. Come on. You need to sleep this off."

"You're not my mom," he whined with a pout while she pushed him in the direction of his stairs – which seemed like a somewhat dangerous proposition, all things considered, when even walking in a straight line gave him fits of the giggles.

"No, I'm not. And you're not our father," she snapped and after all the memories he'd had funnelling through him for hours, spinning him into tighter and tighter circles, he couldn't help the flinch. Some of the expression in her face softened as she closed her free hand around his cheek. "Get your ass into bed and sleep this off, alright? I need you to be okay, Ev. I need my little brother to be okay."

He looked at her, tracing the miserable downturn of her lips and the curve of her eyebrows above sparkling eyes. "I'm okay, Mads."

The disbelief and doubt in her eyes were clear. "No, you're not, brother bear. Now get to bed."

If anyone ever wondered whether stubbornness was a Buck-thing or a Buckley-thing, they need only have had Buck and Maddie in the same room to realise it was undeniably genetic.

Buck allowed himself to be poked and prodded up the stairs to collapse into his bed, face first. Maddie's hands shifted him until he was on his side and she could shove a pillow under his head. Her fingers stroked through his hair for only a few minutes, helping to quell the flashes of harsh voices and angry words, before he started to feel consumed by the pull of sleep.

The following morning, he wished he had a cure for the hangover that pounded through his head.

Maddie's smug and satisfied grin over her mug of coffee hardly helped.

It was difficult to meet Eddie's eyes when Buck still had all the tangled thoughts and memories of his parents tugging at the edges of his alertness. It created an unsettling tension between them which didn't really affect their work – Buck still responded to calls and had a tendency to know what Eddie was going to request before he actually asked – but it certainly affected their off-shift hangouts because Buck became more conscious of what he said or when he brushed too close against topics he didn't want to discuss.

It could've been easy. Buck could've just spat out information about his family, explained that his mother was rarely around or that nothing had ever been good enough for his father, but he had to consider Maddie as well. He had to think about what she wanted shared, because he knew she'd copped a lot when she'd decided to run off with Doug.

Sometimes he just put his head in his hands and wondered why, of all the many men in Los Angeles, his sister had to date someone in his house.

One week slipped into two before Buck realised Eddie hadn't asked him anything – any questions, including how he'd slept or what he'd had for breakfast. Once Buck realised that small, relatively inconsequential detail, it just seemed to make everything more awkward because he knew it was his fault that he'd retreated into his own world of secret feelings and painful heartaches again.

He'd watched Eddie walk around the station a couple of shifts ago, physically present but with an emotional distance in his eyes and wondered how he was meant to fix that when he could barely find the words to say something casual between them. He'd even looked towards Bobby to determine if the Captain had realised Eddie seemed off or whether it was just Buck that was misreading everything, but Bobby hadn't met his eyes and didn't seem to be watching Eddie with a curious or puzzled frown so maybe it was just Buck's imagination.

He did know that the odd, lingering bruises he'd glimpsed near Eddie's wrists or across his knuckles last shift hadn't been his imagination though, and he'd overheard Chim ask about the bruise on Eddie's shoulder when they'd been changing and Eddie say something about getting hit by Christopher's crutches. It sounded strange, his voice working around words that made Buck doubt him, but what was he meant to say? What was he meant to do? He longed to reach out, to close his hands around Eddie's and plead with him to take more care when he was hitting the bag because those hands were needed on a call. He wanted to tell Eddie to be more careful when he played with his son so that he didn't wince when he strapped an oxygen tank to his shoulder and didn't press his lips together into a white line when he lifted a vic into the ambulance.

But admitting any of his observations by approaching Bobby meant revealing how closely he monitored Eddie and perhaps how well he knew his partner because of all their off-shift time together trying to smooth the many wrinkles and heal the many breaks created by the lawsuit, and a series of near-death experiences. No one would understand why it mattered to Buck so much why they weren't talking anymore. No one would understand why Eddie's presence in his life mattered so much. No one would understand why shutting down talk about his parents had created this latest rift between them. Mostly because Buck couldn't even answer of the questions he knew they'd have. He just knew something wasn't right in his gut, the same way that he reacted during some calls.

He also knew, as he nursed his second beer on his thigh, that he probably should discuss with Bobby about the fuzzy line between drinking recreationally and drinking to escape his own thoughts. He was loathe to admit to anyone that it was becoming a regular thing to have a few drinks each night and it wasn't as though he was routinely getting drunk, or that Maddie was showing up pissed off at him and throwing bottles in his recycling container, but…he still had the uncomfortable feeling that he was heading towards a line that he was no longer afraid of putting a foot over.

