Chapter Text
Eddie opens his eyes in a rose garden.
That's wrong. It's wrong, because the last thing he remembers is—
—rolling darkness and cold, a damp choking thing, pain sudden and sharp and all-consuming—
—he blinks, then opens his eyes again. Blue sky overhead. The distant rumble of traffic, the slightly closer sound of lawnmowers, the sweet, heavy scent of roses in the air. He levers himself upright, and discovers that he's on a scruffy little stretch of lawn bordered by terra cotta tiles, yellow siding on the house to his left. To his right is a short driveway with a car parked at the end: a '69 Chevelle, flawless green paint job glittering in the sunlight like a large exotic insect.
His breath starts to come a little faster, because he knows that car. He knows that house, the yellow siding, the white trim, the wicker bench on the front porch that surrendered to mildew and rambunctious grandchildren sometime back when Eddie was still in high school.
There's a man shuffling through the roses with a pair of garden shears. He's humming as he works, occasionally mumble-singing some old Mexican love song that Eddie recognizes but couldn't name. His slicked-back hair is iron-gray instead of wispy and white like the last time Eddie saw him, and he's wearing a guayabera shirt and those ratty brown huaraches that Eddie's abuela was always on him to throw out already.
He smiles when he sees Eddie, lifts a hand to beckon him over, and goes back to trimming the roses.
Eddie gets to his feet, slowly. His heart is thundering. There's not a single other person in sight; nothing moves in the sunlight. He breathes in the taste of roses, and wonders if he's really breathing.
It's been almost twenty years since his abuelo died. But he's here, trimming the rose bushes by the house that was sold five years ago, looking the way Eddie remembers him from summer vacations as a child, and Eddie wants to go hug him almost as much as he wants to bolt.
"Eddito, come here, come here, let me look at you," and it's his name in that scratchy voice that decides him. He heaves another deep breath (is he breathing?) and nods, and starts across the lawn. The scent of roses is stronger here, and now he can smell the clove cigarettes his abuelo always used to smoke—like the old huaraches, there was no amount of fussing from his wife that would get him to give them up.
"Abuelo, it's so good to see you," he manages, and then he's being folded into a hug. He's taller now, by nearly a head. The last time they saw each other was a summer trip a few months before his abuelo died; Eddie was fifteen at the time and hadn't yet hit his last growth spurt.
"Look at you, you're a man now." A warm palm cups his cheek, and his abuelo's eyes crinkle when he pulls back, smiling. Eddie laughs, a little wet.
"It's been a long time."
"I'd say it's been too long, but, well…" his abuelo spreads his hands. "It's given me plenty of time with my roses."
"They look great," Eddie says, taking a step back. It's the truth, but even so: he heaves a breath. His lungs expand. It feels like breathing, but it can't be. He nods, and braces himself, and says, "What happened? Where am I?"
"Well, that's complicated."
"Is it?"
"These things often are," his abuelo says. He picks up his shears again and nods toward the rose garden. "Come on. We can talk while I work. What do you remember?"
"I…" For a moment, there's nothing. Just that rolling blur. Darkness. Sudden pain, not unlike being shot.
Before that: Buck's face in profile, his jaw tight. Rain coming down hard on the highway ahead of them, pounding on the roof of the Jeep, nearly drowning out Buck's voice when he muttered, Yeah, well, I guess I learned my lesson the first time around.
The hell's that supposed to mean, Eddie demanded, and Buck said something else, and then—
Darkness. The world rolling around them, glass shattering, the dark blur of the cliffside reversing places with the dark blur of the rainy sky. Sudden pain. And then another darkness, this one more absolute.
"We were in a car accident," he says slowly. His abuelo purses his lips and nods, his eyes on the new stalks he's snipping away. Green clippings spiky with thorns fall to the ground. Eddie takes a sharp breath, and he can't be alive right now, because if he was, his heart would be racing. "Is Buck—did he—?"
