Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Eddie drums his fingers against the steering wheel. He’s got a good view of his new firehouse, the mostly still exterior. Driving in early had been a hard-fought battle, the slow crawl through LA traffic run through with a hollow in his chest from his son’s absence, and the knowledge that it would be over twenty-four hours until he saw him again—far and away the longest they’d been separated since the move to Texas. Since they became a pack of two.

He’s filled with wants, crammed against each other in the cab of the truck. The need to hold his son again runs up against desire to provide for him, intertwined with the urge to walk into the firehouse and make good first impressions, at odds with his want to pace the outskirts of the property, get his hands on as many walls as he can reach.

Compromise is sitting in the known space of his vehicle and scoping the place out from a distance. He aches for familiarity.

It comes in the form of a new car pulling up alongside his, blocking his view of the building and replacing it with the tinted profile of his captain, who turns to meet Eddie’s eyes after shutting his car off with a smile and a wave—a motion that comes across so controlled, so easily professional yet warm, that Eddie is reminded of why he went with this firehouse in the first place.

All he knows of the 118 is Captain Nash. They’d met for coffee, and though Eddie had gone in thinking he had little worry carried with him—he had an offer from another firehouse that he was one phone call away from accepting—he’d found himself truly at ease one handshake and several minutes of conversation in. Something about Captain Nash’s authority spoke to Eddie’s wolf; not so overbearing that it felt the need to push back, but with a confidence that put it at ease. He was a man Eddie would follow into a fire, and so he had taken the job.

He steps out and into the morning air, only just different enough from El Paso to register as something new, the humidity shifted up and the temperature dropped down.

In the time it takes him to round the front of his truck, he settles into his skin. It’s a similarly small difference, guiding his hand into Captain Nash’s in a confident arc, measuring the strength of the squeeze of his fingers.

“Good to see you again, Eddie.”

“Captain Nash,” Eddie says with a small dip of his head. “Think today’ll treat me well? Heard at the academy that some teams give probies a hard time.”

A fond look works its way over Captain Nash’s face, brightening his eyes and curling his lips. It warms something inside of Eddie, a part of him left cold, leaving Texas and his family’s pack in the rear-view mirror. It’s hardly more than a temporary balm, replacing a full pack of wolves with human coworkers, but Eddie will take what he can get.

But he sees the love this captain has for his team, clear as day. Eddie knows he’s good in a team, from being raised in a pack and his time in the army, so his spirits are high, despite his very real trepidation about probie treatment.

“They’re good people,” Captain Nash says. “Might give you a bit of a hard time, but I’ve seen your scores out of the academy. Be yourself, and they’ll welcome you like family. We’ve been through a lot together.”

There’s a tinge of sadness to his scent when he says it, woven so thoroughly with the love pouring off him that Eddie’s heart aches with it.

“I told you when we met before that I had a partner for you,” he continues, starting toward the station. Eddie keeps up easily, duffel bag pulling at his shoulder. “Evan Buckley. He’s a good kid—I think you two will work great together.”

Eddie does remember. He’d picked up then the same thing he does now—the warmth in Captain Nash’s tone and the protective spike of his scent. A younger firefighter he’s taken under his wing and, ostensibly, a big part of the reason he’d wanted Eddie for the team. Eddie has no qualms with it—he’s happy to prove himself both to the team and as a partner.

“I think I’m hearing a but there.” It’s in the beat of silence after his words, the drawn breath of hesitation.

Captain Nash laughs under his breath. “I can’t give you all the answers, firefighter Diaz. But I’ll get you your uniform if you follow me up to my office.”

Eddie doesn’t worry over it as they pass through the station and ascend the stairs. He’s more focused on drawing the scent of the place and its people in, getting an idea of how many firefighters and administrators pass through regularly, and small whiffs of lunch left too long in the communal fridge.

There’s a smoky undertone to everything, cut through with a harsher chemical smell, and he’s about ready to switch his focus from the smells before giving himself a headache when he picks up on something strange—coppery and bright, a thread among many but impossible to ignore once he picks up on it.

They step through the threshold and into Captain Nash’s office, and Eddie can’t help but notice that the scent is stronger here. It’d be easier to ignore if it were concentrated closer to the engine or the ambulance.

“Here you are.” Eddie is handed a small pile of clothes, which he knows to be his uniform. It smells new, touched only by his captain’s hands. He focuses on it as he offers up a smile. “The rest of the team should be here soon—locker room is back on the ground floor if you want to get changed before then. We’re all looking forward to getting to know you, Eddie.”

The locker room is glass. Eddie takes this in stride, because there’s nothing else to be done. He’s pointed to an empty locker by someone on C-shift, who’s minutes away from leaving for the day and seems more than happy to help out the new guy.

The coppery smell is all over the locker room. It sets off warning signals in Eddie’s head, the kind that feel like a trapped animal baring its teeth. He feels like an idiot pulling his shirt off, exposed and so on edge that he misses the incoming voices, the visual of four people approaching the first tip-off that he’s about to meet the rest of his team. It’s an embarrassment for a werewolf to rely on sight, and Eddie gives himself the brief moment before they enter the room to reorient, chasing that same confidence he’d felt earlier.

“Eddie,” Captain Nash says. “I’d like you to meet the 118’s A-shift.”

“We’re Bobby’s favorites,” the woman to his left says. “But don't tell anyone else that. I’m Hen.”

Eddie nods to her, eyes pulled to the man at her other side when he speaks. “Chimney. Nice to finally have a new probie. I was getting sick of latrine duty.”

“Nice to meet you,” Eddie nods to them both, eyes sliding to Captain Nash’s other side, where the fourth member of their little team stands. He’s the youngest of them, positioned with his chest puffed out and arms crossed.

Eddie knows his type—insecure guys who get all threatened when someone intrudes on their territory. It’s an unsurprisingly common archetype among young werewolves, and he wonders idly for a moment if he might meet any in the LAFD. Their enhanced senses and strength make them good candidates for the job.

But then, it is Los Angeles. The no man’s land of supernatural creatures, making it appealing to all but wolves, save for the outcasts. Even the headstrong loners steer clear, the trouble to be found not worth the difficulty of constant weariness from the other creatures that call the sprawling city home. It’s the whole reason Eddie’s here—no wolves to worry about.

“Evan Buckley,” he says. “Buck.”

He holds out a hand for Eddie to shake, as the name clicks for Eddie—the one Captain Nash had been on the edge of warning him about. Terrorizer of probies, more than likely.

Eddie is happy to rise to the challenge. He takes a step forward, bringing him closer than strictly necessary to Buckley, clapping their hands together. Eddie’s are bigger, though Buckley has a few inches in height on him.

And he’s cold. It’s a sharp contrast to Eddie’s naturally higher body heat, and he’s sure that it’s a strange sensation for both of them. When he breathes in a little deeper to check, seeking out Buck’s scent, he stills. The coppery smell is strong, overwhelmingly so. Buck is cold, and pale, and slimmer than Eddie would expect a firefighter his age to be.

With a quick nod that feels robotic, Eddie drops their hands and steps away. He doesn’t offer another nice to meet you, and Buck doesn’t say anything either. He can feel the eyes of the rest of the team on them, and every thought he’s had of making a good impression echoes loud, but not enough to drown out the word that’s making Eddie’s blood run cold, driving his wolf to snap its teeth and raise its hackles.

Vampire.

“You and Buck’ll be partners,” Bobby says from somewhere in the room. Everything else has fallen away while Eddie stares at the vampire, and it takes a Herculean effort not to clench his jaw as he turns his gaze to acknowledge Captain Nash’s words.

“I think you’ve got quite the pair in the making,” Hen says, a high edge of mirth to her voice.

Eddie thinks of what they must look like to the humans, staring each other down. Some runaway show of masculinity? Important figures from each other’s pasts?

“Buck’ll give you a tour, Eddie,” Captain Nash says. “And if luck will let us, the bell won’t go off until I’ve got breakfast ready.”

“I think we should use our luck on the two of them getting up to the loft without throwing a punch,” Chimney jokes, voice lowered theatrically.

“I think a punch would be the least embarrassing of our worries.”

“Henrietta.”

“Hen, Chim, make sure the ambulance is stocked,” Bobby cuts in, poorly hidden amusement coloring his tone. “Boys, take your time. And if you need to punch each other, do it off the clock.”

“Don’t know why they’d think that,” Buckley mutters once they’ve filed out, leaving him and Eddie alone in the room.

Eddie blinks at him, scenting the air again to double-check, but the scent of vampire is still as strong as ever. If Buck were less pale, or not so cold, Eddie’d almost suspect that he frequented blood bars or something, but there’s something more to him. A stillness in his movements, power in the way he holds himself. His features are subtly vampiric in their sharpness, eyes piercing and mouth curled. Eddie lets himself second-guess for a moment longer, then settles into his belief.

Of course, the next thing he needs to contend with is when, and how, he’s going to kill Evan Buckley.

For as much as Eddie has done to escape the influence of his family's pack, there are lessons he’d never forget—one’s so essential to being a wolf that they may as well be tattooed on his body.

Primary among them is the mission of a werewolf: to kill any vampire they come in contact with, and especially those in position to cause excess harm to humans. The damage that this one can do as a firefighter is almost staggering, and it takes a lot out of Eddie not to flinch.

He levels Buck with a cold stare, not buying his casual, almost resigned attitude for even a moment.

“The tour?” Eddie asks, slipping his hands into his pockets as calmly as he can, letting his gaze soften to something less hostile. In the tone of his voice and the set of his body, he does his best to exude confidence and power. He’s a wolf with claws and teeth at the ready, years of training in how to kill Buck’s kind.

It’s a false bravado, of course—Eddie could shift into a wolf as easily as Buck could. He’s so far disadvantaged in a fight between the two of them that it’s almost laughable. But Buck can’t tell that from his scent, so Eddie won’t give it away.

Buck gives him a tight-lipped smile, and Eddie swears he can see the outline of fangs through his skin.

The tour is so cursory it’s laughable—Buck points in the vague direction of things and gives one-word explanations as to what they are. There’s engine bay, and bathrooms, and stairs, all of which Eddie could have figured out since he, you know, has eyes.

He walks next to Buck for the entirety of the ‘tour,’ not one step ahead or behind. Hen and Chim are watching them the whole time, standing in the open doors of the back of the ambulance and exchanging glances that tell Eddie more about the nature of their friendship than anything else.

Buck is an odd puzzle piece in the whole thing. The team is tight-knit, evident in Bobby’s love for them and the easy communication between Hen and Chimney. Buck folds in with them, though at a careful distance that even Eddie can just barely spot. It could be natural, with Buck being the newest member of the team besides Eddie, not entirely in the fold of the team yet.

But in all that Eddie’s seen, limited as it is, Buck is the one keeping the distance. He’s fooled everyone else into liking him, into seeing him as human.

Eddie wonders at it as they walk unnecessarily along the walls of the station. Unnecessary to the tour, at least. Buck says wall every time they reach one, and Eddie doesn’t roll his eyes because he’s dealing with a dangerous creature and not a prickly coworker. Eddie quite enjoys getting to map out the inside of the building, feeling the bounds of it as a territory form in his mind. It’ll never be solely his, both due to the restrictions of the city of Los Angeles, and Captain Nash acting as its pseudo-alpha.

But it calms his wolf, to know the place better. Settles a bit of the fear dogging his path, nipping at his heels. He might be weaponless, but he’s still fast and strong.

Eventually, after Buck and Eddie have started on their second lap of the perimeter—Buck’s wall commentary unending—Captain Nash pops his head over the side of the railing to call them all up for breakfast.

Buck reacts with put-upon surprise. Eddie only catches it because he’s been watching him so closely out of the corner of his eye that it’s giving him a headache, but his shoulders slump for the briefest of moments before a bright smile takes over his face, and he bounds across the station on weirdly long legs to race Hen up the stairs.

“Still getting the cold shoulder?” Chim asks as Eddie reaches him at the base of the stairs. When Eddie ducks his head in his own show of faux emotion, he just sighs and shakes his head fondly. “He’s got a good heart, Buck. Give it time. Bobby is usually right about these things.”

Buck, as it turns out, is quite the conversationalist with everyone but Eddie. They end up on opposite sides of the table, plates loaded with breakfast potatoes, sausage, toast, and eggs. Eddie does his best to eat at a normal pace, even as his stomach grumbles with how good the food smells. His cooking is lacking, he admits in the privacy of his own head. He could get used to this.

“I still think Cap’s all happy recently because he won the lottery,” Chimney is saying, gesturing with his fork. “You don’t get that kind of glow unless it’s cash.”

“No way man,” Buck says. “Cap doesn’t care about money like that. He probably got tickets to some band from like, the thirties.”

“I thought you enjoyed our Springsteen concert Buck,” Captain Nash says mildly, smiling under the teasing.

“He’d say he enjoyed cleaning the toilets if it got him on Cap’s good side after the firetruck incident,” Hen says. “When do we get to tell Eddie all our Buckaroo stories?”

“Never,” Buck grumbles, his mood souring enough that Eddie can sense it without needing to smell the change in his demeanor. “Besides, we don’t know anything about him. Why does he get to know stuff about me?”

“Not much to know,” Eddie says with a shrug. “But hit me.”

“Where’d you move here from?” Chimney asks right away, like he’d been waiting for the opportunity.

“Texas,” Eddie says smoothly. He watches for Buck’s reaction when he adds, “El Paso.” Buck gives him nothing. Not so much as a twitch of his eyebrow. Must not know much of wolves then. Eddie files the information away in his newly labeled folder for keeping tabs on the enemy.

“You married, Diaz?” Hen asks, and he catches the dark band of a rubber ring on her finger when she brings her fork to her mouth.

Eddie almost laughs. Is he? By law, sure. But if he wants to get out of this questioning mostly unscathed— "Separated,” he says, careful to keep his voice even.

Hen winces a little, her finger moving to touch her ring in a seemingly subconscious gesture.

“Well,” Chimney says, easily brushing over the awkwardness, “I am a professional matchmaker, if you ever happen to be in the business.”

There’s a groan from Hen at that, and Eddie latches on to the distraction with a speed usually reserved for more dangerous situations. “What’s the story there?”

Hen launches into it, and Eddie finds himself truly engrossed in the story of Chimney setting Hen up with her future wife. He gasps in all the appropriate spots, smiles when she gets into bickering with Chim mid-story.

He notices Buck mirroring him, the two of them matching their reactions in a way that feels mocking, if Eddie weren’t fully aware that he has no intention of copying Buck, and an acute record of the very minimal amount of times Buck has so much as glanced his way over the course of the meal. It’s subconscious on both their parts then—Eddie isn’t sure how he feels about that.

It’s hard to reconcile everything he’s heard of vampires with the man sharing a meal with him. He can pick up the little things, of course—Buck picks at his food, moving it around the plate in a way that makes it look like there’s less left than there is. The same distance that Eddie had picked up on earlier is still present, though no more tangible. He exists in the space of the team, laughs and speaks with them, and yet he is apart.

Eddie doesn’t realize he’s staring until Buck’s eyes catch his for the briefest of moments. Embarrassingly, Eddie feels his cheeks fill with warmth, giving him away to anyone else who looks his way. He tucks further into his plate in a poor attempt to hide it, though his eyes return quickly to Buck when no one else looks his way or pauses in their conversation.

More questions are lobbed Eddie’s way when the story finally reaches its end—Chim stands to bow—but they hardly venture deeper than the first. Yes, he does have siblings, and no, Captain Nash didn’t make up the silver star. Eddie the human can be wrapped up in a neat bow, evasive as he is, as a man looking for a new start in a city full of potential. It’s a story that’s been told a million times over, and he shrugs it on like a worn coat.

“Haven’t had a chance to get to the ocean yet,” he adds after someone asks which part of town he lives in.

“With our luck you’ll see it on a call before you get to enjoy it,” Chim says. “I’m sure Buck’d be happy to take you, once he’s less-” he waves a hand in Buck’s direction. “Buck.”

Eddie can’t help the surprised jilt of his eyebrows. Buck scowls at him for it. “I’m busy then.”

Hen and Chimney’s laughs are drowned out by the ringing of the bell. It sets off a whirl of motion, plates left to the table and boots marching down stairs. Eddie lets himself be caught up in it, the cacophony just a touch close enough to overwhelming that it sets off his adrenaline, enhanced hearing making the bell inescapable.

He ends up across from Buck in the engine, through the chaos and maybe a bit of meddling. They angle their bodies away from each other, Eddie pressing his knees into the door to his side and Buck nearly in Chimney’s lap.

With every passing moment, Eddie is finding it increasingly hard to find Buck scary, or even dangerous. It should make him more wary, that he could be so good at pretending to trick even Eddie, who could sniff him out the moment they met, into a false sense of security. But Buck listens intently while Bobby gives them the details of the call, his eyes bright—that unnatural concentration turned to something he’s clearly passionate about. It’s far from disconcerting, and Eddie decides to wait, and observe.

And his plan works for like, thirty seconds. Then he’s stepping in, and on Buck’s toes, correcting him on a medical call. He’s sure it must be some sort of test—Hen and Chimney just watch—but when he knows something needs to be done, he has a hard time shying away from it.

Buck sulks while they load the patient into the ambulance, muttering something when the others congratulate Eddie on a job well done. He’s careful to claim a seat as far from Eddie as possible, and stays out of the conversation that swells on the ride back.

And the shift stretches on. Hen tells him that it’s a slower day than normal, and shows him around the ambulance. She seems pleasantly surprised by his medical knowledge, and Eddie is happy to ask after her kid and wife.

He holds himself back from talking about Chris, even to her. It leaves strange holes in the conversation, awkward sentences when he relates to a story she shares, but can’t spit out why without revealing the secret he’s arbitrarily created.

In a moment of boredom, while he scrubs at the windows and listens idly to a conversation happening across the firehouse, he wonders at it.

He’s protective of Chris—that’s probably the least shocking fact about him. A werewolf acting as a single father? It’s a recipe for over-protectiveness, though Eddie does his best to reign it in. Maybe it’s the missing Chris that he’s feeling now, more than twelve hours into shift. Keeping his memories close to his heart is a form of protection, or some similar convoluted wolf logic. Eddie knows he isn’t usually quite so introspective, but long shift hours leave an excess of time for thinking.

The bell goes off again.

He’s more used to the flurry of motion following it now, helped by the subdued nature of the late hour. It’s only him, Buck, and Bobby in the engine, with Hen and Chim following behind as they zip through traffic that’s somehow still plentiful—a fact of LA that Eddie refuses to accept as normal. He’ll stare at it, baffled, for as long as he stays in the city.

They end up on a street with neat rows of similar houses, set apart only by the decorations scattered on porches. Eddie didn’t know people could be so passionate about flamingos, of all animals, until they pass one house that’s got them all over the lawn and leading up to the front door, bathed in pink light to match.

The house they finally stop at is no different, though the adornments are less fanciful than colorful birds. It looks like a war memorial has been plopped down in the midst of suburbia, flags and statues galore.

As with most military memorabilia, it sets an uncomfortable shadow over Eddie. He’s glad when no one on the team seems to pay him any extra attention as they load up on medical gear and start for the front door.

From Bobby’s briefing, it’s an urgent situation. A man bleeding out in his basement, likelihood of them needing to bust the door down high. But they never get the chance.

Despite having all his senses attuned to the call, Eddie picks up no forewarning of the explosion. The world simply goes from quiet to loud, in a burst of noise that turns the shadow over Eddie’s head into something real, a ringing in his ears and a falter in his step.

He stops, just as the rest of the team does, focusing on breathing in-in-in-out-out-out. Some part of it is going wrong, making his head spin, but he can’t think to correct himself.

There’s a great crashing noise from in front of them, and the team is moving backward, Eddie caught in the pull of it. He’s part of the machine, blind and near deaf and still not breathing quite right.

“Hey,” a voice says, close but not touching. Eddie scents the air instinctively, giving him a better hit of oxygen than he’d gotten for a long few moments. It’s Buck, standing beside him, his voice hushed. “Too loud for your ears, right?” he’s asking. Eddie nods, because it’s easy. “Mine too. I mean- you get used to it. Helps when you can brace yourself.”

Eddie breathes in again, and remembers to hold it this time. The smell of vampire is what he’s left with, Buck’s scent clearing his mind and his voice steadying his body. He clears his throat, blinking hard to push off the last of the lingering static.

The rest of the world, outside of Buck, fades in in pieces. Hen and Chimney are talking a mile a minute, a bit closer to the partial wreckage of the house than he and Buck are. Bobby is furthest back, radioing someone, somewhere.

“What the hell was that?” Eddie asks, loud enough that it doesn’t just include Buck.

“Grenade, we think,” Hen says. Of course it was.

“Not like a- a water heater, or something?” Buck steps closer to the house, which Eddie can now see has collapsed partially in the front. “It’s usually the water heater.”

“Look at this place,” Chimney says, sweeping a hand out to indicate the yard. “And if you look in there, he’s got all sorts of memorabilia. Something probably misfired, blew the poor guy up.”

“Why aren’t we going in then?” Buck looks back at Bobby, just as their captain switches off his radio with a grim expression on his face.

“We don’t have clearance to go in,” Bobby says. “No way of knowing if there are more explosives. Bomb squad should be here in half an hour.”

Hen winces and Chimney frowns, Buck’s expression cracking down the middle with something between sadness and exasperation.

“Maybe I could-” Eddie starts, not entirely sure what he’s going to suggest. Go in there? He could hardly handle being out here.

“No one is going in,” Bobby says, authoritative but gentle. “We’ll wait for the professionals to get here, and hope that there’s something we can do.”

Their job turns out to involve more diversion than waiting; neighbors pulled from their homes by the sound and the sight of the house. Eddie watches Bobby as he handles them, that same assurance he’s coming to expect from the captain always present. People leave looking distressed, but none put up a fight.

Eddie is so caught up in his observation that he doesn’t notice Buck inching closer to the house until he’s reached the wall where a significant chunk has collapsed. Eddie catches the moment he sniffs at the air, attention drawn to the motion by Buck’s furtive and ineffective head turn to check for watchers.

And Eddie sees, too, the moment Buck finds something. His expression shutters, stilling in the same way Eddie has observed from his movements. In the low light of the streetlamps, standing in front of a house collapsed in itself, Buck truly looks vampiric.

Eddie swallows down his fear. He’d gotten a little lax, over the course of the shift, to what Buck is. He hides it well, is the thing, everything about him so bright and alive. It makes him dangerous.

A van pulls up then, the signage making it clear that this is the called-upon bomb squad. The 118 are corralled away, much like the civilians had been earlier, and Eddie doesn’t want to make heads or tails of what they’re doing to test the wreckage, so he turns away and watches a distant ribbon of light, headlights speeding along an interstate over the hills.

It’s their first bad call. Eddie doesn’t know if he’d expected one to come sooner or later, but he’s finding it harder to deal with than he would have expected. The waiting is especially awful, the helplessness of it all. And he doesn’t know the team well enough yet to seek them out to commiserate, so he stands slightly apart and watches the lights.

Their victim is pronounced dead, once they’ve cleared Hen and Chimney to go inside. Eddie and Buck are left topside to minimize the number of feet walking on potential explosives. They stand apart from each other and near the engine, the evening settled into an eerie silence. It keeps nosy neighbors away, but Eddie almost misses the levity of chasing them off.

“You holding up alright?” A hand lands on Eddie’s shoulder. “No shame in it.”

Eddie turns to face Bobby, settling into the steady eye contact offered. “All good here, Cap,” he says, voice smoothed over with practice.

Bobby’s look turns a little more piercing, but Eddie doesn’t break. He knows he’ll pass muster, expects it when Bobby nods and moves on to Buck, who gives a similarly dismissive answer.

The shift fizzles out after that.

Bobby takes them offline to get in an hour of rest when they finally arrive back at the station, but Eddie doesn’t sleep a wink. Part of it is a latent nervousness to let his guard down in the vicinity of a vampire. Most of the rest of it is the carousel of memories that plays behind his eyes every time he so much as blinks, so he explores the station while the city and his team sleep.

There’s a door to the roof tucked into a corner, and he props it open with a brick placed just outside. The night air is cool against Eddie’s perpetually warm skin, and he draws the scent of living, breathing Los Angeles into him.

He imagines that, among the millions of threads, he could pick up Chris’s. It’d smell like home, something Eddie hadn’t realized he associated more with his son than Texas until they’d crossed the border into Arizona and he’d pressed a kiss to Chris’s curls at a gas station.

His son is a born wolf, just like Eddie. If they’d stayed in Texas, Eddie’s parents would have been watching Chris’s every move, up to the day he shifted or didn’t—Eddie had been enough of a disappointment that they’d take their chances on a successor in the form of a pup born to their eldest and a wolf outside of the pack.

But Los Angeles isn’t perfect. There are so few other wolves here that Eddie hasn’t run into one yet, outside of his own family. He smells vampires on every other corner, and he’s sure he’s got the scent of one all over him now. Though, that’ll mean Buck has his in return. What a strange pair they make, a doomed partnership with so much hope behind it. Eddie hopes Captain Nash won’t feel bad when the fallout happens—he had no way of knowing Buck and Eddie were biologically incompatible for anything more than mutually assured destruction.

Eddie watches the sunrise alone. He feels it when the moon dips under the horizon, timed with the appearance of the sun in a rare feat of celestial synchronization. For a wolf like him, it’s hardly more than awareness that draws him to the moon, like a barely audible hum under his skin. He’s not sad or happy to see it go. It simply is.

He’s drawn back into the firehouse by the smell of bacon. Bobby is the lone soul in the kitchen until Eddie walks in, his presence grounding in a way Eddie hadn’t realized he needed, pulling him back down from the sky’s horizon and to the earth. The bacon certainly helps.

“Good morning, Cap,” Eddie says, a little wary of breaking the quiet spell of the early hour.

“Eddie,” he gets in reply. “No sleep for you, then?”

Eddie smiles wryly, suddenly not so certain that he’d ever been able to fool Captain Nash. “First shift jitters still getting to me.”

Bobby hums, a very sage sound. He flips the bacon without taking his eyes off Eddie. “But you’re liking it so far?”

Eddie lets himself sit with the question for a long moment, interspersed only with the popping of grease. It’s not so much making a pros and cons list as it is looking at the whole. And Eddie, despite it all, is feeling like he’s got a purpose.

“Better than I could have imagined,” he says honestly. Bobby rewards that with a smile, and the first serving of bacon.

The last few hours of shift are filled with routine—as routine as it gets—calls, where Eddie tries to be conscious about observing the team.

It’s far more complex than anything the academy could have taught him, in the interactions between the team. As he’d observed earlier with Hen and Chim, many of them are wordless. A glance across the wreckage of a call for a bandage to be tossed, or a nod from Bobby before Buck charges at a wall with a halligan. Eddie does his fair share of work, cognizant of the adjustment everyone else has to make when speaking to him.

But like he’d known he would, he starts picking up on things. Recognizes the difference in a get me my med bag look, and a hang back for a minute nod. Settles into the subdued conversations around the table while they all tuck in for breakfast and feels out the people around him, like he would for a pack. There are no bonds to clarify the depth of their emotions, but with the combination of scent and expression, he thinks he makes up the difference well enough.

There’s not enough time left in the shift for him to put much of it into practice He’s sure in the coming weeks that he’ll quickly learn that what he’s seeing now is only the surface level, but as he changes out of his uniform with his muscles and mind pleasantly tired, he feels good.

And then Buck is there, opening the locker adjacent to Eddie’s. He’s a whirl of movement, not even stopping to change before he’s out of the locker room. Eddie looks after him with furrowed eyebrows, only realizing he’s been caught when Chimney snorts from across the room.

“He always gets like that after a shift,” he says. “Loves the job more than most things, but he leaves like his ass is on fire every time.”

“Huh,” Eddie says mildly. He’s not sure how invested he should be in Evan Buckley’s psyche, not sure how capable he is of making coherent deductions.

“It’s because he thinks his girlfriend’ll have shown up,” Chimney adds without prompting. “She left a few months ago to travel Europe after her mom died. Buck lives in her apartment.”

“Did she… Tell him she’d be back?”

“Nope,” Chim pops his gum on the p. “From what I can tell, she broke up with him in everything but words. But Buck’s not one to give up on a good thing—what he sees as a good thing.”

Eddie makes a mental note that his coworkers are gossips. “Didn’t exactly peg him as being a big commitment guy.”

“He wasn’t. Oh, you should have met the Buck that existed before Abby. Guy was- well, I’ll tell you after you come around to liking him. This has been a total one-eighty.”

Eddie doesn’t know where to start with any of that, brain lagging behind the conversation. Chim must pick up on it because he laughs and grabs his own bag, leaving Eddie to the locker room with a slap to his back.

He wakes up a little during the drive, the thought of seeing his son keeping his mind sharp enough to navigate traffic and the route he’s only just coming to know.

Abuela and Chris are sitting on the porch swing when he pulls into the driveway, and he can’t hold back his grin when he sees Chris wiggling excitedly in his spot, held still only by the steady hand his abuela keeps on his arm. Eddie wants to tell her to leave it be, that he’s never too tired to catch his son if he wants to launch a flying hug at him, but he knows it’s a battle he’ll lose.

Instead, he jumps down to the driveway with little care for closing the door behind him and runs up the stairs to gather his boy into his arms. Pressing his nose to Chris’s neck, setting off a round of giggling, he picks up on all the scents he’d missed. Warmth, and abuela’s cooking, and a wild undercurrent of wolf that’s as much Eddie as it is Chris himself.

“Did you have a good day, mijo?” he asks, setting Chris down long enough to give abuela a quick hug before settling down right on the boards of the porch and pulling a happy Chris into his lap.

Chris tells him excitedly about all the things he’d done, including a meandering recap of a movie—or maybe it was a show, Eddie can’t quite tell—about dinosaurs.

And then he’s turning wide eyes to Eddie, asking to hear about all the cool things he’d done.

“My day wasn’t nearly as awesome as yours,” Eddie says with a put-upon sigh.

“No dinosaurs?” Chris asks, and Eddie shakes his head sadly. “None at all?”

“Not even a little one,” Eddie pauses for effect, watching the little pout that crosses his son’s face. “But there was an explosion.”

Eddie ends up taking a nap on his abuela’s couch once Chris has run out of questions. It’s a little too warm inside, but just enough so to lull Eddie into a light sleep, Chris clutched to his chest, yawning wide in an echo of Eddie’s that sets them both off into a fit of giggles.

When they wake, abuela has lunch ready. Eddie presses a kiss to her forehead in thanks, breathing in deep as he does to catch a little of the scent of her wolf.

Eddie likes a routine. Not one that’ll get him too rigid, but he likes knowing what the shape of something’ll look like.

Mornings are always a little hurried, a little miserable. He doesn’t like getting out of bed, but knowing that he’ll see his son and ruffle a hand through his hair before setting a bowl of cereal in front of him is something certain to look forward to. Not everything about his life is perfect, but he finds it easier to treasure the beautiful moments through it.

Work isn’t a highlight. It’s a neutrality, at best.

He and Buck work around each other. Bobby doesn’t assign them together, and they sit apart at the table for meals and in the engine. Buck is always rushing out of the locker room before Eddie even enters it, both of them avoiding any physical or eye contact. It’s exhausting, but not unbearable.

And Eddie doesn’t want to transfer. He certainly could—Station 6 had seemed eager enough about taking him in, he’s sure they’d give him a chance if he groveled a little and accepted he’d be getting an advanced form of probie treatment. But he likes the team at the 118. It’s as simple—and as complicated—as them feeling like pack.

His other option is to kill Buck, but he can’t bring himself to do it. Barring the fact that he might not even be successful, the pieces of the vampire that Eddie’s seen that have felt so authentically human have wormed their way under his skin, convinced even his wolf that Buck isn’t just a monster.

They make it through a few shifts resigned to this fate. Everyone plays along, though Eddie has no idea what they could be thinking—two guys who can’t get over their dick measuring contest enough to save lives? Eddie hopes he gives a better impression than that, in everything but his lack of interaction with Buck.

It’s Eddie’s fifth shift when Captain Nash decides to toss out his script.

“Buck, Eddie, you’re on ropes,” he calls as they leave the engine, arriving on the scene. It’s a sprawling warehouse on the edge of the city, unnatural lights filling the whole thing with uncanny shadows.

Eddie peers up to where their victim is caught in the wires of a monstrous-looking machine, visually unharmed but clearly panicking.

Bobby heads off to where a manager has a platform lifted to try and talk to them, while Eddie and Buck are left with all the tools to set up a rope rescue, and not a clue in the world of how to coordinate it with each other.

Eddie has been observing Buck just as he has the rest of the team, sure. He knows that Buck likes rope rescues, though he gets a little shaky sometimes when their victim is out over a great height and not responding well—which is, admittedly, most rope rescues. It would make sense for Eddie to be the one going to them, but he doesn’t know how to tell Buck that without setting off the confrontation that feels like it’s been brewing between them for longer than a week and a half.

The time between the instruction and now has been too great—and Buck and Eddie haven’t moved. Their victim could be dying, could panic enough to fall, and it would be their fault.

Eddie squares his shoulders, opens his mouth, and turns to Buck. He’s going to say something—perfectly profound and conciliatory, but not so much that he implies they need to be friends—when Bobby is rounding on them, the look of disappointment so clear in his eyes that Eddie’s wolf cowers.

“Fine,” Bobby says, and it’s the least composed Eddie’s ever seen him. “Chimney on the pulleys, Eddie harness up. Buck, come with me and talk to them.”

The rescue goes well from there, but Eddie can’t shake the shame. He catches it in the glimpses he gets of Buck’s face as well, feels it radiating among the team in the engine and the firehouse.

He can’t fix it. Buck won’t talk to him, and Eddie can’t make himself take one of his two options, and they’re putting people in danger.

Chris picks up on his sullen mood the next day, and Eddie has to distract him with an early lunch of ice cream. Sorry kid, just reckoning with an ancient war. Yeah, it’s kind of like dinosaurs.

Eddie wants to walk into their next shift with a plan, but even a 24 off isn’t enough for a solution to come to him. He considers asking his abuela or Pepa, even thinks for a wild moment, deep into the night as he tosses and turns, about calling his mother. Instead, he comes in empty-handed, and the world comes apart at the seams.

It’s a big quake. He doesn’t catch if it’s the biggest, or just one of them, on the garbled radio as they make their way through the streets full of panicked people, but he supposes it doesn’t matter much when he sees their destination.

The building looks as if it’s been cut off at the knees and only just barely caught as it fell, leaning heavily on the one across from it. Glass covers the pavement, and already people are gathered at the base, talking to the array of firefighters and other emergency personnel. It makes Eddie’s first ever bad call look like a walk in the park.

“Wilson, Han, with me. Buck and Eddie, I want you to sweep the highest floors you can get to,” Bobby barks, and Eddie pulls on his heavy gear without second-guessing anything, Bobby's voice too easily authoritative to leave room for argument.

It’s only when he's kicking down a side door with Buck on his heels, the two of them setting off up the stairs at a pace that would leave any normal human winded after a few flights, that he realizes what he’s just been thrown into. Trial by fire, he thinks to himself with a huff, speeding up the pump of his legs just a bit when he feels Buck closing in behind him.

It feels a lot like being chased, the same tingling at the base of Eddie’s neck that he used to get when his older cousins would send him out into the woods for a game of tag, the kind that often quickly devolved into someone climbing a tree and the others having to sniff them out. Eddie was never so good at the tree climbing part, so he spent a lot of it running for what felt like his life, the game over quickly if one of the oldest of them shifted and tackled him to the ground with great paws and victorious slobber. His heart pangs a little at the memory, how excited he used to be at the idea of getting to be the one running on all fours one day.

Their feet pound against the stairs, echoing loudly even through the groaning of the building. It’s obvious when they reach the start of the tilt because the stairs change direction, and even with their supernatural strength, Buck and Eddie are forced to go slow.

The silence between them feels heavier than normal. Eddie is certain he isn’t the only one thinking of the call from last shift, and how many more lives are at stake now. But neither the tension nor the pressure is enough to bring the perfect words to smooth things over between them to Eddie’s lips, so he works his way up the mind-bending stairs in silence, Buck still solidly behind him.

They eventually reach a point where rubble has completely covered the stairs, but by Eddie’s estimation, they must only be a few floors from the top. Buck kicks down the door out into the hall before Eddie can reach it, and he thinks a little petulantly that it was unneeded.

The thought is dashed from his mind when it becomes quickly apparent that their job for the entirety of the near future involves kicking in a lot of doors. Eddie takes the left, and Buck the right, and systematically they clear the hall before moving down to the next. The building continues its groaning around them, the death throes of a great beast, and Eddie focuses on the job at hand to keep any fear at bay.

It’s a relief that they find no one on any of the highest floors, doubly verified by powerful noses. The dust and chaos of human scent are too strong for them to pass over a floor without checking in every room, but it’s a reassuring secondary.

And then the world shakes again.

Eddie and Buck are at the end of a hall, and Eddie doesn’t even know how it happens—one moment, they’re standing as far apart as they always do, and a safe distance from the elevator doors— jarred by the first shake and left yawning open over the dark pit of the elevator shaft—and the next they’re falling.

It feels like it goes on forever. Air buffets Eddie, even through his gear, and that same feeling of anticipation from earlier—running up the stairs like danger was on his heels—takes over his whole body. Paralyzes him. He doesn’t brace for the impact of the landing, or even so much as try to see what he’s about to be met with before his back is slamming into it, Buck landing squarely on top of him.

Eddie blacks out for a moment. The pain is immense, sharp through his chest and wrapping around his lungs, and he can’t breathe.

He can’t find it in him to panic. His brain is in a hazy sort of fog, keeping him barely conscious and aware as Buck scrambles off of him. It gets a little easier to breathe, then, without weight pressing down on his ribs, which feel like they’ve been ground to dust.

“Eddie?” Buck says, and when Eddie blinks, he gets a brief view of Buck’s hands hovering over him before the world goes fuzzy again. “Eddie you have to- shit, listen, Diaz. You cannot die.”

A laugh tries to work its way out of Eddie’s chest and gets caught somewhere in his throat. Doesn’t Buck know?

He must make a gurgling sound, the aftermath of failed mirth. Surely Buck knows.

“I should have transferred,” Buck says, the words so low they’re clearly meant for only his own ears. “I should have went- went back to the end of the world. Nowhere.”

Eddie wheezes. It might be another attempt at a laugh, or something simpler, like breathing. He’s not doing well at either, but that’s temporary. Doesn’t Buck know?

It’s already started.

Eddie had tried climbing a tree once, during a heart-pounding game of tag. He’d picked it out as a target weeks earlier, adorned as it was with low-hanging branches and few leaves to trip him up. He’d waited eagerly for his turn to be chased, started in a large circle that would have his wolf-brained cousins chasing his scent in loops long before they found him high above them, crowing victory.

The scramble up the first few feet had been so easy, he’d almost wondered at why he’d been so excited to try. This was hardly even a challenge—but he had to prove himself. Everyone else had climbed before. Now it was his turn.

He should have known that the lack of leaves in the dregs of spring was a bad sign. That the creaking of the branches, the dryness of the wood, the singed top of the tree he sets his eyes on—all could have told him in the way of a prophecy what was to come.

The fall had felt short then, the pain starting and then going and going and going and then—

Eddie feels the moment his healing settles in deep enough that he can take a breath without it hurting.

He’d gotten up from the ground, those many years ago, and run like the wind when he heard the crunch of footsteps at the edge of his perception. That night, he slept like a rock from the exhaustion of the day, no twinge of pain left in his body.