He twirled the therapist's card that Bobby had given him between his fingers, the phone number surely imprinted on his retinas for the rest of his life now. He hadn't had mustered up the guts to call though. He didn't want to open up to anyone about anything. After he'd Googled questionnaires for post-traumatic stress disorder to start self-diagnosing, much like with the sex addiction, he'd found one of the first questions had been identifying 'an event' or 'the event'. It had been…unnerving, for lack of a better word. He had to identify one event as though he hadn't gone through multiple events.

And…maybe that should have been sign that kicked him up the ass to call the therapist listed on the card but…he'd still procrastinated it. It was one thing to try and acknowledge that what he'd been through during the year was 'traumatic', that it had left its marks on him. It was another thing entirely to start talking about it.

There was a knock at the door and he sighed, flicking the card towards the coffee table. It skated through the air while he padded to and unlocked the door.

And blinked as he surveyed a very-defeated looking Eddie Diaz on his doorstep.

"Hello?"

"Hi." Eddie's eyes wandered past Buck's head, like they'd been doing for a fortnight. It was almost enough to slam the door in his face. "I, uh… I wondered if you wanted company."

Buck held up his bottle with an arched eyebrow. "Who needs company when you're already hanging out with your best friend."

It was a low blow, and Eddie's undisguised flinch confirmed it.

"So if that was all-"

"I nearly killed someone," Eddie said, his foot jamming inside the door. Except Buck was frozen in wide-eyed shock at the blunt confession and hadn't even considered moving. "I- Cap's given me a couple of shifts off to…sort myself out but I… I felt like I owed you an explanation."

Buck blinked several more times before standing aside and letting Eddie enter the apartment. It felt like a conversation that required another beer – or ten – so he sauntered to the kitchen and collected another two bottles, one of which he gave to Eddie. Eddie fiddled with the neck of the bottle as he fell into step behind Buck, who returned to the couch and folded one leg beneath him as he turned expectant eyes on Eddie.

"I've been…fighting," Eddie said, standing with more discomfort and tension than Buck could ever recall. "Letting off steam, you know? I've been feeling so…so angry and…so many things, I guess, and it just- It was helping."

Buck swallowed a mouthful of beer, conscious of the fact Eddie hadn't even popped the cap of his yet because he seemed more interested in fidgeting with it. Drinking at least gave Buck something to do with his hands and his mouth so he didn't say something stupid that would upset or enrage Eddie and make him shut down. Or worse: leave.

"But, uh… I got put on a fight card and it went too far and…I broke the guy's nose so badly some of the cartilage lodged in his brain," Eddie said in a rush, words blending together and taking Buck an extra few beats to process and separate and then process again.

"You what?" he eventually managed in something that sounded disturbingly like a squeak.

"I called 911. Lena's crew arrived and took him to the ER. And then she and her Captain got in touch with Bobby and he's…" Eddie shook his head, staring at some faraway point on the wall. "I suppose he's disappointed? It feels like so many of us in the house are barely holding it together but I've been trying so hard to stay in control and yet maybe everyone is just covering it up, you know? And I just- I've been an awful friend to you lately, I know that, and I'm sorry. Because I let my shit get in the way of being your friend and-"

"Have you gotten hurt?" Buck said, realising as he listened to Eddie that the last thing he wanted or needed was an apology or Eddie's guilt and shame pressing on his shoulders and dragging him under too. All he was understanding was that Eddie was about as okay as Buck.

Which was to say – Eddie was barely okay at all.

Good to know.

"Bruises and scrapes," Eddie shrugged, like it really didn't matter.

Only it did. Because suddenly the 'rough-housing' with Christopher comment from weeks, months,ago took on a whole new dimension, a whole new lie that Buck wanted to yell about because how many times had Eddie shown up at his place with bruises and scrapes beneath his Henley or his jacket, determined to comfort Buck when it was Eddie that was falling apart? How many times had Eddie crushed down how he was feeling while encouraging Buck to open up?

Hypocrite.

He wanted to yell about it but, instead, with his heart in his mouth, Buck swallowed his fury and hurt and anxiety as best as he could. "Show me."

"Buck-"

"Let me check you over."

"You think I can't do my own job?"

Buck fixed Eddie with a glare that allowed no argument. "Try me, Diaz. I dare you."