Christopher wasn't in the car with them. Thank god, thank every saint that Eddie no longer really believes in, Christopher wasn't in the car with them. If nothing else, there's that. Christopher is safe. And Buck—is supposed to take care of him if something happens to Eddie, so Buck has to be okay.
As if it's that simple. As if the universe has ever been kind enough to bend to Eddie's pleading.
His abuelo shrugs and sets the shears down. "That's outside my jurisdiction, mijo. This is your place, not his."
"Does that mean I'm dead?" Eddie asks slowly. "Is this… what, Heaven? Purgatory?"
"Ehh…" His abuelo wobbles a knotted hand back and forth and then starts patting at his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He lights one with a match from the same pocket, takes a thoughtful puff, and says, "Not quite. You're in-between."
"In a coma, then?"
"Sure. We'll call it that. It's a place where you can… reconsider your life."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Well." His abuelo surveys him shrewdly. "Do you have anything you wish you'd done differently, over the years?"
Eddie chokes on a sudden laugh. What wouldn't he do differently? So much of his life has been a series of bad decisions that felt like good ones in the moment. Ending—maybe literally—in picking a fight with Buck in a moving vehicle while it was pouring rain. The kind of stupid shit that they see the gruesome aftermath of every damn day on the job. He should have known better.
"Yeah," he says. "I mean. Doesn't everybody?"
"Some people have more regrets than others."
"And you think I'm one of them?"
"Doesn't matter what I think. You're here."
"That's cryptic," Eddie mutters.
His abuelo smiles at him. "Well, I'm dead. I'm allowed."
"So, what, I'm just supposed to sit here and think about my mistakes? Like some kind of—cosmic time-out, or something?"
"You can do that if you want. Or you can… go back. See how things would have turned out if you did things differently. If you didn't move to California, if you never became a firefighter…"
"All that happened after you died. How do you know about that?"
"Well, like I said. I'm dead." His abuelo shrugs, smiling a little. "Or maybe I'm a figment of your imagination. Take your pick, whichever one you like better."
"I can't do this," Eddie mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Okay, fine. I want to know what would have happened if I just kept my damn mouth shut in the car earlier. How's that?"
"Kind of a cop-out, but sure, we can work with that."
Eddie opens his mouth to protest, but his abuelo is already shuffling over to one of the rose bushes. He picks up the shears again and snips a single perfect blossom. The petals are a deep, velvety shade of black, and the thorns prick Eddie's fingers when his abuelo hands it to him. He winces, but doesn't drop it. "So what do I…"
"Just close your eyes," his abuelo says, and he does, and then—
He's not in the rose garden anymore. The temperature has dropped at least twenty degrees, and he's sitting down, the rumble of pavement moving beneath him, the quick slosh of the wiper blades in heavy rain. He opens his eyes, already knowing what he'll see, and sure enough there it is: the road ahead nearly grayed out by the night and the rain catching in the headlights. The dashboard of the Jeep, that little duck pendant that Chris got Buck years ago hanging from the rearview mirror, Buck's spare sunglasses in the center console along with his coffee cup from this morning.
And there's Buck in the driver's seat, his jaw tense, his eyes tired. He's been uncharacteristically quiet all shift. For weeks now, really. Since he moved out of the house and into an apartment that he didn't show to Eddie before he signed the lease.
Before, the first time this moment happened, Eddie said, Seems like maybe you have something you want to say to me, that's all and Buck retorted, I don't have anything to say to you, and from there they were off to the races. This time, he keeps his mouth shut. Just watches Buck, and tries not to think too hard about whether this is happening for real or whether he's dying in a ditch somewhere off of Coldwater Canyon and this is all just his brain's last desperate self-soothing hallucination.
"What," Buck asks shortly, after a few minutes of this. A muscle in his jaw knots, but he doesn't look at Eddie.
"Nothing," Eddie says, and redirects his gaze toward the highway. A pair of headlights sweep toward them on the other side of the road, then pass, spraying water. Buck swears under his breath and turns up the windshield wipers, seemingly just as annoyed at Eddie for not speaking as he was for speaking. It's possible, Eddie thinks, that there's not actually a win state here. Maybe that's the lesson he's supposed to learn. No matter what he does, he's going to fuck this up.