Buck is still babbling. Eddie’s never seen him like this—though that’s hardly surprising. It doesn’t make him think less of Buck, to know that he worries for Eddie. As much as he resists it, Eddie knows he would feel the same if Buck were hurt in front of him. He’d eyed a few sharp bits of wood that very day, kicked them to the side before Buck could get too near. Basic courtesy, comes with the territory of serving people.

“Hey,” Eddie says, coughing once more to clear the dust from his throat than anything else.

Buck immediately looks at him, eye contact intense and searching. Whatever he sees in Eddie must truly reassure him, because he sags back against the wall of the hole they’ve found themselves in like a puppet with its strings cut.

“Are you?” Eddie asks when he sorts through the series of events in his head—building tilting, both of them falling. He may have been Buck’s crashpad, but it was still a far ways to fall.

Buck blinks at him, then nods. “I should have let you land on me,” he mutters darkly. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Kind of hard to,” Eddie says, feeling a little absurd that he’s gone from not talking to or even looking at Buck, to reassuring him. And then he remembers the call with the explosion, and his mood sours. So they can only be cordial when things go terribly wrong?

“I could have done it.” Buck shifts, pulling his knees to his chest. “And now we’re stuck down here.”

Eddie almost scoffs aloud. “We’re not.”

“Your ribs must all be broken!” Buck says, a touch too frantic for how fragile their position feels—Eddie worries he might set off another quake. “And they’ll just- they’ll know. That it was on me. You dying.”

“Gonna drink my blood, Buckley?” Eddie sits up, and Buck’s face flashes with alarm, though Eddie's not sure if it’s at the words or his movement. “Good thing I’m not dying down here.”

“You healed?” Buck asks with a tilt of his head.

With a grunt of exertion, Eddie stretches his arms over his head and feels the last of his ribs pop into place. It gives him an excuse to lean his head back and look how far they’d really fallen—and it can’t have been more than half a dozen stories. Getting landed on by another body probably didn’t help, but the fall could have been much, much worse—they’ve landed on the elevator, and not at the bottom of the shaft.

“I did,” Eddie says. The answer is made redundant by his ease of movement, but he says it anyway just to chase off the last of the worry on Buck’s face, or at least try. It only seems to double. “Better than you expected?”

Buck shakes his head, twists his own back as if testing for injuries. “I just- You’re a bitten wolf, right?”

The whiplash of such an invasive question hits harder than the fall. Eddie startles where he sits, and the lie slips out before he can second-guess himself. “Happened while I was deployed.”

“I’m sorry,” Buck says with a frown.

Silence lapses between them, interceded only by the groans of the building that have been joined by the creaking of the elevator in an almost post-apocalyptic soundtrack. Eddie feels like he and Buck might be the last people alive at the end of the world.

He considers Buck. The space they’re confined to really isn’t so small, but his gangly legs seem to be taking up half the platform. In the low light, he looks paler than usual, and Eddie can’t help but wonder when the last time he fed was. It’s probably an inconsiderate question—like asking Eddie if he’s a bitten wolf or how he’d fared during the last full moon—so he doesn’t voice it. He wants Buck to feel comfortable around him.

Shit. He wants the vampire to feel comfortable around him—wants Buck to like him. It’s a far cry from his ongoing mantra of fight or flee, to swing the pendulum out of its bounds and into what—friendship? Partnership, like their captain seems set on? Could they manage it?

“Wondering if you could get away with killing me down here?” Buck asks, and it sounds like he’s going for sardonic with the small lilt to his voice, but Eddie can only focus on the resigned square of his shoulders.

“Not seeing any wood,” Eddie notes. “Or fire.”

“You could get creative,” Buck says. “Claw my head off. Heard that works.”

“Do you want me to kill you?”

“Not particularly.”

“Kind of thought with you being a firefighter and all,” Eddie gestures between them like it means anything, but if the practiced blankness that falls over Buck’s face is anything to go by, he knows exactly what Eddie's getting at.

And Eddie’s thought about it—the irony of a vampire working this job. It would be like if Eddie were a dog catcher, but heavier on the danger than the irony.

“It’s not like that,” Buck says. Another beat of silence, and then- “Anymore. So if you wanted to try I’d have to, you know, make it a little difficult.”

“Well it’s a good thing I wasn’t planning to try and murder you then.” Eddie shoots for joking. He definitely falls flat, though he’d blame the ambiance more than his delivery.

“I’m not leaving the 118.” Buck touches the crest on his turnouts, a nervous sort of tick. “And I’m not- not feeding on them or anything. I’d never hurt them.” Eddie nods, the words he’s been searching for the last two weeks finally coming together. “And I like helping people. It makes me feel- useful. Like if I have this curse, at least I’m doing something with it.”

Eddie kicks his legs out in front of him, nudges a foot against Buck’s. “We aren’t so different.”

Buck laughs, the reaction Eddie’d wanted from his earlier statement and not this one. “We really kind of are.”

“Two sides of the same coin.”

“How can you say that?” Buck swallows, hard, and Eddie thinks he finally gets him.

“Easy,” Eddie says as he stands, the last of his healing coursing through his body and making him feel oddly light. Ready to get the hell out of their dark pit and finally save some damn people. He offers Buck his hand. “I’m in this for the same reasons you are.”

Buck doesn’t hesitate to take his hand, though Eddie really thought he would. “Saving people?”

“Surviving guilt.” Eddie squeezes Buck’s hand, an echo of their first meeting. Cool skin on warm, a balance where they meet. “We could make a pretty good team.”

“This sounds like the start of a shitty action movie,” Buck says, but Eddie sees the flush in his cheeks—which answers the question of how recently he’s fed, if he’s got enough blood in his system to allocate some to warming his face—and grins.

“Have you seen this place?” Eddie snorts. “Looks like one.”

“You got something badass to get us out of here then? Better make it look good for the cameras.”

Something in Eddie glows.

It only warms and brightens as they figure out how to get their gear into place to pulley them up to the nearest set of doors, their strength as well of a match as the words and looks that flow between them like a river undamned. When Eddie takes Buck’s hand to be pulled onto the landing, it ignites into a smoldering flame, twined with a nostalgia for the warmth of true pack bonds that he’d left in Texas.

Sobering, in a way, to know he’ll never feel them again. But he pushes it aside in favor of a nod to Buck, and a renewed energy as they set about clearing the last of the floors they can get to.

It’s much the same, except that Eddie doesn’t find himself looking over his shoulder quite so often. It’s more than a simple trust that Buck is doing his job, moving in tandem with Eddie—it’s the final dissolution of the feeling of being chased. He feels safe, and he feels confident.

They’re a few floors above where the majority of the rescue efforts have been focused due to ease of access when Buck freezes up as they step into the hall. Eddie shoots him a concerned glance.

“Another shake?” he asks, stepping a little further from the stairwell and closer to a secure-looking wall.

“No,” Buck says with a twitch of his head that seems to be just as much of an emphasis of his statement as it is to clear his mind. “I just thought that- that I recognized something. A, ah, smell.”

Eddie sniffs the air, wondering if he can ask Buck some of the questions that have been stewing in his head about vampires. Is Buck’s sense of smell as good as his? Eddie isn’t picking up anything unusual, just a higher volume of human scents, probably due to more people passing through this floor.

Buck waves them on, and Eddie decides to stick close to him this time, instead of working his way down the other side of the hall. Buck kicks a door in, and Eddie is the first to go through. Behind him, Eddie senses Buck tensing up, from the small inhalation of his breath to a stillness that sends a few stray chills down Eddie’s spine.

“It’s-” Buck starts, stepping up beside Eddie. “I must be imagining things.”

Another taste of the air only reveals that one human scent is far stronger in here than any others. It doesn’t stick out to Eddie at all, until he picks up a stray shirt and brings it to his face, eyebrows raising in surprise—it’s the scent of a human intertwined with the scent of vampire.

“Vampire,” Eddie says, offering the shirt to Buck. They’d make quite the sight right now, smelling the shirt of the victim of a building collapse.

“It’s not that,” Buck says, but his eyes are wide. “I know that scent.”

Eddie frowns. A human who’s gotten involved with vampires, then? He’s heard rumors of them, humans happy to give up a little blood in exchange for the temporary euphoria of a vampire bite, but something about it feels wrong.

“Hello?” Buck calls, voice shaking a little. “LAFD, is anyone in this room?”

“Back here!” A weak voice calls, and Buck and Eddie immediately move toward the bathroom, where the door is blocked by a chair placed just under the handle. Eddie cocks his head at it, wonders at the probability of an earthquake throwing a chair just right. He doesn’t have time to look closer though, because Buck is shoving it out of the way—hard enough that it hits a wall across the room and leaves a dent—and reaching for the handle.

“Careful,” Eddie mutters, placing a hand on Buck’s outstretched arm. “Let her open it.”

Buck freezes under Eddie’s touch, then gives an unhappy nod. “Are you able to open the door?” he asks, raising his voice again.

“The lock might be- Oh! I’ve got it,” the voice says, and then the door is swinging open, nearly hitting Buck, who’s leaned forward as if without realizing, square in the face—it’s only Eddie yanking him back a few steps that spares him.

Buck doesn’t even seem to notice Eddie’s touch this time, because he’s gaping at the woman standing in the doorway.

Eddie’s first thought is, obviously, a past fling. The woman in the doorway, despite being covered in dust, is very pretty. He’s heard whispers about Buck’s proclivities, so it’s almost surprising that this is the first Eddie has seen of a past lover. She’s also looking at him with an expression like- like he’s risen from the dead or something. He’s opening his mouth to tell them both they should probably get the hell out of the half-collapsed building when—

“Evan?”

“Maddie?”

Chapter Text

Buck knows he’s being weird with all the staring, but he really can’t help it.

Maddie is sitting in his—well, Abby’s—apartment. Whole. Alive. Mortal.

“So he just… Kept you alive,” he repeats, a little dumbfounded. Maddie nods, jaw tense but otherwise relaxed. She’d promised Buck he could ask whatever he wanted, even if it was hard for her to answer, as long as he was honest in return. It had been a difficult evening for both of them.

“I should have left sooner,” Maddie says, blinking hard. “Nothing was really keeping me with him- I just- I thought there was no one left to go to.”

“No,” Buck says fiercely. “Maddie. D- He is strong. So strong. It’s- you tricking him into not biting you and- and getting away at all. You’re amazing.”

Maddie shakes her head, tears bubbling over again, and Buck pulls her into his arms. He’s got more questions, and more anger than he knows how to deal with writhing in his chest, but for now all he can do is hold his sister.

They’d both thought the other dead for hundreds of years. Feeling her warm and alive against his chest is the most wonderful thing Buck never could have even dreamed of.

It’s uncomfortable, falling asleep curled together on the couch, but Buck would take the ache in his limbs any day over the weight of grief haunting him. They talk through most of the next day, Buck proudly showing off the breakfast cooking he’s learned from Bobby for every meal, neither of them quite willing to leave the apartment. And they fall asleep on the couch again.

Buck doesn’t want to go in for his shift the next morning, but Maddie all but pushes him out the door, promises to text—text!! He’s texting his sister—every half hour.

And for the first time since Buck got fired, he’s almost late to work. No one comments on it, all of them aware of his reunion, though none of them know the true depth of it. They must look at him, appearance frozen in his mid-twenties, and think that he’s overreacting. It’s a sobering thought, and Buck can’t help but be a little subdued through the first few hours of shift, with everyone giving him space.

Expect for Eddie. Apparently, he’d truly meant what he said in the elevator shaft, and Buck hasn’t really had the time to contend with all of that on top of the emotional adjustment of Maddie being back in his life.

“So you only got turned a few years ago?” Eddie asks quietly, his face awfully close to Buck’s where they sit on the couch. He’s got his head cocked to the side, and Buck sees the muscles in his face twitch in regret when he asks the question. “You don’t have to answer that,” he adds quickly. “I just- Your, ah, sister. I was just assuming, based on-”

“Eddie,” Buck says around a laugh. “It’s fine. Yeah it’s been- y’know. A few years.”

Eddie nods seriously, placing a hand—his hands are big. Paw-like. Is it offensive of Buck to think that? Probably can’t be worse than lying right to Eddie’s face.

If there had been one thing he had thought about, in the 24 hours he hadn’t seen Eddie, it was the staunch commitment to never letting him figure out how old Buck really is. Tentative partnership is one thing, but a werewolf letting a vampire as old as Buck live? Forget it. Buck is protecting both of them by lying—he can’t put Eddie through being forced to kill him.

It was a fact he’d known as soon as he’d seen Eddie in the locker room, all sculpted muscle and perfect hair. He was good, in that annoying way werewolves always were. Righteous, self-assured. Confident that they were always right. But Eddie was here, fighting fires instead of sitting his furry butt back and watching the world spin in front of him, and somehow he’d decided that he and Buck were alike.

So Buck lies. Eddie doesn’t push for specifics, just squeezes Buck’s leg—okay. Alright—and sits with him.

And Buck appreciates it, because he’s kind of starting to freak out.

It hadn’t started out so extreme. Just a trickle of doubt, when he’d been welcomed to the 118 with open arms. Given a second chance, even, when he nearly ruined everything. He can see now that he’d been trying to protect himself. Treating the job like it meant nothing to him, sleeping around and stealing the damn fire engine, in the hopes that when it inevitably fell apart, he wouldn’t be ruined.

But now things are so good. His sister is back from what Buck had thought was the dead, and she’s not his flavor of undead. The team still welcomes him—Hen and Chimney tease, but he knows that it’s how they show their love. Bobby teaches him how to cook, promises they’ll move on from breakfast food once Buck gets the hang of omelets. And Eddie says they should be partners. Sits quietly with him on the couch, a steady presence that Buck can’t help but drink in.

He knows, deep in his guts, that it’s all going to fall apart. But he can’t help himself from digging his claws and teeth in, hopes that the gouges he leaves in all their lives will heal over quickly when he’s gone.

A text from Maddie pings on his phone, right on the hour. He grins at it and sends her a dumb string of emojis—imagines explaining to himself from two hundred years ago the concept of an emoji—and drops his phone back into his lap.

He catches Eddie doing the same thing as him—smiling at his phone. It’s a soft expression, his cheeks colored pink and mouth curved nicely. Something in Buck’s stomach twinges, and he rubs a hand absentmindedly at it.

“You have sisters, right?” Buck asks, and Eddie tilts his phone further away from Buck, looks up at him with an expression like he’s been caught.

“Two,” he says, smooth as Buck has come to expect of him. “They’re both still in Texas.” His mouth twitches, and then another wave of guilt flashes over his face. “I mean, that’s where my family is. I’m the only one who’s left. We’re just- close. Is all.”

“Right,” Buck says. “I definitely get that.”

Eddie turns his smile on him, and Buck feels pinned in place. It is so unfair what the bite does to wolves—can’t they like, get hairy instead of hot? All Buck got from his stupid bite was the inability to tan and features that look a touch too angular every time he peers at himself in a mirror—but only the non-silver kind. He tries to avoid the other ones, made easier by the itch that crawls across his skin with any proximity to the metal.

The bell rings, and Eddie and Buck only have to exchange a glance before they’re racing down the stairs, both holding back just enough to look human but still going pretty damn fast. Enough that, when they pass Bobby, who just so happens to be standing at the base of the stairs, he raises an eyebrow at them and steps back like he’s been pushed.

Buck calls an apology over his shoulder, losing a critical second that allows Eddie to reach the engine before him.

They grin as they sit across from each other, the rest of the team boarding and giving the two of them fondly exasperated looks.

“Can we go back to the dick measuring contest?” Chim stage whispers to Hen. “I feel old.”

Buck bites back a laugh at that—he always has to when someone on the team, or hell, anywhere, comments on his age. If only they knew. Of course, it doesn’t really matter. He doesn’t feel old, feels more kinship with Eddie than Bobby or- or Abby.

“Try to keep up old man,” he says, sticking his tongue out at Chimney. “What’s the call, cap? Do we get to do anything cool?”

“Older women with a potentially broken hip,” Bobby says in a deadpan voice. Buck catches the twitch of his mouth. “We’ll see about those heroics.”

“Cap,” Buck says with faux offense. “This is the most heroic call we could get!”

“What's the address?” Eddie asks, going pale when Bobby rattles it off. Buck frowns and nudges his leg, tilting his head in question. Eddie doesn’t meet his eyes, just pulls out his phone and starts texting frantically.

Buck watches him for the last few minutes of the ride, his color never returning to normal, his shoulders up by his ears. Buck wishes he had the sense of smell of a wolf, to know what’s got Eddie all tense—nerves? Anger? He commits himself to studying Eddie’s expressions to learn, figuring that the more he can act like a wolf, the more Eddie will feel like he can be himself around Buck.

Eddie’s the first out of the engine, not even stopping to listen for cap’s orders, which is very unlike him. Buck had been a little surprised when he’d seen his first taste of the rapt attention Eddie gives to Bobby or the incident commander of a call, his body almost freezing up, his attention so entirely on the person giving orders.

He goes around the house, swings open a side gate like he knows exactly where to go, and Buck is starting to get an inkling of what might be going on here.

But he looks to Bobby anyway, moves quickly when Bobby gives the bemused signal to go ahead.

In the backyard of the house, gate left wide open, Buck finds the scene of their call—the older woman, being supported by Eddie to sit up slowly, carefully, and a young boy with wide eyes that look awfully familiar close behind him.

“Hen, help him,” Bobby says with a nod toward them. “Chim, get the backboard. Buck-”

He looks at Buck, who only knows Bobby is looking at him because he’s watching out of the corner of his eye, every bit of his attention otherwise focused in on Eddie, and the kid with a hand on his back.

“Just be ready,” Bobby says after a beat, placing a strong hand on Buck’s shoulder and then moving toward Eddie and his patient.

“Captain-” Eddie says, looking up at Bobby with barely concealed panic. “Her hip is broken, from what I can tell.” His eyes flit over Bobby’s shoulder, to where Buck is frozen in place. “This is my abuela. Isabel.”

“Okay, Firefighter Diaz,” Bobby says calmly, and Buck watches as Eddie visibly relaxes. “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am. Your grandson and our team are going to make sure you get the best care possible.”

“Oh, I’m sure you are,” Isabel says, grimacing a little in pain but speaking easily. “Only the best from Edmundo. I told Christopher we could have just called him directly.”

“It’s good that you called us, ma’am,” Bobby says, and Eddie nods. Hen steps closer, asks gently if she can do a quick examination, and Eddie only moves a little away when Isabel nods and Hen gets to work.

Buck, terrible as it may be of him as a firefighter to look away from a patient, watches Eddie as he pulls the kid—Christopher—into his arms, tucking his little head into Eddie’s neck. “You okay, mijo?” Eddie asks, hushed, and though Buck wishes he hadn’t heard, that Eddie had been able to tell Buck on his own time about his kid, Buck still melts a little at the tenderness in his voice, and the way his son relaxes into Eddie’s arms.

He turns away from them, goes to help Chimney with the backboard to give Eddie some space, focusing on the sound of his own footsteps to tune out the conversation that still barely registers at the edges of his perception, even as he nears the ambulance.

Chimney does need his help, the backboard somehow stuck in place. They both thank their lucky stars that it wasn’t a more urgent call, working quickly together to get it out and return to the scene.

Buck sticks to his resolution of giving Eddie space, focused entirely on Isabel. He doesn’t so much as look at him until he’s found himself in the driver’s seat of the ambulance, Eddie in the passenger seat and Hen in the back. It lights a fire under Buck’s ass—dangerous, for a vampire—and he drives as fast as he can without jostling the patient too much, despite the objective lack of urgency.

Eddie has his hands clenched in the fabric of his pants, knuckles white, and it’s the first weighty silence between them since the end of the earthquake shift. Buck doesn’t have questions so much as he has reassurances, that rise to the tip of his tongue and have to be swallowed back forcefully.

He wants to tell Eddie that he gets it. That if he were in his shoes, obviously he wouldn’t tell a vampire about his son, no matter how close they are. Wants to tell Eddie that his son is adorable. Wants to double check, tentatively, how many years ago Eddie had been bit. If maybe Christopher was- Well. That question sours a little on Buck’s tongue—what right does he have to ask, with his own lie heavy between them?

They arrive at the hospital, Eddie working some werewolf magic—the giant eyes have to help—to get his grandmother back into care more quickly than she would have without the vouch.

“You want to stay, Eddie?” Hen asks. “Bobby won’t mind.”

“I- Yeah. Yes,” Eddie says, stumbling a little over the words.

“I will too,” Buck blurts out. “Actually- Hen, I’ll catch a ride back with you and then bring the captain’s car back so we can get back to the station together.” He nods to himself, though he doesn’t like leaving Eddie for even a little bit.

“You don’t have to do that, Buck,” Eddie says, turning those eyes on Buck.

“You don’t want me to, or I don’t have to?” Buck asks, searching Eddie’s face a little desperately. He wants so badly to help that he feels it in the back of his throat, but if Eddie wants him gone, he’s gone.

Eddie blinks, then lets out a breath. “Come back for me.”

“Got it,” Buck says with a little salute that feels dorky as soon as he’s done it, turning quickly to hide his wince and meeting Hen’s glittering eyes in the process.

He’s a little too frantic, keyed up with nervous energy about messing something up, or having accidentally forced himself on Eddie, made him accept Buck’s offer with some vampiric power he isn’t aware of, to be a good conversation partner on the ride back to the station, but Hen doesn’t appear to mind. She seems to find enough amusement in shooting him little looks out of the corner of her eye, and shooting him a wink when she promises to explain everything to Bobby as he runs for the captain’s vehicle without stopping to talk to the rest of the team.

He doesn’t break any traffic rules on the way back to the hospital, but it’s a near thing. It wouldn’t be so hard to get away with, protected as he is by all the official seals on the vehicle, but he makes himself stay within the range of the speed limit, doesn’t freak out when everyone around him drives with zero sense of urgency.

And before he knows it, he’s pushing through the doors of the hospital, into the waiting room, and looking around frantically for Eddie. He finds him in the corner of the room, talking to an older woman and looking far more relaxed than the last time Buck had seen him.

Buck walks over slowly, even dragging his feet a little as the nerves catch up to him. He needs to be normal—has to make sure Eddie knows that he’s not mad or surprised or even thinking about things at all! He’s being so normal. So good.

“Hey,” Eddie calls when Buck is ten feet away, giving him a little wave. “Pepa, this is my coworker. Buck.”

“Explains the matching outfits,” Pepa says.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “This is my aunt,” he adds, patting the chair next to him for Buck to sit. Something flashes across his eyes as he looks across the room and makes a come here gesture, though Buck is too busy looking him over for any extant signs of stress to follow his gaze, until- “And this is my son. Christopher.”

“You’re Buck?” A little voice asks, preluded by the sound of quick footsteps, and then the same kid from the call is standing in front of Buck, looking up at him with those big eyes. “You work with my dad!” he says, sounding proud.

“I do.” Buck crouches down in front of Christopher, holding a hand out to shake. “Nice to meet you. Do you like Christopher or Chris?”

“Chris,” he replies with a confident nod. “Christopher is too long.”

Buck laughs, letting it course through his entire body as he lowers himself to sit on the undoubtedly nasty floors, legs crossed under him. “Mine’s a nickname too,” he admits, cupping a hand around his mouth like he’s sharing a secret. “My real name is Evan.”

Chris tilts his head, as if considering, and then nods again. “Buck is way better. Do you like dinosaurs?”

Buck loves dinosaurs. He thinks he would love anything, if this kid asked him to, and he all but forgets where he is when Chris finds a dinosaur book on one of the tables, and the two of them go back and forth talking about their favorites.

It’s only when Eddie clears his throat that Buck freezes and looks up from where Chris is excitedly pointing to the dinosaurs with feathers, to find Eddie’s eyes on him. There’s an expression on his face that’s almost- too much. Buck’s mind shies away from it, and he ducks his head.

“They said it was a broken hip,” Eddie says, and Buck quickly looks back up to him, focused. He catches the way Eddie’s mouth twitches down, his sidelong glance to Pepa. “And she was- She was looking after him. Pepa has to go back to work, and I don’t- There’s so much paperwork,” he shudders, and Buck nods. He knows paperwork—getting all of it in order to register himself as a real person to secure a job in the LAFD had been exhausting.

“Bring him back to the station,” Buck says easily. “Cap won’t mind, I swear it. If he does I’ll- I’ll stage a coup.”

Eddie blinks, and his eyes look a little wet. “I can take him after work,” Pepa says, lifting a wrist to check her watch. A glance at the clock tells Buck that it’s nearing one in the afternoon. “Edmundo, you need to stop relying on your poor abuela to look after Christopher.” She doesn’t say it meanly, more like a repetition of the truth. Eddie’s small nod breaks Buck’s heart. And gets the gears turning in his head.

“He’ll have fun!” Buck jumps in. “You ever been in a firehouse, Chris?”

Chris shakes his head, gaze turning quickly between Buck and Eddie. “Can I go dad?”

Eddie pauses, bites his lip. Looks to Buck, who nods a little too enthusiastically, probably. “Of course, mijo,” he says, ruffling Chris’s hair. “But you have to go with your aunt Pepa when she comes to get you, alright?”

Chris bobs his head excitedly, grabbing for Buck’s—Buck’s!!—hand. He’s warm, and Buck really hopes he doesn’t mind the chill of Buck’s skin.

The rest of the shift is a wonderful, bright blur.

Chris is welcomed with open arms into the firehouse, and Buck is torn between watching his excited reactions to everything and the way the tension melts from Eddie’s shoulders, especially when Bobby pulls him aside to reassure him that Chris being here is fine. Good, even. Eddie meets his eye after that, mouths a word of thanks, and Buck feels like he’s floating.

When Chris leaves, Buck is pulled in for a hug. “You have to come to our house,” Chris says, poking Buck. “I need to show you my room. I have so many dinosaurs.”

“I-” Buck starts, looking past Chris to where Eddie is pretending not to listen in. When Eddie sees him looking, he offers a smile that feels like permission. “I’d love that,” Buck says honestly, warmly.

Chris cheers, his sadness over having to leave the station pushed off with Buck’s promise. He waves the whole way to Pepa’s car and doesn’t stop even when the door is closed, face pressed to the glass to watch until the car is out of sight.

“Thank you again, Cap,” Eddie says. “Thank you, all of you, for being so good with him.”

“Of course, Eddie,” Hen says gently. “You know, I think Chris would love to meet my Denny. They’re close enough in age to get along great.”

Eddie grins at her, and the good mood carries on through the end of shift.

Despite it, however, Buck still leaves the station quick as ever. This time, it’s not futile hope that has him rushing through the locker room, but excitement to see his sister. He’d sent her pictures of Chris—with Eddie’s permission—and all the good feelings of the day are bubbling over in his chest, waiting to spill out over a glass of wine.

He doesn’t notice Eddie trying to get his attention, or the fond little shake of his head when Buck disappears out to his Jeep without stopping to talk.

During the drive, he thinks of every other time he’s done it in recent memory—the warring sides of him, wanting to get back as soon as possible, to see if somehow, Abby had returned, and the dread that sat heavy in his chest at the thought of another lonely night.

Abby had changed his life. It was a rare thing for him, stuck as he is with the curse of immortality. He’s been told enough times in his long life that he’s immature to know that he and change don’t go together. He’s still that dumb kid, deep down, seeking out anything to soothe the sting of his parents' coolness, the slow withdrawal of his sister from his life. Years and years and years of living, and Buck was still bouncing from place to place, chased and afraid of more things than he’d care to admit.

But Abby had loved him anyway. She’d seen him, as someone worth trying with. Worth inviting into her home. And she’d left, sure, but Buck understands why. He knows her grief in a distant, distended sort of way. He doesn’t know his parents are dead, but it’s a pretty sure thing. He imagines it’s sort of similar to losing them slowly, as Abby had through her mother’s illness.

So he’d waited for her. And when he’d had her, he’d embraced it fully. Let the change settle into him, reshape the unchangeable into Buck 2.0, curse be damned.

He’d met Carla through Abby, and he’d nearly fled LA. She was good, in the werewolf way. She’d looked at Buck and known what he was immediately, just as he’d known her. But she hadn’t killed him. She’d taken his hand. Told him that he was safe in Los Angeles, that wolves had little power here. Told him that he was good, too, and though he didn’t believe her, they’d kept in touch.

Maddie agrees that it’s a good plan, when he tells her all about Eddie’s predicament. He’s not entirely sure if Maddie knows that Eddie’s a wolf—he’d spun their early times together into a rivalry, putting himself down to sell it. It feels dangerous, to let Maddie into this tentative side of his life, though with every passing hour he's further convinced.

Regardless, Maddie is overwhelmingly supportive of him giving Carla to Eddie. Tells him he’s doing a good thing, and though Buck says she can stay, she disappears to a coffee shop to try and figure out how to get her identity more solidly real in the eyes of the law, so she can get a job that Buck insists she doesn’t need.

He lies a little, to get Eddie to come over. Some part of him finds it fun, welcoming Carla in and ushering her into the living space to wait while he stands excitedly by the door and tries not to bounce on his feet.

Eddie’s knock comes just on time, and Buck has his wits solidly enough about him to wait a long few seconds to swing the door open to keep himself from appearing too eager, though his efforts are dashed with the grin that spreads across his face as soon as he sees Eddie.

It’s strange, how quickly the sight of the man went from inspiring dread in Buck to making him feel light as a feather.

“Eddie!” he says excitedly. “Hi.”

“Buck,” Eddie says back, looking at him amusedly, though it turns to trepidation when he scents the air. “What-”

“I want you to meet someone.” That’s Carla’s queue, and Buck bites his lip hard to keep his smile from going too goofy.

“Ah-” Eddie says. “I mean- thank you for thinking of me but I’m not really looking for-”

Buck snorts, imagining that Eddie’s thought process is Buck calling up the one other wolf he knows, and trying to set Eddie up. “Not that,” he laughs. “You said- about the paperwork. And Chris. And I just so happen to know paperwork’s greatest enemy.”

“This must be Eddie?” Carla says from behind him, emerging just on time. Buck is in awe of her. “I’m Carla. As our Buck said,” she touches Buck’s arm, shakes her head fondly at him, “Paperwork has nightmares about me. I could get that sorted for you, and, if you wanted, look after your pup myself.”

Eddie’s eyes have gone a little misty when Buck looks back at him, and Buck’s heart soars.

Carla and Eddie disappear to the living room to talk, and Buck rearranges the kitchen loudly to show that he’s not listening in.

Every rearranged cup feels a little like acceptance. Acceptance that he’s done something good. Acceptance that Abby isn’t coming back, when he sets the plates in a way she never had, moves things to a higher cabinet she didn’t like to reach for. There’s the sense of dread, of course, unshakeable, but he doesn’t think that his own implosion will catch Eddie and Carla in the crossfire. They’re wolves—free of the curse, free of the spiral that Buck will never escape.

He hopes Maddie will be okay, too. As reticent as he is at the thought of her getting a job, it’ll be good for her to stand on her own feet.

“Buck,” Eddie says, and Buck had been so lost in thought that he really hadn’t heard him come into the kitchen. He whirls around, catches Carla’s wave as she heads out the door. Eddie is close.

“Is it- Do you think that- Will it work?” Buck asks, breathless.

Eddie grins at him. He’s close now, the tips of his shoes just centimeters from Buck’s. Something catches in the back of Buck’s throat, and he has to look at the bridge of Eddie’s nose to avoid the intensity of his eyes.

“Thank you,” Eddie says, his hand falling heavy on Buck’s shoulder. “I don’t even- I don’t know how I’ll repay you. Don’t even know how to show you what this means to me.”

Buck shakes his head, standing so still he thinks he might be turning to stone. “You don’t have to- I mean- It wasn’t even- I just introduced you guys.”

“Don't do that,” Eddie says, squeezing Buck’s shoulder. “Just let me thank you, Evan.”

Something sharp and bright shoots down Buck’s spine.

“Always,” he says. He means it to his very core—with every one of his immortal years. “I’ve got your back.”

“And I have yours,” Eddie strokes his thumb over the fabric of Buck’s shirt, then he's moving his hand, touching the skin of Buck’s neck. He’s so warm, so alive, and Buck is still looking over his shoulder because Eddie’s eyes are burning and Buck thinks he might lose himself to them if he looks too long.

And then Eddie steps back, his cheeks rosy. “That was a, ah, wolf thing.”

“It’s okay,” Buck says, and he has to clench his fists to avoid tracing over where Eddie had touched to see if he can still feel the warmth. “I don't mind. At all.”

Eddie nods, once. And then he reaches out again, this time with his other hand to touch the opposite side of Buck’s neck. Buck doesn’t know what it feels like for Eddie, even though he’s heard some things about werewolves and scent and touch. He just stays still, accepts it.

“See you tomorrow?” Eddie offers, pulling his hand back.

“‘Course,” Buck says, amazed when his voice comes out steady. “Tell Chris I said hi?”

“He’s going to be so mad I saw you without him,” Eddie laughs. “You have to come over sometime this week, man. He’s already asking about it.”

God, Buck is warm. Like Eddie’s touches are bleeding through him, filling all the empty hollows of his body. He wants to follow him home, wants to spend the rest of the day with Eddie and Chris, to chase the warmth until he’s taken it all into himself. But he doesn’t want to leave them cold.

“I’d love to.” Too much, probably, but he can’t help it. Give Buck an inch, and he’ll take an undeserved mile.

Maddie tells him he looks happy when she comes home. It’s a simplification, but Buck lets it settle over him, smoothing out the rough edges of the whirlwind of his mind. He’s having a harder time than normal regulating himself, so he lets his head be pulled into Maddie’s lap, enjoys the feeling of her hand running through his hair.

Buck and Eddie become BuckandEddie.

Bobby tangles their names together on calls, and even at the station. “BuckandEddie, lunch in thirty minutes. BuckandEddie, clean the glass. BuckandEddie, great work out there.” Buck glows with it every time, and he knows Eddie does, too.

And there’s the touching.

It seems as if a dam has been unblocked in Eddie’s mind, with how often he reaches for Buck now. Far beyond the necessary press of their legs in the engine, Eddie is sort of just—all over him. Pressed to his side while he shows Buck new pictures of Chris from Carla, hand rubbing at Buck’s shoulder blades while they listen to Bobby’s assignments for the day. It earns them raised eyebrows, for the first few days, but then Eddie distracts them by offering more touch to the whole team.

He must think of them as pack, Buck deduces as he watches Eddie greet Chim with an overly complicated handshake that he somehow makes look cool. (Buck would admit under penalty of death that Chimney pulls it off too).

But Buck knows he’s the most affected by it.

Every touch sinks into his skin. It takes him a lot of thinking, and a little research, to figure out what the hell is actually going on—because it can’t be something that’s meant to happen.

It’s an obscure bit of vampire mythos, hidden deep into an old book that Buck had found in the lair of an ancient vampire—the fakest sounding object he owns, obviously.

It’s the sort of thing he could puzzle out on his own, but it’s- affirming to see it spelled out, in neat script that gives Buck a headache.

Vampires, when feeding, take on the scent of their prey. A powerful vampire with many subjects would flaunt it by wearing their scent, a sign of power in all the lives they had access to. Werewolves are, objectively, stinkier than the average human—and more powerful. Eddie gets his scent on Buck, and Buck preens under it because of stupid ingrained vampire instincts.

And if Buck is right, based on observation more than literature since he’s quite certain no wolf would write down anything about their species, Eddie gets something out of the scenting. Wolves like when the people they care about smell like them. It explains why Chris and abuela and Pepa all carry the scent of wolf, despite being human.

Buck gets a little giddy when he thinks about it too deeply, sue him. It’s just ironic that two groups who hate each other so deeply are weirdly compatible.

He doesn’t touch Eddie back, unless it’s the incidental things—the oft mentioned legs brushing in the engine, fingers touching when they pass dishes back and forth to wash and dry. He’s more than happy to take what he can get when it comes to touch. He’s a vampire—no part of him needs it. He’s made for isolation, and he’s spoiled with a sister who greets him every time they reunite with a hug, as if to remind herself that he’s real, and a friend who has a biological need to touch.

He’s pressed to Eddie’s side now, back on the firehouse’s couch. Buck’s been feeling drowsy recently, an unshakeable tiredness that only seems to be alleviated in moments of high energy. He’s got himself into a weird sort of limbo, waiting every moment for the next thing to wake him up.

Eddie is frowning at his phone. Buck wants to help, but he’s working hard to keep his eyes open, and the moment passes.

“Traffic this morning, huh?” Eddie says, the general sort of small talk that Buck has noticed he makes when he wants to talk about something supernatural.

Buck plays along; “Mine wasn’t so bad. Think I just missed it, getting here before you.”

“And which of us is falling asleep an hour into shift?”

Buck’s shrug is interrupted by a yawn. Weirdly, the movement of stretching his jaw has his fangs aching to drop, and he snaps his mouth shut quickly. Eddie doesn’t seem to notice, and Buck is glad for it.

He knows, abstractly, that Eddie knows he’s a vampire. That Eddie had distrusted him on the basis of Buck being a vampire. It sounds sort of fucked up, really, but Buck has found it easy to accept the change of heart. Eddie proves it, in everything he does. But trust doesn’t mean he’s going to flaunt the ugly parts of himself to Eddie. So he keeps his mouth shut tight, grits his teeth a little to keep his fangs securely locked back, and listens to Eddie complain about LA traffic, a topic the rest of the team won’t indulge him in.

And then the bell is ringing, and Buck is being hauled to his feet by Eddie’s hand around his arm, warm and big as ever. “You alright?” he asks, holding Buck in place and tilting his head into steady eye contact. Buck nods, shaking out his shoulders with a small grin that he hopes comes off right.

“Just tired Eddie, I swear it.”

“You’d tell me if it was- something else?”

Buck furrows his eyebrows in confusion at that—Eddie knows he can’t get sick. He’s seen Buck get a little weak in the knees when they have calls that go long under the sun, but it’s nothing. Really. He tells Eddie as much, and gets a quick squeeze of acceptance. Trust. Buck glows with it.

It’s an exciting call, so Buck quickly forgets his exhaustion. There’s a helicopter, and a voice Buck knows from the news, and Eddie does his action hero thing, and then stands real close to Buck while he talks to Taylor Freaking Kelly.

She’s impressive. Buck can’t help but be a little taken with her, and he’s moments away from offering his number when Eddie nudges his side, tells him Cap is calling for them.

“See you around?” he offers with a wink.

“Better not be like this,” she says back, but there’s a tilt to her mouth that betrays a smile, and Buck all but skips away, Eddie grabbing hold of his arm again.

“I’m not going to keel over, you know,” he teases as they approach the engine. Bobby isn’t looking at them, instead talking to Hen and Chim about something, but Buck figures he’s just doing his captain thing and making the most of time while waiting for Buck and Eddie, or whatever.

Eddie nudges him again, a full press of his body to Buck’s that sort of- lingers. Werewolf things, Buck thinks with a small snort when he shoves Eddie back.

And they’re professionals, so by the time Bobby turns to them, they’re standing a normal distance apart, Eddie at the sort of attention that only comes from military regimen, and Buck a poor mirror of him.

“All done over there?” Bobby asks.

“All clear, Cap,” Eddie reports, and Buck gives a mocking little salute at his side. “Got the traffic report and all.”

“And we know how much Eddie wanted that,” Buck mutters, just loud enough that he’s sure Bobby will hear.

Eddie turns to him, betrayal written on his face. “I wasn’t the one flirting with the reporter.”

“Coulda tried,” Buck says. “Maybe her type is-” Hairy? Wolfy? “Uptight.”

“Okay, boys,” Bobby says, one of his favorite refrains. Buck likes being boys with Eddie. “Let’s get back to the station.”