Eddie looked like he was trying to come up with an argument, any argument, that would get him out of the situation he'd walked into but Buck was absolutely not budging. With a sigh, Eddie relented by depositing his untouched beer on the coffee table near the white business card. Buck wondered if he should pass it onto Eddie. Rolling his eyes, lips squashing together, Eddie tugged the red flannel shirt over his head. Buck bit his lip hard enough to bleed so he didn't react to the rainbow blossoms of angry colours that decorated Eddie's torso but even so…

"Eddie, what the fuck?" he breathed, his beer clattering to the table as he stood to get a closer look.

Eddie twitched when Buck's feather-light fingers skimmed the darkest patches of red and purple and black on Eddie's ribcage and stomach, reminding Buck faintly of the bruises that had covered him after the tsunami. He could feel Eddie tense when he got close to the silver streaks of scars that were stark against the mottled colours, healed scars from battles long ago. He wished he had the balls to ask but he suspected Eddie would never tell him. These injuries were… God, how many fucking times had he come over and been injured?

"These look…really bad, Eddie," he murmured, thumb smoothing along the patchy bloom on Eddie's collarbone while deliberately ignoring the way Eddie was gazing at him and the shallow way his chest was heaving. This was just Buck checking out injuries, not itemising muscles and scars. "Are you sure you haven't broken a bone or damaged a lung or something?"

"I'd be in the hospital with a chest tube if I had a busted lung," Eddie pointed out but Buck hardly listened to the pathetic excuse, tracing bruises and identifying the oldest and the newest, and the various stages of healing for each. With a hand on Eddie's shoulder, Buck moved to examine his back, identifying scratches from too-sharp nails on his shoulder blades and more uneven circles of sickening colour. It was clear this fighting thing was seriously bad news. There were other old scars on his back too. When his fingers passed over them, he pretended he didn't notice how Eddie's shoulders trembled and his exhales turned shaky.

"You're going to stop now, right?" Buck mumbled, fingers dragging over a streak of a bruise snaking from the knob of Eddie's spine to the wings of his shoulder blades. He didn't even want to imagine how Eddie had gotten that one.

"Now that Cap knows, I don't think I have a choice."

"Oh, thanks."

"No, I just meant-" Eddie sighed, pulling away from Buck so he could tug his shirt on again. Buck pretended not to notice the flex in Eddie's muscles and the pained hiss that escaped his lips. And then he turned, meeting Buck's eyes properly for the first time in weeks. "Cap knows, so it'll be a whole thing with him that maybe he'll clue the others into, or maybe he won't. Either way, I won't be able to fight again. He'll keep tabs on me."

"Pity," Buck said with absolutely no pity in his voice because it was taking a lot of his own willpower not to hit Eddie himself for his stupidity. "Why didn't you just come and talk to me?"

"You've had your own stuff going on and I-"

"That doesn't mean I'm not here. I thought I was your friend."

"You are, I just-" Eddie frowned, eyes skipping over Buck's face. "You can't deny it's been different between us lately. And not all of that is on me."

Buck pressed his lips together so tightly to avoid exploding that it hurt. He was almost certainly scowling and he didn't care. Scooping up his bottle of beer, he almost hurled himself back onto the couch and glowered at the label until the words blurred behind his red-tinted vision.

"Buck?"

"You came here," Buck said, unable or unwilling to disguise his anger, and bitterness, and frustration, and hurt. "So if you've finished absolving yourself of your guilt or providing an explanation for what you do in your own time, then-"

"That's not what this is."

"Isn't it?" Buck retorted, his glare shifting to Eddie over the rim of his bottle. "You nearly kill a guy. You're getting beaten half to death. You get pissed at me for not talking about some nightmares but then you're doing that."

"I-" Eddie rubbed a hand over his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I know it's not my finest moment but-"

"Did you ever stop to think about if you had broken a rib which pierced a lung and no one at your fight club knew how to deal with it?" Buck was glad he had a glass bottle because his fingers were curled so tightly he would have crushed a can until the metal cut through his hand. Even so, he wondered if it was possible to shatter the glass. "Did you ever stop to think about what would have happened if some guy broke your nose so badly that cartilage lodged in your brain?"

"I know I-"

"Did you ever stop to think about what would have happened to Christopher if something had happened to you?" he continued, and that finally seemed to have some sort of effect on Eddie because his whole face changed and his shoulders slumped. "I don't matter to anyone, Eddie. I don't have anyone dependent on me but you do. That kid needs you. He adores you. And if something had happened to you, what would have happened then?"

Eddie's gaze lowered to his feet. "It was good money."