"Thanks a lot, Abuelo," he mutters.
"What?" Buck asks.
"Nothing, nothing. Just talking to myself."
Buck huffs. Another set of headlights passes them: a tractor-trailer this time, spraying up a sheet of water that completely obscures the road for a moment. Buck taps the brakes, and there's the brief but terrifying sensation of the back wheels hydroplaning for an instant before they catch again. Eddie slams a hand involuntarily against the armrest, pulse rabbiting in his throat.
Buck lets out another deep sigh laced with irritation, and it takes everything Eddie has not to flinch and jab at him—not even for answers this time, just to soothe that acid bitterness of terror and frustration in the back of his throat. He bites his tongue hard enough to hurt and keeps his mouth shut.
"Listen," Buck says finally. "I don't—"
Eddie's looking at the road this time, instead of at him, and that means that this time he sees it: the sudden sweep of headlights spinning out into their lane, the huge dark bulk of the vehicle following. Buck swears, sharp and terrified, and jerks the wheel, flinging his other arm out like he's trying to hold Eddie into his seat.
He did that last time, too. Even when they were fighting, he did that. Eddie has an instant to think that, and then the impact comes, same as before: a bone-rattling jolt spinning them sideways toward the guardrail. Tearing metal, a sickening instant of weightlessness. In the moment before the car starts to roll, he hears Buck say his name like it's been punched out of him, like he's the one dying here.
Glass shatters. Rain slaps his face, the gray sky spinning overhead like the entire world has turned into some nightmarish carnival ride. And then there's that final impact, and shattering pain, and darkness.
Eddie opens his eyes.
He's not on the grass this time: instead, he's on the wrought-iron bench in the back garden, the one where his abuela used to like to have her morning coffee. His hands are cradling something soft; when he opens his eyes, he sees the black rose blossom, its petals crushed. His fingers twitch, and a thorn pricks the heel of his palm, red blood beading up. He drops the flower with a shudder and looks up.
His abuelo is watching him from the other side of the bench. Either he's lit another cigarette, or that whole thing hasn't taken any time at all in this place, wherever this place is. It's barely burned down at all.
"What the hell," Eddie manages, raw.
"Not what you were hoping for?"
"No." He takes a shuddering breath. "But you knew that."
A shrug. "I guessed."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Maybe you needed to figure it out on your own."
"There was nothing I could have done. There. Happy now? The accident would have happened anyway, and I was always going to end up here, and Buck—" He breaks off. He can't think about that. "So what now?"
His abuelo nods toward the roses. "Come on. Walk with me."
Eddie opens his mouth to protest, then shuts it. When his abuelo gets to his feet, he follows: down the garden path, green grass and rose bushes that seem taller than he remembers. There are more of them, too. In the real back yard, there was a pretty little row butted up against the back fence, his abuelo's pride and joy that his abuela tended more out of love for him than any particular affection for roses. Here, there seems to be no back fence, perhaps no end to the flowers. Eddie wonders if he'd even be able to see the yellow house if he were to turn around, but he doesn't look.
"All of these," his abuelo says, lighting another cigarette, "are another life you might have lived, if you made different choices."
"Better choices."
"Better, worse, who's to say? Just different."
"And, what, I get a trial run at them now?"
"If you want. This place isn't going to last forever. So maybe you find a life you like better than the one you just left, and that's where you stay."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
Eddie tilts his head back toward the blue sky—perfectly clear, no contrails to be seen, even though in the real world this house was on a flight path to LAX—and laughs. "You know I don't really believe in this stuff, right? After you died—Abuela, she—"
"She tried to find a way to speak to me. Yes."
"Yeah. And it never worked. Cost her a fortune, though."
"And made a skeptic of my grandson," his abuelo concludes with a dry chuckle, lighting another cigarette. "Well, you're here now."
"Am I?"
"Where else would you be?"