Buck falls asleep on the couch—so deeply that he misses an alarm, and gets to be man behind. His profuse apologies are brushed off easily by Bobby, who just suggests that he try getting a little more sleep or let him know if he needs any time off, all in the sort of voice a younger Buck had always thought fathers would use.

“Make sure I wake up,” he tells Eddie in the bunkroom before they settle in. “Any means necessary.”

With Eddie’s word—what does that mean to a wolf? If Buck swore an oath to Eddie, he’d be unable to break it, physically, mentally, all that—Buck settles in, and is out like a light again.

Vampire dreams are strange.

The human brain can retain all sorts of things without much effort, though the conscious mind struggles to recall them. Buck had read about it that one time when he’d gotten himself stranded at a remote lighthouse during a terrible cold season. He’d refused to eat anything but fresh food for years after that, and avoided the cold like a plague.

With more years, more faces and locations to remember, Buck’s dreams tend to be a weird, hazy mix of periods of his life, mashed together like potatoes. He tries not to look too closely at the through lines.

He’s in the firehouse in this one, though it’s got a design that can’t have been in use for at least fifty years. Bobby is here, steady, and Buck goes to him. His feet feel heavy, dragging across the cracked floor like he’s made of marble. Just when he gets close, Bobby walks a short distance away. Buck follows. And again, away. Bobby doesn’t even look at him, doesn’t seem to know that Buck is trying to get to him; he just keeps moving.

Buck tries to say his name, but his mouth feels as if it’s been stuffed with cotton. It tangles in the gaps of his teeth, snags on the sharp points of his fangs, and he knows, he knows, he knows.

The alarm is going off. It sends out pulses of red light that bathe the entire firehouse, flicker over Bobby, out of sync with the rest of the setting. Buck tries to step back, wills Bobby to keep up his evasion, but he is still, and Buck’s feet are too light, and he’s falling, falling, falling.

Everything is red, and then everything is Eddie.

“Hey,” he says, shaking Buck’s shoulder. The motion feels familiar, though Buck is only now cognizant of it. “Alarms going. It’s just medical—Bobby says we’re staying behind. But I figured-”

“Thank you,” Buck chokes out, swallowing around a dry tongue. “Could you- Shit. Could you get me a glass of water?”

Eddie’s not even done nodding before he’s turning to leave. Buck drops his head back on the pillow with a groan. He shudders to think of where the dream would have gone, had Eddie not pulled him from it. He’s had his fair share in that vein—not funny—about everyone he’s ever loved, or so much as cared for. They usually drag on and on, Buck left with a body with the throat ripped out, and nowhere else to turn.

Eddie comes back, gesturing for Buck to sit up before he hands the glass over.

“Bad dream?” he asks, matter-of-factly. Buck puts off answering by draining the whole glass, thirst quenched in a hollow sort of way. He’s very glad not to be on that med call.

He’s been stupid, he knows. With the excitement of Maddie being back, it had been easy to let feeding slip his mind. Truthfully, though he’s never found documentation of it, he swears that when he’s around people, he needs to feed less. Survives on their energy or something. He doesn’t want to look at it head-on, for fear of finding that it's more sinister than he'd ever allow for, but he’s always generally aware of it.

He doesn’t want to admit that to Eddie. It’s ugly, through and through.

“Not really bad,” he lies. He’s noticed that Eddie can’t read him quite as well as everyone else—he gets away with lies while Eddie raises his eyebrows at anyone else on the team trying to slip even a little white one in. “Just weird. Do you have those dreams like dogs do? Where you think you’re like chasing a squirrel, or whatever?”

Predictably, the distraction works. Eddie wrinkles his face up, swats at Buck. “No. I’m not a dog, Buckley.”

“Right, sure, sure. But not even once?”

“Do you ever think of yourself as a mosquito?” Eddie shoots back.

Buck laughs, biting—still not funny—and loud. “That is so different. You turn into a dog. I’m just me.”

“A wolf,” Eddie says grumpily, though Buck catches something else in the twist of his mouth—a twitch he’d usually associate with a bit of sarcasm. “Maybe a straw would be more accurate.”

“Yeah, you caught me,” Buck snorts. “Sinking in. Being used.”

That earns him ruddiness from Eddie’s cheeks. “I set you up for that one, huh.”

“Come on, no you didn’t. That took skill.”

“Turning everything into innuendo isn’t a skill, Buckley.”

“Just because you don’t have it doesn’t mean you get to- to dog on it,” Buck snickers to himself. “Thanks for the water, but I gotta piss. Did it sound like they’d be gone for a while?”

Buck forgets about the dream until he’s frowning at Maddie’s new place, the rental truck they’d used to drag over her new furniture behind him. He’d seen it before, sure, but looking at it now, knowing Maddie’s really moving in? It totally looks like the set of a horror movie.

“Are you sure about this place?”

“Yes, Buck.” Maddie is in the doorway, her posture betraying all the waiting she’d been doing while Buck moved her shit. “You asked your coworkers to come, right?”

Buck huffs. “You know I can move everything on my own, right?”

It’s a lie. The exhaustion has expanded into weakness, but he’s got a weird mental block every time he so much as thinks about feeding. Like the spell his life is currently under will be broken, or something.

“Sure,” Maddie says, half placating and half teasing. “But I want to get to know the people you spend half your time with, you know. Should I make tea?”

Buck imagines Eddie, and then Chimney, drinking tea. He gets mixed results and answers Maddie with a shrug. “Maybe beer?”

“Boys,” Maddie grumbles, vanishing back into the house. Buck sets about getting things out of the truck, though he’s a little miffed to find he has to stick to the lighter ones. It’s not that his muscles ache, when he tries for something he can’t lift. His body just sort of- gives up, without trying, and he goes stiff as a board.

It doesn’t help that the sun is really beaming down today, even as they pass the last days of summer. He wishes, in a flash that has him leaning heavily against the side of the truck, that there was sweat pooling on his upper lip. That he could roll his shoulders to chase off a pleasant ache of exertion, or look forward to massaging out pains in his legs after a long shift. He’s so far from human, it feels absurd that anyone buys his lie.

“Buck!” someone calls, and the harsh edges of Buck’s bad mood instantly dissipate—Eddie waves from where he’s heading up the driveway, already sizing up the things they’re set to move. “Long time no see,” he jokes, like a total dad.

“Ha ha,” Buck says, offering his fist for a quick bump that Eddie happily indulges.

With Eddie’s presence to feed off of, and his strength to carry more than his fair share, Buck is able to get through the moving. Chimney, the bastard, disappears inside to help with decor, like he has any expertise. Maybe he does, really—he surprises Buck at the weirdest of times.

Eddie certainly shows the exertion of the job. His hair gets floppy with sweat, and he rolls up the sleeves of his shirt midway through. Buck stares with barely concealed jealousy filmed over with sadness, not quick enough to hide it when Eddie catches him.

“Sweat gross you out?” Eddie asks, that careful tone he always gets when asking Buck about vampire stuff clear as day.

Buck smiles with bared teeth, twitching his unsalted upper lip. He imagines it—pressing his lips to Eddie’s neck, the taste of blood mixed with salt. His fangs ache. “No,” he says shortly, angry with himself.

Eddie tolerates him. Trusts him, somehow. And here Buck is, in his sister’s driveway while Eddie is taking time out of his day to help someone he’s never met, wondering what his blood tastes like.

“Okay tough guy,” Eddie teases. “You’re really making me look bad, you know?”

Buck looks at Eddie again, careful to keep his gaze from his neck. The sweat. His arms, corded with muscle that Buck’s seen in action more times than he can count. He really does look like he’s exerted himself far more than Buck has, and they both laugh about it while they finish up.

“He is so cute,” Maddie says, during a moment when both Eddie and Chim are in the kitchen, their voices a pleasant rumble at the edge of Buck’s awareness. His hearing goes a little fuzzy at Maddie’s words, though, and he blinks at her.

“He’s a werewolf,” he hisses, fully aware that Eddie's probably hearing every word.

“Chimney is a wolf?” Maddie asks, blinking back.

Buck opens his mouth to correct her, but she leaves. Walks to the kitchen, doesn’t even look back. Buck wonders if the paperwork he’d helped her forge had specified whether they were siblings, and, if so, what the disowning process looks like.

Eddie emerges. He’s got a shit eating grin on his face. Buck hates him, too.

The day winds to a close. Buck retreats to his—Abby’s—apartment, waves off an invitation from Eddie for a movie night with Chris, as much as he wants to see them.

He’s been avoiding spending too much time at Eddie’s. He lets himself hang on to him at the station, at bars, and now, even Maddie’s place, but Eddie’s home? It feels like he’s crossing a line.

He’d gone once, for dinner. He couldn’t say no, knowing that Chris wanted to see him. And, god, it had been one of the best nights of Buck’s life, watching Chris and Eddie talk, somehow finding himself invited in.

But that was the problem. He can't let himself get used to it. Can’t let himself get pulled in and stuck for fear of hurting those in the crossfire when he’s forced out. He’s living in his girlfriend’s apartment, not a word exchanged between them in months. An invitation in isn’t something a vampire gives up easily.

He’s only in the apartment long enough to get a change of clothes, more fit for going out.

Absurd as it is, he’s got himself a little routine, when it comes to feeding nights. A few hours at a bar or club, shared body heat in dark corners or alleys. He never drinks from them. It’s more of a salve, a disjointed effort to connect the memory of warmth to the cold blood bags he snags from the hospital.

He tries a new bar tonight, far as he can get from the usual haunts of his coworkers without being absurd. But something in him feels more hollow than normal, not quite up to his usual flirting. He watches people come in and out, watches them laugh with friends and throw back drinks, go hand and hand from the bar to the bathroom and beyond. He wants, but in an unreachable sort of way—the same way a wolf howls at the moon, or a lighthouse looks over the ocean.

And then someone comes to him. A warm hand on his shoulder, a surprised intake of breath.

“If it isn’t firefighter Buckley,” says Taylor Kelly’s familiar voice. “You follow me here?”

“If I did?” Buck asks, the words coming before he can think. Something about Taylor Kelly wakes him up, draws him in.

“Might call the police,” she says. “Or would that go to your house?”

“What if it’s coincidence?”

“I don’t put much stock in faith.”

“So you’d prefer the stalking,” Buck asks, and they’re close now. Bodies drawn together, an easy, effortless connection.

It carries them out of the bar and into the back of her honest-to-god news van. It’s a new one, even for Buck, and it’s reflected in the spark that ignites in his belly, a point of warmth that meets where his lips press to Taylor’s, where their bodies find each other.

It takes a delicate balance to exist in the moment that his mouth trails hot kisses around the collar of her shirt, and to commit the feel of it to memory. It helps to find the small, distinct pieces. Make every memory its own.

The news van certainly helps in this one. Sparks of heat drip down his spine whenever one of his limbs smacks against a wall or door, a reminder that they’re in the parking lot, thin metal walls the only thing separating them from public view.

And maybe he imagines it, but Taylor burns. It’s less a physical feel, and more in the way she grabs at his hair, pulls his mouth back to hers. The way she settles herself on his lap, swallows the sounds from his mouth. He gives everything he has eagerly, desperately.

They fall away from each other, panting. The floor of the van pokes at Buck’s body, and he pulls Taylor to lie over top of him.

She studies him, hair falling loose around her face. There’s something critical, examining, to the glint of her eyes, and Buck tries not to preen under it. His hunger is growing. It spreads, down from the lingering hot spot of his mouth to the rest of his body, and he rides the edge of it because the alternative is giving in.

“I knew it,” Taylor says, her voice somewhere between flirty and official. It kind of does it for Buck, which is a little embarrassing. She strokes a finger over his closed lips, presses down on his canines. “Vampire.”

Buck freezes. Taylor doesn’t seem to mind, pressing her finger to the corner of Buck’s mouth until he opens, and she can touch his teeth with no skin in between.

“I knew it at the call, you know,” she adds. “Thought it was weird, a vampire signing up to fight fires. You got a death wish, Firefighter Buckley?”

With great care to keeping his fangs tucked away, Buck nudges Taylor’s hand aside. “H- how?”

“You just learn to spot it,” she says with a shrug. “Is it lonely? No one else on your team looked too-” she waves a hand around Buck’s mouth. “All human.”

She didn’t pick out Eddie, Buck thinks, somewhere between indignant and relieved—though he’s still not certain of her intentions.

“So you’re going to kill me.”

“Wasn’t planning to.” She pokes at the apple of his cheek. “You look like you haven’t been keeping up with your blood intake.”

“I wasn’t- I’m not going to- I won’t bite you,” Buck stammers, attempting to sit up.

She scoffs. “Well why not? I’ve got plenty of blood. Always wondered what the bite felt like.”

Buck cringes. “So you- What? Found me just to ask for it?”

To his surprise, her face clouds over with confusion, and a little hurt. “No. I slept with you because you’re hot, dumbass. But if you want to take a drink, be my guest.”

“You’re sure?” Buck asks, mouth already watering. His fangs drop when she tilts her head, exposing the long line of her neck. “Really sure?”

She grabs his collar and sits up, guiding him with her. Her hand presses at the back of his head, guides it to a spot that’s just a touch too far to the side. When she speaks, her voice rumbles through him. “Ask me one more time and I’m leaving you to find a real pointy stick.”

Buck huffs against her skin, readjusts his mouth for the best angle, and then sinks his fangs into the neck of Taylor Kelly, the voice of his morning commute.

“You’re looking rather energetic today,” Chimney says when Buck walks out of the workout room humming. He doesn’t sound excited that Buck has gotten over his exhaustion, which Buck takes great offense to.

But he doesn’t even feel like arguing—he just grins, swatting at Chim with his useless sweat towel when he gets close enough. “Helps not to be old,” he jokes, the words far more humorous to him than his friend, for more reasons than one.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Chim says, putting up less of a fight than Buck’d expected. “I was wondering—did uh, did your sister mention me? After I left?”

Buck stops his movement toward the showers, so abruptly that he knows it must look unnatural. But Chimney is standing there, hands fidgeting at his waist, and not meeting Buck’s eye.

“No,” Buck says. “No way.”

“We had a connection?” Chim says, and Buck wishes more than anything that he didn’t have to lie when he answers him.

“I don’t think she even remembered your name,” he says cheerfully. Maddie had raved about Chim’s help with the decorating—though Buck had hardly noticed a damn difference—through half a bottle of wine.

Chimney squints at them, and then his face lights up. “You’re lying. That means she talked about me! Wait,” he goes a little pale. “Was it bad?”

Buck looks dramatically across the firehouse and spots Bobby leaving his office. “Oh, hey, real sorry man, but I gotta go,” he points to Bobby, and then turns in a totally different direction, snickering when Chim splutters behind him.

When he emerges from the shower, whistling as he goes, he runs into Eddie for the first time. He’d come into shift late, something about getting Chris’s school paperwork sorted, and Buck quickly goes to greet him.

“Hey!” he says. “You missed the craziest call ever.”

“Did I?” Eddie asks, clearly not buying it for a second. Buck, with his track record of being caught lying now a solid zero for two, wonders if he should be like, practicing. He should be good at it already, right? Hundreds of years of pretending to be human and all?

“Totally. Imagine like, the coolest thing ever. That’s what the call was.”

“Oh?” Eddie looks at Buck, an amused twinkle in his eye that makes Buck feel all nice and fluttery. “Tell me more.”

“No,” Buck says with a shake of his head. “You gotta imagine. That’s the only way to do it justice.”

“I’m not very creative.”

“Then this can be a learning exercise.”

“Is it supposed to be what you think is cool or what I do?” Eddie squints at him. And then, predictably, he sniffs the air. Less expected is the face he pulls, like he’s smelled something sour.

It’s hard to discreetly try to sniff your pits with someone’s full attention on you, but Buck gives it his best try. He smells good though, if he can say, the body wash he brings specially for the firehouse working its magic.

“Is that the reporter?” Eddie asks, stepping close and placing a big hand on the back of Buck’s neck, burying his nose in the junction of Buck’s shoulder.

Buck squeaks, hyper aware of the very glass locker room and their very nosy coworkers.

“Didn’t you just shower?” Eddie asks, like a freak.

Buck shoves at his shoulder a little bit, getting them to a respectable distance apart. “Don’t you have a- a military grade nose?”

“Wouldn’t still smell her on you if it was just from the call,” Eddie says with narrowed eyes.

“What- Eddie!” Buck can’t help the laughter that bubbles up in his stomach. And scowls at him, a thing made less fierce by his big, almost pleading, eyes. And Buck is still feeling good today. “I may have, y’know.” he smiles, going for coy and probably hitting dopey. “Slept with her.”

“And?”

Maybe Buck of forty-eight hours would have been unnerved by the knowledge that a werewolf can smell the last person he fed from on him, but Buck of the now just thinks it’s kind of nice, that Eddie’s paying that kind of attention to him. “And she offered for me to drink from her.”

Eddie’s face doesn’t turn murderous, but he does get a little pout in the swell of his lip. Buck is delighted.

“In her news van,” he adds. He’s past the bragging about sex thing—enough eye rolls from his coworkers—but Eddie is so riled up. He can’t resist.

But then he has to go and ruin everything with the way a soft smile slips onto his face. “So you’re feeling better?”

Buck would swear he can feel the change in Eddie’s attitude where it hits him in the chest, all his desire to see red cheeks or huffing breath dissipated with a wave of fondness for Eddie having picked up on his fatigue, and knowing to connect it to a lack of blood.

“Way better,” he admits, just as soft as Eddie had been. “Just- wasn’t thinking about it, you know?”

Eddie bites his lip, and Buck notes his teeth—a bit sharper than the average human's, he’s noticed, but not quite as big as he’d expect of a wolf. Maybe Eddie is just a puppy, or his wolf form is pomeranian-sized. Buck, a good vampire, wouldn’t kill to see it, but he would do, like, a thousand push-ups.

“Maybe it’s like your shifts?” he hedges. Eddie never talks about that part of being a werewolf, in the same way Buck’s never acknowledged his need to feed before today. He really, really gets it—werewolves are a secretive bunch, for good reason. He and Eddie might be friendly now, but that doesn’t mean shit for the kind of things they need to keep close to their chests. Buck’s problem has always been that he can’t keep his mouth shut.

But Eddie just shrugs, easy as can be. “Maybe. Guess no one would ever really know, huh?”

“It’s not so different from being regular thirsty,” Buck muses. “Just like, all over. And deeper.”

He looks at Eddie, barely concealing his eagerness to hear a little about his wolf, but—”I don’t know,” he says. “It’s not- It’s not like anything else. Really.”

“So I’ve just got to imagine, huh,” Buck snorts.

“Now you’re getting it. Any breakfast left?”

Buck purses his lips in thought, before offering up a shrug of his own. He’d run off to the gym before he could get assigned to table-clearing duty—he’s gotten used to doing it with Eddie, and it’s no fun without.

He’s not sure if it’s an improvement on his great day or not when Taylor Kelly comes into the firehouse, camera and attached man in tow. Buck is more than happy to narrate his day, though neither of them seems to have much interest in the workout regime of a firefighter. He supposes it doesn’t help that he looks like he wouldn’t know what to do with a weight if someone put it in his hand and lifted for him.

He also delights in watching Taylor try to get any usable footage from Eddie. He stalks around the place like a cat, ducking behind pillars and hiding out in the bathroom.

After Taylor waves Buck off when he tries to give her a tour of their fridge—knowing what they eat would be interesting!—Eddie yanks him into the bunk room, where the lights are dimmed and no one else is present.

“Uhm?” Buck says.

“She knows,” Eddie hisses. Again with the cat thing.

“About?”

“Us,” he whispers so lowly it’s more of a pantomime.

Buck jolts like he’s been struck by lightning. “What- Us?”

Eddie blinks. Buck blinks.

“Oh,” he says. If his heart could speed up its pumping, he’s sure it’d be doing that. “Well, yeah. I literally drank her blood dude.”

“Exactly,” Eddie says. Buck wonders if he’s really committed to this whole speaking in one or two words thing. Might be hard to work with, but he can adjust.

“Exactly,” Buck echoes, nodding like he has any idea what’s going on.

Eddie cocks his head, clearly listening to the rest of the firehouse outside their little bubble. “She’s going to expose us, Buck.” He says it with a gravity that Buck isn’t used to, face set in a way that reminds Buck of their first shift together.

“She wouldn’t do that,” Buck says immediately. He can’t blame Eddie for thinking it. Trusts his instincts, even. “She- I know she wouldn’t.”

“What, because you slept with her once?” Eddie growls, and Buck has to hold himself back from asking to hear it again—Eddie’s wolf is so close.

But it stings. He shakes his head and steps away. “You have to trust me on this one.”

“I can’t do that.”

Buck gets it. He really, really does. But his good mood is quickly spiraling, and he has to get out before he says something stupid to Eddie. He turns to flee, a move he’d learned from the man behind him, and is saved by the bell from having to figure out if he’s allowed to slam the door dramatically behind him.

They’re professional on the ride to the call—more professional than usual, really. Their legs only brush, like, once, and Buck listens to the whole briefing from Bobby. He doesn’t understand it—eating contest? Bugs?—but he listens.

It’s no easier to comprehend when they do arrive, a mess of people and bugs and reptiles in the back area of a sketchy-looking pet store. It’s mostly a medic call, so Buck tries to surreptitiously check that the animals all appear to be in good condition. He knows the numbers to call to get this place shut down, is what he’d say if questioned, though everyone seems a little preoccupied with the actual emergency happening.

But surprisingly, everything seems well taken care of. Buck nods to himself for an inspection well done, and turns his attention back to the chaos just in time to get a full view of the owner of the store.

“You,” she says.

“Hello ma’am-” Buck starts, his firefighter spiel at the ready.

She cuts him off with a hand motion like a closing mouth, and he can’t help the small twitch of his eyebrows in surprise. She beckons him closer with the same hand, and he leans down, glad for it when she says, “Vampire.”

Again. Did someone write it on his forehead? Does he need to start fake tanning?

“Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’ve got some magic of my own,” she nods to the shop, and all Buck can think is that she must be some kind of witch. He’s not sure if the weird eating contest makes more or less sense. “You work hard, for the humans.”

He nods, uncomfortable. “I, ah, like doing what I can to help.”

“Good for you.” She swats his shoulder in what he thinks is meant to be an affectionate gesture. “And a wolf on the team too! Oh my.”

“You can tell?” he asks without thinking. “I mean- Really? I, uh, hadn’t noticed.”

“Don’t play dumb with me, vampire.” She levels a glare at him. “I was going to say I find it impressive that you two cohabitate.” Is that what they do? Buck shrugs in mild disbelief. “It’s a good thing you two are doing. We need more of it.”

Buck waits a long beat, but she doesn’t add anything else.

“Okay, well, maybe don’t, ah, have any more of these contests, okay?”

She rolls her eyes at him. “You have my word,” she says, and a glint in her eyes that tells him that her word probably means less than the lives of the crickets crawling over Buck’s boots.

“Okay,” he says awkwardly, stepping around her and back toward his team. “And I like your lizard.”

Eddie is scowling at him in the engine. It might be because Taylor was at the call, looking positively elated over the footage she was getting. Or maybe he’s decided in his wolf brain that Buck isn’t allowed to talk to anyone—Buck isn’t sure how he feels about that. Something to consider later.

The glares continue through the rest of shift, a continuing, more petty mirror of their first shift together. Buck doesn’t really let it get to him, happy enough to chat with Hen or bother Chimney, and then Bobby is asking him to help with dinner, and nothing can go wrong in the world.

He expects it to be over by next shift, but that hope is dashed when he sees Taylor Kelly’s news van—he feels heat rising to his cheeks at the sight of it—already parked.

“You might as well just join the team,” he jokes when he sees her. “I could put in a good word for you at the academy. Or, hell, ask Eddie. He was top of his class.”

Taylor gives him a tight-lipped smile. “Was he?”

“Oh yeah,” Buck says, launching into everything he’d heard of Eddie in the moments before meeting him, and then their subsequent spat. He leaves out all the supernatural bits, probably makes them sound like a pair of doofuses, but he hardly minds. And if Eddie is going to give him the cold shoulder, then he can have a little embarrassment.

In the loft, he finds a tray of delicious looking muffins.

“Who are these from?” he asks Bobby where he’s, predictably, manning the stove. Without waiting for an answer, he shoves a whole one in his mouth. “Good!” he declares with a double thumbs up.

Eddie appears. Buck grins at him, and inclines his head toward the treats. “You want?”

With narrowed eyes, Eddie picks up a muffin, looking like he’s one a second away from sniffing them—for what? Poison?

“Come on, dude. They’re muffins.”

Not his best moment.

Buck has never seen so many tiaras in one place, and he really wants one. “Eddie,” he whispers. Eddie, who has been pressed to his side since they arrived at the call, widens his eyes and points to himself, mouthing me?

With a nod, Buck also points to Eddie. “You need one.” He moves his finger slowly, so Eddie can follow, to the small humans and their tiaras. And their outfits.

“I have one,” Eddie frowns. “Not- No. Mine is a boy. Chris. You- and Chris-”

“Christopher!” Buck says, and he feels like he could fly. He loves Chris. “Where is he?”

Eddie’s face falls further. “I don’t know. Do we need to find him? Is that why we’re here?”

“It must be.” Buck cranes his head, tries to see if Chris is somewhere close to them. “Can you- you know.” He sniffs the air dramatically, making sure to flare his nostrils. It gets him a lungful of all sorts of smells, and he can’t help but cough a little.

Eddie copies him, taking such a big breath in that his chest expands. Buck wonders if he asked, if Eddie would do it again, and if Buck could put his hand there. On his chest. To feel how he breathes in. But then Eddie looks so sad.

“I don’t smell him,” he whines. It’s a real whine, underlying his words, and it pricks at Buck’s ears a little with the high-pitched tone.

“Ow.” He cups his hands over his ears. “Don’t be sad Eddie,” he says loudly, so he can hear himself. “We’ll find your- Your-” Buck can feel his eyes welling up. Eddie’s son is missing, and Buck can’t do anything about it. He needs to help.

When Buck wraps his arms around Eddie, Eddie is quick to do the same in return. He’s a good hugger, Buck thinks.

“Thank you,” Eddie says. “So are you.”

“But I’m cold,” Buck says. He’d meant to say that one out loud.

“Mm.” Eddie presses his nose into Buck’s shoulder, and it feels weirdly familiar. “I am too, kind of. My nose.”

“Like a dog,” Buck says. He wants to pet Eddie. Oh, his hand is already on his head, patting. Eddie seems sort of neutral to it, which can’t be right. “Am I doing this wrong?”

“Not a dog,” Eddie protests. “Wolf.”

“Ohhhhh,” Buck says, lying. He grits his teeth together and then thinks, What’s the difference?

There’s a commotion from across the room. Buck can smell blood, but he doesn’t feel hungry for it—he’s really full of blood right now. Enough that he can blush, when Eddie squeezes his arms around him and then presses his face further into Buck’s neck, like he’s trying to get under his skin.

“What’re you doing?” Buck asks, and if Eddie is a wolf, then maybe Buck is on a Planet Earth documentary. He wishes he had better clothes on.

Eddie licks his neck. “Have to make you smell like me.”

“Okay,” a new voice says. It’s not tiny enough to be one of the tiara-wearing humans. “What the hell are you guys doing?”

The voice is behind Buck, so he has to turn around to see who it is. Eddie lets go of him, but only to grab onto his arm and press himself to Buck’s side instead of the hug. “Hen!” he says excitedly when he sees that it’s her. “We were-” somewhere in Buck’s brain, the knowledge that he’s not supposed to be telling secrets still exists. “Eddie was sad he didn’t have a tiara.”

“And my son is missing,” Eddie adds. “And Buck doesn’t smell like me. And my head hurts.”

“Okay,” Hen says again. Buck mouths the word, to see why she likes it so much. It feels pretty normal—he tries mouthing Eddie, and decides that it's a much better word to be saying an abnormal amount of times. He’ll keep it in mind. “Are you guys on drugs?”

“Hen,” Buck hisses. “We’re at work!”

“And Eddie just licked you, Buck, so I'd like to think that there’s something unusual going on here.”

“Who did what?” says another new voice. Chimney. Buck smiles at him.

“Don’t ask,” Hen says, and then shoots Chimney a look that says I’ll tell you everything later. Buck thinks he should be offended, but if Hen wants to talk about Eddie licking him, then she should. Maybe everyone should. “We need to get them back to the station. Or the hospital, but I don’t think sober them would approve of that.”

“Is Chris there?” Eddie asks. He’s got really good puppy eyes, Buck notes from where he’s craned his neck to stare at Eddie’s face.

Chimney starts to say something, but Hen cuts him off with an enthusiastic, “Yes!”

“Then why are we still here?” Eddie asks, starting up a march toward the engine. Buck is drug along with him, and he tries his best to keep time, but he just isn’t as good as Eddie.

“I’ll look after them,” Chim says behind them. “Vics should be heading to the ambulance. I’ll radio if I have to reroute to the hospital.”

Eddie puzzles over the handle to get the door of the engine open, and he’s so mystified by it that Buck forgets how it works, too. Chimney opens it for them, and then stands and watches as they climb into the engine.

“Don’t do anything gross or weird or- or indecent,” Chimney says sternly.

Buck looks at Eddie. Eddie shrugs. They sit pressed together, though Eddie keeps trying to pull Buck closer—they reach the firehouse with their legs overlapping where they’re sat side by side, and Buck yelps when he finds that his foot has lost connection with his brain and feels all prickly.

“What did you do to me?” he asks Eddie, and then instantly feels awful about it when Eddie’s eyes and mouth go all sad. “It’s okay, actually. I don’t need my feet! You can carry me.”

“Should have added dangerous to the list,” Chimney grumbles. He’s wrong, obviously. Eddie could carry Buck easily. “Come on, out, out. We need to get you two looked at.”

“Chris?” Eddie asks, his hands on Buck’s waist as he slowly steps out of the engine. Turns out, his feet are still there. And they kind of move how he wants them to.

“You can see him once I check you over,” Chimney says.

“You’re lying,” Eddie contests with a sniff of the air. Buck elbows him, the speed of which is meant to convey secrets!! Eddie just looks at him all sad again, and Buck decides secrets really aren’t that important.

“Don’t lie to Eddie,” he tells Chim. “He’ll know.”

“Cryptic,” Chim mutters. “Okay- stay put. I need to get a few things.”

He disappears from sight, and Eddie is hauling Buck up the stairs. They end up by the table, where the muffins from earlier are in a covered pan, and Eddie grabs them before crawling under the table. Without a moment's hesitation, Buck follows him.

“I got these for you,” Eddie says, shoving the muffins at Buck. His cheeks have gone a little pink, and Buck wants to poke them. He does—Eddie’s skin is soft and warm and Buck wants to leave his finger there, but Eddie is going cross-eyed trying to look at him.

Buck wants to eat all the muffins. Is that what Eddie wants? Or should he bury them? Is he allowed to ask?

“Hey!” Chimney shouts. With wide eyes, Eddie makes a shushing noise, that is, unfortunately, a little too loud. Chimney’s boots appear, and Buck has to assume that the rest of Chimney is also standing beside the table. “Don’t eat any of those.”

His face appears, and then he’s crawling in after them. Buck hugs the tray of muffins to his chest, and Eddie tries to get in front of him, and even through the haze of Buck’s brain, he can tell this is all a mess. Chim steals the muffins. Eddie growls at him. Buck tries to pat Eddie again, but his hand sort of—sticks. He ends up holding on to Eddie’s shoulder, both of them watching as Chim scoots back out from under the table with the muffins awkwardly balanced in his arms.

“I’m sorry,” Buck says to Eddie. “I should have fought him for you. The muffins.”

“Absolutely not,” Chim says. He’s crouched down to look at them, though he keeps checking over his shoulder for something. “Is this what you two ate before the call?” He shakes the muffins at them, which makes Buck feel sad—he took them, and now he’s taunting them?

Eddie says nothing. Buck searches his memory and gets stuck thinking about his drive to work, and then he’s thinking about being in the engine with Eddie, and then just Eddie. His hand is still on Eddie. He tries again for a pat, but his hand comes down a little too heavy. “Sorry,” he whispers.

With big, big eyes, Eddie says, “It’s okay. You couldn’t hurt me.”

“Guys,” Chimney says sharply. “The muffins?”

“Yes,” Buck spits out without thinking. The muffin had been good, he remembers the muffin. “And Eddie had one too! But he doesn’t want to share.”

But Chimney just frowns and looks at the muffins like they’re trying to teach him cryptography. “But Hen and I had the muffins too.”

“And it’s just them acting weird?” a new voice says. Buck perks up, because he knows that voice.

“Bobby,” he tells Eddie, who sits up straighter.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for either of you to be alone,” Bobby says when Buck and Eddie are sitting in his office, the muffins worn off after a few hours of close supervision, both of them looking down at their shoes like kids called to the principal's office.

“I can go to Maddie’s,” Buck says quickly.

“He can come with me,” Eddie says at the same time. They turn to look at each other, Buck in surprise and Eddie with a frown. “Doesn’t Maddie have a shift?”

Right. Maddie’s job. Buck’d put in a word for her at dispatch, though he couldn’t exactly say that he had faith in her being good under pressure to escaping her vampiric captor. He thinks they’d only listened to him out of fairness, but he’d been more than confident that Maddie would prove herself—and she had.

“I’ll be fine on my own,” Buck says with a wave of his hand.

“Eddie needs someone to watch over him, Buck,” Bobby adds. Buck takes in this information with a slow nod. “And since you two seem mostly recovered, it should be safe if it’s just the two of you, though I will be checking in.”

Buck finds himself agreeing, and then questioning why he’d been so wary in the first place. Spending more time with Eddie could never be bad, but-

“Are you driving us to Eddie’s?”

Hen meets his eyes in the mirror, Eddie and Buck relegated to the backseat. She’d lost at rock paper scissors to Chim to have to drive them, and they’ve just taken the turn that leads to Eddie’s street.

“That was the plan,” Hen says, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Chris won’t be there,” Eddie offers. “Figured since we might be a liability, better to just keep the danger zone to the two of us.”

Buck pouts. “Oh. That makes sense.”

“He’ll be over tomorrow, if we make it through the night.”

That’s enough for Buck to brighten up. It’s been a bit since he’s seen Chris, with his self-enforced avoidance of Eddie’s house. And here he goes, headed over for a sleepover—at least he can blame whatever the hell was in those muffins.

Hen watches them closely as they walk from her car to Eddie’s doorway. Buck can’t resist faking a little stumble, but it’s Eddie that flings an arm out to steady him, while Hen hardly reacts. Some supervisor she is.

And then they’re in Eddie’s house, and it’s, admittedly, a little awkward. Buck’s memories from the afternoon are fuzzy, but he’s certain that he embarrassed himself a dozen times over.

“Beer?” Eddie offers.

“Is that a good idea?”

“I’m sure our systems have burned through it—even if whatever it was somehow hit us in the first place.”

Buck hums. “Have you ever felt anything like that? I mean, I’ve tried some- well, you know. But that stuff only ever works if I get it from drinking from someone who’s under an influence.”

“That’s… Cool,” Eddie says. “I’m the same. I mean, no way around it for me.”

“But the beer?”

Eddie shrugs. “Social habit I guess. Got used to the taste.”

“Toss me one then.”

Buck slumps down on the couch. His energy from feeding a few days ago is already starting to wear off, annoyingly. He’d usually get a good week out of it, no hunger pangs or random tired spells, but something about whatever they’d been drugged with seems to have worn him down faster than normal.

Eddie doesn’t throw the beer from across the room, which is a good thing because Buck is halfway to nodding off when he appears. Instead, he presses the cool bottle into Buck’s hand, cap already popped, and takes the spot next to him.

They don’t speak, just drinking together in silence, but something about the whole scene is nice.

Buck’s been on the couch once, for the movie night with Chris and Eddie, but he’d been on edge the whole time. It had all felt way too good to be true, being welcomed into the home of a werewolf. He’d left as soon as the movie had ended, to Christopher’s disappointment, and missed it ever since.

“Is there a- a game on or something?” Buck asks, an olive branch that he’s not certain he needs. Does Eddie remember the entirety of their time under mysterious influence?

“Too early,” Eddie says. “Don’t think I could focus anyway. Might fall asleep out here, hah.”

“I’m sure I could head home if you want to-”

“No way,” Eddie says, dropping a hand onto Buck’s knee briefly. “Take the couch, man. You never know if the aftereffects could hit us differently.”

Buck puzzles that one over—what could it have been that hit both of them so hard, leaving the rest of the team, who had all been verified to have tried the muffins, just fine?

He snaps his fingers and sits up, startling Eddie. “Silver,” he states. “It must have been.”

“Shit,” Eddie says, somewhere between impressed and miffed. “You might be right.”

“Have you ever, ah, been affected by it before?”

Eddie considers, tilting his head and drumming his fingers against the bottle. “Some. But I can usually sense it, in a way. Make my skin all tingly.”

“I think you did, earlier. And I went and goaded you into eating one, damn.”

“No way you could have known, Buck. And besides, no one got hurt. Whoever made them must have known what they were doing.”

Buck’s next epiphany doesn’t feel quite so snap-worthy. Instead, he sinks back against the cushions with a groan. “The lady at the eating contest. She was a witch. Knew what I was, and you, too. Said something about us doing good,” he rubs his face with his hands, trying to press some warmth into it. “She must have done it on purpose. Probably thought it was a great gift.”

Eddie lets out a disbelieving laugh. Buck raises his beer in a mock toast, and then throws half the bottle back.

He falls asleep on the couch in the seconds after Eddie excuses himself to his room. It’s a great couch, in Buck’s defense of waking up to the morning light coming through the uncovered windows, more than twelve hours later. And he doesn’t have a single dream, a rare comfort.

With careful steps and ears perked for even the smallest hint of movement, he peeks into Eddie’s room and finds him still passed out, sprawled across the bed over the comforter, shirt thrown into a corner. Buck can’t help but blush a little at the sight, how startlingly intimate it is to see a man asleep in his own bed. He shuts the door with a quiet shk, and moves into the kitchen.

Breakfast takes him way, way too long. He has to make an effort to be quiet, even as he scours the space for everything he needs—and he will give Eddie zero kudos for his organizing skills. Nothing makes sense, even to Buck, who’d been living in an overgrown frat house for a year before Abby.

The result is passable. He goes heavy on meat, enough meal times passed noting down the way Eddie always dug into it with the most enthusiasm, piling his plate high the night Bobby had made them steak after a hard call well-done, unlike the meat. Eddie probably would have requested it raw, if it wouldn’t have earned him weird looks.

Buck sort of—jokingly—waves a plate overflowing with sausage and bacon in the direction of Eddie’s room when he realizes the dilemma of waking him up. Of course he wants Eddie to get as much sleep as possible. He also wants Eddie to try the food Buck made for him. Thus, the wafting.

He feels silly as soon as he does it, and then vindicated when he hears the rustle of sheets and a low groan, the sound that comes with a good stretch that edges on painful. Buck can’t help but shift excitedly on his feet, turning the plates and arranging them just so.

His snooping is quickly shut down when the bathroom door swings open, and then shut, with two wooshes and a click. The rattling of the plates he pulls down from a cupboard is overly loud, but he doesn’t want Eddie to think he’s listening to him piss. Maybe Buck should invest in headphones—do they make them vampire-proof?

“Buck,” Eddie says when he emerges, sounding warm as the covers he’s left to cool. “You made breakfast?”

“Figured it would, y’know, make up for me spending the night.” Buck twists his thumb against the palm of his opposite hand, watching as Eddie steps closer and closer.

