Over the next couple days, a headache started to form in the back of Eddie's head, one that only seemed to be growing stronger with each passing day. Along with this, a tingling feeling started to pass over his body.

"Are you okay, Eddie?" He heard Corey, one of the other firefighters in his station come up and ask. "You don't look too good."

He knew that was an understatement. He had seen his reflection in the mirror that morning. Bags far darker than he had thought possible pooling beneath his eyes, ashen color to his face, reddened eyes. After a full day of calls with barely any rest he figured he couldn't look any better than before he came in that morning.

"I'm fine," Eddie shrugged, trying to play it off. "Just wasn't getting good sleep this week. I'll be sure to catch up this weekend."

Corey still looked unsure at this answer, but he didn't say anything. They only had two more hours to their shift today, and unless there was some catastrophic emergency, their watch wouldn't be called back in until Monday.

"Well… have you tried eating anything today?" Corey asked, concerned. "We missed lunch with that last call, and I didn't see you eat anything after we got back."

Now that Eddie thought about it, when was the last time he ate something? He didn't eat lunch today, and this morning he was too rushed to get out of the house and get Christopher to school to eat breakfast. Once he arrived at the station and their shift had begun, they were almost immediately called out and he had forgotten all about the missed meal. He had eaten dinner last night though, right?

He had definitely fed Christopher dinner. He wouldn't forget that. Even when he was back in Texas, working three jobs and still barely affording rent, he had been feeding Christopher more than he needed when it came to meals.

But did he eat anything last night? He racked his brain, but he still couldn't remember.

"Come on, Eddie," Corey said, nudging him on the shoulder. "I've seen dead bodies look better than you. I doubt food will make you any worse."

Eddie sighed and rolled his eyes, which only worked to send another spike of pain through his head, but stood up to follow the other man to the kitchen.

The food was good, refreshing to his hungry stomach, but it did nothing to help how the rest of him was feeling.

When their shift came to an end, with no more calls coming to them, he still felt no better than earlier. "Are you going to be safe to drive home? I can give you a ride home if you need," Corey had asked, seeing that Eddie still looked really ill.

"Yeah," Eddie said. "I told you, it's just bad sleep. I have to pick up my son on the way back anyway."

Corey still looked conflicted. "Okay, he eventually relented. "But if you still looks this way tomorrow you'll go to a doctor, right?" he asked.

"Sure," Eddie said, just to get the man off his back. He doubted a doctor would be able to help him with this problem. In the past, many people have tried making various drugs to help with the symptoms caused by breaking bonds, not Spontaneous Soul Bonds, but other bonds. None of the drugs were ever effective.

But this wasn't the first time Eddie had gone through a broken bond, He had experienced similar, although less severe, symptoms when Shannon left. He knew that with enough time, they would die down. He only had to wait this out.

As he was driving his truck through the streets of LA, headed to pick Christopher up from school and get started on whatever weekend plans Christopher had thought up, a weekend he thankfully didn't have a shift for once, he could feel the tingling grow stronger and the headache start to lessen. Which confused him slightly. If anything, the opposite had been happening all week.

That was when he saw it, a familiar shape of a red and white fire engine right outside of the school building. Shit.

All thoughts of the headache and weird feelings he had been experiencing immediately vacated his mind. He was worried that something happened. A fire? Gas leak? Bomb threat? Did Christopher get hurt?

Then he saw the lack of students outside, only one ambulance and one fire engine. If there was a fire or gas leak or bomb threat, they would have evacuated everyone from the building. He guessed that it must have been a medical emergency someone had called in. And judging by the fact that he hadn't been called yet, he doubted Christopher was the one being loaded into the ambulance.

But then, as he drove past the school building and into the parking lot across the street, he saw the numbers on the side of the fire engine.

118.

That was the station that his supposed 'soul mate' worked at.

All that dread and apprehension he had been feeling ever since the night of that one call immediately returned.

This is the absolute last thing he wanted. So close to Christopher too.

He knew what the policies for the schools were when they called in for medical emergencies. Even if the end of the school day was only five minutes away, they would hold the students inside until the emergency was dealt with and the fire engine and ambulance had left the area. The last thing they needed was for a bunch of kids to see the vehicles when they left and start to freak out. Or be way too interested in them and want to get involved, which dealing with some of the scenes for the last six months, Eddie knew was a common reaction among children.

So Eddie would wait out here for the next who knew how many minutes. Through his windows, he saw a group of parents standing over by the crosswalk. They were probably also waiting until the kids would finally be released. Should he go over and join them? Probably. Would he if it was any other squad across the street? Still probably not.