"You were gambling with your life, and with Christopher's happiness, when he's been through enough torment this year." Buck shook his head, swallowing a few mouthfuls of beer and wishing he could swap it for tequila and get drunk faster to block out this entire conversation ever occurred. "I'm allowed to be angry about that."

"I know," Eddie agreed, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and scratching the back of his neck. "I'm sorry, Buck. I know it was stupid."

"It really was."

Buck stared at Eddie for several more minutes before realising the anger that had burned within him came from a place of fear and worry that after everything Buck had been forced to go through, Eddie was actually voluntarily getting into situations that compromised his life. And Buck couldn't afford to lose Eddie. Whatever Eddie had gotten involved in, how badly he could have gotten hurt, was terrifying because it was something out of both of their controls and he could've lost Eddie and Buck hadn't even realised he was struggling. With a frustrated sigh, he patted the spot on the couch beside him.

"Come. Sit. Drink. Talk. In whatever order you wish."

Eddie peered at him. "You sure?"

"I'm not forgiving you that quickly," Buck acknowledged, quirking one eyebrow, "but you've put yourself through enough hell lately and I'm not going to add to that right now. So yes, sit. Don't drink and don't talk if you want but…you came here for a reason, Eddie."

"I- Yeah…" Eddie sat, the arch of his spine clearly still bowed with tension as he bounced his knee and folded his hands into his lap.

"Hey." Buck scooted closer, resting his temple against Eddie's shoulder. "You came here. What do you need?"

"I…don't know," Eddie admitted.

Buck carefully wrapped an arm around Eddie's back, knowing it was impossible to avoid all the bruises littering his skin. Even so, some of Eddie's stiff posture relaxed into the tentative embrace. "Why, Eddie?" Buck murmured, staring at his friend like he was a stranger.

"It's… I've just been so angry about so many things." Eddie reached for the abandoned bottle of beer and twisted the cap off, but he didn't have a drink – merely rolled the cap between his fingers. "I think Shannon's death was… It- It started with that. I feel like I failed her, and I failed Christopher, and we were making it work and then she died and-" Eddie's voice caught and he released a shaky breath. "She died after she asked for a divorce and I felt like I'd failed, again, because I could never make it work with her. And yet I kept trying for Christopher, for me, for her parents, for my parents, for her and it- It was never enough."

Buck tiptoed his fingers along Eddie's spine as he listened, mindful of any slight adjustments Eddie made for where there were patches of skin more tender than others and avoiding those spots when he traced his fingers on another path. He couldn't help noting just how lost Eddie sounded, how desperately sad, and Buck tried not to hate himself too much for being so utterly blind to how much pain Eddie had been in. Maybe he should have reached out more, reached out more insistently, after Shannon had died despite the crush injury.

"But she died and Christopher was… He found it difficult, I know he did," Eddie continued, his words wavering. "And then there were the bombings, and everything you were going through up to the tsunami, and then that lawsuit and I-"

"I really am sorry for that," Buck said quietly, realising just how much he'd added to Eddie's burdens in the wake of Shannon's death. He wanted to punch himself in the head. Repeatedly. No wonder Eddie had yelled at him in the grocery store. No wonder Eddie felt like Buck had let him down. No wonder Eddie thought he was exhausting. It was a wonder Eddie still talked to him at all.

"I know. I know and I've let it all go now, but at the time… At the time, it was all too much." Eddie glanced at him, a faraway sort of gleam in his eyes. "After your lawyer weaponised Shannon's death, something inside me started to unravel and I would feel so much rage and the last time I felt so furious all the time, towards everything and everyone around me, I was deployed and I had a clear series of targets to take out. I struggled with the re-integration but that was…"

Eddie shook his head, gaze drifting away from Buck's but not before Buck had glimpsed the increasing redness, the glitter of unshed tears. He pressed his arm a little more into Eddie's back to hold him close.

"You know that stat of twenty-two vets killing themselves every day? It- It doesn't surprise me, Buck. Some days just feel so dark and ugly inside and you don't know how to let it out." Eddie tilted his head slightly towards Buck, strands of tickling hair brushing against Buck's forehead. "But I didn't have targets this time so… I don't know. I honestly don't know if I wanted to take someone out or have someone take me out and I don't know which of those scares me more."

Buck rolled his lower lip between teeth and stared up at Eddie. Words failed him because Eddie's meandering explanation had pierced various wounds he thought had scabbed over on the path to healing but now leaked fresh pain. He couldn't imagine Eddie on deployment, geared up and heart guarded against everything he was doing in a warzone to save the lives of others yet still following orders in hostile territory, and he couldn't imagine Eddie returning home, shaken to the core with horrors rattling inside him that had earned him a Silver Star. He could imagine how those circumstances could cause strain on his marriage to Shannon when they were both already struggling with Christopher's diagnosis, and for the first time he almost thought he was glad Chris would have been too young to fully grasp what had happened between his parents when Eddie had been an army medic.