“What’s there to make up for?” Eddie asks as he snatches up a piece of bacon. Luckily for his fingers, it’s cooled enough for him to do it. “This is good,” he says with wide eyes, going for another piece. Buck watches in fascination as he does, his hand sort of twitching to smack him away—but this is Eddie’s house. Buck is the guest. If Eddie wants to eat hunched over the counter, then that’s what they’ll do.

But he pauses before he gets his mitts on the second piece, head turning slowly to the double-stacked plates. “Plates,” he says, and since Buck is snooping again he’d swear he can hear the gears of Eddie’s brain turning, pulling him the rest of the way into the motion of wakefulness.

“C’mon,” Buck says, scooping up a plate and handing it off to Eddie. “Load up.”

And while Buck glows beside him with a pleased grin, Eddie does.

They sit diagonal from each other at the table, because the seat across from Eddie is characterized by a tabletop marked in crayon—Chris’s spot. And it would be weird if Buck sat next to Eddie, right? So diagonal it is.

Buck’s own plate isn’t piled quite so high—breakfast is far from his favorite meal. Eddie must pick up on this, somewhere between shoveling eggs down his throat in a refined sort of way and sipping at a tall glass of room-temp water, which Buck thinks he might be insane for.

“Can I-” Eddie starts, cutting himself off with a sausage between his teeth. He swallows, the points a finger at Buck’s plate. “Do you need to eat? Outside of,” he taps his wrist, big finger leaving a temporary dimple in the thin skin over his veins.

Buck hums. “No. I mean, obviously I can. Don’t need to though. Doesn’t really taste like much either.”

“Well,” Eddie says with a frown. “It’s good. Really good. Could have come from Bobby’s kitchen if you ask me.”

Buck doesn’t have enough blood to flush‚ that damn silver burning it up, but he knows he would be if he could. He gives it away by ducking his head, chin pressed to his collarbone. “You’re just hungry,” he says dismissively.

Eddie gives him a stern look, all dad, and Buck has to grip the edges of his seat to avoid squirming. It’s hard not to believe Eddie, is the thing. He digs right back into his food, though his gaze doesn’t stray from Buck.

“I had a good teacher,” Buck acquiesces. “And I know how you like your meat.”

With a snort, Eddie finally lets his eyes drop, and Buck relaxes enough to poke at his own food, even bringing a bit of egg to his mouth to chew over.

He’d realized, early into his time at the 118, that he’d have to get used to eating in front of the others. It was something the Buck of that time had groaned at—it was so much easier to get away with not stomaching the tasteless mess that always just ended up making the ache in his stomach for blood even worse.

But then he’d had a meal at the firehouse, cooked by Bobby after Hen and Buck had found him passed out in his tiny, lifeless apartment. Depressing even to a vampire. He’d met eyes with Hen over the impressive spread they’d been greeted with when coming in for shift, and he’d felt a bloom of warmth that started in his belly and his hands, felt like the touch of Hen or Bobby or Chim on a call well done, arms wrapped around him and ready to hold on as long as he’d need.

It had been easy to eat with them after that. He enjoyed it, marvel of all marvels, though the food was tasteless as ever.

Chapter Text

Eddie considers Buck, with the strange angle their diagonal seating has given them. It’s a constant wonder to him, the way they’re falling so easily into something special, something that Eddie wants to cradle close to his heart and keep warm with the pumping of his blood.

He wishes Buck had sat next to him, but it would make it harder for Eddie to look at him, so he accepts the distance with a begrudging sort of necessity. They’re too far for Eddie to even kick at him, which is such a damn shame that Eddie is considering sawing his own table in half, though he’d never touch Chris’s spot.

It’s hard not to feel content, in this moment, though memories of the day before have tried to ruin Eddie’s good mood. It’s all a bit of a haze, the only standouts being Buck, Buck, and also Buck. Eddie is sure that, if anything, he was acting strange toward Buck. And he can let all the blame be taken by the hypothesized silver, can shove the inklings of an explanation forming in a strange little ball of light in his chest to the back of his mind to rest in the cobwebs and other similarly tucked away memories, but it feels nice to lounge in it, for the moment. He’s doing a lot of that, actually, with a belly full of good food and his vision filled with Buck.

There’s an element missing, of course, belied by the empty chair at the square table—Eddie misses Chris like a limb, and he knows the plan is for Pepa to drop him off in a short few hours, but he wants to enjoy this moment with his son. Wants to watch him talk to Buck, all the worry that had buzzed under Eddie’s skin dissipating the moment the two of them had met on that awful call, had talked about dinosaurs in that waiting room.

Buck silently pushes his barely touched plate toward Eddie, and though he hardly needs more, Eddie takes it and finishes the food. He’s noticed every small smile that Buck wears when Eddie eats his food or accepts his help, even as he tries to downplay himself. Eddie can work with that—displays over words, though the many he wants to say crowd up against the back of his teeth and pop against the bacon grease.

“So,” Eddie says. His plate is empty save for a few wayward crumbs and streaks of food, but it holds the memory of breakfast like a softened piece of clay grazed by the press of a hand. “You still in your girlfriend’s apartment?”

It’s one of those questions that’s been eating at him, one of the few that doesn’t directly pertain to the vampire thing. Buck answers most of his questions in that line easier than Eddie ever expects him to, but he doesn’t want to push too hard, though he thinks he might pop if he doesn’t find out more.

The use of girlfriend, with no qualifying ex, is both an olive branch and a prodding test—Buck can easily refute it, or he can take it and leave Eddie to stew in his displeasure with the whole situation, gleaned mostly from their teammates gossip.

“I am,” Buck says a little testily. “It’s a good place.”

“Far from the station, isn’t it?”

“Close to dispatch though.” Buck shrugs. “I like being near Maddie.”

Eddie inclines his head. “Sure. But don’t you want a place of your own?”

Buck chews his lip, his teeth unsharpened. “I don’t think I’ve ever had that,” he admits. Eddie swallows, hard, and wishes again that they were closer. “Not m-my parents house, or any of the, ah, places I’ve stayed- since. The weeks Maddie stayed with me were the closest to anything.”

“You could stay here for a bit,” Eddie offers. It’s both an entirely new thought and one so central to the core of who Eddie is, and who Buck is becoming to him, that he’s not surprised by the offer when it tumbles from his lips, though he never could have predicted its existence. “Just to, I don’t know, motivate you to look? Change of scenery?” Whatever you want it to be, he adds to himself, and because Eddie is a stupid wolf with silly instincts, he means stay forever.

He hasn’t known Buck long enough to offer that. Knows so little about him, though he delights in every new fact earned. Feels, sometimes, that they still are just a touch away from each other. An invisible gap that Eddie doesn’t know how to cross, though he sees the tendril of his lie about being a bitten wolf deep in the chasm, spreading it wider.

Buck blinks at him, disbelief and unrealized delight warring in his gaze. “You- you know- You shouldn’t,” he stutters. “I mean- Eddie. I’m a vampire. I know you know what it means, to let me in. Invite me.”

“I do,” Eddie says easily. There’s not even a small part of him that fears it. Instead, his wolf has perked its ears and dug its claws in, thinking its want has been reciprocated. It wants every person Eddie loves under one roof, and here is someone who would take such a thought and cling to it with dangerous fervor. “I trust you, Buck.”

“You know,” Buck says, and Eddie leans forward until his sternum brushes the edge of the table. “Th-that’s why I’m still staying at Abby’s.”

Eddie can’t help the way his lip curls a little at that, his teeth not quite so harmless as Buck’s are pretending to be. To let someone like Buck in, and to leave him? She wouldn’t have known all of it, maybe, but even had Buck been human it would still rankle at every instinct Eddie has ever had about house and home.

“Did you love her?”

Buck’s face crumples in on itself, rebuilt in the visage of a statue. “I did. I wasn’t sure I could, before her.”

Bullshit, Eddie thinks. “You love Maddie?”

“I thought she was dead,” Buck says with a humorless chuckle. “I saw her die in front of me. And then I was bitten. I changed. And Maddie wasn’t around to s-see it. To know me.”

Eddie can’t imagine it. A few years thinking his sister was dead—it’s a miracle Buck is alive. That Buck is good.

“And then Abby?”

A laugh, tinged with a self-deprecating flavor Eddie is coming to expect from Buck. “Well. There were some- some other things. I’m sure Chimney has let you know all about Buck one-point-o.”

“I’ve heard of him,” Eddie says mildly. At first, it had been easy to connect the Buck he’d met with the image of a man chasing the pleasure of skin. And then it had been harder, when he’d seen the quieter side of Buck. And then easy again, when he saw the way Buck leaned into touch, his eagerness to talk and talk and talk, when he felt comfortable to do so? Eddie could see.

“And then I met Abby over the phone. We just clicked, I guess. She made me feel- present. She was so grounded, so good at her job and so dedicated to her mom and- she made me want to be better. And even leaving I- I get that. I’ve done that more times than I can count. I like to think that maybe- maybe I gave that to her. The want to take something for herself.”

Eddie feels something inside him crack. Maybe the last part of him that had held himself at a distance from Buck, maybe some bit of ice, long ago frozen over, melted away with a raucous shift of his psyche.

“You’re selfless, Buck,” Eddie says. He can see it now, clear as day. Buck sticking with a job that could get him killed, Buck letting Eddie have some part of him even after everything Eddie represented of the cruelty of the world toward him. And Eddie, who is not so selfless, wants to give himself back to Buck. “My wife left. I didn’t understand it. Still don’t, really. And not for a lack of trying–I try and I try but then I look at our son, and I don’t get it.”

He digs his nails into the grain of the table a little, wishes he was enough of a wolf for them to grow and leave marks.

“I think it’s different,” Buck says softly. “With- Chris. Do you, uh, do you still love her?”

Eddie, who has tried not to think about this very thing since he’d woken up alone in bed—hell, since he’d landed back in Texas with an honorary discharge—lets himself fall into it.

It’s not so straightforward, to say that him and Shan were married. They were, in the eyes of the church and god, but wolves don’t put much stock in that sort of thing outside of it being a precursor to the real event—the bond.

Mate was the technical term. Eddie thought it a little too crass, rough and wild around the edges in a way that he and Shannon couldn’t be, their relationship buttoned up nice and pretty after they found out she was pregnant. They had to be perfect. Had to tuck away all the things that made them fit, their jagged pieces that had slotted together imperfectly. And it tore them apart.

Eddie can’t feel her anymore. Isn’t sure when the bond faded enough that he can’t reach for her at all, if it was when he was shot the first or second or third time, or when he saw her in his parent’s kitchen, looking at him like she didn’t know what to do with him, and didn’t want to try.

“I always will,” Eddie tells Buck, because it’s the truth he’s built himself around. He loves Shannon, because he failed her. Because she gave him Chris.

Buck smiles, a brittle thing. “You still think I should move out?”

“Yes,” Eddie says with a groan, some of the tension of the moment breaking. He almost misses it—the pressure had massaged his words into something achingly truthful, and he’d seen it having the same effect on Buck. “Seriously man- crash on my couch for a few weeks. Move in with your sister.”

“She’d kill me.”

“It won’t stick,” Eddie says, breathing out a surprised little huff of air at his own words.

“Eddie!” Buck laughs, jostling the table. It sets off a clinking of noise, forks against plates against wood, and Eddie can’t help but join in.

They wash the dishes the same way they do at the station, when one of them gets the task–Buck with his hands in the hot water, and Eddie drying.

“It doesn’t hurt?” Eddie had asked once, when even the remnants of the heat had been just a touch away from too much against his skin.

“What?” Buck had asked, losing himself in the task the way Eddie had often caught him doing. He wished Buck would talk through it, let Eddie in to his internal world. He feels bad interrupting him, but the water is hot. Buck’s hands aren’t even red.

“The water,” Eddie explained, waving a hand close to the spout and feeling the heat pouring off it. “You’ve got lava coming out of this thing, man.”

“Oh,” Buck had said, frowning a little and twisting the handle. “It doesn’t hurt. Cold doesn’t either.”

Eddie had searched his expression and the set of his shoulders for any signs of discomfort, but found nothing beyond a curious tilt to his head. “What do you think it is about fire?” he’d asked, because he’d seen an opportunity.

And glory of all glory, Buck had filled the rest of the time sorting through the substantial pile in the sink—Bobby had made a very involved lunch—talking about his theories as to why fire alone could hurt a vampire.

Eddie’s blood had run cold when Hen had caught them, but she’d brushed it off with a fond smile and a tease that Buck should try writing a book.

Buck talks now of everything and nothing, train of thought more of a boulder tumbling down a hill than a beast confined to tracks. Eddie settles into it, checks the clock on the microwave too often, counting down the minutes until they’ll hear the squeak of Pepa’s brakes—Eddie’s tried to fix them, he swears—and the clack of Chris’s crutches.

He pulls Buck into helping him the with laundry when the dishes are done, not feeling the least bit guilty for using his clear, and stupid, feeling of needing to make up for spending the night against him to make Buck stick around longer.

Understanding Buck always comes in steps. He’ll think he’s got him figured out, and then his foot will find another ledge, and down he’ll go.

At first, when Buck had brushed off every offer of Eddie’s to return to his house after their only dinner together, he’d bounced between him being disinterested or weary. Eddie would start a shift certain that Buck had been bored, eating food that didn’t appeal to him and watching a movie to the taste of Eddie’s son, and end it worried that Buck still thought Eddie might hurt him.

He thinks he’s really getting it now. Buck is worried about overstaying, about inconveniencing. He peels the sheets and blankets from the couch when Eddie so much as breathes the word laundry, follows Eddie like a loyal dog to the laundry room with his arms full.

“Do the floors seem dirty?” Eddie asks, like he’s hosting a dinner party and not simply unable to sit still at the thought of seeing his son again.

“No, but you vacuum and I’ll sweep,” Buck says, running off for the broom—or, the direction he must assume the broom is in—before Eddie can protest the torture of the vacuum. So loud.

He moves as quickly as he can to get it over with, some of his energy dulled with the assault on his ears. With little care taken to shoving the damn thing back into a closet, he collapses down on the couch, listening to the gentle sounds of the washing machine to reorient himself.

The couch smells like Buck. Even with the coverings removed, some of him has sunk into the fabric. Eddie decides, with little dilemma, that he likes it. Him and Chris and Buck, all woven together in the threads of the couch.

“Scooch,” Buck says, appearing from the kitchen. He’s got a glass of water in his hand, ice procured from some unknown corner of Eddie’s freezer. He passes it over, leaving his own hands empty, and settles on the couch. It’s like every time they’ve done the same at the firehouse, Eddie thinks as he sips at the water, dismayed at how much more enjoyable it is chilled.

“You taking a liking to this?” Eddie asks, patting at the cushions and waggling his eyebrows. Buck rolls his eyes at him, though Eddie wouldn’t miss the way he really has settled into it.

“Not even a little bit,” Buck lies. Eddie doesn’t need to be able to smell it on him to pick up on it, so he grabs for a pillow and then swats Buck with the little square of one he finds, going for the head to show him he means business.

Buck hardly fights back, just shields his face with raised arms, and Eddie gives up with a huff. It’s a tactic he’d know well from having two younger sisters—make the fight no fun by not giving anything in retaliation.

“You don’t know how good you’ve got it,” Buck says, a wistful sigh parting his lips. Eddie has, frankly, no idea what he’s talking about. The couch? “Like,” Buck continues, and now he’s gesturing at Eddie. “You work out. And it does something.”

It clicks. Eddie looks over Buck, the width of his arms that doesn’t match up with the strength he displays on calls or how often he’s in the station gym. Hard to build up muscle mass if your body is technically dead, Eddie realizes with a sinking feeling.

But Buck hardly seems to be in a bad mood. He flexes, and it’s not unimpressive. “You know, you knowing about all this- supernatural shit. It’s going to suck.”

“Why?” Eddie props a leg up on the coffee table, takes another drink of water. Damn, the cold is nice.

“Because you’re the only one I can really complain to,” he says with a lopsided smile. “I mean- Maddie’s been through all this awful shit. I can’t say, hey Mads, know it sucks that you we in that awful, awful place for a while with that fucking douchebag, but can I whine about my physique? Takes all the fun out of it.”

“Lay it on me,” Eddie says with a snort, to disguise the want that rises in his throat. “Seriously. You can tell me anything.”

Buck glances sidelong at him, considering. “What makes you so curious? I mean, I can’t say I’m not the same. But I’ve come to expect it from myself.”

“It’s like-” Eddie starts, pausing to mull over his words. Buck is a puzzle. Eddie doesn’t want to fix him, doesn’t need to see all the pieces put into place. He just wants to find them out. See the whole field. “Can’t say,” he settles on. “Just- Happens. I’ve heard all these things about vampires,” he winces. Buck doesn’t know he was raised in a pack. “From the wolves I’ve met, you know? They’ve all got things to say.”

“None of them positive,” Buck says drily.

“Right,” Eddie shifts, more aware than ever of the discomfort that’s been growing in him about some of the things worn into his head about the world. “And I guess, it didn’t make sense. You can’t say all wolves are the same. How could it be true for vampires?”

“You don’t think so?”

“No.” Eddie means it. “You and- and Maddie’s guy. Haven’t met him, but you’d say you’re nothing alike, right?”

Buck shivers, lip curling. “No,” he says emphatically. “I’m nothing like him.”

“Exactly. So I guess, when I ask about- about this stuff. It’s mostly because I want to know you.”

“Oh,” Buck says, a pleased little smile working its way onto his face. “That’s- cool.”

Eddie snorts again and raises the glass of water in a mocking cheers. “So? Any more complains? I’m all ears.”

He can see the joke form on Buck’s lips at that, but they’re interrupted by the squeal of brakes.

Eddie is at the door, scrabbling for the handle, before he even really registers that he’s moving. He gets it open with a healthy bit of grunting, not willing to divert his focus from the sound of voices and opening doors long enough to focus on the finer details of the thing.

Outside, the air is warmer than it’d been in the house, and Eddie feels the sun warming him outside in as he bounds across the driveway to pull his son into his arms.

Buck stays until the sun goes down. Eddie’s noticed that he tries to avoid it when they’re off shift, and he’s pretty sure it’s the excuse Buck’s given himself to stick around for so long. Eddie both curses and grudgingly accepts it, wishing for longer summer days when he sees Buck gearing up to announce his departure when the dishes from the dinner he’d made with Chris’s enthusiastic help are washed and put away, one of those cycles of life that never really ends.

“Well,” he starts, eyes darting to the door. “I’d better-”

“Have you ever played Mario Kart?” Chris asks, before Eddie can jump in with his own distraction.

Buck makes a face like he’s offended. “Uh, yeah. I’m great at Mario Kart. All of them.”

“Dad sucks,” Chris says, and Eddie loves his son so much, even when he’s being insulted. “He always forgets to use his items.” It’s said with a forlorn shake of his head, like his dad’s shortcomings are something of grave consequence.

“Well,” Buck says, glancing to Eddie before putting his full attention on Chris. “Guess someone needs to give you a real challenge, huh?”

Buck ends up between Eddie and Chris on the couch, unable to leave without disentangling himself from them. It also makes him more vulnerable to cheating elbows to the side, which both Eddie and his wonderful, cunning son take advantage of, because Buck is really damn good at the game.

“I think he’s cheating,” Eddie says to Chris, leaning back so they can meet eyes over Buck’s back. “Check his controller.”

Chris giggles, reaching for the plastic Buck is holding loosely.

With a gasp, Buck leans away from him and right into Eddie. Helpfully, Eddie uses his shoulder pressed to Buck’s spine to send him back toward Chris, and the controller is successfully yanked from his hands and thoroughly inspected.

“See anything, mijo?” Eddie asks. Buck is pretending to fight against the arm Eddie has flung over his chest to keep him from snatching the controller back, flailing in slow motion.

“No,” Chris pouts. “Maybe he should play with only one hand.”

Buck wins again. He somehow uses his knee to do it, his self-satisfied smile only growing. Eddie notices the way he keeps an eye on Chris’s expression, probably watching for the same switch Eddie is from determination to figure out how Buck is doing it to genuine frustration. But the kid is happy as a clam, probably helped by his solidly beating Eddie every race.

And then it really is late, and Eddie is gathering a wriggling Christopher into his arms. He catches the yawns his kid keeps hiding, and whisks him away to brush his teeth and put on pajamas.

While Chris is in the bathroom, humming to himself the way Eddie has taught him to make sure he brushes long enough, Eddie considers Buck.

“Glad you stayed,” he says. It’s meant to be a question, really, but it comes out as Eddie’s feelings on the whole thing.

Buck gives him a lopsided little grin. “Kind of feels like I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“Well, your time isn’t up yet. Chris’ll riot if you don’t give him a goodnight.”

With a put-upon long-suffering sigh, Buck stands from where he’s sunk into the couch, stretches like he’s preparing for a rescue. “Any tips?”

“You’ll be a natural,” Eddie says softly. “Just don’t mention dinosaurs, or bugs. He’s in a bug phase now.”

“Scared?”

“Fascinated,” Eddie huffs. “Tried to bring in a huge praying mantis.” He shivers.

Buck lets out a delighted laugh. “Eddie- were you scared?”

“I can handle spiders!” Eddie defends, holding his hands up. “But that thing was huge.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You better not,” Eddie grumbles.

They both look over when the bathroom door swings open and a significantly sleepier looking Chris steps out.

“Ready bud?” Eddie calls, shooting Buck a look to make sure he follows, and heading for Chris’s room.

Buck had seen it the first time he’d come over, a long few hours of Chris explaining every little knickknack he’d accumulated in his relatively short life. Buck had cooed over each, asked all the right question, and Eddie had rotated between sitting in the room and watching until he was kicked out, and standing with his arms crossed to watch a baseball game on the television.

He worries, momentarily, that the excitement of Buck being here will keep Chris from wanting to sleep, but he’s quickly proved wrong as he crawls right under the covers and curls his head into a pillow.

“Long day mijo?” Eddie asks, running a gentle hand through his hair. Chris gives him a sleepy nod, and a yawn that shows off the sharp teeth he got from his dad. “Well don’t let us keep you up.”

“Will Buck be here t’morrow?” he asks, tilting his head to peek around Eddie to where Buck is hovering in the doorway.

Eddie follows his gaze, and catches Buck’s eye. He doesn’t try to sway him in any way—he’s sure that Buck is deliberating, and he wants him to choose what he’ll be happiest with, even as every part of Eddie aches to not let him go.

“I can bring lunch over?” Buck offers.

That seems to appease Chris, and his blink goes slow and long. “Okay,” he says sleepily. “Goodnight Buck.”

“Night Christopher,” Buck says, and he’s still too far away, but Eddie isn’t about to pull him in. He leans down to press a kiss to Chris’s forehead, and listens for a few minutes until his breaths even out.

Buck is still in the doorway when he turns, which Eddie had known—he can hear his breathing, nearly as content as Chris’s—but he still smiles when he sees him, like it’d been a pleasant surprise.

“Can I offer you a beer?” Eddie tries. He reads the reticence on Buck’s face before he sees the slow shake of his head, but he just shrugs and says; “Worth a shot.”

“I will bring lunch tomorrow,” Buck says. “You can uh, tell me where to stop? If you guys have a place you like?”

“That sounds great, Buck,” Eddie tells him warmly. He wants to offer many things—an invite to spend another night, a lunch out of the house. But small steps are still steps. “Thank you.”

“Thank you.” Buck is backing up towards the front door, eyes flitting over the place as if to check if he’s forgotten anything. He has—his clothes are in the laundry bin, Eddie’s on him—but Eddie doesn’t say anything. No harm no foul; Buck’ll be back soon enough. “Seriously Eddie. I- It means a lot.”

Eddie looks at him. The slight hunch of his shoulders, the pause in his movement toward the door. He makes a rash decision, and steps forward to pull Buck into a hug.

Buck melts into it, exactly as Eddie had known he would. His skin is cold where it touches Eddie’s, a reprieve from the long-lasting heat of the day, but neither allows it to linger much more than a few seconds.

“I’ll text you an address,” Eddie promises as he walks Buck to the door. “And I’ll cover our portion when you bring lunch.”

“Sure you will,” Buck says with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “See you then.”

And he’s gone, out the door. Maddie had dropped his Jeep off sometime that afternoon, getting a ride from Chimney back, to Buck’s loud consternation, and Eddie listens until it fades into the swell of traffic.

His house feels a little empty without Buck, and he goes to check in on Chris before getting ready for bed himself.

Characteristic of the unending energy of his age, Chris is up before Eddie.

He always makes quite the racket, trying to be quiet, but Eddie loves being woken by the sounds of his son moving through the house.

“Is there someone breaking in?” Eddie asks loudly when he steps out into the hall, rubbing his eyes to press some awareness into his head.

Chris looks at him with bright eyes. “Me!” he says, baring his teeth at Eddie. “I’m turning into a vel-o-ci-rap-tor.”

Eddie gasps, rushing forward to gather Chris’s head into his hands and tilt it from side to side, as if examining him. “You are,” he says, pulling at his ear. “You must be the first ever weredinosaur.”

Chris snaps his teeth and giggles, waving clawed hands at Eddie. “I’m going to eat you. And then when Buck comes to bring lunch I’ll get him too!”

“I’ll stop you,” Eddie says dramatically. He ruthlessly tickles his dinosaur son, taking a few hard kicks to his stomach that nearly knock the wind out of him.

When they’re both tired out, Eddie heads to the kitchen for cereal. It’s a treat only for weekends, he always says. Of course, he ends up caving on pretty much any morning that Chris wakes up grumpy, but it never fails to make his kid smile.

When he sets the bowl in front of Chris, he’s looking at a stubborn crayon mark on the table like it’s got the answers to the universe in it.

“Dad?” he asks, tilting his head. “Is Buck a wolf?”

Eddie cringes a little internally.

He hadn’t exactly had a chance to explain Buck to Chris, before the two of them met. His son is smart, and knows better than to mention being a wolf to anyone—even those he thinks might be like him. And Chris doesn’t mind yet, growing up far from the environment Eddie had, that he’s surrounded by humans, save for Carla.

“He’s not,” he says slowly. “You remember I told you there are other people like us, that aren’t wolves?”

He’d been careful to avoid the distance that his parents emphasized. Other supernatural creatures were always still people, when he talked to Chris, just like humans were.

“Yes,” Chris says with a nod. “So Buck is like that?”

“He’s something called a vampire,” Eddie explains. “So there’s no wolf inside of him.”

“But not like you?”

Eddie, with a burst of shame trained deep, deep into him, nods. “No wolf at all.”

Chris doesn’t have any more questions after that, more interested in getting cereal into his mouth.

Leaving Texas was the hardest decision Eddie ever made.

Chris had been safe there, in a pack as big and secure as his parents’. He would have grown up learning how to be a wolf the right way, just like Eddie had.

And like Eddie, there was the chance he’d never get his shift. That the wolf that lived within every person born to at least one werewolf would never take on a physical form. It was hardly rare—twenty percent of born wolves never shifted. Both Eddie’s abuela and aunt couldn’t shift. They were still welcomed as members of the pack, but Eddie was more than aware of the pressure that came with it—because he had never shifted.

It was said that more powerful wolves were late bloomers. Eddie and his parents had held onto that hope up until the day of his eighteenth—a birthday he never really got to celebrate, because it marked him as a failure. A wolf who couldn’t shift would never lead a pack.

So when Shannon left, and Eddie felt himself crumbling under the disappointment and pity of the pack without her at his side, he’d taken his son to a place where it wouldn’t matter if he ever got his shift or not. His parents fought him, with words that hurt far more than teeth or claws ever could, and Eddie fought back tears until they'd crossed the border out of Texas.

The rest of the morning is spent in anticipation. Eddie does remember to send Buck the address, a place just a few miles off and, Eddie had double checked, on Buck’s route. Chris’s sandwich order is always weirdly complex, and Eddie makes him say it into his phone's microphone to send as a voice note rather than transcribe the whole thing.

When Buck shows up with it, he laughs as he tells them he’d played it out loud for the person who’d taken his order, and Eddie and Chris are quick to join him.

—

“Chimney smells weird,” Buck says when Eddie walks into the locker room.

There’s a woman from C-shift still in the locker room, and she laughs lightly like it’s a joke, despite the gravity of Buck’s tone. Buck, uncharacteristically, glares at her.

“Uh, what?” Eddie slides his locker open, the door blocking them from view. Buck waits until the other firefighter leaves, and then sort of- explodes.

“Something is off. And I keep thinking that- that maybe I’m just being paranoid and then I smell it again.”

“Okay,” Eddie says placatingly. “What do you think you’re picking up on?”

“A vampire,” Buck breathes. His voice trembles just the slightest bit, and before Eddie can think it over, he’s marching out of the locker room to find Chimney.

Normally, Eddie would be better at waiting, at thinking things over. But something about the fear in Buck’s voice makes waiting impossible—painful.

He finds Chimney by the ambulance with Bobby, which is unfortunate for Eddie’s reputation but—he gets as close as he can to Chimney, within a foot of him, and he breathes in.

“...Eddie?” Chimney looks him up and down, not backing away but leaning with the entire upper half of his body in the opposite direction of Eddie.

“Buck said you had nice cologne on,” Eddie says with a shrug. Bobby—Bobby—chokes on a laugh.

“Didn’t know Buck was paying such close attention.” Chimney sniffs at his arm. “And I’m also not wearing anything like that.”

Eddie, who hadn’t actually registered what it was he’d been smelling in his frenzy to get to it, breathes in again. It’s the coppery scent of blood, faint but noticeable, clinging to Chimney. Shit.

“Well, you know Buck.”

“I sure do,” Chimney mutters.

Eddie makes his escape, opening his mouth when he turns away to draw the scent over his tongue. It’s different from Buck’s, in a way he can’t quite pinpoint. Deeper, maybe. A penny left longer to be passed from hand to hand.

“You’re right,” Eddie says, nearly running headfirst into Buck at the threshold of the locker room. “It’s definitely a vampire.”

Buck swallows, leaning a shoulder against the glass wall. “And- you can smell Maddie on him too, right?”

Eddie thinks back to the only time he’d met Maddie, and then compares it to his recent Chimney encounter. “I can’t say for sure,” he says slowly. “But- I think so. You think they’re related?”

“I mean, I know she’s okay right now.” Buck frowns, lines creasing the edges of his mouth. “I called her as soon as I- you know.” He censors himself when someone walks past, and Eddie gives them a cheery wave that he hopes conveys nothing to see here. “And she’s at work. Just fine. She wouldn’t tell me if she saw Chim but- but I was trying to make sure she couldn’t tell I was nervous.”

“Okay,” Eddie says. “Okay, so, maybe Chimney knows. Or he has no idea, and was around a vampire without any awareness of what they were. But can you- can you tell me the worst case here?”

“The vampire that took Maddie. He couldn’t turn her because she tricked him into an agreement but- he still hurt her,” he pauses, looking at Eddie a little nervously. “He’s old, and he’s powerful. If he wanted to get to Maddie- he might go after Chimney first.”

“So we talk to Chim. Find out if he’s met anyone recently.”

“We shouldn’t,” Buck says quickly. “We can’t- we don’t know if he’s- if he’s compromised. This vampire, he can compel people.”

Eddie takes this information in slowly. Of course, he’s heard about vampires with compulsion abilities. But it had always felt far-fetched, even before Eddie had met Buck. It’s not to say that Buck is weak—he’s only been a vampire for what Eddie estimates to be a maximum of five years. He’s weak in sunlight, but doesn’t burn. He’s strong, but not incomprehensibly so.

“I can’t do that,” Buck says. He must be reading something from Eddie’s expression, though Eddie’s not sure he’s gotten it right. “And, shit, Eddie, you don’t have to get involved in this. You h-have Chris. Your family.”

“I’m helping,” Eddie says firmly.

“I’ll keep you safe then,” Buck meets his eyes with a steely gaze.

Something inside Eddie warms, and he holds a fist out to Buck, happy when he’s met with a solid bump of Buck’s in return.

And then Eddie snorts out a laugh. “You? I’ll be doing the safekeeping here, bud.”

Buck guffaws at him. “And tell me how much you know about-” footsteps pass them on the other side of the engine. “This specific thing. That we are working on.”

“More than you do, rookie,” Eddie goes for an English accent. He is so entirely certain that he falls short, especially when Buck starts laughing at him, but he doesn’t mind at all.

They make a plan throughout their shift. How to follow Chim without him knowing, what to look out for. Because Buck has, objectively, fewer obligations, he has more time to tail him. Planting a tracker on his car is shot down, and then brought up again, and Buck is ordering it before Eddie can argue again.

“Don’t do anything dangerous without me,” Eddie orders when they’re sitting on the roof, sometime between one and three in the morning. It’s pleasantly quiet outside, the city abnormally subdued, and Eddie is basking a little under the nearly full moon.

“Sure,” Buck lies. “Can I ask you something?”

Eddie lulls his head on his shoulder so he can look over at Buck rather than out across the skyline. His hair has curled in the humidity and the wear of a long shift, and it looks good. His eyes reflect the lights of the city, and a small glimmer of the moon.

“Do you have to, ah, shift? I mean, the full moon is in a few days, right? I- you worked the shift we had during it last time, but I thought maybe you like, hid in the bathroom for a minute or something.”

With a creak that feels like a reminder that he’s getting old, Eddie drops his head back so he’s looking right up at the sky. Ostensibly, he’s doing it to look at the velvety dark, the stars hidden by light pollution. In reality, he doesn’t want Buck to see his face when he lies.

“We don’t have to,” he says. Not a lie—no wolf needs to shift on the full moon. It feels good, releases tension, helps pack bonds. And it pulls. Calls for them to go in fur and howl from the cliffs. Eddie’s never been with the pack on the night of a full moon—it’s relegated to real wolves.

“Oh,” Buck says, sounding a little disappointed.

“It feels nice to, though,” he adds. The lie. What does Eddie know? Anecdotes, folklore. Immaterial, unsubstantiated, kept out of his unsharpened nails and dulled teeth.

Shift ends, as they always seem to do. Buck wants to follow Chim right from the station, but Eddie holds him back—it would blow their plan before it could even start.

“Wait until he goes home,” he repeats, the two of them clustered once more in the locker room. “And you’re taking my truck. Your Jeep stands out like a sore thumb.”

Buck’ll swap their vehicles after they both drive back to Eddie’s. When they arrive, Eddie squints at him—and then shakes his head. “You’ve got to shower,” he says, pointing toward his front door. “If you run into this guy and he smells wolf on you…?”

“He’ll recognize me no matter what,” Buck says grimly, but he obeys. He emerges from his quick shower smelling like Eddie’s bodywash, but not like a wolf, or a vampire who’s been fraternizing with one. “Clean?” he asks Eddie, a little biting with nerves.

Eddie makes a show of sniffing at him, and then nods. “If you see him, just watch,” he repeats, wanting to grab at some part of Buck to wear it in, but knowing that would ruin the whole purpose of the shower.

“On it, boss,” Buck says.

Eddie watches him go. From the line of his shoulders to his silhouette in the window of Eddie’s truck.

And then, because Eddie had hardly gotten a wink of sleep the night before, he falls asleep with his phone on his chest right there on the couch.

The plan drags on. They can never seem to catch Chimney with whatever vampire is leaving its scent all over him, but the scent doesn’t stop. If anything, it drapes itself more thoroughly over him, and both Buck and Eddie begin to slowly lose their minds.

The problem is their inconsistent coverage. Eddie is often looking after Chris, or doing one of the hundreds of tasks that seem to surprise him every day. Buck tries, he really does, but Chim seems to have a knack of losing him, without even knowing he’s doing it.

“Maybe I’ve got to learn the compulsion thing,” Buck says one evening at Eddie’s, when Chris is at a friend’s for the night. Chimney is with Maddie, and neither of them feels right haunting Buck’s sister’s driveway.

Eddie raises a brow at him.

“What? I could do it. Here, let me try on you.” He ushers Eddie to sit in the middle of the couch, a change in pace from his worn in spot to the side. Buck hasn’t stopped pacing since he walked through the door, so Eddie is hardly expecting it when he roots himself in front of Eddie.

“Maybe try opening your mind,” Buck says, planting his hands on his hips. “I need like- easy mode. To start.”

Eddie makes a show of getting comfy on the couch, leaning back and letting his arms rest at his sides. He’s surprised about how serious Buck’s face is—could he really…?

Buck closes his eyes, and draws in a deep breath. It rises in his chest, whistles in his nose. His hands fall from his hips to his head, where he massages at his temples. Powering up the vampire mind magic, surely. Eddie doesn’t laugh.

He actually does think that Buck might be able to do it—he’s smart, and he’s determined. He may not be a very old vampire, but there’s nothing to say that it only becomes available at a certain age, like he’s a video game character. Eddie isn’t sure if he should be wary of Buck succeeding—he imagines himself being forced to do Buck’s chores at work, and he’s glad Buck’s eyes are closed to miss the smile that Eddie can’t keep back.

“Stand up,” Buck says. His voice is flat, and Eddie startles a little because he hadn’t been expecting it. But he feels nothing at all by way of needing to follow.

Buck tries a few more times, walking around Eddie, waving his hands, keeping his eyes open. Nothing works.

“I might have an idea,” Eddie says when Buck starts trying to do a headstand. He can’t exactly imagine an ancient and powerful vampire getting their head on the ground to order people around.

But he does know what it feels like to hear the command of a pack alpha. It calls on what it can to make the words stick—respect, duty, fear—and it pulls. It doesn’t work without trust. A pack gives an alpha its power, and an alpha must use it well, or have it taken. Collar, leash.

Buck is looking at Eddie now, his hands relaxed. His trust is woven in the ease with which he exists in Eddie’s house, the way he lets his unnatural stillness take over with no attempt to hide it. He may as well have been standing in Eddie’s living room for a year, or a decade, the place built up around him.

“You know I trust you, right?” Eddie asks of Buck. Recognition is a more complex beast than existence—Buck can live in his body and know with every fiber of it that he’d trust Eddie to be on the other end of his line, or help to protect his sister. Eddie can let his heart talk to Buck for hours and hours about the latest creature to catch his fancy. And none of it means that Buck could put it into words. Into an outward confidence, a sealed belief.

But the words seem to simply sink into Buck’s skin, easy as moonlight. “Of course.”

“Then when you tell me to do something, act like it.” Eddie’s voice doesn’t falter in the face of Buck’s certainty—he’s bolstered by it. Energized, alive with it.

And he can see that Buck is about to try it. That maybe, it’s going to work.

Buck’s phone rings, and the moment breaks.

He answers quickly, as he has been since their little mission started. Eddie’s watched him huff and hang up on spam callers more times than he can count.

This is not one of those calls.

“Chim?” Buck says. Eddie stands. “I c-can’t hear you.”

“Maddie,” his weak voice croaks through the speaker. Eddie’s stomach drops, and he reaches for Buck when his hands start to tremble around the phone. “He took… Maddie.”

The call goes dead. Buck doesn’t drop the phone, but spiderweb cracks form on the screen from where his fingers press the metal frame, and Eddie doesn’t know what to do.

Buck will want to go. Last they’d heard—and it had been quite the game to pry the information out of either of them—Maddie and Chim were going to spend an evening in at Maddie’s. And there were all the security measures, cameras Buck had double and then triple checked would work on a vampire.

“Eddie-”

“We’re going to call Athena,” Eddie says. He puts every bit of conviction he has into it, every part of him that wants to see Buck make it through this with everyone he loves whole and safe. “Tell her what we know.”

Buck jerks, a response that looks painful and involuntary. Eddie drops his hand onto Buck’s shoulder, enough weight to bring Buck down to earth. “She could already be dead,” Buck whispers.

“We can’t think like that Buck.”

“I can’t think of anything else.”

