I Love Arm

i love arm

have the buckley parents been bodysnatched

is Hoover gonna be the station dog

sevo

keep the ones who want me

6x05 coda

buck drives them home, and the jeep is silent as eddie spends the whole time trying to decide whether or not to bring it up. when he finally opens his mouth, they’re just three blocks away from his house.

“anything you want to tell me?” he asks buck, tipping his head back against the seat and letting it roll to the side.

buck seems to—flinch, almost, but it’s brief and barely there and eddie’s taken advantage of the fact that buck agreed to drive tonight, so he’s not entirely sure he hadn’t imagined it. he blinks and it’s gone, blinks and buck’s in the driver’s seat just like he always is, one hand on the wheel and his elbow propped against the window. any tension eddie thought he’d seen is gone, nowhere to be found in the languid lines of his long—

“what do you mean?” buck asks, interrupting eddie’s disintegrating thought process with a slight frown.

“just—back there,” eddie says, waving a hand in the vague direction they’d come from. “you’re not planning on trying to transfer again, are you?”

“first of all,” buck says, quirking an eyebrow at him as he turns to check his blind spot before turning into the driveway. “you’re one to talk about leaving the 118.”

eddie holds his hands up. “that’s true,” he says. “but i was always going to come back.”

“second,” buck says, turning the car off but making no move to get out. “why would i be trying to transfer?”

“i don’t know,” eddie says on a sigh. he doesn’t reach for the car door, doesn’t even unbuckle his seatbelt. they could easily continue this conversation inside, but—some things are easier to talk about in the dark, when you don’t have to look directly at them. eddie has a nagging feeling this might be one of those things.

“i was just thinking about—you said it might be the last time we’re all together,” he continues, his eyes flicking to buck and away again. “why would it, unless—”

“i’m not going anywhere, eddie,” buck says, low. “hen’s leaving, and i know she says she’s not going to disappear but we all know what doctor schedules are like, so i just thought—i don’t know, it seems unlikely that we cold just—keep things the way they’ve been.”

eddie hums. “unlikely, maybe,” he says. “but not impossible.”

“sure,” buck says. “not impossible. we’ll do it once, maybe twice, then hen has to miss one or one of us has to cover a shift or someone will be injured and then suddenly it’s christmas and we’re sending hen holiday cards thinking about how we haven’t seen her in sixth months.”

“christmas is two months away, buck,” eddie says, and buck rolls his eyes.

“but you get what i mean,” he says. “right? we’re all hopeful and optimistic now, but this is how it starts.”

and there it is, the thing that’s too fragile to examine under the bright artificial lights of his kitchen, the thing that can’t take shape in the same space as something as mundane as a cup of coffee.

“how what starts?” eddie asks.

“hen leaves first, and then—what, a couple of years from now bobby retires, and then—”

“and then what?” eddie asks. “where exactly am i going? where’s chimney going?”

“i don’t know,” buck mumbles, dropping his head back and staring at the roof of the car. “but that’s just life, isn’t it? people move on.”

“is that life?” eddie asks.

“isn’t it?” buck counters. “everyone leaves eventually.”

“not everyone,” eddie says.

“everyone dies.”

“who’s dying?” eddie asks. “buck. you’re spiralling.”

“am i?” buck asks. “i know what happens to guys like—guys like me. i’ve seen it.”

it takes a second, then eddie remembers the old firefighter buck met years ago. the one who’d died alone, who’d lived out his final days alone, who’d had buck somehow convinced that was his future, too.

“buck,” eddie says, softer now. “you’re not red. you’re nothing like him.”

“yeah?” buck asks. “nothing like the guy who ended up alone when everyone else got busy with marriage and family and kids? i couldn’t even keep the damn dog, eddie.”

“that wasn’t a dog,” eddie mutters. “that was a chaos demon with fur and a tail.”

buck huffs a laugh and eddie grins, shifting in his seat to face him.

“buck, you’re nothing like red,” eddie says again. “red didn’t have a sister, for one thing. maddie wouldn’t—”

“no,” buck agrees, soft. “she wouldn’t.”

“and for another thing,” eddie says, “red didn’t have me, or an eleven-year-old who hangs onto his every word.”

“i thought you said he was growing up,” buck says, dubious.

“he’s growing up on me,” eddie says. “dad isn’t cool anymore. but i’ll bet you anything buck still is, hm? you want to come in and see?”

buck had planned on just dropping eddie off, on going to the loft for the night, but eddie’s not letting him off without an object lesson in exactly how much evan buckley is nothing like red delacroix.

“i should—” buck starts, and eddie rolls his eyes.

“you should crash here for the night,” he says, in a tone that brooks no argument. “and in the morning you should teach chris your french toast recipe, because he says mine isn’t half as good.”

buck hesitates for a moment, still, but eddie sees the moment his resolve cracks and he softens, like he’s finally allowing himself to relax. “well, then,” he says, flashing his first genuine smile since they’d climbed into the car. “if it’s about the french toast.”

ari@njd | 12.11.22