"In a coma? Bleeding out in a ditch and hallucinating this whole damn thing?"
"Well, in that case, what have you got to lose?"
"Yeah, okay." Eddie laughs again, rueful. "You got me there."
He sets his hands on his hips and turns. Like he thought, the house is no longer visible; the roses surround them in a riot of color, towering over his head, six feet or more.
You're five-eleven on a good day, Buck's voice teases in the back of his mind. It was years ago now. Before Marisol, before Kim, before El Paso. He was redoing the shower wall in the house on South Bedford street in a burst of home improvement zeal after he and Buck patched the holes in his bedroom wall, and Buck was helping more because he just happened to be there than because Eddie specifically asked for his help. That's how things always worked with him and Buck, for years: neither of them really needed to ask or be asked. Buck's problems were Eddie's problems and Eddie's problems were Buck's, even when the problem was as small and prosaic as the fact that Eddie couldn't quite reach the top row of tiles without a step stool, and so Buck laughed at him and took over.
Always happy to lend my services to the vertically challenged, he laughed when Eddie rolled his eyes and stepped out of the tub to lean against the sink and watch him work.
I'm six feet tall, I'm not vertically challenged, he retorted, and Buck glanced back with a bright grin, grout speckling his shirt as he laid that last line of tile and Eddie refrained from pointing out that they were going on slightly crooked even with the guide markers. He missed that crooked row of tiles, in El Paso, in the bathroom tiled in the wrong color, no sign of Buck there anywhere.
And, Hey, Eddie, did you know that astronauts get taller if they spend a long time in space? Because there's no gravity compressing their spines. Maybe that's your solution.
Yeah, maybe I just ask my pain in the ass best friend to set the top row of tiles instead of joining NASA.
Come on, are you saying you wouldn't want to be an astronaut? Isn't that every kid's dream?
Yours, maybe.
He blinks and opens his eyes. His abuelo is looking at him patiently.
"Okay," Eddie says. For some inexplicable reason, he can't meet that calm gaze. "Okay, what if I hadn't ever gone back to talk to Kim? What if—what if I never saw her that day? What if I just stayed away, and didn't—"
Ruin everything, he thinks. That was the thing that ruined everything. That first step into a shop that smelled cloyingly of scented oil and candle wax was a match held to everything important in his life, and a year later he's still sifting through the scorched ruins.
"If that's what you want," his abuelo says. He grinds his cigarette out in an ashtray on the ground that Eddie didn't notice before—if it was even there before—and gets to his feet, shears in hand. This time the rose bush he approaches is covered in pale pink blossoms. He snips a cluster of them and brings them back. Eddie takes them carefully, mindful of the thorns this time. The prick from earlier still stings.
He closes his eyes.
And opens them to rain slapping at the windows of his bedroom. Thunder rumbles overhead, and Eddie rolls over onto his back, blinking and disoriented in the gloom. The clock on the wall reads 6:17, but he has no way of knowing if that's AM or PM. The stormy gloom outside could be either.
It was evening when their car went off the road. The end of a twenty-four hour shift, and they might have stayed at the station until the storm blew over, except that it wasn't supposed to be that bad. Was really barely drizzling when they left in Buck's Jeep, because Eddie hadn't brought his car and had followed Buck out to the parking lot with the easy assumption of a ride without asking.
Buck hadn't looked all that pleased about it, which Eddie kind of shrugged off at the time. Maybe he shouldn't have.
There are lights on elsewhere in the house, a warm glow coming in through the open bedroom door. Someone is moving around in the kitchen. Eddie levers himself upright with a groan, pinching at the bridge of his nose. He feels foggy the way he always does when he naps too long during the day, and he's in an LAFD t-shirt and boxer briefs, his uniform pants in a crumpled heap on the floor next to the bed.
Probably evening, then. He knuckles at his tired eyes as he swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands. There's a nasty bruise spanning the side of his thigh, a bandage on his forearm that, when he peels it up slightly, reveals fresh road rash. Nothing any more dire than that seems to be wrong with him, but it's jarring.