“I’m going to call,” Eddie says. “I need you to think of where he might have taken Maddie, if they don’t find anything at her place. Everything you know about this guy, okay? And think- think of how you’ll tell Athena.”

It goes unspoken that they can’t explain the vampire element. It would take up precious time, complicate things. It also puts Athena in danger, to not have critical information, but she’s smart and strong, and they have no other choice.

The call connects, Eddie eternally grateful that they’d all been made to take Athena’s number just in case. He explains, keeping his words as slow as his racing mind can, that they’ve received a call from Chimney, and that Maddie might be in danger. He glances at Buck, holds his gaze when he explains what he knows of Maddie and Doug. An abusive ex. Dangerous. Determined.

Athena is good at keeping calm. It would be easier to hand the phone off when she asks for Maddie’s address, but he pauses for Buck to tell him and then repeats it to Athena. Buck is so still. Eddie wants to see him blink, to shift on his feet, but nothing comes. Only his mouth moves when prompted.

“I’m on my way there now,” Athena reports. “I want you to keep an eye on Buck, and stay where you are.”

Movement, finally. Buck flinches.

“I don’t know if that’s going to be possible.”

Athena sighs. Eddie can hear faint sounds of her vehicle moving, and he tries to take some comfort from it.

But it’s impossible to shake the knowledge that he could help.

He’s been smelling this vampire on Chimney for weeks, now. If he went to Maddie’s, he could follow the trail if they went on foot. And he knows how to kill a vampire, if they find him.

“I’ll call you back,” Athena says, and there’s a squeal of brakes. Eddie wonders if they’ve gotten a miracle, if she’d been close enough to reach them in time.

Again, a line goes dead. Buck’s eyes flick to the door. Eddie is between it and him, but rather than step aside or continue to block it, he meets Buck with a steely gaze and a “Let’s go.”

The drive passes in a blur of lights, clouded over by desperation. In the passenger seat, Buck curls his fists into the fabric of his pants, so hard he must be damaging them. Eddie tries to keep his eyes on the road, but it’s like his head is on a timer, turning to Buck every few moments to make sure he’s still present, still as alive as he can be.

They can see the red and blue lights of squad cars from quite a distance away. Eddie grips the wheel harder, presses his foot to the gas, and jolts both of them when he switches to the brakes, a few heads turning their way.

Athena comes to intercept them, both hands held up in a practiced move. Outside of the truck, Eddie can see that among the flashing lights is an ambulance.

“We found Chimney,” Athena says. Buck’s eyes snap to the ambulance, like he’ll be able to see straight through it. “He’s in rough shape, but he’ll live.”

The pause in her words is filled with the crunch of gravel and a swirl of other voices. Eddie searches through them, listens for Maddie, or blood, or dead. He can’t pick anything out, and it makes him grit his teeth in frustration.

“We didn’t find Maddie,” Athena continues. She’s looking right at Buck. “There’s no sign of a struggle. But with what you’ve given us, we’re going to work off the assumption that she was taken.”

“Okay,” Eddie says, when Buck falls into his stillness again. “Thank you. Can we ride with Chim to the hospital?”

“Better to meet him there,” Athena says with a shake of her head. “And I will tell you if we find anything. I’ve already informed your captain, give him my best.”

She turns away from them, a clear dismissal. It’s harsh, but Eddie understands. Even as his instincts scream at him to search for a scent, he heads back to the truck. Buck stays rooted in place.

“We won’t find anything they’ll have missed,” Eddie says. “Too many new scents around.”

“I know,” Buck says without moving. “But I can’t- Eddie. I can’t leave. It feels like I’m giving up on her.”

“You’re not,” Eddie says fiercely. “Look, Buck. We’ll go to the hospital. If they don’t find anything- We tell Bobby everything. Everything. I’ll- I’ll call my pack. A dangerous vampire will get their attention, especially if he’s left the city limits.”

It would be throwing away the tentative freedom Eddie’s clawed out for his life, but he’d do it. Buck has already been through the pain of losing his sister once.

Buck, finally, looks at him. “Your pack?” he asks, eyebrows furrowed.

Eddie’s stomach drops again, like he’s on the worst rollercoaster of all time. And the lie comes easy, in the absence of bravery. “Some packs take in bitten wolves. We’ve got to go.” The ambulance moves, inching past them and then picking up speed when it hits a wider stretch of road. The lights are a beacon, calling them away.

On the drive, Eddie finally hears the story of how Buck was turned.

He tells it with such a rawness to his voice that Eddie would almost believe it happened yesterday. There’s nothing detached about it—he feels the way every moment must have hurt Buck, cut him to the core until everything he was fell away, and in its place rose the vampire.

Doug had courted Maddie. He was charming, smart. A way to escape their parents, who were always distant, and create her own path. Buck got the worse end of it, Eddie realizes, though Buck said nothing of the sort.

But Buck had known that something was wrong. Maddie hid things from him. Looked tired and scared. Buck asked her to leave with him, and she promised she would.

It breaks Eddie’s heart to realize that Buck blames himself, when his voice goes soft and breakable. “I was so stupid,” he grits out. “Thinking he wouldn’t know.”

They met late in the night. Safer, had Doug been sleeping. But when Maddie and Buck ended their embrace, when they stood apart to talk and to talk and to talk so they could run together, the world had fallen apart.

Buck says that it was a mess. So terrifying that the edges of his vision had gone white, and his body stiff, when a hand grabbed his neck. But he’d seen just enough to realize that Maddie, too, was under attack. Already attacked. So, so, still where she lie.

“I know she was dead,” Buck says. “Maybe s-something brought her back. A trick of Doug’s. But I know with everything in me, that in that moment, she was dead.”

Buck’s attacker had been a vampire. He’d claimed to be an enemy of Doug’s, looking to steal his prey. And wasn’t Buck so strong, so angry? Did he want to hurt Doug? But he couldn’t do it like this, so mortal, so vulnerable.

“I took the bite,” Buck admits. A confession for wooden pews and smoky corners, given in the rumbling interior of Eddie’s truck like it holds the same gravity. “I drank his blood, when he offered. It was- it was fear. And anger. I didn’t want to die. I wanted him dead.”

But Buck’s sire hadn’t let him go after Doug. Had said he needed to get stronger.

“I tried to leave him,” Buck says. They’re in the hospital lot now. “But he’d always follow. He could find me anywhere. I-it’s something to do with him turning me.”

“I’m so sorry, Buck,” Eddie says, the first time he’s really broken his silence. He wants, more than anything, to comfort Buck. “You ran from him for five years?”

It’s Eddie’s closest estimation. Every timeline Buck gives is hazy at best, and he can only estimate off of the age difference between Buck and Maddie, her mortality and his deference to her as the clear younger brother.

“No, Eddie.” Buck closes his eyes. Drops his head against the headrest. “Three hundred years.”

“How-” Eddie bites off the end of the question, the words bitter on his tongue. “Maddie is mortal?”

“Doug kept her alive,” Buck says bitterly. "There’s a lot of things the older vampires can do. It’s less about p-power. They don’t care. Nothing matters to them. They feel like they’re above anyone who can die, that what they do is justified.”

Eddie can’t help but wonder how old Doug is, if Buck holds this much fear for him.

“I d-don’t know what he’s going to do to her.” Buck is staring out the window, red and blue lights flashing across his face. “If he can turn her now, because she ran away. If he’ll just k-kill her. Or worse.”

“We’ll find him,” Eddie says. He means it. He’s meant every word, every reassurance. There’s a roughness to it now, a need to puzzle over how he feels about Buck’s lie, and the truth of Buck’s existence. But he knows, before anything else, that he cares deeply for him. “And we’ll find Maddie.”

They’re not meant to make promises, on the job. Eddie figures he can make an exception just this once.

There’s no information available on Chim yet when they finally make it into the hospital. Bobby and Hen are already there, and both of them quickly turn on Buck and Eddie for the full story. Eddie takes point in explaining again, and he pats Buck on the back when Hen and then Bobby pull him in for long hugs.

“You’re so cold,” Hen says with a frown, brushing a hand over Buck’s cheek. “I’ll see if I can get you a blanket.”

Buck falls apart in Bobby’s arms. Eddie has to look away.

Hen returns with a thin hospital blanket, clearly not very happy about it, but the way Buck wraps it tightly around his shoulders seems to placate her.

“Eddie.” She looks him over, searching. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m alright,” Eddie says softly. “Just want to make sure Buck’s okay. I can’t even imagine what he’s feeling.”

Hen shakes her head sadly, patting Eddie’s shoulder before taking the seat on the other side of Buck from the one Bobby has claimed. And Eddie, the only one left standing, feels apart from it all.

It’s irrational. Stupid, to be worried about something so trivial in a time like this.

But Eddie’s wolf wants to comfort or be comforted in times of crisis. Feels like a failure, when doing neither.

He paces. Bounces between asking every nurse that passes through the waiting room for updates, and hovering a few feet from the trio of his team. Sometimes, his phone will buzz, and it’ll feel like his heart has stopped until he can look at it. But there’s nothing from Athena, and everything else sort of fades away, not important enough to be stored in Eddie’s memory when it’s in panic mode.

“Eddie,” Bobby says. Eddie runs into him, because he’s half out of his mind and Bobby has stepped right out in front of him. He’s steadied by Bobby’s hands on his shoulders. He expects another you okay? But Bobby just looks at him.

“I’m making things worse, huh?” He can feel it, now that he’s paused. The energy his pacing has stirred up in the room, setting everyone around him on edge. He slumps, tension leaving his body like his strings have been cut.

“Sit,” Bobby instructs. Eddie is ushered over, dropped into the seat Bobby had left next to Buck.

Eddie blinks, and he’s not sure how much time passes. Bobby talks to the nurses, far more calmly than Eddie had been able to. Buck’s cold arm presses to Eddie’s overheated skin.

“Mr. Han’s family?” a new nurse says. All eyes are immediately on him, but he’s steady under the pressure. “He’s stable. Lost a lot of blood, but no serious injuries. He can take two visitors.”

Bobby sends Hen and Buck in.

“Tell me,” he says to Eddie. With Buck out of his sight, some of the calmness Eddie had been able to gather is draining away. What if he gets bad news in there? Hen will help him, of course, but Eddie should- “You’re worried about Buck, right?”

Eddie nods, because of course he is. He worries, deeply, for Maddie, too, but something about Buck’s pain is twisting at his insides. It reminds him, absurdly, of how he’d feel during a fight with Shannon.

“Is there something I should know about?” Bobby presses.

“No.” Eddie is on the defensive before he even really gets what Bobby’s asking. Has he caught on to Buck being a vampire? Does he know about Eddie? But then it clicks, and Eddie feels himself go red. “Nothing, cap. We are friends though. You got that one right.”

Bobby looks at him critically for a moment longer, and then nods, as if in approval. “I’m glad you have each other, then. I was worried that first week. Seemed like nothing could get you to work together.”

Eddie can’t help but laugh, weak and out of place in the waiting room. “Yeah, well. We both had some things to work through.”

Bobby pats him on the back, and Eddie lets a little more of the tension fall from him. Things will work out—they have a way of doing that.

Buck and Hen come back, both of their eyes rimmed in red. “He’s not actually awake,” Hen tells them. “But it’s nice to see that he’s alive.”

And it’s true—Eddie looks over Chim’s sleeping form, and though he’s looking worse for wear, he’s also clearly alive. His chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm, aided by only a few machines, and as far as Eddie can tell, there are no scars on his neck to mark him for turning. It’s not an impossibility, of course, but Eddie just has to hope that Buck knows the signs better than he would.

They stay for a few minutes, listening to the beeps and watching Chim breathe. Eddie sees a few of the cracks in Bobby’s calm exterior, in that room, and it shakes him. He loves this team like family, prays for them like family. He’s pulled a rosary from his pocket, and he bows his head at Chimney’s side. Eddie doesn’t leave. He adds his own little prayer, directed out the window to the glow of the moon just barely visible behind a cloud. He doesn’t know if he believes it’ll do anything, but it means something to put it into the world.

The waiting room is suspiciously empty. Eddie searches for Buck, needing a bit of levity, but he’s missing. Panic rises in Eddie’s chest, climbs up his throat.

“Buck went with ‘Thena,” Hen reports, in a long-suffering voice. “Think she knew he was going to try something on his own if she didn’t.”

Bobby shakes his head and chuckles, though it’s tinged through with a similar worry to Eddie’s.

“She has a lead?” Eddie asks.

“Sounded like it.”

“That’s… Good.”

“Eddie, I’m sure you want to be home with your son.” Hen frowns. “I’ll send through any updates.”

Eddie should tell her that Carla had said it was fine, that she could stay with Chris for the night. Should sit with Bobby and Hen in the waiting room, but he feels like he might lose his mind if he’s stuck in it for one more minute.

“Thank you,” he says softly. He pulls her into a hug. “I’m sorry I didn’t think to call you as soon as we knew Chim was hurt.”

“Eddie,” Hen says, squeezing her arms around him. “It’s okay. Buck needs more people who care about him. I’m glad he has you.”

It’s almost exactly what Bobby had said.

Eddie thinks of Buck, alone for three hundred years, believing that his sister had been murdered in front of him. His parents certainly can’t be alive, though Eddie might be the smallest bit glad for that, from what he’d gleaned from Buck’s talk of them. No one to look out for him except for the vampire who had taken advantage of him in the worst moment of his life.

And Buck is probably reliving every moment of it right now. Eddie should have held him longer, pressed his care into Buck’s skin like a tattoo. But his hands don’t feel steady enough. His wolf wants for so much, and always fails to reach it. Eddie’s life is a precarious balance, built on running from home, and he’s not sure how to stop from going wrong.

The night passes in throes of misery. Eddie can’t sleep, can’t sit down for longer than a few minutes before he feels like he might crawl out of his skin. He keeps his phone in his hand until it gets dangerously low on charge, and then he spends an hour pacing tight circles around the counter where it charges.

He hears nothing. It’s for the best, probably—no updates mean Chim is stable, mean that Buck hasn’t been staked through the heart. Or they mean everything could have gone so terribly wrong that keeping Eddie in the loop is far from the list of priorities. He doesn’t know.

Somehow, somehow, he makes it through to morning. It’s a miracle that their seventy-two off has fallen so perfectly on such a terrible string of days.

His reward for seeing the sunlight is a bland bowl of oatmeal and some more staring at his phone, until the clock ticks past seven and he deems it acceptable to call Bobby.

“Anything?” he asks as soon as it goes through. It’s a good opener; establishes that Eddie himself is fine, just desperate.

“Chim is stable. Woke up for a few minutes, but he didn’t have any information,” Bobby reports.

“That’s great!” Eddie says. “He’s really okay?”

“Seems like it. They’re most worried about emotional trauma now.”

A beat of silence, Eddie feels sweat trickle down the back of his neck, and a deep ache of tiredness in his eyes. “And Buck and Athena? Maddie?”

“No word.”

Eddie sucks in a breath. “Nothing? At all?”

“A few reports from other officers that they’re still on the move, but neither of them have called. Buck’s phone goes straight to voicemail, probably dead.”

“Shit,” Eddie breathes. “Are they worried?”

“Not yet. PD won’t send anyone else in yet. They’re still hesitant to call it a kidnapping, despite how hard Athena pushed. It’s why she’s gone a little rogue, I’d guess.” There’s a healthy layer of fondness to Bobby’s voice, complement to the surety he clearly carries. “We might hear soon, with the sun up. Good reminder to call the people you love.”

Eddie mumbles out an agreement, head spinning. Can he track Buck’s phone? They hadn’t added each other on any apps, but maybe there’s a way. Or could he follow their trail? He knows Buck’s scent.

“No sleep last night?” Bobby cuts through his spiral. “You’re going to get some rest now, Eddie. Captain’s orders.”

Eddie thinks back to he and Buck’s ridiculous attempts at learning the compulsion, contrasts it to the power in Bobby’s voice now. He doesn’t need anything supernatural for Eddie to yawn.

“I’ll try,” he says. “But you’ll call me for updates?”

“Of course. Anything I hear, you’ll be next in line.”

“Thank you Bobby,” Eddie pauses, then; “For everything. Picking me for the team. For being so- good.”

Eddie passes out right on the couch, phone resting on his chest.

He dreams that he’s in a deep stretch of woods, the kind that are rare between his stretch of Texas and California. It’s a strange dream, the trees staccato. He’ll go to step around one, and find it in his path. It’s muggy, given away by the weight of the air, and then he’ll step in a patch of freezing snow.

There’s nothing to do but wander. Aimless, because thinking of purpose puts a tree in his path. They seem to stretch up and up and up as he pads onward, scraping nearer to the stars.

And he’s closer to the ground. The smells of the forest are rich, layered. He doesn’t have to focus to separate them—just breathing is enough, and the ecosystem unfolds like a map on his tongue.

His steps get smaller and faster. The ground is soft, every divot noticeable. Something howls, and his ears perk toward it, and then he runs like he’s never run before, four feet on the ground and head dipped low. He’s-

The ringing startles him awake. It shivers through his whole body, shakes off the last memories of the dream. Eddie chases them, but his feet are too clumsy, his senses blunted.

Bobby is calling him.

“Hello?”

“Eddie. Everyone is okay. They found Maddie. Athena and Buck are bringing her back.”

Eddie jumps to his feet and feels like he could float right up to the ceiling. “The same hospital Chim’s at?” he asks, already heading for the door in yesterday’s clothes.

Bobby confirms. Eddie doesn’t realize he’s kept him on the line until he’s halfway to the hospital.

“Shit- sorry Bobby,” Eddie cringes. He doesn’t wait for a reply, just pushes the button to end the call and then smacks himself over the head with a metaphorical newspaper until he’s back in the hospital parking lot.

He doesn’t see any familiar faces in the waiting room, but a quick text to Hen confirms she’ll be in soon. With exhaustion still wearing at him, Eddie collapses in an uncomfortable seat to begin the next phase of his waiting.

In the time it takes the missing members of their little team to return to them, Chimney wakes up again. Eddie is in the room when it happens, alone.

“Eddie?” Chimney croaks. Eddie quickly hands him some ice chips, though most are melted. After a few seconds Chim turns to look at him, and Eddie’s heart aches—there are deep bruises under his eyes, and he’s terribly pale. “Maddie?”

“She’s okay,” Eddie tells him, trying to imbue all the reassurance Bobby had given him into his words. “She’ll be here soon.”

“The hospital,” Chim says, and it takes Eddie a moment to realize it’s his normal dry humor. “Great.”

“Do you know who did it?” Eddie probably shouldn’t be asking but he’s burning.

Chim’s eyes go unfocused, looking somewhere over Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie worries he’s going to fall unconscious again.

“No,” he says eventually. “I feel like I should. It’s like there’s another hole in my head.”

The compulsion, then. Chim’s been made to forget.

“That’s okay,” Eddie soothes. He strains his ears for someone coming to join them, but the hospital is bustling at this time of day. He can’t pick out any familiar footsteps, and he’s not sure what he should ask Chim, if he should ask him anything at all. “You can rest,” he settles on.

“Gee, thank Diaz,” Chim says. “I was ready to get back to work.”

“Eddie, are you being made fun of by a man who’s just been stabbed?” comes Hen’s voice, and Eddie flushes.

It’s nice, though, to watch as Hen leans over the bed to wrap Chim in a hug. “Is it like a yearly quota for you?” she asks. “Gotta scare me to death to make sure our friendship stays strong?”

“You caught me.”

“Well, you’re more than welcome to stop, now.”

“We can pass the torch to Buck and Eddie,” Chim jokes, and suddenly there are two pairs of eyes on Eddie, who points to himself for a split second before dropping his hand, feeling silly. “Yeah, just you wait.”

“Keep the torch to yourselves, thanks,” Eddie says, laughing as he does—it’s doubly, maybe even triply funny—especially for the use of the word torch. His work partner, particularly susceptible to wood and fire, otherwise invulnerable. What are the chances Eddie is ever back in a hospital like this, looking at Buck laid out in a hospital bed?

Hen asks after Chim’s memories, but the answers are much the same as he’d been able to give Eddie—gaps in his memory, places where he really, really feels like he ought to know things. It brings the mood down, and Eddie feels the tension of the waiting creeping back in.

“We holding up alright in here?” Bobby asks upon his entrance. Hen and Eddie step aside so Bobby can greet an awake Chimney. “Great to see it. Athena just called. Said they’re ten minutes out.”

Eddie perks up, glancing at the doorway.

“Any word on how Maddie is?” Chim asks.

“Stable,” Bobby says. Eddie winces, the word a sore spot after its unceasing repetition. “She’s in an ambulance, obviously. Athena’s leading it in.”

“And Buck?” It’s Hen who asks, a familiar face of worry.

“Perfectly fine, if a little shaken,” Bobby says reassuringly. “Very little sleep, though.”

Eddie laughs under his breath at that. He hasn’t quite figured out if Buck needs sleep, but he sure seems to enjoy it. His closest guess is that he placebos himself with it, theoretically able to avoid it entirely but easily falling into a grumpier mindset if he thinks he isn’t getting enough.

“And he won’t get any more until he’s sure his sister is okay,” Hen sighs. “You think you can get us a shift off, Bobby?”

“Already did. Longer off for some of us,” Bobby says with an open look toward Chim.

“Maddie and I will hold the hospital down,” says Chim. “We’re qualified, you know.”

“What is it with you two?” Hen, always a shark for gossip, jumps in. Taken her out on a date yet, Han?”

“We’re just friends.” Chim tries to wave her off, but he can’t quite get his hand up, and the overall effect is a little pathetic. Eddie has the urge to wrap him tighter in his blankets. “Really! Why are you all looking at me like that?”

Before the teasing can spiral out of control, Bobby’s phone rings. Eddie thinks he might have nightmares about phone calls, when all this is over.

“Athena,” Bobby says warmly. “You here?” A pause. Eddie doesn’t bother to listen in, already moving toward the door. “We’ll meet you out there, then.”

And Eddie wouldn’t run in a hospital, because there are all sorts of things that could go wrong, but he certainly hustles. It earns him some glares, but they’re mixed with pitying looks, so he doesn’t really take it to heart. He’s not sure which looks would be most fitting—encouragement? Happiness?—but he’s not thinking much of anyone else when he emerges into the waiting room and sees Buck, unscathed, next to Athena.

Buck spots him and smiles, a surprisingly wild thing in the sterile room filled mostly with misery. It’s uninhibited, in a way Eddie hadn’t realized Buck had been held back from, infectious and particularly effective to stir Eddie’s wolf up.

It’s the excuse he’d give, if anyone asked why he pulls Buck into his arms right there, without even a word exchanged between them. He’s cold, of course, but Eddie can feel every breath he takes pressed into his own chest.

“Glad you didn’t get yourself killed,” Eddie says as he pulls away enough to see Buck’s face, one of his hands lingering on Buck’s shoulder. “'Woulda missed you.”

Buck’s eyes mist over, and Eddie has to pull him in close again.

Hen and Bobby are there, then, and suddenly Buck and Eddie are in the epicenter of a team hug. Eddie catches Athena rubbing a hand along Bobby’s back, and Eddie thinks again of how strong his captain is, to worry for two team members as he has.

None of them are too eager to splinter off, so they all end up back at Chimney’s bedside. It’s probably against hospital rules, but no one seems willing to kick any of them out.

They get the story from Buck and Athena, in bits and pieces. Chim gets a third more technical questioning from Athena, and the only thing that seems to keep him awake through the story is sheer force of will.

Eddie has to read into the retelling, obviously. When Athena says they suspect that Doug must have threatened Maddie with a weapon they haven’t uncovered yet, he knows it was his fangs and power that led her away. When Buck tells the chilling story of the scene he’d found in the snow, voice trembling, Eddie knows why Maddie had known to find a stick capable of driving straight through skin.

He stands near Buck during the entirety of the recounting, rubbing a hand over his shoulder blade almost unthinkingly. It’s a comfort for him as much as he hopes it is for Buck, to feel him alive at his side.

Eddie can only convince Buck to leave the hospital once they’re allowed in to see Maddie. Her worst ailment seems to be exhaustion, but like Buck, there’s a new, freer quality to her. Eddie steps out of the room to give them some time together, and nearly falls asleep leaning against the hospital wall.

He aches to text his sisters, call and hear their voices, but they still live with the pack. There’s a barrier between them, one Eddie isn’t sure that he’s allowed to break.

When Buck appears, Maddie asleep, Eddie tries to put on a good mood. He nudges Buck’s shoulder as they walk, but neither of them says a word. The cacophony of the hospital presses on Eddie’s ears and nose, inescapable now that he doesn’t have the distraction of the constant waiting. He’d grown used to the damper it had put over the world, waiting and waiting for the moment when things would become bright again. And now that they have, everything is quickly catching up to Eddie.

“I’ll drive,” Buck says when they reach the truck.

Eddie shakes his head, walks to the driver’s side. “You haven’t slept.”

“Don’t need to,” Buck says easily. “You look like shit.”

“It’s-” Eddie starts, cut off by a yawn so deep it aches in his jaw. “Not a far drive.”

“Right,” Buck says, and suddenly he’s between Eddie and the door, his hand extended like he’s going to take the keys, but he doesn’t touch Eddie.

With a critical eye, Eddie looks him over. His clothes are rumpled, and his hair is a mess, but his eyes are bright and lively, his posture sturdy. Eddie, in comparison, feels like he’s just got off a busy twenty-four.

“Fine,” Eddie grumbles and drops the keys into Buck’s waiting hand.

There’s a blank space in his memory, between the drive home and the next morning when Carla comes to drop Chris off. Eddie can maybe remember Buck stirring him awake with just his voice, opening doors and watching so he doesn’t stumble.

But the sight of his son—and a full nights sleep—have Eddie fully awake. He presses his nose to Chris’s neck, breathes him in. It settles some of the ache for his family that’s taken up residence between his ribs, reminds him why he’s here, and why he can’t go back.

“I’m sorry Chris,” he murmurs. “That you had to be away.”

Chris doesn’t say anything in repose, but he also doesn’t push Eddie away, so he takes it as a win. Carla had told him, in a text she’d been sure to send in a very gentle tone, that Chris was pretty upset about how long he’d been away from home, and from him. It had nearly broken Eddie down to tears, right there in the hospital, so there’s no world where he resists when Chris asks if they can have ice cream with their breakfast.

Bobby had managed to get the whole team two shifts off, and Eddie spends most of his time holed up at home with Chris. Buck had taken off, and Eddie doesn’t see much of him, though their text chain confirms that Buck is spending it with Maddie.

It’s hard for Eddie to find a balance with Chris, between apologizing and explaining what had happened. He doesn’t censor much of the story, tells him that there was a dangerous vampire involved, that Buck’s sister was very, very brave.

“But vampires aren’t all bad,” Chris says. “Buck isn’t bad.”

“No, mijo. Buck is good. No one is made to be bad,” Eddie says it softly, wishes he could have heard it himself.

The energy is strange, on shift. Chimney missing is an obvious hole, though Buck and Hen are both quick to call back to the last time he’d been out for a while, with the rebar through his skull. Eddie helps a little on the medic heavy calls, flexes the muscles in his brain that know how to bandage and triage.

“You’re good at this stuff, Eddie,” Hen says after a call, on the ride back to the station. “You ever think about being a paramedic?”

Buck perks his head up, looks at Eddie with an unreadable expression that says more than Eddie thinks he means for it to.

“I did think about it,” he admits. “And I wouldn’t say it’s off the table—but I’m happy where I am now.”

He nudges Buck’s knee with his own.

“A waste,” Hen says, though she winks at Eddie when Buck kicks at her. “Maybe I’ll just have to get Chim out of commission more.”

“You, Hen, are falling victim to recency bias,” Buck says. He pushes at a pair of invisible glasses, pretends to flip through a book. “Don’t let Eddie fool you. He wants to be in the action.”

“You’re falling to bias, generally,” Hen says back with a snort. “I’m not stealing your partner, Buckley.”

“Sure sounds like it,” Buck mutters.

“I wouldn’t let her,” Eddie placates. He imagines it, staying back from a fire while Buck runs in. It feels like he’s back to being alone in his house, waiting for a phone call.

A few days after Maddie and Chimney are out of the hospital, Bobby sends a group text inviting all of them over to a little park tucked into his neighborhood for an afternoon of food and conversation.

It’s an intimately familiar concept to Eddie. Werewolves love nothing more than to gather and exchange scents and pack gossip, especially for a larger pack like his parents’, scattered across a metropolitan area. Nearly every weekend of Eddie’s childhood had been spent in parks outfitted with grills and teeming with wolves.

He gets an explicit go-ahead from Bobby to bring Chris, in a separate text thread, before Eddie even asks.

More than aware of the hole in his talents when it comes to cooking, Eddie bribes Pepa with an offer to fix up her car’s brakes again in exchange for tamales. She laughs and tells him she would have cooked without the favor, but of course her Eddito would offer, and who would she be to refuse?

Buck spends the shift before the event trying to figure out how he can adapt his breakfast-food-only abilities into something acceptable for lunch.

“Mini pancakes?” he says to himself between reps, Eddie spotting him. “With- with sausage.”

“Too breakfast,” Eddie says, just to be a shit. “I’m sure Chris would appreciate it, though.”

Buck grunts, arms steady as he lifts the bar again, face free of sweat. Eddie is surprised to find that he doesn’t envy Buck’s existence, when it comes to workouts. He can’t imagine finishing a rep without the satisfaction of wiping the sweat from his forehead, or shaking off the burning in his muscles.

“Savory cinnamon rolls,” Buck proposes, shouting up to Eddie while he rappels down the side of a building.

They’d missed lunch, and Eddie’s stomach grumbles. “Eyes on the objective, Buckley!” he calls down.

“You don’t even have eggs,” Buck groans as he rifles through Eddie’s fridge, the night before the gathering. Eddie and Chris are both watching him from the dinner table, thoroughly amused.

“Eggs are always breakfast, Buck,” Chris says wisely.

“No,” Buck says without looking over, sifting through shelves like he might have missed something the first two times he looked. “Eggs are versatile. And I’m good at them.”

“You could just put your name on the tamales,” Eddie offers. “Might have to owe Pepa a favor though—fair's fair.”

“No,” Buck hisses. Chris giggles. “Not- not no to helping Pepa. I would do that without payment, unlike some people.” He taps a picture of Eddie on the fridge, then bends to open a cabinet Eddie had forgotten existed, slim and tucked into a corner. “Eddie, why are the baking sheets you told me you didn’t have in here?”

Eddie slaps his forehead, the memory of sticking them in there when he’d moved in suddenly clear as day. “I knew they didn’t get lost in the move.”

“I’m going to reorganize all this one day,” Buck grumbles. He says it like a threat, but Eddie warms at the idea—his kitchen unmistakably changed by Buck.

“In your dreams,” he says. “My kitchen, my way.”

“Dad,” Chris whispers. “Did you lie?”

Eddie places a hand over his mouth, and shakes his head quickly. Buck snorts, then swears as a pile of pans clatters out of a cupboard.

He smiles at Chris, when he’s sure Buck is looking away, warm and encouraging. He’s noticed that Chris’s senses are sharpening. He pinpoints birds when they walk in the park, and he’s been scenting out Eddie’s emotions—tentative, and not all accurate, but he’s getting there.

Eddie still hasn’t told Buck that he’s a born wolf. Hasn’t told him that Chris, too, is one, or that Eddie is increasingly beginning to suspect that unlike him, his son will be able to shift. He feels bad for it, when he thinks of Buck telling him the truth of his age, the nerves that had persisted for a few days when everything had calmed down. Eddie still hasn’t opened a conversation about it, just done his best to show Buck that it doesn’t change anything.

Maybe he should fix both of those things—make sure Buck knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that Eddie still trusts him. That he gets why Buck would lie, and offer his own truth.

But there hasn’t been a good moment for it yet. It’s almost as if they’re still in the shadow of that awful weekend, the party the final scene to end it all.

“How about this,” Eddie says, when Buck slides down the wall to sit dejectedly on the floor. “Just bring breakfast.”

“Eddie,” Buck groans.

“Buck, come on. It’s our fa- it’s the 118. They all know that you’ve been learning.”

“That’s the problem,” Buck says. He’s really playing up the dramatics tonight, driven by a mixture of real frustration and, if Eddie were to wager a guess, the joy of entertaining Eddie and Chris. “I can’t be predictable. I have to show- to show growth.”

“And lunch food is growth.”

“Obviously. It’s next sequentially.”

“You could so Le-breakfast,’ Chris chirps. “Like- like both. At the same time.”

Buck considers this, while Eddie tells Chris; “Great idea, mijo. I think they call it brunch.”

“Brunch,” Chris repeats with a sharp bob of his head. “Buck. Brunch.”

“Sandwiches,” Buck muses. He’s got the fridge open again. “Wraps.”

“Don’t think I’ve got those ingredients, bud.”

“It’s fine,” Buck says with a wave of his hand. “I can run to the store.”

Eddie glances at a clock. Seven thirty. “You have enough time?”

“Come on Eddie,” Buck huffs. “We’re not in small-town Texas anymore. There’re grocery stores open late.”

“El Paso is not small town Texas.” Eddie crosses his arms over his chest, nudges Chris for agreement. “Remember kid? Took us an hour to get to your appointments every time.”

“So we always got ice cream on the drive back,” Chris says. Eddie smiles, until Chris’s face falls. “Dad? Are we going to see everyone again?”

Eddie bites his lip, freezes. He doesn’t know.

“I- I’m sure we will,” he hedges.

“I miss them.” Chris’s lip pushes out, a telltale sign that he’s going to start crying. Eddie brushes a hand over his head, tries to calm him with touch, but he can imagine what Chris is feeling—what Chris is missing.

Eddie feels it too. Despite how close he’s gotten with the team, how uncannily similar they are to a pack, there’s a hole in his chest where pack bonds should be. He can feel Chris, warm and bright and his, but without many more bonds to surround it, it feels fragile. Vulnerable.

“I know mijo,” he says. “Tomorrow will be good, I promise. It’ll feel just like we’re back home.”

Chris sniffles, shaking his head.

“What do you say we go shopping with Buck,” Eddie blurts out. Buck, who had stayed quiet and still throughout the conversation like he was trying to disappear, perks up. “It’ll be special—you’ve never been to the store so late, right Chris?”

“Past bedtime?” Chris asks with wide eyes. “No,” he whispers. “Am I allowed?”

Eddie glances at Buck, catches his enthusiastic nod and smiles softly. “Well, tomorrow is a big day. Do you think you can get to sleep as soon as we’re back?”

“Yes,” Chris says seriously. “I can practice. Look!” He brings his hands, sandwiched together, to the side of his head, then closes his eyes tight.

Buck makes a snoring noise from his spot over by the wall, and Chris quickly copies him.

“Wow Buck,” Eddie says. “Are you seeing this?”

“I am.” Buck stands, circles the table. “I think he should come.”

Chris wiggles excitedly in his chair, but keeps up the act.

“I think you’re right,” Eddie says. He taps Chris’s cheek like he’s waking up a phone, and Chris’s eyes pop open. “You want to change? Or is this a good outfit for the store?”

Chris springs out of his chair, scrambling toward his room.

“What do you think he’s planning?” Buck asks fondly. “The Captain America costume?”

“Too obvious,” Eddie says. “You know, he’s like your age.”

“What?” Buck blinks. “Oh. No. I mean, I’m like twice as old as him! I actually don’t like thinking about that.”

“Is it, uh, weird? Modern stuff?”

Buck purses his lips. “Not really? You know, I think back to when I was a kid, before I even got, uhm, bit, and it’s sort of hazy? Like I’d swear I can remember watching TV, but like, obviously I didn’t.”

“Interesting,” Eddie says, genuine surprise coloring his tone. “Is that weird? Knowing your memories are all scrambled?’

“Don’t mention eggs right now Eddie, I’m sensitive,” Buck sniffs. “And it’s terrifying. That’s why I don’t think about it,” he says it with levity, but Eddie winces anyway. “Hey, no, don’t worry about it. I mean, I’m sure y-you feel the same about being bitten, right? How you changed?”

The moment feels potent. Like they’re on the edge of something—it’s what Eddie’s been waiting for.

“Listen Buck-” he starts. He’s cut off by Chris running and sliding back into the room, dressed head to toe in black.

“I’m ready!” he declares.

Eddie and Buck exchange a glance, and then giggle. “Are you going to rob them, Chris?” Buck asks, doing a big once over of his outfit. “Should I wear something more secretive?”

“No,” Chris huffs. “That’s illegal, Buck. This is a secret mission.”

“Right, right,” Buck says, going with it easily. “Do I need to change?”

Chris hums, returning Buck’s assessment. “You’re shirt is too bright,” he decides. “And they’ll know where you work. And your name!”

Buck is wearing one of their LAFD shirts, just a touch too tight around his shoulders like they all are. It’s a deep navy blue, so Eddie isn’t sure if Chris is onto anything there.

“I don’t have anything to switch to,” Buck says mournfully. “I guess I can be the distraction.”

“Dad has clothes,” Chris exclaims. “Lots of them are the right color.” He shoots a meaningful glance at Eddie, who chuckles and stands.

“You got it,” he says with a salute. “One black shirt for Buck, coming right up.”

He thinks he hears the beginning of a protest from Buck, but he doesn’t stick around to hear it. He might leave with more giddiness than his son had, and it’s another of those things he’ll happily blame on his wolf.

It’s not his fault his instincts are ramping up today. He wants his son to be happy, and he’s planning for what’s essentially a pack outing, and Buck is using his kitchen to cook because Abby’s makes him feel restricted, in the cooking sense. Whatever that means.

So, he wants to get his scent all over Buck. Whatever. Werewolf stuff. Embarrassing, had his son not given him the perfect opening.

Eddie digs out a newer sleep shirt, the collar not quite so deformed as the older shirts tend to get. It’s all black, and fits Eddie loosely. It should be perfect for Buck. Eddie rubs it between his hands a few times before heading back into the house, where Buck and Chris are scheming, pointing to an invisible map on the table for their not-a-heist heist.

“Here,” Eddie says, and throws the shirt at Buck. It lands over his head, flops down to cover his face, and Chris cackles with laughter. “Oops.”

“Dad!” Chris points at him, and then at a spot on the table that Eddie isn’t in the know enough to identify. “You take out the cameras.”

Eddie splutters. “What happened to us not stealing things?”

“We’re not,” Buck insists. He hasn’t taken the shirt off his head. “It’s just playing pretend. I said we could imagine that the store is evil.”

Chris nods sagely, then pulls the shirt off of Buck’s head. “You have to wear it like a shirt, Buck.”

Buck smacks his forehead. “Oh, right! Thank you Chris.’

“You’re welcome,” Chris says. “Dad, you have to stay in the car. Our leaving driver.”

“Get-away,” Buck chimes. “And we can just pretend he’s waiting in the car.”

“Fine,” Chris sighs. Another glance at the clock tells Eddie they’re inching closer to eight, and further past getting Chris to bed anywhere near his bedtime. “Dad, you have to pretend.”

Eddie pretends like his life depends on it. He drives, because that’s the role he’d been given while he was away getting a shirt and unable to defend himself. Both Buck and Chris chide him when he tries to complain about traffic—at this hour?—because the Eddie they need for this job wouldn’t complain about traffic.

Their store of choice is one of the big, overwhelming ones. Eddie tries to avoid them because they give him a headache, but a double check of his maps app confirms that it’s all that’s open within twenty minutes of him.

“Maybe the getaway driver should stay put,” he says, patting the center console. “Looks pretty dangerous in there.”

“No,” Chris and Buck say as one.

Eddie sighs. A shame that his life going perfectly means he has to be subjected to obnoxious grocery stores.