He didn't really know any of the other parents anyway. Something he was told by his abuela he really should have been working on. But he had tried that earlier at some of the after-school events Chris had dragged him to, and it was safe to say that he just didn't click with any of them.

He also knew that if he were to walk over there, he would be pulled into whatever inane conversation they were having. Even though that with the damn fire engine, most likely containing his soulmate, across the street, the headache coursing through his head was still making him not want to interact with anyone he didn't have to.

Just as the fire engine had finally started up again, appearing as if it was about to head back to their station, some idiot had to be speeding down the quiet street to crash into a street lamp, sending the pole to fall down and block the street.

His day just couldn't get any better, could it?

He spoke too soon.

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

Buck had known something was up when they arrived on the scene of the school. It was only a simple call, some kid had had an allergic reaction to something they had traded for lunch. The kid was mostly stable, had already been administered an Epipen, it was only protocol for the school to call to get them transported to the hospital.

But the itching that he had been feeling under his skin for the last week had finally lessened. For whatever weird reason, he had felt more relaxed than he had in a while.

Then he started to feel a strange pull to the parking lot of the school across the street. He spared the occasional glance in the direction, but all he could see was a small group of parents forming outside their cars, probably parents waiting until they could come over and pick their children up.

For the life of him, he didn't know why, but he kept looking over in the direction of the small group. He didn't recognize anyone over there. But that strange feeling, that pull, kept making him look over.

For a second he thought it could be the Soul Bond acting up. It was supposed to tell him when he was nearby, right? But when he looked over at the parking lot again, he didn't see anyone that resembled the man he saw in the group of parents.

"Hey Buck!" He heard Chimney call out his name. "Quit daydreaming, help me pack up this stuff so we can leave!"

Well, it looked like he wasn't going to get the answer to this mystery. He turned around, putting the parking lot at his back, and ran to rejoin his team. They had just about wrapped everything up now. The ambulance with the sick kid already had taken off to the hospital, now they only had to put some of their bags back into the big old fire engine and go back to the station.

As they had all finally gotten back in the cabin, and were about to take off from the school, they heard a loud bang. "What was that?" Chimney asked.

They looked out the left side windows of the truck, and across the street, right at the entrance of the school's parking lot, it looked like a car had driven and crashed into a light pole, placing a large dent in the bottom and making the pole fall down and collapse across the street.

There was a large dent on the driver's side door of the car that had crashed into the pole, and it appeared that the driver was trapped inside the vehicle. At least, from that distance, there didn't appear to be any fire coming from the vehicle.

"Well," Bobby sighed as they started up the engine. "Looks like we have our next call."

As they drove the short distance from the school's front loop to the fallen lamp pole, Buck felt the return of the pulling sensation, only this time much more intense than before. As they dismounted from the truck, Buck turned to look at where the bond was trying to pull him. He spotted a blue pickup truck about halfway across the parking lot.

He also saw a man standing right outside of it. To anyone else, at this distance, the man could be anyone, but to Buck, who knew this strange sensation could only be pulling him to one thing, he knew that could only be one man. The same one who he had been thinking of constantly for the past week.

His soulmate.

Seeing the man again, it cleared all the static that had been whirling around the back of his head for the past week. It lifted heaviness that he hadn't noticed was on his chest and shoulders. It also finally answered the question of the strange pulling that he had been feeling for the last hour. Buck spared a quick glance in his team's direction. They looked like they had everything covered, like they had more than enough people working with the second station that had come over. They could probably spare him for a couple minutes so he could go talk with the guy. If not, Buck was sure that when he explained things to Bobby the man wouldn't be mad. The Captain was all sappy when it came to bonds after all, just like Buck.

From the brief eye contact they shared, the man clearly recognized him, but for some reason, he didn't look too happy to see Buck, at least not as much as Buck felt to see him. Buck ran the short distance to the guy's truck. A feeling of dismay washed over Buck, which briefly made Buck hesitate. He thought the man would be happy to see him again. Buck sure was. But that look on his face. Had the man been avoiding him?

"It's you," Eddie said as he looked the man up and down. The man from that night. The man that Eddie still wanted nothing to do with. The man he wanted to stay far away from. He just now was coming to the realization that to do that it might mean moving again. Which would be a pain, but probably worth it in the long run. He would look into what it entailed when he got home, he decided.

"Oh, so you do remember me!" Eddie watched as the man's face lit up, an intense wave of something positive hitting him and nearly knocking him over. The wave felt… good. Like he was relieved, like a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. Shit, was this the sharing emotions part of the bond?

"My name's Evan Buckley," Buck said, thrusting a hand out to Eddie. "But you can call me Buck." Buck felt a slightly confused sensation through the bond, and he said. "We never really got to introduce ourselves last week."