He doesn't remember either of these injuries. He presses his fingers into the bruise and winces at the dull throb of pain. It's deep bluish-purple at the center, not yet starting to fade, which means it probably came from the same place as the road rash that he also has no idea where he got.
"This is fine," he mumbles, rubbing his palms over his face. He leans down to pick up his pants off the floor, and his phone thumps out to the carpet. He picks it up and tosses it on the bed and is gingerly starting to tug his pants back on when footsteps come down the hallway.
"Eddie? Are you awake now?"
Marisol. Eddie barely controls his flinch, yanking his pants up with a quick jingle of his belt before she comes in. Which is stupid, objectively. It's nothing she hasn't seen before. And she's here, so—apparently in this timeline, they didn't break up.
"Yeah," he says roughly, as she ducks into the room. His heart is rabbiting; he rubs his knuckles against his sternum and gives her a smile that he hopes looks more convincing than it feels.
Marisol doesn't smile back. Her face is carved out of shadows, hard angles, more unfamiliar than he thought it would be. They dated for almost a year. Almost two years, now, if this is the same moment when—when Buck's Jeep—
"Dinner's ready if you're planning on joining us," she says, and there's an edge to it.
"Us?" Eddie asks dumbly.
"The Sanchezes dropped Chris off while you were napping," she says, like he was supposed to know that. Like something about it is wrong, and his fault.
"Oh," Eddie says. He blinks. "I'll, I'll be out in a second."
"Fine," she says, and turns on her heel, and leaves without another word. Eddie sits down abruptly on the edge of the bed and reaches for his phone.
His passcode is still Chris's birthday. He unlocks it, pulls up Buck's contact, and hits call. It rings once, then goes straight to voicemail.
"Go for Buck, you know the drill."
Eddie's breath shudders out of him. He clears his throat. "Hey, man, it's me. Can you give me a call when you get this?"
He ends the call, then pulls up his text message thread with Buck. The last one is from two weeks ago, and that puts another needle of unease through the pit of his stomach; even when he was in Texas, he and Buck texted almost daily. It's been a lot less since he got back to Los Angeles, since Buck moved into his new place across town, since they're working together again most shifts and there's no real reason to text unless it's to make plans, which they also haven't been doing as much as he'd like to. Just one more way the whole world feels off-balance with Bobby gone.
That's all it is. Eddie's pretty sure that's all it is.
I still have your slow cooker, I'll bring it to the station tomorrow, is the last text Buck sent him. Eddie replied with a thumbs-up. And that was it.
Hey, text me? he sends now. No read receipt; Buck isn't ignoring him, at least.
Eddie wasn't on shift today, clearly. But if Buck was, then he'd be driving home now.
Rain lashes the windows. The roads would be slippery, and Buck would be alone in the Jeep. Would that be better or worse? Would he have taken a different route back to his place without Eddie there?
He'd still be at the loft, the one he gave up when Eddie moved to Texas. Because in this universe, Eddie didn't move to Texas, so Buck never left the loft for Eddie's house, and he never left Eddie's house for the bland little one-bedroom he's renting now.
He pulls up the news, but there's nothing, or at least, nothing yet, and wishes with sudden fierceness that he had a scanner. Buck has one, or at least he did, bought when he was on medical leave for the first time and going stir crazy. Eddie always kind of figured that listening in on the calls probably didn't help much with that feeling, but now he wishes desperately that he'd followed in Buck's footsteps. Bobby always said—
He takes another breath. Then he types Robert Nash into the search bar. Immediately, dozens of headlines pop up. He clicks the first one with a sinking heart and reads the first sentence: Captain Robert Nash, 58, of the LAFD, was killed in the line of duty when a fire broke out at a medical lab early Tuesday morning.
He closes the tab. The list of headlines remains, mocking him: Scientist Arrested In Conjunction With Fatal Lab Fire. Investigation Into Social Tech Biomed Fire Continues. LAFD Gathers To Honor Fallen Hero.