He gets cart-pushing duty. It’s like the car, Chris explains. Eddie runs the cart into Buck’s side as often as he can get away with in protest. He almost feels bad for how little Buck protests, or even dodges, but he doesn’t let up. It’s the principle of it.

Buck has settled on wraps, so they make quite the traipse across the store.

“Steak,” Eddie insists when they dally over the meat.

“You would say steak,” Buck says as he reaches for it. “Carnivore.”

Eddie shakes his head in bafflement at that, which Chris catches. When Eddie suggests he add kale, Chris says “Car-ni-vore.”

“Not quite buddy.”

“An uncharacteristically herbivore decision,” Buck notes. Chris scrunches his nose up, clearly trying to decipher Buck’s words. “Like one of those long-neck dinosaurs.”

“That’s not dad,” Chris agrees.

Eddie expects Chris to be half asleep on his feet when they end up in the alcohol section, but he’s pointing at every protrusion in the ceiling and asking Buck if it’s a camera.

“That one?” He points to a sprinkler.

“Nope,” Buck says. “That’s for if it catches on fire.”

“That one?” he asks, pointing to a balloon caught in the rafters.

Buck frowns up at it. “Balloon. Could be a camera hidden in there.”

“If you had the truck with the ladder could you reach it?”

“Easily,” Buck boasts.

“Wow.” Chris has been a bit starry-eyed over the whole firefighter thing since his afternoon at the station. Before, Eddie had gotten him interested in it, but only peripherally. It was the cool thing his dad did, almost untouchable. Now Chris’ll point at fire hydrants and make Eddie explain exactly how they work, and if all the dogs that pee on them are to collect water.

It’s adorable. Eddie had missed Chris’s why stage, and it feels like a redemption to get another go of it.

Buck, too, seems to find great joy in answering Chris’s questions. He always does it thoroughly, works through it until he’s sure Chris understands. Sometimes, when he gets a little lost himself in the excitement of explaining, Chris’ll just let him ramble.

“I think that’s everything,” Buck says, looking over the cart. “I mean- maybe I should ask Bobby if he needs anything else?”

“He can always get it before. At normal people times,” Eddie says.

“Right,” Buck frowns. “But what if everything sells out tomorrow?”

Eddie glances around the sleepy grocery store. Pulls up a mental list of holidays and finds none fall on this weekend. Pushes the cart into Buck’s hip.

“Not going to happen.”

“Fine,” Buck huffs. “But you’re taking the fall if it does.”

“I say we blame Chris,” Eddie stage whispers. Chris, who has been trying to subtly steer them closer to the toy aisle since they walked in, looks over his shoulder and scowls. “Right? You’ll take the blame for Buck?”

“No,” Chris says. Then he pauses, but only in his words—his feet are still moving in a diagonal that points suspiciously toward the other end of the store. “Yes. But I won’t drink any blood.”

Eddie and Buck both have to stifle their laughter, though they can’t seem to stop catching each other’s eyes and dragging it out further. Chris takes advantage of this and somehow gets them all the way into an aisle filled with Lego.

“How did we end up here?” Buck asks, sounding like he really means it.

Chris snickers, though his wide eyes don’t leave a firetruck set. “Dad did it.”

“Eddie.” Buck shakes his head. “You know there aren’t any Legos on the list.”

“Hmmm,” Eddie says, taking the paper from Buck. “But if you look,” he drags a hand down the messy scrawl of Buck’s handwriting, loopy in a disjointed way. “There’s an L. And an E. And, wow, a G. We’re just missing…”

“I see it,” Buck nods, jabbing a finger at an o that he didn’t close into a full circle. “Wow, Chris, did you do this? Was this the secret plan all along?”

Chris dutifully nods his head.

He hugs his Lego box to his chest the whole ride back home, falls asleep with it clutched in his arms. Eddie snaps a picture before picking him up out of the car, an unbearably fond smile radiating from him.

“This was fun,” Buck says quietly as they head in, opening the door for Eddie. “Thank you.”

“You’ll stay the night, right?” Eddie checks, voice barely above a whisper. Miraculously, he hadn’t picked up a headache in the store, and he’ll have to make a mental note that if he ever needs to go back, the evening hours are perfect for it.

Buck shifts on his feet, lingering by the door as Eddie hesitates to go deeper into the house.

“You’re riding with us anyway,” Eddie reminds him.

“I am,” Buck says slowly.

“And I have more clothes you can borrow.” Eddie stays totally calm when he says it, though he’s been looking at Buck since he slipped Eddie’s shirt on, scenting him too. “And you did say you liked the couch.”

“Fine, fine.” Buck raises his hands in surrender. “You win. And I shouldn’t have to get up early to finish the food.”

“Good,” Eddie yawns. “I think we all deserve to sleep in.”

A week later, when Eddie is flung from a firetruck, he wishes he could have stayed in that moment forever.

Everything hurts. He’d landed wrong on his shoulder, jarred it enough that he can feel it shifting back into place, too fast to set right.

The world spins when he tries to open his eyes, nose filled with acrid smoke and burning metal, fire crackling and cars screeching. He shuts them quickly, but there’s no hiding from the sounds or smells, and he can’t hold back a groan of pain.

Then there are voices. Angry, loud. Eddie responds instinctively, shutting out everything else to sit up, even when it sets off a cascade of pain. There’s a kid, standing in front of the firetruck where it lies on its side. It looks unnatural, a great beast felled in the middle of the street, and Eddie’s instincts are going haywire. It reminds him, strangely, of how strongly he’d reacted to Buck on their first shift. A sense of wrong wrong wrong, unceasing, like they thought he was missing something.

“Eddie?” That’s Hen’s voice. Eddie twitches his head to face her. “You okay? It looked like you took a pretty hard fall.”

“Where’s Buck?” Eddie asks. He tries to scent the air, searching for the familiar metallic smell under the harsher ones pressing in on him, but his nose isn’t precise enough for it.

“Eddie,” Hen says again, gentle now. “He’s-”

Eddie sees him, and the world tunnels until all he can see is Buck, trapped in the engine.

He’s moving before he can think. His boots pound against the ground, and people shout. Eddie doesn’t hear them. Buck’s face is backlit by the flames that dance behind him, his hands scrabbling at the windows as he tries to find a way out.

Eddie reaches him. His head is still spinning. When he puts a hand against the glass, Buck pauses, pauses. Matches him.

He looks around desperately for something to break the glass with. The fire roars in his ears, a furious background to all the human noise, and Eddie finds nothing. The pavement is scattered with glass, taunting him. With a growl of frustration, he hits his fist against the window. It doesn't buckle or crack. Buck stares out at him, his eyes so impossibly blue in front of the fire.

Buck looks worse. His movements have slowed, like the heat is draining him. Eddie forces himself to step back, to look at the scene, every beat of his heart a moment too long.

He's at the front of the engine, looking in through the front windshield. The other row of windows faces up, with no way for Buck to climb to them with the flames roaring. The other section is in the pavement, shattered and dangerous, though Buck would come to no harm. The only way to get him out, Eddie realizes with a burst of energy, is to lift the truck.

"I'm going to get you out," he says. He doesn't know if he yells or whispers it, if the words even leave his mouth at all, but he means them, through and through.

Hen is by his side when he crouches, hands grabbing at the smooth metal of the engine. There's enough of a handhold, enough to get leverage, and Eddie lifts. His whole body goes into it, his fingers digging in so tight he'd swear they could shift to claws sharp enough to tear the engine apart.

It doesn't budge. Hen is saying something, frantic and loud and not directed at him, but she may as well be speaking another language for how much Eddie understands.

This can't be how it ends.

Eddie wants to be selfish. He wants more of Buck's life than he's already got—hundreds of years, hundreds more filled with possibility, and Eddie barely got one? It's not fair.

"Eddie," Hen says, fear breaking through Eddie's focus. He looks up, and finds a gun pointed in his face. He faces it, unafraid, making himself bigger so no attention falls to Hen, still beside him, and he doesn't have time for this. The fire is only growing, searching for more to burn. “I don’t think you want to do this,” Eddie snarls. “Put it down. Walk away. And maybe I won’t-”

He doesn’t know how that sentence ends. He’s still running purely on instinct, teeth bared like he can do anything with them. The stink of the man’s fear is strong, and it only enrages Eddie further.

But suddenly, Bobby is there, breaking through the crowd. “Enough,” he says. The gun turns to him, and Eddie tenses to move, to protect his captain. But Hen's hand touches his shoulder, and Eddie drops to his knees. Shoves at the engine again with tears blurring his eyes.

Something swells within him. It sounds like the strength of Bobby's voice, feels like Hen's hand on his shoulder, Chim's back to his.

There are people all around him, their hands following his, grasping, grasping, for the edge of the truck.

He pushes himself back to his feet. There's little coordination in this mad rush, but determination has their hearts beating in sync, their bodies moving in time. Eddie throws everything he has, and then everything he wants, into moving it.

The metal screams. The fire roars. People cheer or grunt or give up, but the engine lifts. Glass rains down on Eddie's feet, the sound of it strangely delicate, and the engine is upright.

Eddie reaches for Buck where he leans out the window, too weak to get himself all the way through. His clothes are singed by the fire, further torn when they scrape over the jagged edges of where the windows once were, but there's no blood. Eddie wishes there was. Wishes he could feel the warmth of Buck's life staining his hands. He settles for taking his weight, so much less than a firetruck but so impossibly more.

They’re in the ambulance. The engine fades into the distance, a great beast left to lie until the scavengers come in to tear it apart. Good, he thinks. He wants to see it torn to scraps, reformed into cans.

“They’re in shock, I think,” one of the paramedics says. Eddie doesn’t recognize them, and he doesn’t like that they keep touching Buck.

The other medic hums in agreement. “Makes sense. Imagine if this old girl blew up on us,” she pats the side of the vehicle. “Would feel like a betrayal.”

“Are we going to the hospital?” Buck asks, voice small and wary.

“That’s the plan,” the male paramedic says. “I’d assume you’re familiar with how these things work.” It’s kind, the way he says it, as if trying to offer Buck familiarity. Eddie wonders if it’s working for him, if Buck doesn’t also feel like the entire world has been spun on its axis. Nothing feels the same. Everything is pointed, dangerous. Even the rumbling of the tires over the road makes Eddie want to wrap his arms around himself and Buck, make sure that they aren’t pulled apart again.

He wants for a bond between him and Buck. Wishes he could poke at it, assess if Buck is lying about his pain, or his worry. Wishes he could feel it glowing between them, golden and bright, stronger than any bond Eddie's ever forged.

But Buck is a vampire. Unscathed even after being trapped in with the fire and dragged through glass, save for being a little shaken up, the doctors verify. Eddie gets much the same diagnosis. Both of them are told to take it easy, maybe spend some time outside, breathing.

Eddie will do anything to keep Buck beside him.

When they’re called into Bobby’s office, together, Eddie doesn’t know what to think. They’re due back at work in two days, medically cleared and joking with the rest of the team about their bad luck. Everyone thinks Buck got himself a miracle.

“I need you two to be completely honest with me,” Bobby says. There’s a grave look on his face, one Eddie’s never seen before. “And explain exactly what happened the night of the bombing.”

“Got lucky, cap,” Buck says, though he’s shifting nervously under Bobby’s intense gaze. “Got out just in time.”

“Buck.” Bobby draws in a deep breath. “You should have been bleeding. Your lungs should be weak, there should be something. And still, I've never seen you as scared as you were in that engine.”

Eddie stays silent. He hasn’t been able to fully shake the rush of instincts that overtook him that night, strong as they were. He’s been trying to focus on checking in on Buck, biting his tongue every time they surge and tell him that Buck isn’t safe yet. Not so long as he stays with the job.

“I- Cap.” Buck’s face is a tragedy, twisted with guilt. “I can’t tell you.”

Eddie winces. And he knows, he knows he shouldn’t. It goes against everything he’s been taught about secrecy, everything he values in his respect for Buck, but he opens his mouth to confess and-

“Fine,” Buck says it fast, like it’ll hurt less if he gets it over with. “I’m a v-vampire.”

Bobby seems to consider this. Takes in the bow of Buck’s head, the slight shake of his hands—the same things Eddie is caught on, snared like fabric in a rosebush.

Everything feels messy. Wrong. A confession like that should send the world spinning, but it’s still just the three of them in Bobby’s office, decorated with its pictures and plaques. But Eddie himself feels off kilter. His center of gravity nudged just enough to the side that he has to shift on his feet to feel in control.

Bobby meets his eye, the question evident there. Is it true?

“He’s not lying,” Eddie says. He needs to say it aloud, can’t let this happen in quiet looks and unspoken platitudes. It would be unfair to Buck.

“I told Eddie,” Buck jumps in, trying to protect Eddie’s secrets despite it all. “S-since we were going to be partners. I thought he should know.”

Bobby nods. He seems lost, and for the first time, Eddie can tell he doesn’t know what to do. How to proceed. It only worsens Eddie’s discomfort. He needs to fix this, but he doesn’t have the words, the tools. He can only watch.

“Can you tell me what it entails?” Bobby asks. He’s looking only at Buck again.

“S-sure. It’s- not what you think. And it is. There’s- I need blood.”

“How often?” Bobby’s fingers tap against the desk, like he wishes to write this down.

Buck shrugs, but it’s too stiff to look casual. “Once a month? But it d-doesn’t have to be fresh. I usually, aha, use blood bags.”

“Acquired with permission, I’m sure,” Bobby says drily. Eddie tenses, ready to defend Buck—what else is he meant to do?—but then Bobby shoots Buck a placating smile, and Eddie forces himself to relax. “Okay. Once a month.”

“Most things can’t hurt me,” Buck continues. “The firetruck- I’m not sure how to explain, but even if it had- had fallen on my leg or something, it couldn’t hurt me p-permanently. Only fire and- and wood and silver can.”

And Bobby scowls. It calls to something within Eddie, a familiar beast gnashing its teeth over the same thing.

“So you’ve been putting yourself in danger,” he says slowly.

“Not any more than I would be if I was human,” Buck shoots back. This is familiar territory for him, too. Eddie only pokes, but he’s heard Buck complain about how often Maddie questions him about the same thing. “It’s the same as you, or Eddie, or Hen or Chim or any of the other thousands of firefighters.”

“I remember when you joined up,” Bobby says. “So reckless. I saw myself in you, you know. Those times when my family would be the heaviest on my mind, and looking in the flames felt like the closest way to get to them.”

Buck’s face cracks, bravado and fear spilling into devastation. “I’m not- I’ve changed. You know I have.” His voice cracks and splinters into pieces.

“You have. But tell me honestly, Buck, that no part of you feels that way anymore.”

Eddie winces. It’s not- it’s not a fair ask. He’s certain that Bobby knows that, would know that outside of this room, where emotions are high. Where he’s looking at Buck, the kid he took under his wing, and is afraid to see himself.

Buck seems to know it too, but the height of his emotions has always come out loudly. “I shouldn’t have to! You wouldn’t ask that of anyone else on the team, Bobby.”

“I want what’s best for all of you. And right now, that means I want you to take some time off Buck.”

All the air seems to be sucked out of the room. Buck stumbles back, and Bobby leans in over the desk like he wants to chase him.

“This isn’t because I don’t trust you,” Bobby says. “And I am not afraid of you, Buck. I’m worried for you. You are not fired. This is not permanent.”

“This is all I have.”

Eddie wants to say something, but he can’t get the words out. They snag in his teeth, grind down into his chest as a rumble that he prays neither of the other two hear—though he thinks they both may have forgotten he’s bearing witness.

“Maybe that’s part of the problem,” Bobby says.

It’s harsh. It probably isn’t entirely wrong. Eddie aches to pick up the pieces.

“Fine,” Buck hisses. He opens his mouth, like he’s got more to say, then shakes his head and leaves the office without a bang, or stomping of feet. It’s quiet. Like he was never there at all.

Bobby looks tired when Eddie gets up the courage to meet his eyes. “Anything you want to tell me?”

“Nothing here, Cap,” Eddie lies. “Just me. I’ll keep an eye on him, though.”

Bobby nods, reaching for a stack of paperwork. He doesn’t explain himself, though Eddie hadn’t really expected it. He can tell Bobby thinks he’s doing what’s best, and it’s confusing Eddie’s instincts that he’s not sure if he entirely agrees.

He still isn’t, a month later. He misses Buck at the station, more than he knows how to deal with. There’s a rotating cast of fill-ins, though the engine always feels a little too quiet and far too empty, like the fire really had burnt something away

Eddie tries to keep up with Buck, but Buck makes it difficult. He’s still living in Abby’s place, though Eddie and Hen had hoped that with the time off, he’d look for somewhere new. No one else knows why Buck is on break—just that it happened shortly after the firetruck, and that Bobby always emphasizes that he is not fired. It’s the cause of much gossip, which Eddie always refrains from.

“Can we go to the store tomorrow?” Chris asks as Eddie is putting him to bed one night, a predictably common question after their eventful outing.

“I’ve got a shift, mijo,” Eddie says. He presses Chris’s curls back so he can smack a kiss to his hairline with a mwah.

Chris sighs dramatically. “But maybe if we go, Buck will be there.”

Eddie just shakes his head, dropping Chris’s room into darkness with a click of the lamp. “Bed, Chris.”

But the ask sticks with him. Chris misses Buck. And Eddie had said he’d keep an eye on him—two birds, one stone.

Chapter Text

Buck is rudely awoken from his near catatonic state by a whoosh, and the flickering of a light. He’s instantly alert, sitting up in bed—it was Abby’s once, though her scent has long faded—like the sort of vampire they put in movies.

“Rise and shine,” says a voice that quells Buck’s flight response and has him slumping back onto the pillows.

“Go away Eddie,” he groans, much like a petulant teenager. Weird, because he’s well over three hundred years old and on leave from the job that means everything to him because of it. Maybe he ought to be acting his age, if he’s going to be punished—crawl into the earth and sleep there, where no one can so easily bring the light in.

“Can’t do that Buck.” Buck isn’t looking at him, staring at a dull spot on the ceiling instead, but he hears Eddie rustling around. “You need to get up. And I have a shift.”

Buck’s lip curls up at the reminder, but it comes with an ache in his throat that feels like a building sob. “Good for you,” he spits. “Some of us don’t have anything to do, and would like to go back to sleep.”

“And who would that be?” Eddie is leaning over him. He looks—well, wolfish. Like he’s got some devious plan, and can’t quite keep his face from spoiling it. “Because it isn’t you.”

“It is me.”

“Not today.”

“Did Bobby say-” Buck starts, treacherous hope fluttering to life in his hollowed out heart.

“No,” Eddie says quickly. He sounds genuinely remorseful, like he has every time since Buck got put on leave. But it rings hollow, because Eddie hadn’t pushed back. He’d been in the room. And he’s said nothing. “I have something for you.”

“I don’t want to do it.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Eddie says, almost sing-song, or as close as he gets. “Come on, bud. Up.”

Buck really, really isn’t going to do it. Then he hears a noise from the other end of the apartment, and he tenses. “Eddie,” he hisses. “Is someone else here?”

“Only one way for you to find out,” Eddie yanks the blanket away again, and then leaves the room with it. The bastard. Buck should swap out the contents of his fridge with dog food.

He gets up. His sweatpants are pilled, and his shirt hangs weirdly off his collarbone, but he can’t bring himself to care about appearances, even with a mystery person apparently in his space. There’s not much he can bring himself to care about, recently.

Straining his ears for a hint of a voice proves fruitless. The apartment is quiet, save for footsteps above him and the rumble of the ice maker. He tries not to search for scents.

In the living area, parked on the couch that had once been Abby’s, is Christopher. Buck feels himself straighten up, some of the fog of the last month cleared like the sun has broken through the clouds.

“Chris!” he says, rushing to pull the kid into his arms.

He hears a pleased rumble from Eddie, one of those new things he’s been doing recently. With how little Buck sees him, it’s easier to catalogue the changes; there are all sorts of new little noises, like his wolf is constantly closer to the surface. Buck envies him, in a desperate sort of way. It’s another one of those things he’s trying very hard not to look at.

“Hi Buck,” Chris says. He pats Buck’s head as Buck breathes him in, catching that bit of wolf that always clings to him. “Dad said we’re going to hang out today!”

“Oh, did he?” Buck shoots Eddie a half-hearted glare. He’s finding it hard to have any sort of real negative feelings right now. The hunger that’s been plaguing him has also taken a back seat, sated as he drinks in the presence of the two Diaz’s in Abby’s apartment.

“Like a play date,” Eddie says. Both Chris and Buck pull faces at that, and Eddie laughs at them. “Just have a nice day, okay? Watch a movie or something.”

“Finding Nemo!” Chris crows.

“He’s been on a fish kick,” Eddie says with an approving nod. “Carla should be here to pick him up to sleep, but let her know if you want to do a sleepover,” he winks, effectively locking Buck into the plan—which he’s far from fighting.

Chris’s eyes go wide, and he looks at Buck.

“We’ll see how you feel buddy,” he promises.

“Well, I’ve got to head out.” Eddie looks at his wrist, and then really winces. “Okay, really. Love you mijo.” His shoulder brushes Buck’s when he leans in to give Chris a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Have fun, Buckley! Call me if you guys do anything fun.”

Chris and Buck yell their goodbyes, loud enough that Buck’s probably going to win himself a noise complaint, but he can’t find it in him to care.

All the earlier doom and gloom feels far from him now, as he asks Chris if he’s had breakfast yet and gasps when Chris says yes, but he’d really like to try this brunch thing out.

Buck can do brunch.

He hasn’t been practicing his cooking during his leave. No point in making food he doesn’t need, and doesn’t really like all that much. So he messes up the eggs when he tries for an omelet, but he plays it up enough to make Chris laugh, and then makes him help under the guise of making sure Buck won’t mess it up again.

And all the while, he’s thinking of how Eddie is trusting him alone with Chris.

It’s got him floating out of his own head a little, honestly. He’s determined not to mess up, obviously, but Eddie’s faith in him alone is giving him confidence that he can. That he and Chris will have a great day, together.

He opens a few windows, while Chris eats his eggs. He’s talking at a mile a minute the whole time, getting crumbs on the table, but Buck doesn’t mind. It makes the apartment look lived in.

Following that train of thought, he helps Chris set up a miniature blanket and pillow fort on the couch, so they can watch Finding Nemo.

“How many times have you seen this movie?” Buck asks around a laugh when he quotes the first five minutes, verbatim.

Chris shrugs, not taking his eyes off the screen. “A lot. But there are so many fish.”

“You know,” Buck starts, weighing his words as he goes. “I heard there’s an aquarium at the Santa Monica Pier.

Chris gasps and finally looks at him, even as something exciting and colorful happens on screen. “Really? Can we go?”

Buck pretends to think it over for a moment, but like Eddie name dropping a sleepover earlier, he knew he was locked in to the plan as soon as he said the word aquarium aloud.

“I think we have to,” he says. “Think of all the fish.”

“The fish!”

They get a few glares, in the aquarium, with how many times Buck or Chris will point to a tank and say the fish. The parents whose kids pick up the habit seem especially miffed, but Buck is usually being whisked into the next room by Chris before he can even shoot them an apologetic smile.

He’d texted Eddie the plan, of course. Taking Chris to the aquarium, he’d sent, with a few fish emojis—one of his favorite things about modern life. He thinks of all the letters he’d sent Maddie, how much they could have been improved by a little picture after every other word. He sends her a few emojis now, along with pictures of Chris, and gets a happy face and hearts in reply.

The fish? Eddie sends back. Buck records a video of Chris saying just that, his own laughter audible in the background.

And Buck had picked the aquarium because it was out of the sun, but when he and Chris step outside, still full of energy, and see the pier looming over them, Buck can’t resist.

“You ever been to the pier, Chris?”

It’s easy to forget a lot of things, when spending time with a great kid. Buck doesn’t tell Eddie they’ve extended their outing, but he does snap some pictures that he means to send to him. His phone is overheated, though, and makes it annoying to deal with, so he shelves it for later.

The sun hardly gets to him, with Chris’s contagious energy to feed off of as they do the rides, and then move on to the games. Buck doesn’t feel weakened at all while he wins Chris a giant bear plush, especially when he gets a hug and loud, unrestrained laughter in return.

His mood only dips a little when they see a group of firefighters called in, and Buck is close enough to catch the easy way they work together, the way the nervous murmuring of the crowd fades as they watch the firefighters work.

He’s tried, in his long days with nothing else to do, to understand why Bobby did it.

Buck has been safe. The worst he’s gotten hurt since moving to LA was the time with the garlic bread, on his first date with Abby. And that wasn’t even on a call. The firetruck had been a near thing, sure, but Bobby must have seen how quickly Eddie was there for him.

It must be that Bobby fears him, being a vampire. It’s natural—god, Buck can’t even blame him for it—but it stings. More than. It hurts him down to the core. Weakens him, like a support beam has been knocked out from under him.

Buck doesn’t expect that he’ll ever be allowed back at the fire station. Maybe Bobby will have him transferred to a desk job, where there’s no chance of him hurting people without someone seeing it. Or maybe he’s been compiling all his paperwork, the time he fired Buck for real and all the times he’s messed something up, and sending it into the LAFD headquarters to get Buck fired and blacklisted.

He doesn’t think Bobby would be that cruel, but it’s almost worse to wait in the limbo. He wishes, in the darkest parts of the night, that Bobby had just fired him then and there.

Chris must pick up on his melancholy mood, because he nudges Buck with the entirety of his body, looking at the firefighters too. “Do you miss working with my dad?”

Buck swallows roughly. “I do.” He shakes his head, plasters a smile on. “But it’s alright—we’re not here to mope. You want to look at the ocean? I, ah, know a few fish facts.”

Chris nods, face lighting up, and Buck lets himself be led once more.

Looking out over the water, the horizon a smudgy line in the distance, Buck feels small. Worse than being just another body in the crowd, he’s a liar. Among all these people, whose lives are ticking down on an invisible clock, Buck is something apart.

“Do you wish you could be a wolf?” Chris asks out of nowhere, when Buck has run out of fish facts that he gleaned from the signs in the aquarium, that Chris was too excited to read.

He startles a little at the question, instinctively looking around to make sure no one could have heard, and then dismissing the worry. A young kid asking a sort of nonsensical question is nothing to turn heads, except to share in a bit of fond laughter. Besides, they’re mostly alone in their spot.

“Like your dad?” Buck asks, just to stall. Chris frowns at that, and cocks his head at Buck like he’s missing something. “Uhm,” Buck stutters, feeling like he’s not answering right, that it should be obvious. Has Eddie told Chris that the bite is a curse? Would he want his son to worry?

“Hey,” someone says, a ways down the railing from them. Buck only picks up on it because there’s something to their voice, a worried edge. “Where’d all the water go?”

Buck stands, and it feels like he’s on the edge of something. The eye of the storm, before everything crumbles.

Below the pier, the water has disappeared. Sand and rocks are all that's left behind, a sheen of moisture over it that makes the whole thing look alien. It’s like poking at the hole after losing a tooth, the feeling that something should be there.

Buck has lived all over North and South America. Ventured inland, and to remote coasts. Spoken to locals who would later spread tales of a man who carried a great sadness with him, learned about the dangers of water. Its terrible, great power.

What it means when the water disappears.

He grabs Chris, and he runs. There are screams around him, and though he can’t see the wave, he can feel it bearing down on them. It’s in the roaring of water, the dampened rumble of collapse. He runs.

But the sun is strong today, unhidden by clouds and already high in the sky. With the energy of the day turned frantic, Buck has nothing substantial to feed off to keep his strength up. It only serves to make him shake, his grip on Chris weakening, his urge to run and run and run until he’s far from the sun and the water strong.

It’s a tragedy when he thinks of Eddie trusting him, mere hours ago. Giving him a piece of his heart, despite all the reasons he has not to trust him.

He’s not fast enough. Not strong enough. Not powerful enough, to have felt whatever vibration of the earth set off the wave.

Buck is going to fail.

The wave is on them.

He sets Chris into a stall, filled with ephemera, and flings himself in. Tries to get his arms around Chris’s small, breakable body, but the water hits them without mercy. It tears the small structure apart, flings Buck away from Chris and out of his own body.

Buck knows what it is, to run and to run and to be caught regardless. It was a game his sire had grown particularly fond of, when it became clear that Buck wasn’t quite the fearsome protege he’d wanted. Buck, who would stop before ever taking enough blood to kill someone. Buck, who didn’t like the games he played with his food, because blood tastes better when they’re afraid.

He let Buck run. Again and again and again, Buck would sneak away. Catch a train, throw himself off a cliff to tumble deep into the water. Sometimes he’d get away for years at a time, sometimes just hours.

But always, his sire would find him. It never came with punishment or even acknowledgment. Buck would get comfortable, find himself in a small, remote village. He’d get to know the people, help where he could. Try to dispel any rumors about a mysterious stranger before they could start. He’d lie—he had roots here. His mother had called upon their hospitality once. His father had fallen in love here. It was always false, of course, but the lies were like a balm to his unanchored soul. A temporary hold, rooted in nothing but sand.

Buck knew how to hold on.

And then his sire would appear in town. He was charming, when he wanted to be. Useful, with all the knowledge gained over however many hundreds of years of living he’d done. He was, in those first few days, Buck but better.

Buck would always run again, eventually. Things would start to go wrong in town, if he stayed. A bad crop year. A fire at the home of an elder. Animal carcasses on doorsteps, trails of blood up and down the streets. No one dead. But they’d start pointing fingers.

And Buck was the easy target. An unshakeable strangeness he couldn’t hide, because he could still feel it. Still lived in it. His weakness was clinging so desperately to humanity that his lack of it kept him scared and meek. He knew everywhere he went, he was the odd one out. His sire lurking around every corner was only a reminder of everything he didn’t want to become, but could see creeping in on him with every turn of the Earth.

His sire was dead now. And here Buck is, still unable to hold on.

Chris isn’t in his arms. There’s only water and debris, raging with all the uncaring force of a storm. To Buck, whom the world has always felt pointed and carelessly cruel, with him always caught up in the whirlwind of it, it feels like fate.

He wants to give in. To stop the flailing of his limbs and sink down, down. His body would rest on pavement, or among the wrecked pillars of the boardwalk. He’d never reach the seafloor. They’d proclaim him one of the victims of the disaster. Would Bobby give him a firefighter’s funeral? Away from work and caught, useless.

Something hits him hard in the side, and it stings in a way even the close call with the flames in the firetruck hadn’t. He doesn’t need to squint through the murky water to know that it was wood, probably blunt rather than the sharpness needed to stake him.

He could die down here.

He’s not sure he doesn’t want to.

Everything is dark and cold. He’s used to this. Makes sense, that he would meet an end that looks just like the rest of the bleakness.

Water, and water, and water. And something tugs. It’s beyond warmth, beyond the meager bits of it he’s managed to chase in the last few years. This is burning, a spark catching and spreading and burning through him like kindling.

So this is death. It doesn’t feel much like the first time. That had been dark and cold. Maybe there is mercy, beyond.

But how it burns. He feels apart from the water, apart from the flotsam caught in it. Uncaring death around him, and in the center, he is called to be something more.

Chris.

Eddie. Maddie. Bobby. Hen and Chimney and everyone caught in the maelstrom.

Buck swims. He was good at it, once. Always. It was an escape in the before, a distraction in the after, and something to fight with now.

Something scrapes his arm, and he lets it wash through him. Imagines, at the end of the world, that he really has been reborn. That once again, he can feel the lactic acid build in his muscles as he pushes and he crawls and climbs, the surface churning and dangerous but there, to be broken.

Buck is through. With his head above water, the sun hits him once more, and he’s reminded of true weakness. He still burns.

“Chris,” he screams. It rips through his lungs, burns in his throat. He does it again, and again, and again, and again, and the water boils around him. He burns, and it burns, and he screams. Calls. Searches.

And there is so much, but all of it is nothing. No small head of curly hair, no flash of red glasses. Buck stumbles, and the weight of it settles heavy on his shoulders. He lost him. Broken trust, dashed among the wreckage of the rollercoaster that he and Chris had been on less than an hour ago, their screams delighted rather than frantic.

Buck burns. He can’t stop.

He repeats the name. Loses himself to it.

Something moves at the edge of his vision. It could be anything, among the chaos, but Buck knows it.

“Chris,” he yells again. There’s a call in return, distorted by Buck’s entirely on edge senses to sound more wild than it is. It twists when it rings out again, taking on the trembling quality of the howls he hears in his dreams.

It must be something deep in his mind, getting things all twisted up. His worry, his anguish over breaking Eddie’s trust, warping his senses. He can’t let that happen. He has to be all in, the moment around him the most important in the world.

He breathes, and he moves. Each step is a herculean effort, but he feels nothing at all.

Another of the wild sounds. Out of place, even in this corner of the world where nothing is right.

“Christopher,” Buck calls again. His voice breaks a little, but this failing does not matter.

There’s a whirl of motion, a high-pitched series of cries that seem to shake the world. And there, perched on a slab of concrete that juts just above the water, is a small golden wolf.

And there’s no part of Buck that doubts, when he sees him.

“Chris,” he cries. He has to lift himself out of the water to get on the platform, fingers digging in so hard as he pulls himself up that splintering cracks form on the surface, even as his knuckles are greeted with a cold nose and wet fur, trembling and then launched into Buck’s chest when he’s up.

It’s almost too much. The concrete is sun-warmed, sapping Buck’s strength as he sinks down onto it, legs unable to so much as hold him up. And Chris is so alive in his arms, small cries shaking through his body as he presses himself as close as he can to Buck’s chest.

Eddie lied. Buck doesn’t know where—maybe he was bitten before Chris was conceived, or maybe he was born a wolf—but he forgives him. Instantly and completely, because Chris is in his arms and he’s battered by water and rage, but he’s alive.

“Chris,” Buck murmurs. There’s no part of him that’s sure of how he’s meant to handle this, so he just does. His hand doesn’t shake when he lays it on Chris’s furry neck.

He’s never been so close to a wolf—obviously. Never even so much as seen one clearly, outside of glimpses that could have been hallucinations deep in the woods. Wolves are proud, and territorial. They’d show a vampire their second form only if they intended to kill them.

It’s made him a little conflicted about the whole Eddie thing. Like, of course he wants to see Eddie as a wolf. But most of the more rational parts of his brain know that it’s never going to happen, unless Buck is moments from a final death. The furthest reaches of him, pushed down as far as they can go, want for it. Eddie’s teeth clamped down around his neck. A moment of warmth, and then nothing at all.

But here’s a young wolf, curled up in his lap. The shaking has subsided, and Buck has a hard time wrapping his head around himself being the reason for that. Chris pushes further toward him every time Buck tries to give him a little space, so the moment draws itself out.

It’s eerily silent. No more of the sporadic peaks of noise from squealing rides or screams of delight. There’s only the water, stilled for the most part, and the brush of flotsam against their concrete pillar.

“Hey buddy,” Buck says gently. He waits while Chris sits a little back to look up at him with a tilted head. “You can understand me?”

Chris bobs his head in the same way a human would, sending his ears flopping. He must like the feeling of it, because he gives his head a good shake, abrupt and strong enough to send some of the water clinging to his fur flying.

Buck laughs, a desperate little thing. “You’re not hurt?”

Chris butts his head into Buck’s chest, which he takes for a no. He’s sort of stumped, after that—the multiple knocks to his head must have taken something out of him, or maybe the sun has burnt away what it can reach of his cobwebbed brain.

He can’t help but feel a loss when Chris separates from him. He wobbles a bit as he steps, placing his paws gingerly, and Buck worries that he really might be hurt. But when he squints his eyes to look closer, takes in the happy perk of Chris’s ears and the sway of his tail, it’s clear that he’s happy. Unsure, maybe. As if he doesn’t quite know how to walk on four legs.

A chill runs down Buck’s spine. “Is this y-your first time shifting, Chris?” he asks tentatively.

Chris spins to face him, and it’s another of those strangely human nods. Buck lets out a measured breath, and fights back creeping tendrils of panic. In the middle of a natural disaster, Chris is experiencing something entirely new.

He can’t help a watery smile when Chris, still pacing as if to get the whole walking thing figured out, catches sight of his tail out of the side of his eye, and then turns in a tight circle, speeding up when he doesn’t catch it.

“Can’t believe your dad got so uppity about the dog thing,” Buck laughs.

Chris’s head tilts at that, and he pauses where he is, one paw lifted in the air. Another tilt of his head, and Buck melts just that smallest bit more. They’re going to have to scrape the goo of him out of here, if the tsunami doesn’t do it first.

It’s a sobering thought. The water around them is dangerous, even as placid as it currently appears.

Chris whines.

“Your dad?” Buck guesses. “I’m so sorry he’s not here, buddy. I-I’m sorry it happened here. We’re going to find him though, okay?”

Shrinking in on himself the smallest bit, paws too big for his body gathered close where he sits, Chris whines. Buck makes a split choice, watching him sit there. He clearly doesn’t know his form well, hasn’t learned how to work his legs and paws just right—and they’ve got danger all around them.

“Buddy,” Buck says, eyes roving over the water until he finds a shirt with the pier’s branding all over it, too big for Chris but usable in a pinch. A pair of pants are snagged on the other side of the pillar, by some miracle, and though Buck would have preferred shorts for the quicker drying, he grabs them anyway. He can feel Chris’s eyes on him the whole time, and he must pick up on some of Buck’s worry because he shifts in place, a nervous tick that Buck recognizes from his own repertoire.

“There’s no rush,” Buck starts, wringing the clothes out and sitting criss-cross opposite Chris, meeting his eyes as steadily as he can. It’s only a bit of a lie—a wave going out could come in any minute, and they aren’t far enough from the water to be safe from it—but he puts as much conviction as he can into it. He’s noticed that Eddie can’t sense when he lies like he can with the humans on the team, so he hopes Chris is the same. “But do you think you could shift back? I-I need to be able to carry you. And it’s dangerous out here, when people get scared in a disaster.”

While he could probably pass Chris off as a dog, there’s something distinctly wild to him. Power, unmistakable to any other non-humans they might come across. Buck is starting to suspect that Eddie really is a born wolf, if Chris embodies it so well.

He’s not sure what a face of concentration looks like on a snout, but Chris’s teeth poke out a bit, and he stands. His claws flex into the concrete, and a tiny growl breaks through the stillness.

It’s adorable, and then things get hazy. A sense of wrongness, like seeing the ocean floor without water, and Buck has to look away. Feels like he’s made to look away, head turned to the side by an invisible, but gentle, hand.

“Buck!” Chris says. He’s huddled in on himself, reaching for the shirt that Buck quickly passes over to him, shivering. The soaking wet shirt doesn’t do anything to fight the cold, but Buck makes sure he gets the pants on too before pulling Chris, as a human this time, into a tight hug.

He wishes desperately that he had more warmth to give, but at least he can be glad for the concrete now, and he releases Chris to set him down.

“You did so good,” Buck says, reaching forward to run a hand through Chris’s curls where they’ve clumped together. “You were so brave, buddy.”

“I wasn’t scared!” Chris says, teeth chattering through it. “I l-lost my glasses though,” he frowns. “Am I bad at being a wolf?”

“No,” Buck says quickly. “You’re the best wolf I’ve ever seen.”

Chris makes a stink face at him. “You’ve never seen any other wolves.”

“You don’t know that,” Buck says with mock offense. He can’t stop looking toward the horizon, where land should be. There’s a growing pit in his stomach, but he fights it down. “Maybe I’m a wolf expert.”

Chris huffs at him, snaps his blunt human teeth. “Okay, Buck.” He sounds just like his dad, and Buck can’t help his strained giggle.

“You have a plan for getting out of here?” Buck asks as he thinks about it to himself, searching the water for anything useful. But it all sort of blurs together, and he has to blink a few times before he can focus more clearly. Must be his adrenaline wearing down.