But an Eddie like this, who had seen so many awful things but then repressed so many feelings… Buck wasn't sure if anyone at the 118 had realised he wasn't really okay, even though Buck had known there were unexplained bruises and winces sometimes. And an Eddie like that, an Eddie who shut down and lied so competently, had to be a difficult person for Shannon to love and support if Eddie had also shut down and shut her out after returning from deployment.

And as for Eddie wondering aloud about being taken out… Buck wasn't sure how successfully he held back the horrified shudder at that thought. He couldn't imagine what that would do to Christopher, or the 118. And there was no way in hell he wanted to imagine what it would do to him.

"Did beating people up actually do anything for all these feelings?" he said eventually, fingers circling the knob of Eddie's spine where he knew the bruises that lingered were dark and almost certainly painful.

"Probably not," Eddie admitted, raising one shoulder in a shrug and lifting the bottle to his lips. He swallowed several mouthfuls and managed a rueful sort of smile. "But I didn't know what else to do, or where else to go. I have to keep it together for Christopher."

Buck ran his thumb over the short hairs at the nape of Eddie's neck, hiding a small smile when he tilted into it just like Chris often did. "You don't have to keep it together here, Eddie."

"Don't I?" Eddie shot him a wan look. "We both know you aren't okay."

Buck frowned and tried not to feel like the magnifying glass had just been swung over him again, like he was an ant that Eddie was trying to set alight with the sun.

"That's not what I meant. If you need to come here and yell or scream or throw something, then my door is open to you." Buck didn't feel like mentioning that yelling and screaming and throwing things might end with him locking himself inside the bathroom and calling Maddie because he'd start thinking of someone else who used to yell and scream and throw things when he got livid. Eddie didn't need to know that particular detail. "Or if you just need to come over and have a beer and watch some TV and smash some buttons on a controller with Christopher for a few hours, then we can do that too. It still beats almost killing a guy, or nearly getting killed yourself."

"True." Eddie shifted his arm so he could sling it around Buck's shoulders, hand settling over the curve of Buck's ribcage until he was tucked securely into Eddie's side. "I… I really am sorry I didn't tell you sooner, Buck. I…thought you'd be angrier, honestly."

"I am angry," Buck said, poking at a spot on Eddie's chest which was almost certainly bruised and relishing Eddie's hiss of pain because the idiot deserved at least some sort of punishment for his stupidity. "But you've listened to me plenty and I know being angry about what you've done won't solve either of our problems. And I know that some of it, at least in part, is because you didn't feel you could come here because I messed up."

"You're really blaming yourself for this?"

"Not entirely," Buck said, meeting Eddie's disbelieving expression. "You make your own mistakes, just like I make mine. I just wish I'd been there before so I could talk you out of it."

"But at least you're here now," Eddie pointed out, and Buck wasn't sure if Eddie was referring to their faltering friendship reconciliation, or because he'd opened the door, or because Buck continued to live despite Fate's best attempts to get rid of him these past few months.

The conversation drifted to other topics – things which were lighter and slightly more cheerful – and Buck was quietly content to keep his arms wrapped around Eddie and feeling Eddie's arm across his back. By the time Eddie admitted he needed to leave, Buck thought he stood with the confidence of a military man who had been trained to square his shoulders and raise his chin no matter the dire circumstances he was expected to face. While Buck somewhat admired Eddie for recovering his mental fortitude that quickly, he also feared just how much Eddie felt which still bubbled beneath the surface, unacknowledged but poised to erupt at a moment's notice.

As Buck crawled into bed, sheets tucked to his chin, he couldn't decide if forging forward with no regard for your health and wellbeing was admirable or incredibly dangerous. He knew he'd done the same thing, ignoring the pain in his leg before the clot, but Eddie had sought out something so dangerous, something potentially fatal, and he'd kept going. It terrified him, more than he was willing to admit, that Eddie could have so little regard for his own safety when usually it was Buck that was accused of being the reckless one.

He stared at the ceiling, thinking back through all the conversational topics they'd traded in the hours that he'd been curled around Eddie. He couldn't easily categorise his feelings towards Eddie, but he knew there were times when he'd looked up and met the brown eyes gazing steadily back at him and felt his heart skip a beat or three in his chest.

~TBC~