Under that last one is a picture of a funeral procession that looks no different from the one he took part in two months ago, in his own life. Eddie's not in the photo, but Buck is, stiff-jawed and dry-faced just like he was when this happened for real. A step behind him is Hen, tears streaming down her cheeks.
It happened for real here, too. Eddie must have been there, this time around, and it turns out that didn't make a damn bit of difference. Maybe it should be a relief, maybe it should ease the guilt, but it just hits him with a fresh punch of grief, all over again.
Footsteps in the hallway again, this time the familiar shuffle-tap of Chris's crutches. Eddie swipes at his face quickly before looking up. "Hey. Sorry, mijo."
"You better hurry up," Chris says. He's smiling a little. He doesn't look any different than Eddie's own Chris, but Eddie can't help staring at him anyway: his t-shirt is an unfamiliar one, his hair slightly longer, curls bobbing over his forehead. This is a Christopher who never ran away from him. This is a Chris he never betrayed, who doesn't know yet exactly how much of a fuck-up Eddie is.
It should be a relief, but instead it makes him feel oddly adrift.
Chris frowns, taking a step into the room. "Dad? Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Eddie says quickly. "Yeah, I'm, uh, I'm still waking up, I guess. Sorry."
"Painkillers," Chris agrees, which would make some sense, with the bruising, and with how groggy he is. "You'll feel better if you eat."
"Yeah, yeah, I know," Eddie says, and he manages to find a smile as he pulls himself to his feet and limps across the room to the dresser, where he pulls out a t-shirt and tugs it on.
There's another dresser tucked into the corner, a different style. Mirrors and jewelry boxes on the surface. Eddie stares at it, his heart sinking.
"Dad?" Chris asks.
"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I'm coming."
The kitchen smells like mole, thick and spicy, and Eddie cringes faintly before he makes himself hide the expression. Marisol is at the table, the plate in front of her full, scrolling through her phone. She looks up when Eddie comes in and sets it down with a click that feels pointed, but she doesn't say anything.
"Thanks for cooking," Eddie says.
"Of course," she says with a tight smile.
Chris sighs faintly, settling into the chair between them, and doesn't speak as he serves himself rice and chicken in thick mole sauce before passing the serving spoon to Eddie, who dishes out as little as he can get away with.
"You're not hungry?" Marisol asks. Maybe it's his imagination making it sound accusatory.
"Probably the meds," Eddie says with a tight smile of his own, like he knows what meds he's on or how he got hurt badly enough to need them, like he knows why he asked her to move in or why he never told her that he doesn't like mole. It's not entirely untrue, anyway. His stomach feels like it's twisted into a sick knot, but he makes himself eat most of the meal, his head down. Chris and Marisol chat about his classes—they're doing a poetry section for ELA, apparently—and Eddie makes an attempt to participate when Chris draws him into the conversation, but the mood never really seems to get any less tense.
Afterward, Chris puts his plate in the dishwasher and heads back to his room to work on his homework, and Marisol gets up to start clearing the dishes away. Eddie starts to stand up, to help, and she says, without looking at him, "I've got it."
"You cooked, I can—"
"I said I've got it," she snaps, setting the pot down on the counter, hard.
Eddie puts his hands up, subsiding. "Okay."
"I'm going to stay with Miguel tonight, I think," she says, without turning back toward him. "You'll be okay. Right?"
"Uh, yeah," Eddie says, after a guilty beat, hoping that the relief doesn't show in his voice. He feels bad about it. He probably should. The truth is, after the mess of everything with Kim last May, after Marisol called him a cheating bastard and stormed out without a backward glance, Eddie hasn't actually thought about her at all. She was a footnote in the catastrophe he inflicted on his son. The idea that she might have stayed, that he might have tried to build something with her for real—it fits oddly. It makes him think of a panic attack on the floor of a menswear shop, Ana's quiet bitterness in this very kitchen when he finally ended it.
"Good," Marisol says.
"Right," Eddie says, and he grabs his phone and makes his limping escape to the front porch.