“I have a plan for zombies,” Chris sighs. “Not water.”

“Well, it’s not so different.” Chris looks at him like he’s insane. “No, come on! We have to, you know, get to high ground.”

“Zombies can climb.”

“Not these ones.”

Chris frowns as he looks around. Buck tries to follow, but his vision is still just a touch too blurry. “There’s a firetruck,” Chris reports, looking further inland. “Is it dad?” his voice waivers, a mix of excitement and fear.

Buck feels a jolt of the same, before remembering the engine he’d seen a bit before the wave had come. “It’s not him,” he says. “We’d already be rescued if it was.”

Chris nods in agreement. “Dad would get us out. He helped me make my zombie plan.”

Buck hums, still squinting in the direction Chris had pointed to. He thinks he can maybe see a glimmer of red, but it could just as well be confirmation bias.

With so little danger making itself known around them, Buck is having an increasingly hard time ignoring all the things going wrong with his body. His eyes, of course. There’s also a heaviness to his bones, exhaustion like he’s never felt before. It’s a pulsing sort of feeling, increasing with every minute spent under the sun. And there’s the hunger.

It’s too still. Buck has nothing to sustain him, and the time he’s gone without feeding is catching up to him. He needs to get Chris out before he loses all his strength.

“Okay,” he says. He squares his shoulders, chases for the warmth that had drug him out of the water in the first place. “We’re getting out of here. There could be a-another wave, when the water goes back out.”

Chris nods, eyes huge. Buck sees his wolf in the movement, and he aches. He wants to survive this. To see Chris as a wolf again, when he grows into his paws. To want to live is a bigger shift than it should be. A reframing of a mindset he hadn’t fully realized he’d settled into, an affirmation of Bobby’s choice. Buck, now, wants to live. Buck, before, did not feel quite so strongly.

But wanting doesn’t make their situation any easier to escape. He’ll have to swim for it, or try to build up their platform or-

“Buck!” Chris gasps. “There’s people by the firetruck.”

“The firefighters?”

“No,” Chris whines. “They’re in the water like they can’t swim.”

Shit. “Okay, Chris. Do you think you’re strong enough to hold on to me if I swim to them? I’ll get you up on the engine, where you’ll be safer. And then I need to help those people.”

Chris hugs his arms around himself, digs his fingers into his skin like they’re still clawed, and then nods with a ferocity that again, Buck recognizes from Eddie.

“Alright,” he says on a breath. “Let’s get out of here, huh?”

Despite the still appearance of the water, it does its best to pull Buck down. He takes it as a good sign that it pushes him inland, the tide not yet turned out, and lets it carry him to their destination. Chris clings on tight, his grip strong around Buck’s neck. It’s a comforting sort of vice, a reason for Buck to swim as hard as he can.

He splutters with a mouthful of water when he tries to call out to a pair stuck clinging to a downed wooden pillar, has to pause and tread water to spit it out. “I’m coming,” he yells. “Hold on!”

Chris tightens his grip when Buck gets closer to the engine, and Buck steadies himself on a precarious hold before addressing him. “I’m going to put you up there, okay Chris?”

A nod against his neck, and then a quick squeeze that feels like a hug. Buck hoists Chris up, takes a precious few seconds to make sure he’s secure, and then plunges back into the water.

It’s harder, going against the pull of the water, but Buck pushes. He gets the hoseline from the engine, rigs up a sort of safety net when he sees more people drifting inward.

Losing himself to a rescue is nothing new, but there’s something different about this one. It’s urgent, precarious. It’s impossible to shake the feeling of being alone, no Eddie on the other end of his line, no Bobby to point him the right way. Just Buck. He’s all these survivors, and Chris, have. So he fights for them.

The world is a flat plane of sun and water, and Buck sits above it on a cherry red firetruck, clutching Chris close to his chest. The side of the engine that juts from the water is clustered with the people he’d been able to save.

“Buck?” Chris asks, sniffing delicately at the air. “What’s that smell?”

Buck peers around, though his vision has only worsened. He shouldn’t have bothered though—the smell of death hits him a second later, inescapable.

“The water must have gotten into a candle store or something,” Buck jokes weekly, using a hand on the back of Chris’s head to cradle him against Buck’s neck, a habit he’d seen Eddie do a dozen times. It’s the only option he has, masking the smell of death with his own brand of it, but he hopes that the water hasn’t fully cleansed him of Eddie’s scent, so Chris can pick up something familiar.

The plan is to wait. It’s all they can do, with a group and no visible path out. As near as Buck can tell, leaning over the edge with Chris grabbing at the back of his shirt, the water is still going in. He almost wishes for it to turn, so they’ll know that the worst of it is over.

“Hey,” Chris says, a little sleepy as he pokes Buck in the ribs. “There’s more people.”

He’s looking out to sea, where the horizon stretches wide and fuzzy. To Buck, it looks like an infinite expanse of nothingness. But there’s worry in Chris’s sleepy voice.

“Can you watch him?” Buck asks, turning to a woman huddled in a cranny of the engine near them. “I- there are more survivors.”

“Of course,” she says, gesturing Chris to her.

There are many moments Buck could point to in his life, where he wishes he could travel back and change a single action. He’ll think about it when the sun beats down on him for hours to come, wandering alone, looking for a familiar head of hair.

But he jumps off the engine. He swims, against the current, once he catches a flash of movement and realizes they’re going to be flung right past the engine if he doesn’t get them to swim toward him.

He pushes, arms and legs dragged by the current, but they only seem to get further away.

“Hey!” he calls, fighting not to take in more water. “Come this way!”

“The water,” a voice calls out. “It’s pulling us away.”

Buck stills, and he feels it. The water pushes. It feels like you wanted this.

He turns back to the engine just in time to see a wave crest over the top of it, his vision just clear enough to see the bodies that go with it. Out to sea.

Buck wants to scream. He wants to let go, and he wants to fight, and he wants to bury himself so deep in the earth that the sun will never reach him again. More than ever before, driven by a need that bites, he pushes. Swims. Fights.

It’s not enough.

The engine is lifeless. Buck shudders to see it now, no longer a bastion of safety but a reminder of a terrible chain of events. Unable to hurt his physical body, but his end nonetheless.

In the stillness of a flat world, only his grip on the engine to keep him from being swept away, Buck screams.

It doesn’t end when his voice tapers out, but lingers over him when he sets off. The wave going out has made the water shallower, so he walks rather than swims. It should feel like dignity, to stand on his own two feet and set off to change fate, but he feels like a man sent to the gallows. His life condemned, his path determined. Buck will walk, and he’ll walk, and always hope will be the last to leave.

There are other people, out at the end of the world. They need help, and so Buck gives them everything he has. A child, who could have been Chris in another life, pinned under a wooden pallet that scrapes Buck’s hands. She cries when she’s freed, because she is alive.

He finds a small camp, on a raised street. No one has seen Chris. They look at him with pity, and they wish him well. Buck can’t tell if they lie. He can hardly tell if they’re human, or if he talks to the lampposts and can’t even dream up a good enough answer.

Always, he finds the water again. The sun is less cruel, in a way. It is a constant, no hint of reprieve. Always on his neck, pressing against him like it wants to wear him away. He’s barely anything at all, a wraith wandering the streets, moaning about trust broken.

His fault. The aquarium. The pier. Chris shifting back to human. Leaving him. Not recognizing the change in the water. Too weak. Not human enough to be selfish. Afraid. Buck is so, so afraid.

He’s running again. Always running. His steps are haunted, even as the world courses with electricity, as the cities get bigger and taller. Buck doesn’t understand modernity, never does in the midst of it. Then, one day, he’ll wake up, and it will have always been this way.

It’s not him who killed his sire. Another vampire, not so old but doubly strong, and a territory dispute. Buck’s sire wanted nothing to do with land, had no care for new age vampiric politicking, but he died to it anyway.

Buck was free, then.

And still he ran. From who he was, mostly. Impossible to feel out of place if you’re always new. A traveler, who spoke of a home in platitudes and generalities. He learned to throw out a wink, that blood from a deer carcass lasts longer in the system when the memory of a night of skin on skin lives on the surface of the mind.

Buck runs, and the world spins. Nothing sticks. He’s untouchable, ethereal. Transient.

Los Angeles was never meant to stick, either. Another on the long list that fades and roils, letters written over the top of words faded by time. But there had been the fire academy, and there had been Bobby, and there had been Abby.

And Eddie. Eddie should have killed Buck, staked him through the heart and eaten it to be sure that he would never rise again. Maybe, if he’d done it then, Buck could have gotten a firefighter’s funeral.

He calls for Chris, again. Thinks of him as a wolf, his big paws and his cold nose and his golden fur. Another bit of debris now.

Buck should let go. The water can take him out to sea, and if he’s not lucky enough to die, he can wash up on a distant shore and start life over. Maybe he’ll do it right this time. Maybe he’ll run without caring that no place will take him.

“Hey!” Someone calls. The world is a muddied mess of watercolor now. Buck walks by scent and sound alone.

There’s a hand on his arm. Pressing at deep scratches, unhealed. “You need to get to a shelter. They’re making one at the VA, last I heard.”

Buck shakes his head. The world spins, swirls. He’d like to lie down, now.

“Okay,” they say. “Just lean on me.”

They don’t know what he is. No one ever seems to recognize him. Eddie had, of course. He’d hated Buck, until he hadn’t. Buck had tricked him eventually. Worn the shell of a human well enough to trick even a keen nose. And Bobby had believed him, believed him, and then he’d known. Buck drifts.

His feet move. His body follows. Maybe he’s deep in the Pacific now, flashes of color made of coral, more alive than he is.

A flash of red. Buck sees it, as if in a spotlight. “Wait,” he croaks. The tide pauses. He stumbles, on his own power, and carefully so so so so carefully takes the red glasses from a pile of debris. God.

“Are those yours?” the voice asks.

“No,” Buck chokes. “Yes,” he cries. Chris was his, for the time that Eddie trusted him. His fault, his fault. The tide carries on.

Buck smells people. People covered in blood, blood being moved outside of their bodies. He’s too weak to be hungry, but it sharpens something inside of him. The lens focuses, the colors don’t run quite so much. He’s sitting.

It’s a familiar bustle. A disaster relief zone. Where he should be, to help. He should help.

He tries to stand. A hand stops him.

“Sir, you’re too weak to be walking around,” says an admonishing voice.

Buck wants to laugh, but he can only say “Christopher.”

“Is that your name?”

He flinches, a violent movement. “No. No, no. I need to find him.”

“Okay,” she says soothingly. “Do you have a last name?”

“Diaz,” he murmurs. It feels like an incantation, a summons. Eddie should hear him, be called to him.

“And first?”

“Evan,” he mumbles. He’s Evan. Maddie’s Evan.

“Evan Diaz,” she repeats.

He tries to say no, but the word won’t come out. “And Christopher,” he says. It’s a better use of his energy. “Christopher Diaz.”

There’s more to be said, and he tries. He’s a good kid. I have his glasses. Take them. Take them and I’ll crumble. Let me leave. I have to find him. Ask him about dinosaurs, for me. And the fish. Please, please, there are better aquariums. Tell him to be selfish. Ask for the bigger one. Inland, inland. Water and sun, he likes those. Liked those.

“Please, save your energy,” she says. “You might have hypothermia. I need a doctor.”

Buck should tell her he’s cold because he’s dead. He doesn’t have words.

Time floats around him. When he’s lucid enough to think, he tries to leave. Every attempt is met with a gentle hand on his shoulder, or the urge to move not quite reaching past his synapses.

“Can you try something for me?” A different person now, with blue gloves that wave in his face. “Follow my finger.”

Buck tries, but the more he focuses, the more everything bleeds at the edges.

“Vision impaired,” they mutter. “I have you on the list for the doctor but,” they chuckle grimly. “Most everyone here is on the same one.”

More time. It might be none at all. Buck feels the passage of every second. His ears, straining to make up for the lack of vision, have picked up the beating of the hearts around him. Wildly out of sync, amplified by the part of him that hungers.

He presses his hands to his ears, but the lack of noise whooshes and falls and sounds like waves, washed up on an invisible shore. He’ll take the alternative.

When he was younger, more naive to the reality of his existence, he’d thought that staying away from blood would make him feel more human. If he could feed as little as possible, limit his urges. The truth was far from it. Blood was the only thing that made him human, stolen as it was. To abstain was to descend entirely into vampirism, a state that could only exist with a ceaseless hunger.

There are so many apologies, when you appear to be on your deathbed. Buck knows his well, so they’re hardly necessary, but again and again they come.

And then, breaking easily through the noise, clear and bright and warm, is a voice Buck knows. It says his name, tinged with worry, and Buck wishes for the floor to open and drag him down, for the wave to come back and tear him to pieces.

Eddie is here, and Buck lost Chris. Eddie is here, and Buck is here, and Chris is gone.

“Sir, you shouldn’t be yelling in here,” says a placating voice. It’s close. Buck shrinks in on himself, straining his useless eyes for something, something.

“I’m sorry I just- I know he’s here somewhere.”

“Did you check with someone with a clipboard? They’ll know.”

“I did, but I know- Please. Buck. You have to tell me where he is.”

“Is there another name we could try?” The voices are closer now. Feet away, probably. Buck can hear Eddie’s heartbeat, wild in his chest. Worry for Chris. Anger?

“He’s here,” Eddie says. He’s looking toward Buck, some part of him knows. But there must be curtains in here, the sort that always pop up at these places. A facsimile of dignity, the best they can offer.

“That room belongs to an Evan Diaz.”

Eddie’s heart stutters. “That’s who I’m looking for.”

“Are you sure-”

There’s a rustle, and a scrape of metal, and then Eddie’s scent is in the room with his heartbeat, and Buck is looking at him but not seeing.

“Buck,” Eddie breathes. Footsteps. Two hands on Buck’s shoulders, steady and big and warm. “You’re okay.”

Buck chokes on his voice, shakes his head. His eyes are still capable of some function, at least, because they burn with tears. “Eddie-” he tries.

“Hey, shh, you don’t have to talk. I saw your chart—can you see anything?”

Buck shakes his head again, but it’s not in answer. “Eddie I- I. Chris. I lost him.”

Eddie inhales sharply, and Buck tenses. “Hey, hey hold on,” Eddie says when Buck tries to wipe at his eyes, certain that if he presses hard enough he can fix them, and get back out. His wrists are caught between the fingers of one of Eddie’s hands, and the other gently brushes away his tears. Somehow, somehow, Buck’s vision sharpens. He can see the shape of Eddie before him, steady.

A few more blinks, and there’s no improvement—he can’t make out any of the background, still useless.

“Buck,” Eddie says. It might not be the first time he’s said it, trying to get Buck’s attention. “Everything is okay. You’re alive. You’re here. Chris is, too. Someone brought him in one- two hours ago. He’s asleep, has been. And I was going to help a bit, before we left, but then- they need so many more hands than they have, here. I lost track of time. But then I smelled you. And I-I tried to tell myself that you must be at another camp, safe. I had to believe you were safe. And here you are.”

“I’m not safe.” Buck can feel his teeth sharpening. He’s feeding off of Eddie, now, his warmth and his wild energy. It’s only enough to make his hunger actionable.

“Is something hurt?” Eddie pats at him, and Buck can’t help but list toward him.

“No,” he says, like ripping a bandage off. “I’m not safe, Eddie. I- I haven’t fed in two months.”

“Buck,” Eddie says. It’s somewhere between admonishing and worried, and though Buck strains his ears, he doesn’t pick up on any fear. “Come on,” he says with more grit. “We’ll get you home. Stay here, and I’ll get Chris.”

He’s gone, and Buck slumps. An excuse, probably. Eddie is going to leave him here, among all these unfamiliar people. Eddie would never. But he should.

Buck tries to gather his strength. With his hunger driving him, he finds that he can sit up steadily, that his legs shake under him but hold his weight. There’s little he can make out beyond his hands, but his other senses are acute.

Eddie returns, and Chris is with him. Curled against his back. Buck sees when Eddie gets right up in front of him. “Still out,” he says. “Now come on. Good thing you can’t put on any muscle mass, huh.”

He gets an arm around Buck. As they make their way through the curtains and cots, Buck feels like a hyperactive dog, leashed to a treadmill. Before him dangles a treat, and his legs push and they push and they push. The treat, of course, is his proximity to Eddie’s neck with how heavily he leans against him. He can hear more than his steadily beating heart, now. His blood rushes in his veins, rich with life.

“Pepa drove my car over here,” Eddie says, when they’re outside. It’s quieter, here, though the scent of death is much stronger. A casualty's tent will be strung up somewhere nearby. Buck prays that Chris stays asleep. “Said traffic was more of a nightmare than usual. My tío followed her over, drove her home. Lifesavers.”

“I need to go,” Buck says. He tries to step away from Eddie’s hold, to head toward the emptiness that he can sense. It must be the path of the tsunami, buildings left abandoned. A fitting place to die.

Eddie pulls him closer. “Don’t even think about. What’s your plan there, Buck? Crawl into a hole until you starve?”

Yes, Buck thinks. Eddie scoffs.

“Here,” he says. Buck is propped against a metal surface, curved and cool, and then there’s the click of a door mechanism. “Get in. If you’re gone, I will hunt you down and make sure you live, Buckley. Stay in the car.”

Buck is helpless but to follow his command. His weakness, probably, giving him a lack of conviction. Eddie and Chris’s scents disappear, save for the traces of them stuck in the leather of the seats, and Buck loses consciousness.

He wakes to the car rumbling, and something plastic and strange in his lap.

“Buck!” Chris says, and something shatters inside of him. Good or bad, he doesn’t know, but he finds it hard to care when a small hand grabs for his arm. “I’m sorry that I didn’t find you.”

Buck chokes on a sob, covering Chris’s hand with his own. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he tells him. It’s every bit of conviction he has, all the admiration he carries for this brave kid. “You were so brave, Chris.”

Chris hums. Curious, Buck picks up the object in his lap and recognizes it by feel alone—a bloodbag. “What-”

“Drink up, bud,” Eddie’s voice says from the front of the vehicle.

“Did you steal blood from the relief zone?”

“Is it really stealing if you need it?”

Buck swallows roughly. His fangs are sharp in his mouth, and words are hard to come by past the vicious hunger that rises in his throat, but he knows he should say something. A thank you, or a refusal.

Instead, he just passes the bag from hand to hand. Its weight shifts strangely. He can feel Chris’s eyes burning into the side of his head, and somehow, through the fog of exhaustion, he feels shame and worry.

“Chris,” Eddie admonishes. “Don’t stare.”

Chris huffs, but there’s an audible squeak as he turns away.

Buck can’t wait any longer—he sinks his fangs into the side of the bag, practice the only thing keeping his bite neat. The plastic-y taste of the blood floods his mouth, but he can’t find it in himself to mind, for once. It’s life.

Quicker than he’d like, he drains the entire bag. He has to sit for a moment, eyes closed and world shut out as much as it can be, to feel as it fills his veins and pumps through his heart. Like a rescue breath, or a shock of electricity. Something that was missing is returned. Stolen, of course, though the guilt weighs less heavily.

“Feel better?” Eddie asks, and he sounds vaguely amused. When Buck opens his eyes, the world is clear. It’s almost a bigger relief than the blood itself, though he knows he only feels that way because the hunger immediately creeps back in, while his vision stays steady.

It’s more biting than it should be, having just fed, but he supposes it’s a consequence of how long he’d gone without, and the extent of the wear on his body. Maybe he’ll get a scar to stick, this time around.

Traffic is, predictably, still nightmarish. Eddie uncharacteristically doesn’t complain. If Buck is reading him right, he seems content to just exist in the same space as two people he had worried for.

“Eddie?” Buck asks quietly. Chris is asleep next to him, and Buck has hardly looked away from him once. “How’d you end up at the same place as us?”

“Luck, mostly,” Eddie replies. “We got sent to deal with the aftermath of the wave. I ran into this firefighter—another wolf, actually—and got put on babysitting duty. She was worried about her captain.”

“Right,” Buck says. It’s hard to comprehend, how well things had worked out. “Did you- Did Chris tell you that he shifted?”

Eddie tenses minutely, a detail Buck catches even from the corner of his eye. “I- he didn’t. And I- I didn’t feel it. There’s probably something I should tell you.”

“It’s fine,” Buck says. He’s too tired to worry about lies. He just wants to be, with Eddie and Chris.

“No,” Eddie sounds torn. “You have to know I did it for a reason.” Buck hums. “And I should have come clean sooner. But I was born a werewolf, to two wolves who were born from other wolves.”

“You’re from a big pack,” Buck surmises. “Eddie- I get it. When you told me, i-it was early. We were hardly friends.”

“Right.” Eddie sucks in a big breath, and then; “And I can’t shift.”

Buck blinks. “What?”

Eddie, in the relatively short amount of time Buck has known him, has embodied so fully everything Buck would expect of a wolf. He’s competent, dedicated, loyal. Strong and fast, with stellar senses. Attractive, in an unattainable sort of way.

“Some wolves never can,” Eddie says with a shrug that’s too stiff to be casual. “My family that lives here is the same. Wolves in their souls, or however it works, but nothing to show it.”

Buck flounders for what to say. I think you’re a good wolf, Eddie? “I’m sorry,” he settles on. “Is that why y-you left?”

Eddie’s mouth twists into a sharp smile that makes something inside of Buck hum. “Part of it. Didn’t want Chris to have to deal with all that but- look at him. He’ll be a good wolf.”

The choice of good feels significant. Buck wonders at it, a parent loving you without conditions. He’s just glad his are dead and buried, mostly.

“But I am worried,” Eddie confesses. Their eyes meet in the rear-view mirror, warm brown against harsh blue. “That I won’t be enough for him.”

“You will,” Buck says fiercely. He has no right to it, but he knows. “You’re a great dad, Eddie.”

Color fills Eddie’s cheeks, in contrast to the dark circles under his eyes. “I should have felt it,” he murmurs. “When he shifted. I-I have a bond with him, but it’s not complete. I should have known that he was in danger.”

Buck winces. In danger because of him.

“No,” Eddie shakes his head, and they’re stuck at a red light. He turns to look at Buck, and Buck has to fight to meet his eye. “You couldn’t have known.”

"I shouldn’t have lost him.”

“It was a disaster, Buck. He’s alive, and so are you.”

Someone honks behind them, but Eddie doesn’t turn back to the road until Buck gives him a small nod. Somehow, he means it.

Stepping into Eddie’s house feels like shrugging off an itchy coat, comfort seeping into his skin. Chris is nestled against Eddie’s chest, his nose pressed firmly to his neck, and Buck trails just behind them. He’s wired in the way he always gets after feeding, his mind racing while his body drags, still healing.

He ends up on the couch, wrapped in blankets and Eddie’s clothes. A shower would take more out of him than he has to give, so he has to settle for skin caked with salt.

The house settles around him. A rumbling fridge, wood beams expanding in the humidity, the plastic bag Eddie had thrown the shreds of his old clothes into rustling in a draft. Buck sinks his body into the couch, and his mind into the bones of the house.

His senses are still on high alert, and he doesn’t have to strain to hear it when Eddie starts speaking in a low, gentle voice, across the house in Chris’s room. It’s inescapable, really, and Buck doesn’t have it in him to feel guilty for eavesdropping. His quota for failure has been reached for the day.

“You alright, mijo?”

“Yeah, dad.”

“Okay. It’s okay if you’re not, you know?”

“‘m okay. You can tell me a story.”

“Oh I can?”

“You have to. Or I won’t be able to sleep.”

“Hey, you’ll come get me if you wake up, right?”

“Yes, dad.”

“Okay. A story, then. Do you want a new one?”

“No. The one about the first wolf. I want that one.”

“That’s a really good one, buddy. Do you remember how it starts?”

“He’s not a wolf. He’s just a person, at the beginning, right?”

“Exactly, kid. He and his family, they’re all human. Very human—you know?”

“But it’s not a bad thing.”

“Never, mijo. He’s the youngest of his family. Lots of brothers and sisters. Tíos and tías, and there’s always someone there if he needs anything.”

“Does he have his own room?”

“I think he does. His family get him everything he wants, you know. He’s their baby. Even as he grows, he’s still the baby. If he’s hungry, someone has already made him food. If he wants to play, there are toys and siblings waiting for him.”

“It sounds good.”

“It does, it does. He had so much love, all around him. And he knew that’s what he had. He gave it back, where he could. Said thank you for his food and kept his room clean. Are you laughing, buddy? This is the most important part.”

“It’s not.”

“Maybe. Everything is important together. The boy was growing into a man. And still, he never had to want for anything. He had seen his older brothers and sisters, and all the things they would do when they were his age. It was the first thing he never got, when he asked for it. His family said that he was okay to sit back, to relax. They wanted the best for him. Didn’t want him to worry about work. He was their baby, even though he had grown so much.”

“They didn’t let him do anything?”

“It’s a lesson for parents, too. They thought that they were doing what was best for him. And things were worse than he knew. There wasn’t enough food for everyone, and the weather was getting worse and worse every year. And there was a war, getting closer and closer.

“When it came to their doorstep, the man didn’t know how to help. Many in his family were killed. His house was destroyed. There was no food left, and they were all scared. And the man, he felt like he was failing. He was meant to be the strongest, because he got all the food. He was meant to be the smartest, because he had read all the books. But when his family ran from their home, as many of them as could walk, he was helpless.”

“He was sad?”

“He was sad, and he was angry. Maybe he was old enough to know why his family had treated him the way they did. Maybe he was angry that all he had ever known was being destroyed.”

“He loved them.”

“So much. He wanted, and he wanted, and no one could give him what he asked for, so he had to make it for himself. It was a clear night. The woods were loud, as full as they were with all sorts of animals. He knew the most fearsome of them, the wolf, and he knew the most fragile in the mice and the birds. The woods were dangerous, and yet they provided shelter.”

“And he asked the moon!”

“He asked, and it was every bit of him that did so. All ten toes and all ten fingers and every hair on his head. He wanted to help his family. And the moon and the forest gave it to him, because it was love that they could recognize.”

“So his family was good?”

“His family loved him. And he loved them, and he was the first man to ever walk as a wolf.”

There’s a sleepy rustle of blankets, and Buck imagines that Eddie has an arm around Chris, that he leans over and presses a soft kiss to his forehead that lulls him into the final dregs of sleep. It’s bathed in the soft glow of the moon, where it washes through the window.

Quiet.

Buck wonders if it’s a limit to his imagination, that he can’t imagine what it would be to turn one body into another. For his bones to crack and break, his nails to grow and grow. His fangs, of course, he understands. They ache in his mouth now, his hunger barely satiated. He’d pushed too hard. The hunger may destroy him, now that he’s so close to something beautiful. He has a best friend, and a team—removed as he currently is—and a life that he wants to live. And he is consumed, eternally, by his hunger.

“Still awake?” Eddie asks softly as he pads into the room. It’s strange to see him in the flesh, after drawing up an image of him from his voice alone.

“Don’t think I’ll be able to sleep,” Buck says ruefully. “I should leave.”

Eddie’s face turns stony. “And why would you do that?”

“I-I still need to feed. I went too long without blood. And my body isn’t healed.” He holds an arm out of the blanket, losing some of his hard-fought warmth to show the deep scratches that have barely scabbed over.

“Well, come on then,” Eddie says, jerking his head to the kitchen. “We’ll find you something.”

Mystified, but unable to say no, Buck follows. Maybe Eddie’s own exhaustion has caught up to him, and he’s forgotten that human food will do nothing for Buck. Maybe he’d stolen a few more blood bags and tucked them in the freezer.

But when Buck rounds the corner, he finds Eddie standing and staring. He’s an inescapable presence in the small space. Buck can’t look straight at him for fear of his body giving something away.

“Ah, I don’t know if you have-” he starts.

“Come on, Buck,” Eddie says. It’s lighthearted, their usual teasing, but underneath is something new, something electric. A current of fear and excitement that Buck has never sensed from Eddie before. “I’ve got plenty of blood. Hardly did anything today to lose it.”

“No,” Buck says. He reaches for the counter to ground himself and then stops, afraid that he’ll break it. His hands are trembling with the force of his hunger, his hearing tuned to the frequency of Eddie’s beating heart. “I won’t.”

“I’m asking you.” Eddie comes closer. He’s not baring his neck like some people do, when asking. Instead, his wrist is held in front of him. His muscles bulge with the tension of it, and his veins stand out under his skin. Buck’s fangs drop so fast they graze his tongue, and he gets a second taste of the plastic-y blood. Here, with an offering like this so close, it tastes hollow. Lacking in life, the way it was given, without a target, and stored. And it’s not Eddie.

“I’m sure,” Eddie continues. “I don’t- I don’t want you to do something you don’t want to, Buck, but I need you to be okay. And letting you run out into the night is not going to be good for me,” he laughs darkly. “Don’t make me go through looking for you again. Ever, preferably, but certainly not tonight.”

He’s close enough now that his arm, horizontal between them, bumps into Buck’s chest. With an effort he didn’t know he was capable of, he searches Eddie’s eyes. There’s an openness, an earnestness, there that scares Buck. Eddie, as Eddie always does, means his words.

They won’t be the same, after. But Buck isn’t sure he’s opposed to it.

He takes Eddie’s arm in both his hands, still shaking. The angle is bad. He’d have to twist Eddie’s arm away from his body, or crane his neck, but he can’t think to do anything else. The hunger is rising, rising, a wave to end the day.

“Here,” Eddie says. His other hand grabs at Buck’s hip, spins him so his back is pressed to Eddie’s front, and Eddie’s wrist is facing inward to Buck’s face. “You’re so cold,” Eddie murmurs. His free arm squeezes around Buck’s ribs, presses him close to his chest. “Please,” he says. His voice is in Buck’s ear, all around him. “I need you to be okay.”

Buck’s eyes trace hungrily over the smooth skin of Eddie’s wrist, an indulgence with the same ferocity as his aching hunger. Held against Eddie’s chest as he is, the only way to bring him close enough is to pull on his arm. It’s an inverse of sorts, when Eddie meets his call with a push, and then Buck’s lips are grazing his skin.

A heartbeat, that Buck feels against his skin. He’s deep in the moment. Every minute flicker of light and flutter of sound, each of the numerous places where Eddie and he touch, consumes him wholly.

He parts his lips. Eddie’s breath stutters, just the smallest bit. But he’s steady, steady, not flinching away. The first touch of Buck’s fangs to Eddie’s skin is incidental, the upward brush of his mouth opening, like the gentle slide of a lover’s hand.

The actual bite is somewhere between the press of a needle and the violence of a shot. In the in between, Buck knows it to be pleasure and pain, release and craving. The peak of anticipation, the first pangs of loss. Eddie is not still. When the tips of Buck’s fangs puncture his skin, the arm he has around Buck tightens. Buck is pulled closer.

His hands cradle Eddie’s wrist as he sinks in further, skin giving way cleanly to impossibly sharp teeth, honed by hunger and need. Coaxed by the makeup of Buck’s saliva, blood flows heavily from Eddie’s body and into Buck’s desperate mouth.

The greatest difference when drinking from a human—or something that looks a lot like one—is the presence of life in the blood. Transfer through tubes and machines and bags saps it out, makes the blood bags poor substitutes for the real thing. The aesthetic difference is also staggering, contributing more than most vampires would care to admit.

Eddie, of course, is not human. Buck had heard him when he said he wasn’t a full werewolf, the underlying and overt shame of his inability to shift. But as he drinks Eddie in, takes what makes him Eddie into himself, he finds it impossible to fashion him as anything but a wolf.

There’s something unnameable about his blood. It doesn’t settle easily into Buck’s veins like the bag from earlier, following the channels worn time and time and time again. Buck’s body is reformed by it. His heart beats in time with Eddie’s. His lungs breathe with his. Everything that Eddie is, everything that Eddie feels, Buck is swept away in.

His head clears. His body hums with a song he doesn’t know, and the moment tips to the other side. Eddie holds him, and Buck’s fangs stay sunk in his body. Blood flows between them, like a transfusion on the field, and neither of them makes to move. Buck is overindulging. He tastes Eddie’s blood, swallows it down, and it sits heavy inside him, away from vein and heart and artery. Eddie’s body compensates. His healing tastes like lavender, a field of silver and purple, and Buck is so, so full.

It’s instinct that has him pulling away, and there’s a split second, a fraction of a moment, where Eddie keeps him in place. He answers Buck’s want with a plea of his own, and Buck can hardly be surprised when it falls away, and his fangs slide free.

Eddie doesn’t go far. He doesn’t go away at all, really. His wrist still hovers in front of Buck’s face, the punctures slowly healing, and he still holds Buck to him. In a display of an instinct Buck has never felt before, he tugs Eddie’s wrist to his mouth once more and licks over the mark. Behind him, against him, around him, Eddie breathes out. Lets go.

Buck is the one to step away. He’s humming with energy, more than he’s had since losing his job. He can feel his body healing. Cuts scabbing over and then sealing shut, bruises purpling and fading. Nothing of the terrible day will stick around. Eventually, even Eddie’s blood will have been burnt up, and again Buck will have to feed.

He clears his throat awkwardly. “Thanks man.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything. Buck nervously turns to face him, expecting to see a face of regret or anger or—or something. In the split second it takes for Eddie to enter his view, he spirals. A downside of the excess of energy is the speed at which his thoughts race, conjuring up a near infinite number of possibilities for the future. And then he’s looking it in the eye, and it wears a familiar face.

There’s a moment, that lingers in the quiet, sacred space, where Buck can feel Eddie taking him in. He’s not sure what he finds—Buck’s face healed and flushed—but he smiles in a soft, private sort of way. He lifts the same arm that Buck had drunk from, fingers curled in a loose fist, and Buck grins when he returns the gesture—fists bumped together like they've wrapped up a tricky call.

“You know,” Eddie says, leaning a hip against the counter and crossing his arms. “I didn’t let you- you know- for a debt or anything.”

Buck blinks at him. “I, uh, didn’t think you did?”

“Sure,” Eddie snorts. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that if you went and laid down on that couch right now to sleep—or stare at the ceiling, or whatever—you wouldn’t feel any guilt at all. You wouldn’t do that Buck thing, where you second-guess everything, tie yourself up in a knot.”

“I drank your blood!” Too loud for the kitchen, for the hour. Buck didn’t know he’d been walking the edge of regret, but Eddie had picked it out so easily. “And I-I lost Chris. You should be furious with me, Eddie. And instead you l-let me into your house, and you steal a blood bag for me, and you let me-” he shakes his head, cuts himself off. “I don’t get it.”

“You know what I think about you ‘losing’ Chris.” Buck has never seen a more emphatic use of air quotes. “And I’ll say it until you get it, Buck. It was a disaster. Chris is okay, because of you. Having both of you here, both of you alive, is what I need.”

Buck so rarely sees Eddie take something, ask for something, because he wants it. And here he is, spelling it out to make Buck feel better. They’re an ouroboros of need, Buck desperate to be wanted and Eddie’s want to protect built into his bones.

So Buck stays the night. Eddie tries to pile more blankets on him than will fit on the couch, but Buck doesn’t protest. He’s awake when, somewhere in the early hours of the morning, Eddie reemerges to duck into Chris’s room. His voice is a quiet, comforting murmur, and he doesn’t reappear.

It feels like everything should be different, when the sun rises and Buck settles into a relaxing day with Eddie and Chris, though Eddie is often on his phone and frowning. Pepa and abuela arrive in the afternoon with comfort food and smothering hugs for Chris, and Buck doesn’t even find it in him to feel out of place—Eddie’s blood, presumably, running through his veins and giving him an overblown sense of being at home. A side effect that Buck is familiar with—the few times he has fed directly, strange inheritances often make themselves known in the immediate days that follow. A brief aversion to dogs, a craving for cinnamon, the instinct to walk on the left side of every path. Sometimes it feels like losing himself. Mostly, it feels like being human.

The day winds down. Buck is a little surprised when he’s pulled into the parting hugs, knowing now that Eddie’s family are wolves, too. He’d smelled it on them, just as he had Chris, but it was easy to assume that it was just a consequence of Eddie’s touchiness and tendency to leave his scent all over the people he loves. But the scent of wolf was theirs, and still they treated Buck with kindness.

Chris has been quiet all day. Buck catches Eddie frowning over him at least a dozen times, though when Chris faces him he always put on a bright, brave face. It isn't at all like Chris, and Buck understands his worry deeply. But outside of the touch, they’re all careful not to smother Chris. No forced enthusiasm or happiness, just calm existence, like they’re proving to him that things are going to be okay.

“Dad,” Chris says, only a few minutes after Pepa has left with abuela in tow. “I think I’m ready for bed.”

Eddie’s face creases, but he quickly hides it behind a gentle smile. “Alright buddy. You want to go get ready, and I’ll read you a story once you are?”

Buck wonders how many more werewolf stories there are, if it would be weird if he asked after them. Everything about the one he’d heard the night before sticks with him like a spider’s web, unshakeable and fragile.

“Goodnight Buck,” Chris says, and Buck is quick to crouch down and pull him into a tight hug.

“‘Night, Chris,” Buck murmurs into the crown of his head, holding on for just a moment longer than he normally would, trying to press the memory of Chris, warm and alive, into the space where his worry still lies. It’s embedded deep, rough like a poorly healed scar.

Buck is steadily calm as he watches Chris go. He’s safe, here with Eddie. Buck has felt it for the past day, basked in it. Taken his fill.

“Well,” he starts, standing from his crouch. Eddie is watching him with a wary look in his eye, like he knows what Buck is about to pull. “I’d better get going.”

“Is that how it’s going to be?” Eddie’s got his arms crossed over his chest again, and Buck has to fight not to fall back into the moment in the kitchen. “Every time? You stay, and then you hit your, what? Your self imposed quota? Is it twenty-four or twenty-five hours, I can’t quite tell.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Buck says. He matches Eddie’s barely veiled frustration with his own practiced stillness. “It’s not weird for me to go back to my apartment, Eddie.”

“Yours. You know that’s not true.”

The only movement Buck allows himself is the press of his nails into his palm. “Fine. I don’t have a place that’s mine. I-it’s fine.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“I can’t stay, Eddie.”

“Why not?” Eddie takes half a step forward, and then falters back. “You have a place here.”

Buck doesn’t believe him. Can’t believe him.

It’s Eddie’s instincts, getting all twisted. Buck believes that he was worried for him, after the tsunami. He believes that Eddie doesn’t begrudge his presence. But he doesn’t think that Eddie is conscious of how much he’s letting his instincts command him, the regret he’ll feel when they fade.

“I know,” he says placatingly. “I like being here. But I can’t stay. I-it’s who I am. I think that maybe I’m forgetting it, and that you can’t see it. But I’ve always moved. I’ve always been-” Running. “Free.”

Panic flashes over Eddie’s face. “You’re leaving LA?”

“No,” Buck says quickly. “I’m going to get my job back. And Maddie is so happy here- I wouldn’t leave her. I just need- time. A few days, okay?”

“Chris will need you.”

“Any time. Seriously. Anything he needs.”

“And what if I think it would be best for him if you stayed here?”

His instincts again. “I don’t know,” Buck says, fighting for his stillness. “We’ll figure something out. I’m not leaving,” he repeats. “I just need to be away, for a bit. It’s how things work.”

A conflict of wants. That’s what Buck tells himself, as he watches Eddie grapple with it. Eddie thinks he wants everything he cares most for under one roof—or maybe he knows it, and the part that’s confusing him is Buck being part of that.