"Ah, right," Eddie nodded. "Eddie Diaz," Eddie said as he reached out to shake Buck's hand. At the contact, a warm feeling spread between them up through their arms and throughout their body. It felt good… euphoric. One of the most blissful feelings that Buck had felt in a long time.

But then Eddie dropped his hand, his gaze moving down to it with wide eyes. Buck felt an intense jolt of shock and surprise come from the guy. If Buck didn't know better, it was almost like the man looked scared of what they just felt.

But that couldn't be it, the guy just hadn't expected it, Buck thought, and neither had Buck if he was honest with himself. If it was going to be like that everytime they made skin-on-skin contact, Buck would be pretty happy.

"Dad," The two men heard a child's voice call out, and Eddie turned away from Buck towards a group of kids who had just been led across the street by a teacher. A young boy, about six or seven in a yellow T-shirt with bright red crutches waved over at the two of them.

"Ah, sorry," Eddie said as he waved at the boy. "I have to go get him, I'll be right back though," He said as he turned around and took a quick jog over to the group.

Oh, Buck thought. That must explain the sort of weird feeling he had been experiencing off and on from Eddie. The guy had a kid. And if he had a kid, he must be in a relationship, probably married too. And here Buck was, jumping into the middle of things and messing everything up. He knew it wasn't out of the ordinary, in fact completely normal, for people to go into relationships and form romantic bonds with people other than their soul mate. In fact, Buck had almost been in one or two relationships that approached that stage as well, most recently with Abby.

For some reason though, even if he had always held out hope of one day meeting his soul mate, it never occurred to him that his soul mate might already be in a relationship.

"This is your kid?" Buck asked as Eddie walked back over to his truck, carrying the boy in his arms. Upon seeing him closer, Buck had to admit that Eddie had a cute kid, and it seemed the boy was studying him just as much as Buck had been.

"Yeah," Eddie ended up saying, nodding. "This is Christopher," Eddie introduced the boy. "Chris, this is Buck."

Eddie shifted as Chris moved in his arms, trying to look at Buck. "Are you a firefighter?" he asked, recognising the clothes Buck was wearing.

"Yeah," Buck's face changed into a bright smile, exuding happiness.

"Do you work with my dad?" Chris asked.

"Um…" Buck hesitated, not sure exactly how much the boy understood or knew about Firehouses and how they function. "We do sometimes. But I work at a different Firehouse than he does, so most of the time we don't."

"Oh, that makes sense," Chris said. "Your helmet says 118. Daddy works at the 124."

"Yeah," Buck smiled at the boy. "He does.

"Okay," Eddie lowered his arms and stood Chris on the ground. "Why don't you get in the truck now bud," he said. "I have to talk to Buck here for a few seconds."

Chris looked back at Buck, looking him up and down for a second time. "Okay," he said as he started to climb into the truck.

Now that the two of them had a second, Eddie motioned for Buck to follow him around the front of his truck.

"So, about the-" Eddie began.

"Do you think-" Buck started.

They both spoke at the same time, and cut themselves off. After an awkward second of silence, Buck said, "You first." and nodded for Eddie to speak.

"About the whole… thing," he started, and it didn't pass Buck how he evaded saying the word 'bond.' "We should probably… talk about it." He nodded over at Buck's team and the fire engine. "When you're not on shift, that is."

"Yeah, of course we should," Buck nodded eagerly. It was the first thing he wanted to do once he got off of his shift. Just being with and finally getting a chance to talk and get to know his soulmate… there was nothing else he would rather do.

Through the bond, Buck could feel a sense of tension reside, although Buck couldn't read anything on Eddie's face. "Would tomorrow afternoon work?" Eddie asked. "Christopher here has a sleepover thing tomorrow. It's probably best if he isn't here for this."

Buck paused, thinking it over. His shift ended tomorrow morning, and ideally he wanted to meet right afterwards. But maybe Eddie had a point, since this would be their first 'date' as one could call it, it might be best for a young kid to not be present.

"Okay, that would work," Buck said as he fished his phone out of one of his pockets. He opened it up, then passed it to Eddie. "Here, give me your phone number, I'll text you a time and place for tomorrow morning. I know a really good cafe around here and-"

Buck felt a brief moment of hesitation through the bond, with what looked like a fake smile on Eddie's face, but was sure he just interpreted it wrong. "Sure," Eddie said as he took Buck's phone and entered his contact details. "Here you go," he said as he passed Buck's phone back and they made their departure from each other.

The rest of his shift into the next morning, Buck felt light, happy, ecstatic even. Like nothing could hold him down. If the other guys on shift noticed his shift in mood, they didn't say anything, but he might have thought Chimney and Hen were giving him amused looks.