Rain is coming down hard enough that the concrete floor is soaked, droplets scattering against his skin, cold sinking in and making him very aware that he's in just a t-shirt right now. He checks his phone again—still no messages from Buck—and shoves it into his pocket to stare unseeing into the wet gray gloom of his familiar neighborhood. The thought he can't keep his mind away from, unfair as it is, is how the hell could Buck let me do this.
Buck's supposed to know him better than this. He's supposed to see when Eddie is in a rut, and reach down to help him climb out. That's always been what happened in the past, and Eddie's been starting to wonder if he broke something when he moved to Texas, but—maybe it's not that. Or not just that.
Or maybe things are fine between him and Marisol, and he just woke up in the middle of an argument. Couples fight. It happens. Maybe they're happy together, but the instinctive, unpleasant lurch in the pit of his stomach when he saw her dresser in his room suggests otherwise.
He didn't cheat this time around. She still can barely seem to stand the sight of him. And he doesn't want her here.
"Great," he sighs, and then his phone starts to vibrate.
It's Buck's name on the screen, an unfamiliar contact photo, and the relief that shoots through Eddie is so sudden and intense that he nearly drops his phone fumbling to pick up the call. "H-hey. Buck, hey."
"Got your message," Buck says. "Seemed kind of ominous. Is everything okay?"
"Yeah," Eddie croaks. Embarrassingly, his eyes are wet. He swipes at them and stares out into the rain. "It's really coming down outside. Just wanted to make sure you got home okay."
There are a few beats of silence at that. They don't really do this, is the thing. They don't worry about each other like this, for no reason. And apparently the last time Eddie texted him was two weeks ago.
"Um," Buck says finally. "Yeah, I—I was off today, actually. Johanssen moved things around while you were out."
"Oh," Eddie says. "Johanssen?"
"Interim captain?" Buck says slowly. "Eddie, are you good?"
The audible concern in his voice makes Eddie's throat hurt. "Yeah, I—don't know what I'm thinking. Been having weird dreams. Painkillers, I guess."
"Yeah, well, that's what you get for taking a support beam to the thigh," Buck says, with a tiny thread of humor.
"Thought my partner was supposed to watch my back," Eddie says. It comes out sharp, sharper than he intends or Buck deserves.
"Eddie…"
"Listen, forget it," Eddie says, jamming a hand against his face. "That was shitty."
Buck sighs, but doesn't deny it. "Wasn't my idea to reassign you. You know that."
"I know," Eddie says, though he doesn't. But it sounds like he should know that. It sounds like Buck isn't particularly surprised that he's being a dick about it, either. "Listen, I—didn't call to fight with you."
"I know," Buck sighs, sounding exhausted, like this is a path so well-trodden that there's no point going down it again. Shannon sounded like that with him, in the weeks before she left. Like it just wasn't worth the trouble of trying to talk to him anymore.
Eddie swallows. "Just—feels like we never talk anymore."
"Well, we've both been busy."
"We should be better about that. You know? All of us. With Bobby gone—"
"Yeah," Buck says. That sounds tired, too, more resigned than wounded, and that's worse. Then, "Hey, listen, I have to get going. Get some sleep, huh?"
"Sure," Eddie says, but Buck is already gone.
He turns his phone off, shoves it in his pocket. Stares blinking out into the cold gray gloom. In the house behind him, he can hear pots and pans clattering. Marisol says something he can't hear, and Chris answers.
He squeezes his eyes shut, like a kid in a nightmare, hoping desperately that he can wake up. I don't want this. This isn't what I want. Please, this isn't what I wanted.
The sound of the rain stops, like a door has been slammed shut. He can feel sunlight on his face, and when he breathes in his nose is full of the scent of roses.
He opens his eyes, and lets the crushed rose in his hand drop to the ground. Petals scatter. He kicks at it a little, childishly resentful, then winces and looks up to see his abuelo watching him mildly.
"Sorry," Eddie mutters.
"The flower can't feel it."
"Still."
"Mm."
Eddie lets out breath and grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes. "He still died. Bobby."
"Your captain."
"My friend," Eddie says, but it feels too small to encompass everything Bobby was to him—a second chance, a safe place to land. A door left open, always ready to welcome him home. "My captain, yeah. At the 118. He died while I was in Texas, and I've never been able to stop wondering, if I'd just been there, maybe—"
"You're just a man, mijo." His abuelo lifts one shoulder. There's another cigarette in his hand, unlit. "All you can change is what you do. Other people—they have choices too. You know?"
"Were you like this when you were alive?" Eddie asks, half-smiling. "I don't remember the philosophy lessons."
"Pah. You were a teenager. Philosophy is wasted on the young."
That does get him to smile for real. "Okay."
"So."
"I don't think I learned my lesson," Eddie says. "Whatever that's supposed to be. Marisol moved in, and she hates me. Bobby still died. Buck and I barely talk. That's not better."
"What about Christopher?"
"Christopher…" Eddie squeezes his eyes shut. "Hurting him the way I did last spring, when he found me with—that's one of the worst regrets of my life. I'd give almost anything to undo it."
"But?"
"Who said there was a but?" His abuelo doesn't answer. Eddie sighs. "Buck told me once that I'm Chris's dad, and that makes it my job to screw him up."
His abuelo huffs. "Not exactly how I would put it."
"I get it, though. He wasn't wrong." Eddie opens his eyes. Shadows shift and scatter on the grass as the breeze moves the rose bushes. "I think I was so afraid of making the wrong decision that I just didn't make any decisions at all. And that's not better. Just a different kind of bad."
His abuelo claps him on the shoulder, and Eddie leans into the illusory warmth of his touch, the brief pressure. "See? Now you're old enough for philosophy."
Eddie scoffs. "Not sure how far I got with it, but thanks. Did I pass?"
"Pass?"
"The test. Whatever this is."
"No test." His abuelo fishes the matchbox out of his breast pocket and lights his cigarette. "Just choices. Different ones, if you want."
"I don't think I know what the fuck I want," Eddie admits.
His abuelo smacks his knee lightly. "Language."
"Thought you just said I was a grown man."
"Not too old to get your mouth washed out with soap."
"Okay, okay," Eddie says, smiling. Then, "You know, when Shannon left—she always made it sound so easy, like we could all just pack up and hit the road and be a family again, together."
"And it wasn't?"
"I don't know. Maybe it would have been." That's the worst thing, the thought that he returns to sometimes, still, after all these years. Most of the memories he has of Shannon are worn smooth, losing definition after being turned over and over so many times, but this one still has edges sharp enough to hurt. Maybe it really would have been easy. "I didn't go with her. I stayed in Texas, and I—I always thought she'd come home."
He understands better why she didn't after those last months in El Paso, stifling under his mother's grasping, overbearing judgement. He's still not sure he's ready to forgive her for it, but he understands it better now.
"She had a choice. So did you."
"Yeah," Eddie sighs. "Okay. You're right. What if I made a different choice way back then? What if I came with her to Los Angeles when she asked?"
"Hm," his abuelo says, climbing to his feet again, scooping up his shears. Eddie wonders, as he watches him shuffle over to another rose bush, cigarette dangling absently from his mouth, if it actually matters which plant he cuts a flower from. If there's something intrinsic to this rose or that one, or if it's all just symbolic.
He scoffs as soon as the thought occurs. All of this is symbolic, he's pretty sure. Like that coma dream Buck told him about, bits and pieces anyway. This is all happening in his head, and he's laid out in a hospital bed right now, if he's lucky. Dying in a wet ditch, if he's not.
"Something funny?" his abuelo asks. Eddie didn't even notice his approach this time. He looks real, as real as Eddie remembers. But memory is a tricky beast, he knows.
"No," Eddie says.
"Have it your way," his abuelo says, and holds out another delicate cluster of roses. White ones, this time. Eddie hesitates, then reaches out to take it.