Buck has never fit that way. Has never been wanted long term, never found himself a place to stay. His parents could hardly tolerate him, even before he was turned—maybe it was always his fate, to be this way. Drifting. Taking what he can get, always careful to let go before he takes too much. Maybe there’s a world where Eddie wants him badly enough to overcome it. Maybe there’s a world where that doesn’t go terribly wrong. For the sake of Eddie and Chris and everyone else that Buck loves, he gives Eddie the strongest smile he can manage, and he leaves.

It’s strange to step outside the house. He feels colder right away, though the true temperature is the opposite—Eddie’s house cooled by AC, the early hours of night still filled with LA’s warm day. The only part of him that still burns is the back of his neck in awareness that Eddie is watching him go.

And then his big, important choice is shattered when he remembers his car isn’t here.

There’s a glimmer of mirth in Eddie’s eyes, barely beating back the fight that still lives there. “Forgetting something, bud?”

“I’ll call an Uber,” Buck grumbles.

“You’ll come back inside while you wait?”

It’s the last time Buck will let himself falter. When he finally gets back to his—Abby’s—apartment, he throws himself into research. It takes him through the night in tangents and deep dives, the wonders of the internet much appreciated.

volunteer opportunities los angeles

documents needed to volunteer at library

documents needed to volunteer at animal shelter

how to not get tempted into getting a pet

where to get fingerprints taken

do fingerprints change over time

rate of firefighters with fingerprints burnt off

Buck flings his phone away a little dramatically. It bounces right to the edge of a couch cushion, teeters for a long moment, then doesn’t have the guts to follow through and fall. Of course.

He doesn’t think he’s ever had his fingerprints taken before. He’s also pretty sure it would be passed off as a weird coincidence at worst, if he did happen to be a match for, say, someone who appeared forty years his senior.

His research is inconclusive, really. The process to get his job at the 118 had been trial enough, and he’s pretty sure he only got waved through on Bobby’s good word. The degree to which he exists as a living person is wobbly at best, though he often passes it off by joking that his parents just forgot to deal with all the paperwork nonsense when it came to him. His delivery didn’t tend to draw more than awkward chuckles.

He can probably find somewhere to volunteer. It’s just—he has the thought to do it, to prove himself. Getting a paid job would feel like moving on from being a firefighter, a betrayal, and possibly a legal breach of his employment contract. He’s still hired. He wants that job back, please and thank you. If wracking up some volunteer hours will do it, then Buck is more than game.

But despite how pleasant it sounds to read to kids at the library or walk puppies, Buck worries. He’s had more jobs than he can count over the years, and the only one that ever felt like it fit was firefighting. That was purpose. Ironic, sure, but purpose. If he threw himself into other things and found them lacking, would it leave him worse off? Prove to himself that what he’d built at the 118 was a fluke, a rare bit of luck in a miserable existence? Buck isn't sure he wants to find out.

The alternative, however, is worse. He does not want to spend another day kicking around the apartment that doesn't feel like his and hasn't felt like Abby’s in months, either. The wait for her to stop paying the rent is a weak precursor to the moment he feels his welcome wear off, her claim to the place lost and him kicked out as an afterthought.

So, he can try for two things, maybe. Get himself out there. Build some trails or whatever, and apartment hunt with his weird credit score. He’s going to end up back in a frat-ish house, best case. Maybe Eddie would let him sleep on the roof like an overgrown possum.

He doesn’t know when he stood and started pacing, but it’s hard to stop the momentum now that he’s got it. Everything just feels pressing. He’s lived for hundreds of years, and in this moment, it feels like if he doesn’t get his job back within the week, he’s going to—well, not die. That’s the whole problem, really. Maybe he’ll freeze over, like a tray of ice cubes placed gently, lovingly, in the freezer. He’d like that. If it was Eddie’s freezer.

Shit.

Eddie’s blood is doing strange things to him. Buck wants to keep it in his veins forever. He wants to step into the sun and let it burn through his energy until he needs to track down a new blood bag.

His breath catches in his throat, and he stops midstep when the thought rises, abhorred and ugly, in his mind. He wants to do it again.

Chapter Text

“When you said blow off steam.” Eddie frowns. “This isn’t what I was picturing.”

“You want a rage room instead, Diaz? Don’t know if they make those werewolf-grade.”

“Is this for wolves?” he asks, surprised.

He and Bosko are parked a few rows back from the action, a lot full of mismatched vehicles and low lighting. It’s some sort of street fighting, obviously—hard to miss the tells—but by all appearances, he’d think it was entirely human.

“Not exclusively,” she says. “Not many humans with the guts to show, though.”

Eddie nods, and he can’t tell if he’s warming to the idea or not. If he should like it. Truthfully, he’s not entirely sure what he’s doing here.

Things have been weird in a post-tsunami world. Chris is up every other night with bad dreams, and it doesn’t help that Buck has all but entirely shut them out, against his own word. Eddie feels alone at work and at home, unmoored. It’s a state he should be used to. A state he condemned himself to when he left his pack. But for a time, he’d had something.

He doesn’t have to worry himself in circles to figure out what went wrong; he pushed too hard. Let his instincts win over his common sense, acted like a dog with a new favorite toy. Buck is busy with his new determination to prove himself by spending every waking hour busy, and Eddie is only losing his mind over it a little bit.

Thus, Bosko. The parking lot. The sounds of physicality, the smell of blood that reminds him of a night in the kitchen, the last time everything had felt right.

“Alright,” he says, reaching for the handle. “Let’s do it then.”

He hasn’t told Bosko everything, but by virtue of being a wolf, she can tell that something is off with him. Maybe it had been a few punches thrown too hard at the bag in the station’s gym, or an eagerness to volunteer for the more physical calls, but somehow she’d decided that what Eddie needed was to watch some punches get thrown—unclear yet on if she expects him to be in the brawl.

They stick close together as they approach the circle of people, the sound of skin on skin overlapped by cheers and groans and more animalistic noises, the kind that set Eddie’s teeth on edge. It’s a mass of confusing smells, blood and sweat the clear topnotes with creeping musks of wolf and magic.

It’s simultaneously a caricature of what he’d expected Los Angeles to be when setting it in his sights for escape, and a shock to his system. The logical part of him knows that a city free of packs would call to wolves without them, and yet Eddie couldn’t have predicted just how many that is. Among the crowd, it must be close to ninety percent wolves. Enough of them to form a sizeable pack of their own, if they weren’t visibly bristling just being near each other.

Eddie immediately gets the allure. His instincts rise to the surface, hot and prickling, like doing a rope rescue. It’s a tight margin between genuine danger and shared adrenaline. When he meets Bosko’s gaze, she’s giving him a knowing look.

He’d picked her out as a wolf at the Ferris wheel, halfway through the rescue. The abundance of water didn’t help, all sorts of smells displaced or washed away, and he’d nearly toppled off and back into the water when the errant scent of wolf had hit him. She’d looked at him in shock a few minutes later, so at least he wasn’t alone in being late to the call.

But they’ve never really talked about it. An unspoken agreement, camaraderie established through raised eyebrows and upturned noses rather than words. But among all these wolves, Eddie can’t help but be a little curious.

“So,” he says, while they watch a witch circle a wolf with his fangs spilling from his mouth, eyes dancing with the light. “What are you hiding from?”

“Classy,” she snorts. “Maybe I just don’t like pack life.”

The crowd lets out an appreciative ooo when the witch tosses out a flashy bit of magic. Eddie can’t quite tell what it does, but it certainly catches the eye. “Right. I’m sure anyone here would say the same. But what was it about it that had you turning tail?”

“You think you’re so clever.” He shrugs. It makes him ache with longing, but he shoves it down. “I wasn’t chased out, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was a power thing. Next alpha was clear enough, and he and I never got along. Decided to cut out before things got messy.”

“And you never found another pack.”

“Projection, then.” The fight has finally picked up—the wolf has the witch pinned down, teeth snapping in their face while more light flies out toward the crowd. “I’m sure you’ll be able to settle down, nester.”

“I don’t need a pack,” Eddie answers instinctively, and then bites his tongue. A particularly bright burst highlights her disbelieving look.

“You joined up with the LAFD same reason I did,” she states. “Close as pack as you can get with less of the,” she waves a hand around. “Drama. Though not by much.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” Eddie mutters. There’s a very fast bit of movement, and then the witch is really pinned, shouting and sparking for an end. For a long moment, Eddie thinks the wolf is too lost in the energy of the fight, that he’s really about to watch someone die. And then he backs off, fangs still on full display, and arms thrown into the air while the crowd cheers.

There’s a pause while the next two fighters are pushed into the center. Neither of them looks all too eager until the cheering starts, and Eddie notices the money exchanging hands.

Bosko looks at them for a moment, and then says, “My bet’s on the shorter one. You can see a vampire mark on him. Takes a strong wolf to deal with that, and a ballsy one to show off the scar.”

Eddie jolts a little, craning forward until he can spot the shiny twin marks on the wolf’s neck.

“You’ve got a vampire problem at the 118, right?”

“What makes you say that?” Eddie asks coolly. Less nonchalant than he ought to be, but this whole thing is really setting him off, adding to his turmoil as of late.

“I can smell it all over, for one.” She ticks off on a finger, and Eddie notices that her nails have sharpened and her eyes reflect the light more than a human’s would. The atmosphere has its claws in her, too. “For another, people talk. We’re not the only wolves who fight fires.”

“I never noticed,” Eddie says, a little miffed. If other teams are picking up on the dynamics of his, is he missing something to not be noticing theirs? “And his name is Buck.”

She raises both eyebrows at him now. “You like the vampire?”

Someone gets hit, hard. It’s the shorter wolf, the one Bosko’d picked out. Eddie watches him fall, how quickly he springs up.

Eddie is starting to think he more than likes Buck. It’s the crux of his issue, recently—dumb werewolf brain seems to have picked him out as pack, impossible as it is. Eddie can’t form bonds, as proved by his complete unawareness of his son being in danger for the better part of a day, and Buck can’t form bonds because he isn’t a wolf.

It’s hard to explain that to the creature that lives inside of Eddie. Buck loves his son. He watches Eddie’s back on the field, lets him in, and then shuts him out when Eddie gets too close. A rollercoaster that gets Eddie’s blood pumping with frustration, though always at himself or circumstance. Buck can be Buck about things. Eddie needs to accept that.

“We’re partners,” he says belatedly. “I trust him.”

“Well,” she laughs. “Guess you really can see anything in LA.”

“You ever get in there?” he asks to change the subject. Talking about Buck feels like holding his heart out on a platter, and this really isn’t the place for it.

Short wolf—vampire slaying wolf—has taken the advantage, somehow. Eddie had zoned out too much to follow, but his opponent is looking significantly more bloodied.

“I have.”

“You any good?”

“Trying to fight me, Diaz? I was only curious about the vampire.”

Eddie laughs, a bit of the tension sparking off of him. He’d thought it ridiculous to get in that ring when they’d arrive, but now—

“Nah,” he says. “Think I’d get good odds, though?”

She looks him over, a purely analytical gaze. He’s fairly confident in what she sees—a combination of boredom at work driving him into the workout room more, and a feeling of inadequacy for not being able to help Buck or Chris while both were in danger has his muscles in top form, and it’s a hot night, so not much is hidden.

He often wonders if a practiced wolf can tell he’s unable to shift just by looking at him. Hell, he’s not sure Bosko even knows, isn’t sure she’d have brought him here if she knew how weak he really is. Wracked by instincts foreign to his body, nails blunt and teeth only as sharp as a human’s can get.

“No,” she settles on. “But you’d win anyway. That is a bet I’d put money on.”

It’s a challenge, clear as day. The crowd cheers louder than Eddie has heard so far, and the short wolf has won. Eddie takes in his bloodied fists and the wild look in his eye, and he rolls out his shoulders.

“Don’t lose the house,” he tells her as he steps forward.

He’s paying more attention to the flow of money than he is his opponent, when he’s accepted into the center of the ring. It’s hard to tell specifics, obviously, but he sees far more gestures in the direction of the wolf opposite him than he does his way. Fine. He’s never minded an underdog story.

By his assessment, they look evenly matched. His opponent has a few pounds on him, more built muscle where Eddie is lean, but it’s nothing drastic. He won’t be slow, but Eddie will be faster anyway.

They start by circling, a move that feels canid. Eddie watches the rhythm of his steps, the stutter of his breath. Fired up, of course, hard not to be. Cocky, in the way he watches Eddie back, but not too closely. He knows his first move and is waiting for opportunity, not knowledge.

Eddie has made it a point to learn to fight like a wolf. Overcompensation, he’d heard in quiet voices, familiar with pack proximity. Everyone knew.

Now, he feints. His opponent sees it, because Eddie wants him to. The crowd jeers, though he can tell they’re hooked on the tension and not yet bored. More circling, and Eddie draws the energy of the night into him on each breath.

He’d learned everything he could about how to be a good wolf. Watched the easy way his packmates asked for and gave touch, their scenting and their sharing. Emotions communicated through tosses of the head, reverence shown through downcast eyes. Many of his teenage nights had been spent in front of a mirror, watching the slope of his own shoulders.

His opponent throws the first real punch. It’s not too wolf-like, he notes as it grazes his arm, not enough of a swipe. He must fight humans often.

Eddie bares his teeth. There’s no sign of the moon through the haze of light pollution, but he’d swear he could feel its pull when he throws his own swing.

It always chafes at Eddie to admit it, but fighting is a lot like dancing. His army buddies had been shocked to find out about the significant chunk of Eddie’s life spent pursuing ballroom dance seriously, but he’d never questioned it. It was about knowing how to lead, when to follow. Synchrony and motion, as necessary for wolves as breathing. Despite his yet undiscovered shortcomings, Eddie was good.

His partner now doesn’t seem content to let Eddie lead. He steps to a rhythm that sends him off balance and clashes when Eddie leans away and then moves in. Control isn’t always about setting the circumstances. You make them your own.

It’s an imperfect, violent thing. Eddie gets more hits in, but he’s caught on claws that tear his shirt to ribbons and leave welts over his skin, quick to heal as they are. But where his opponent sticks always to the plan he’d been set on before even entering the ring, Eddie adapts with every new moment.

When he wins, the riotous cheers press back his aches and bruises. A grudging nod of a victory well-earned when he offers a hand up from the asphalt makes his body hum, though he doesn’t jump for another fight.

“Nice work,” Bosko says with an appreciative nod, once Eddie has made it through the small crowd that wants to pat him on the back for winning them their bets. He gets a few dirty looks too, though no one does anything about it. Still, he can’t be sure if that’s because of his thorough victory or the unspoken rules of the place.

“You didn’t really think I’d win, did you?” Eddie pulls off the remnants of his shirt, and when he can’t find a bin to toss them in—he has a very logical limit on his tolerance for illegality, thank you—shoves them in a pocket of his pants.

“No,” Bosko snorts. “Thought I was going to have to carry you back to the truck, maybe try and explain some things to Bobby.”

“I’m trying real hard not to be offended,” Eddie jokes. He’s feeling lighter now, though the buzz still runs under his skin.

“Come on. I thought you were the sort of wolf who runs from his own shadow,” she says. “Never seen you so much as show a claw.”

Something in Eddie is satisfied, that she didn’t know. Being able to pick up that something was off with him and his wolf wasn’t quite the same as pinpointing it to a lack of shifting.

“Can’t,” he says simply. “Wolf doesn’t come out to play.”

She does a double-take. “No way. You messing with me?”

“Not at all.” He holds up a hand, flexes his fingers like he’s seen a dozen wolves do. They stay human, nonthreatening. “Can’t quite prove nonexistence, but,” he shrugs. “Was supposed to be alpha, someday. Hard to pull off if you can’t run with the pack.”

“Wow,” she says. “I’d pegged the alpha type, figured you were running from responsibility. Older pack then? Traditionalists?”

“You could say that.” Understatement. Eddie’s pack is old. Their little patch of Texas is just the latest, an adjustment to ever-growing numbers. It’s all Eddie’s ever known, obviously, but he’s had his head filled with the legends of his—old—pack since he was old enough to hear them. “They wouldn’t have chased me off, though. Just shoved me in a corner to collect dust, do paperwork. Didn’t sound too appealing.”

“Well, you pass it off well,” she settles on, after a bit. The sounds around them have Eddie’s blood humming for another round, but he bites it back. Doing one at all was pushing it, indulging the instincts he should he shelving. Though, maybe if he got enough fights in they’d be satiated…

He can’t stop thinking about that night, after. His life is still distinctly Buck-less, and he finds himself getting into a habit of morning runs. Mornings and Eddie Diaz have been long-standing enemies, and yet here he is, struggling to get an excess of energy out wherever he can.

There’s no easy way to wrap up his problems, is the thing. Eddie is patient. He’s had to be, but it’s never come awfully hard to him. It’s being helpless that he really hates.

Chris is in therapy. He’s doing good, apparently, but he has stuff to work through. Eddie does his best to balance talking to him about it and giving him space, finds himself spending long nights sitting at the edge of Chris’s bed to watch him sleep and remind himself that things will work out, that he’s alive and breathing.

Buck is like a ghost. Part of Eddie wants him back at work so desperately that he’s almost ready to beg Bobby for it, on his knees and all. Another part of him, wracked with guilt for how he knows it would feel for Buck to hear it, is relieved that Buck isn’t putting himself in danger anymore. Far fewer fires at libraries, last Eddie checked, and he doesn’t think they’re giving the shelter dogs wooden teeth implants.

He needs a happy medium between Buck dodging his texts and calls and Buck being back in the line of danger. A few more nights spent at Eddie’s house would be nice. Is Eddie too old to propose a sleepover? He’s starting to not care much, as weeks turn to months.

Lack of control doesn’t logically translate to putting his body on the line, but Eddie finds himself falling into a habit of fighting anyway.

It’d been impossible to shake the first night from his mind, the aftermath when he’d collapsed into bed and slept well. Picking Chris up from his sleepover hadn’t even felt like life or death, and Chris had been very glad for Eddie being normal about things.

He doesn’t win every fight. Finds himself pinned, when he’s outmaneuvered or overpowered. His wolf howls something fierce when he calls quits, and in those moments, he feels like he’s on the precipice of growing claws and fangs and fur. It’s as addictive as a win, though he still never loses much. A perk of how often he does it, and how much time he has at the station, is that he only gets better.

“You thinking of leaving us for the WWE?” Chim asks one day, when Eddie is really wailing on the punching bag. The team has been careful around Eddie, since Buck got put on his leave and started ghosting all of them. He should protest it, tell them they’ve known the guy longer than he has. Maybe they can all take turns throwing punches! The bag can take the hit. But another part of him, that twisted, confused part that imagines a bond glowing bright between him and Buck, thrives under the treatment. Everyone knows Buck means something to Eddie. They don’t need to be wolves to sniff it out.

Eddie laughs, tighter than it should be. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

“You’d be good at theater,” Chim says. “Lots of drama, with you.”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.”

Eddie squints suspiciously at him, then sighs and wipes at the sweat on his forehead. Fine enough place to end the workout, he supposes. Maybe Chim is in here to start on his own.

“It’s just, like,” Chimney says, and Eddie slowly lifts his head to face him. “Well. You and Buck, you know.”

“I’ve heard of them.”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s been what, a year since you joined the team? And already, the two of you are like- like one beast. Buck and Eddie. Say it five times fast, you know.”

Eddie’s chest blooms with an embarrassing warmth. This is not helping him keep his instincts at bay, at all. “I guess?”

“Right, sure. So I was just thinking that you could be like, way more mopey than you are. Might get Bobby to consider letting Buck back on faster.”

“You don’t think he should have put him on leave?”

Chim glances over his shoulder, though Eddie knows he’s not really afraid of Bobby. He sighs. “I don’t even really get it. He had a close call, we all saw that. A miracle, really. But my read on Buck’s always kinda been, yeah, that kid's seen a few miracles. Only way he’s made it this far, probably.” Eddie huffs out a small laugh. ”And it’s Buck. He’s missing the job. I’d know it even if Maddie—don’t tell Buck she told me this—even if Maddie didn’t tell me how much he talks about it.”

“I don’t know,” Eddie says neutrally. He’s not sure what he thinks of his habit of watching how he talks about Buck to his friends. “Maybe Bobby has the right idea.”

Chimney blinks at him, then purses his lips and nods slowly. “I’m the one who’s missing something?”

“Did Maddie- did she say anything about thinking Buck should come back?”

“Sensitive topic,” Chim says. “But- yeah. She thinks it’s good for him. Been real worried about what he gets up to with all his free time.”

“I’ve heard it’s mostly harmless.” Eddie shrugs. He had, maybe, thought about double-checking that Buck was where he said he’d be. Would that be too far? It was normal friend behavior, near as he could tell. Chim was worried, too.

“Okay, well,” Chim stretches, looking at the punching bag with a little trepidation. “You done pummeling that thing? Think Bobby’ll have lunch out soon.”

Library day? Eddie texts Buck when he gets off shift the next morning. Chris’ll be in school until the late afternoon, and Eddie isn’t looking forward to returning to an empty house, even if it promises a nap.

Buck occasionally responds to his questions about his little sidequests, as Chris has taken to calling them. To prove whatever point he’s trying to make with them, most likely. Eddie isn’t exactly reporting back to Bobby, but he’s not complaining about getting a few updates in an otherwise empty void.

Yes, comes Buck eventual reply, while Eddie is driving in slow circles through a neighborhood. He can’t help but notice every rattle his old truck makes, the small squeak of the brakes that comes back no matter how many times he tries to fix them—pennance for never getting Pepa’s quite right, probably.

Which one? Eddie types back. Just wondering if youd recommend it for chris.

Kind of far from urs. Eddie frowns at the period bookending that text. At least it tells him where Buck is, and he doesn’t even need to plug the address into his phone to get headed in the right direction.

And? And Eddie replies when he’s stuck at a light. Where the hell are all these people going at ten in the morning?

Buck doesn’t text back. Eddie checks, at the plethora of opportunities he gets.

Fine. Buck can play it this way. Despite traffic, Eddie is going to see him. It’s an aching need in his chest, the Buck that lives in his mind’s eye morphing into the face he’d seen in that tent after the tsunami—drained, hurt. Pale, until the bag of blood had brought some of his color back, and then vibrant when he’d let Eddie help him. Memories of the kitchen feel distant now, and worry has him pressing his foot harder against the gas, despite the more logical part of him that knows there’s no reason for Buck to be in any danger.

Shame has never once been a feeling he associated with letting Buck drink from him. At its most base level, he was helping a friend. Unique circumstances to be sure, but Eddie was not the type to balk at a challenge.

He knows how his parents would feel about the act. The vampires of their stories are pure sin, taking and taking and taking. They could only live through the exploitation of others, and if Eddie had internalized that as an aversion to ever asking for help, then maybe he’d taken the best lesson he could have, given the circumstances. Buck wasn’t like that. No part of him was. Eddie could see clear as day how bad Buck wanted, when he sat on Eddie’s couch and looked around the place like he'd never leave, and yet he hadn’t stepped a foot over the threshold since.

Eddie invited him in, and Buck fled. A tragedy of epic proportions, draped in seawater and longing. Eddie is getting real tired of it.

He parks. The lot is sparsely filled, and he picks out Buck’s car in a shaded spot. To be a little petty, he parks right next to it, and glares. It has at least some fault in Buck’s avoidance. Eddie isn’t one for slashing his friend’s tires, but he does it in spirit anyway.

Maybe he’d frame it on someone else. Circle around and pull up just in time to see Buck discover them, play the magnanimous part of offering him a ride home.

He’s not going to do that. Obviously. And he’s not, like, really fantasizing about it. And if he was, it’s Buck’s fault for driving him crazy with the disappearing act. It ends today, if Eddie has anything to say about it.

He doesn’t look at Buck’s tires again before leaving, because what if someone did slash them? Eddie gets implicated because he was lost in thought? No, thank you. Setting off toward the library with his shoulders squared and head held high, Eddie feels no guilt, and little worry. It’s Buck.

He’s pretty easy to spot, even among the tall shelves. His broad shoulders and long legs make the small cart of books he tows with him look comically small. Eddie just watches, for a long few moments, until someone clears their throat—quietly, of course—and he realizes he’s blocking the entrance. With an apology that’s little more than a duck of his head and the word sorry played out on his lips, he slides out of the way.

Not taking his eyes off Buck is easy enough. He may be out of practice, but it’s like riding a bike or driving a car. Each small step Buck takes, each twitch of his face as he frowns over the classification of a book and then the brightening when he slides it into place, gets tucked into a special spot in Eddie’s brain. He can do this librarian thing, too.

What ultimately drives him to actually go up to Buck is the awkwardness of standing around, no laptop to hide behind and no idea of a book to grab. He waits only until Buck starts on a new aisle, a relatively secluded one, and then he swoops in.

“I was wondering,” he says, walking up behind Buck. “You got anything on vampires?”

Buck jumps. Eddie can’t even take some joy in it, because up close he can see that some of his fears were true—Buck does look tired and pale.

His mouth gapes open like a fish, working like he can’t quite figure out what to say. “Eddie,” he finally hisses. “You have to be quiet.”

Eddie takes an exaggerated look around the empty aisles. Buck’s glare stays, so Eddie compensates by stepping close, and dropping his voice low. “Well?”

“You’re in the wrong section,” Buck grits out. “This is nonfiction.”

“Oh!” Eddie says. “I think I’m in just the place, then.”

“What do you want?” Buck asks. He’s got a book in his hands, fingers fluttering through the pages nervously. Eddie isn’t sure if this is how he’d wanted things to go—he hadn’t planned much beyond seeing Buck and hoping he’d have the right words to get things back to normal. “I’m busy, you know.”

“I could help.” Eddie grabs for a book, gets a hefty one. “The Merits of Socialization; and Why You Should Answer Your Friends’ Texts.”

“It doesn’t say that.”

“How would you know?”

“I- Eddie. We texted like an hour ago!”

“I would hardly call that texting,” Eddie huffs. Through the smell of paper, he can just barely pick out Buck—and the lack of Eddie’s scent clinging to him. It sets off a nervous roiling in his stomach, makes him itch all over. “And also, I hate texting.”

“You don’t.”

“How would you know? Not like you’re around anymore.”

“I just want my job back,” Buck’s voice rises enough that Eddie expects a shush to come whistling through the books. He slumps. “I-I don’t know what else to do, Eddie. I need to prove myself, but if I do something dangerous, Bobby will just take it as proof that I-I want to die.”

Eddie scowls. He should tell Buck that he wants him back at work, too. That he misses him every moment they’re on a call or hanging around the firehouse. But there’s that hard edge of worry, tempered by a recent five-alarm. The flames had been more unpredictable than any Eddie had ever seen, and Bobby had expressed a similar sentiment with a haunted expression on his face. Just thinking of Buck being close to that made Eddie sick.

Buck looks him over, some of his resignation turning icy. “You agree with him, don’t you. That’s why you didn’t say anything in his office.”

“Buck-”

“No, Eddie. You don’t get to do that.” Buck’s whispering is ferocious. With every word, his lips pull back, like he can hardly resist snarling, and Eddie’s eyes keep drifting to the flashes of his teeth, looking for sharpened points.

“I didn’t do anything.” Eddie crosses his arms, leans forward. “It doesn’t matter what I think, Bobby made that choice. And you’re moping over it because you think he lied to you.”

Hurt flashes over Buck’s face. “I don’t-”

“You do,” Eddie says. He knows that his countenance of easy calm will only further rile Buck up, but he’s lost in the high of getting Buck to talk to him. “You think that he’s afraid of you. Well, let me tell you Buck, he’s not. I was there. I can tell when people are lying, you know? It stinks. Bobby didn’t lie to you. He’s worried about you, for good reason. I think he’d talk, if you tried, instead of running yourself ragged around the city and what,” he scrunches his nose, brushes his knuckles over the pale skin of Buck’s arm. “Starving yourself. Hell, I’m sure he’d hook you up with blood bags for life if you just talked.”

Buck is shaking his head, a battle long lost. There’s no world where Eddie changed his mind today, he knows, looking at him now. A few hundred years of living makes you stubborn as a mule, apparently.

“I’d go to the firehouse and- and beg. Right now, if I thought it would do anything. But he made up his mind.”

“Then why are you here?’ Eddie asks, throwing his arms out. “What’s the point of any of this?”

“Maybe I’m doing it for myself.”

“You said you wanted to prove yourself.”

“To someone,” Buck says. “I-I can go to the higher-ups. Get a job at a different station.”

Eddie scoffs. “You wouldn’t.”

“Why would you know?” Buck hisses. Eddie can see him building up to say something mean, and he leans in for it. “We’ve known each other for a year, Eddie. That’s- that’s nothing to me. If I never saw you again, I’d forget you. Easily.”

A wolfish, sharp grin creeps onto Eddie’s face. He doesn’t fight it. “Liar.”

Eddie turns on his heel and leaves. The last word is his—Buck wouldn’t break the sanctity of the library to run or yell after him.

He’s thinking of it when he throws a punch. His opponent is no good—more raw energy than technique, and Eddie curbs it easily. Doesn’t even bother drawing it out, playing with his food. There’s little joy to be found, Eddie's blood not pumping even as hard as it had been in the midst of books and noise control.

The crowd cheers nonetheless. Inside, a warehouse of some sort, the sound echoes more eerily than it did in the outdoor lot. Some add howls in with their cries, and Eddie shivers under the impulse to join in.

Rather than stick around to watch, he sets out into the night, ears perked for following footsteps until he’s a good few blocks away. His truck is parked in the opposite direction, also a few blocks out from the actual site, but he needs to clear his head.

It feels like his life is spiraling out of his control as of recent. The fighting was meant to be a way to reclaim it, channel his energy in a controlled place, but now even that can’t seem to sate him.

Under the streetlights, and with a light breeze tugging him along, he can admit to himself that the effect is wearing off because it never got to the root of the problem—Eddie’s wolf, locked inside his head as it is, doesn’t want for violence.

He catches the real pangs of longing when he thinks of home in the late, sleepless hours of the night. The easy touch that comes with living among a pack, easy to take for granted until it disappears. It feels like a part of Eddie is slowly rotting away, turning him cold.

It’s the worst time for it. Chris is struggling, Eddie can tell. Therapy has been good for him, sure, but waking up most nights in terror has left a mark on his son. And whenever Eddie tries to broach the topic of Chris’s shift, Chris waves him off. Eddie knows he should push—that this is one of those things he needs to take control of—but Chris’s aversion sides with his own burgeoning feelings of inadequacy. Eddie knows nothing of what it means to truly be a wolf.

Does Chris’s need for someone who can understand him outweigh the pressure and expectations Eddie fears for him, if they returned to Texas? He hasn’t even told his parents that Chris had his first shift—hasn’t mentioned the tsunami to them either, though he’d guess word of it reached them after all of Pepa and abuela’s fussing. They’d never report directly, but word tends to spread through tight-knit connections. It’s a wonder they haven’t come knocking Eddie’s door down, to arrive to the scent of vampire—though mostly faded—and Chris having grown into himself as a wolf.

Eddie snarls at a shadow in frustration. He can’t get Buck to come to him, and he doesn’t know how to talk to his own son.

A car whooshes past, unsettling Eddie’s hair, which has grown longer in recent months. He should buzz it down again, he thinks sullenly, erase the stubble from his face as well. He’s fooling no one playing the role of the rugged wolf.

There’s a patter of footsteps behind him. He zeroes in on the sound, keeps his feet steady forward. It could be nothing, but his instincts ping at him. Overreactive as they are, he’s already enough on edge that he wouldn’t be able to ignore them if he tried.

He reaches an intersection, the lone crosswalk sign blinking red. He doesn’t want to stop, but his only turn leads down a darkened bit of road, all the streetlights gone out. It would have no effect on his vision, but he’s seen enough movies to know that going down the darker path can’t possibly end well.

As coolly as he can, he waits for the light on the balls of his feet. The smell of LA overwhelms anything he might pick up otherwise, and though few cars pass by, they’re just enough to cloud his hearing and keep him from darting across the street.

“A wolf without a pack becomes boring,” a voice drawls. Eddie tenses, unable to stop from turning his head to the side and catching the unmistakable sight of a vampire. “In this city. I’d remark on it, if you were anywhere else.”

The lights above them go red, bouncing off pale skin. Eddie can’t help but notice the differences, between the man beside him, and Buck. Everything about him is angular, predatory. No smile or softness in his eyes to dull it, and though Eddie had once feared Buck only played a role well, he can see clear as day now that it can’t have been true. A vampire wears their nature like a fine coat, to be flaunted.

“Wolf blood is my favorite,” he continues, wetting his lips. “Though I don’t suppose you’d offer. Oh, such offense!” he says, when Eddie’s face must flash with disgust. “Was it forced, then, when you were fed upon?”

“You know nothing about me,” Eddie says coolly, though his hackles rise at the implication that Buck would do such a thing.

“If only I had a nose like yours,” he mocks. “But you can tell nothing about me, either. A grand oversight, really, that wolves are so blind to us. Do you doubt the plan of your god, when you think of it?”

Eddie grits his teeth. It’s a trap, he’s almost sure of it, get him riled up and angry before the jaws swing closed around his waist. “I don’t need a plan. I live for myself.”

The vampire sniffs the air. He doesn’t do it the way a wolf would, seeking out the currents of the world. His is a demanding action, pulling threads roughly. “The lone wolf,” he says. “Or so you’d have me believe. Hide your weakness amongst the dregs of the earth, where no wolf would stoop to lay claim. But you don’t roll enough in their misery. You’re claws are unstained and no fur snags in your teeth. Maybe then, I wouldn’t smell the young wolf on you. A child, then.”

Eddie snarls and lunges for him. He doesn’t move out of the way of Eddie’s hands, though he could likely do so with ease. Instead, he only meets Eddie’s gaze with an unwavering one when his back meets a brick wall. Eddie should care for the headlights that pass over them, but he can’t bring himself to. This monster dares to mention his son? He wants, badly, for a stake.

“Show me your true self,” the vampire taunts. “More than this mask. So little monster in you.”

Fear sparks in Eddie’s chest. If they were to fight, he would lose. Unlike the creature held by his unclawed hands, Eddie is riddled with vulnerabilities and lacking in weapons of his own.

He doesn’t let it show, though he keeps from flashing his teeth. “What the hell do you want? Playing with your food is childish. Act your age.”

“Only to observe.” His bare skin is cool against Eddie’s hands, and he doesn’t move even a single muscle save to speak. In every way, he is a terrible mirror of Buck. “And you were the first to leave the fight. Chance guided our meeting.”

Eddie grits his teeth, curses the dissatisfaction of his past self. Life screams at him to dirty his hands further, though he doesn’t care to listen. Ramblings of beings outside of his perception are the misconstrued echoes of far simpler things, mystified through unknowing.

He releases his hold. Steps back, and is unsurprised when his unshaken foe follows. “And how happy that it did!” he continues, as if Eddie hangs on to his every word. “You are an interesting creature, running from so many things. Tell me of one of them, and you will never see me again.”

“Like hell I will.”

“Or I follow until I learn what I want to know,” he shrugs. “I have no need for your blood, tempting as it is. You call to my age, and yet you do not seem to understand that every necessity of mine was squared away centuries ago. Only a hunger for cognizance guides me now.”

Though he stands in open air, Eddie feels as if the world is closing in around him. Uncertainty only makes it worse—a chemical trickling into the room, with no way of knowing if it will harm him. Is it safer to give up a bit of himself, or run and hope that it never comes back to bite?

He hates the choice. Hates that it is between Buck and Chris, that he knows which he would choose, and that his decision would be met with unwavering support even while they fight, but hates all the same that it is a decision to be made.

“The vampire you smell on me is a friend,” he spits. The vampire cocks his head, eyes alight in a way that does not make them look any less dead. “I offered for him to drink from me. And-” Eddie tries to bite his tongue, but he recognizes the game now, far too late. Persuasion wrapped in slimy words, Eddie a fly to a honey trap thinking he could get out with a partial truth when the depth of it is pulled from him. “And I would offer it again, if even only for-” he bites down so hard his tongue bleeds and his jaw aches, but it’s not enough. “Pleasure.”

It’s as if, as soon as the words are out of his mouth, Eddie’s mind shies away from them. He knows he has admitted to something, but the specifics are lost in a haze of anger and shame.

The vampire laughs, a cold, dead thing. Eddie wants to tear him limb from limb, watch his healing piece him back together only to do it again.

“What a delight!” he croons. “Oh, better than I even could have hoped. Do we truly have to part so soon?” A pause, as if listening to something Eddie can’t hear. “That is the problem with these things,” he says, a facsimile of sadness. “I am as tied in as you are. I’ll carry your truth, hold it well. Maybe your fate will be so kind as to put you in my wayward path.”

Eddie doesn’t take his eyes off the vampire, but he refuses to speak, for fear of another trap.

“How rude that you’re so eager to see me go,” he tsks. “But overstaying a welcome does happen to be one of my weaknesses. Already, it wilts me.” He places a hand over his heart, though Eddie can’t imagine that it beats. “I wish you well! Truly! A tragedy of your proportions will make its way back to me.”

The nearest streetlamp flickers, and Eddie’s vision with it. In the portion of a second it takes to return, the vampire has vanished. Eddie feels wrung out, worse than when Buck fed from him.

The walk back to his truck is one of shame, berating himself all the way for not simply returning to it in the first place, or never visiting the warehouse at all. He’s worse off than he started, and all he has to look forward to is an empty house and a dull shift the following day. Like many a werewolf does, Eddie falls into a cycle.

Work. Hug his son close to his chest. Memorize the schedule Buck runs on, sit in parking lots and rooms filled with books, neither fully acknowledging the other. No more arguments, every word hashed out and unchanging. Fear. Want, for things that tug him in opposing directions. To be a true wolf, to never have been born with the curse. To sink roots deep into the arid soil and make a home in spite of it, to run back to Texas with his tail between his legs. And he fights. Lets his opponents get close even when they don’t have the skill for it, feels his skin knit itself back together and blood rush.

It’s easy to put on a face of calm, when no one around him knows to look deeper. Eddie is the model firefighter, level-headed when he needs to be and bold when the clear hole in the team becomes evident. So he’s surprised when Bobby calls him into his office and meets him with a grave face.

“Is something wrong, Cap?” he asks, unease roiling in his stomach.

“That’s what I wanted to talk about, Eddie,” Bobby says on an exhale. “Is everything alright with you?”

“Me?” Eddie’s surprise is real. He truly hadn’t thought it possible for Bobby to see through him. “Things have been- tough, since the tsunami,” he admits. “But nothing I can’t handle.”

“Chris is doing better?”

“He’s a strong kid,” Eddie says. “I make sure he knows he doesn’t need to be.”

“Good,” Bobby says with a nod that warms Eddie’s chest. “And you miss working with Buck?”

Eddie jolts. “I do. But I understand why he’s on leave.”

“You’ve been keeping an eye on him,” Bobby states. Eddie nods, a little cautious. “Is he doing alright?”

He takes a few seconds to mull over the answer. He’d seen Buck just the day before, resolutely ignoring Eddie where he sat and flipped through a book on the nature of bats. He still looks pale and exhausted, only brightening when asked for help. It takes all Eddie has not to throw himself at Buck again and offer up his blood.

“He misses the job,” Eddie says cautiously. “It, ah, proves your point, I’d say. Everything he does, that I’ve seen, is in service of getting it back.”

Bobby nods grimly, sadness settling in the lines of his eyes. “Can’t help but notice that you didn’t answer when I asked about you.”

Eddie bites back a sharp, sardonic laugh at that. He finds himself wrapped up in his care for those closest to him, and though it drags, he wouldn’t have it any other way. He could sooner separate his emotions from theirs as pull the moon down from the sky.

“I was thinking of getting a new truck,” Eddie says. He laughs under his breath at the objective unweightiness of it, validated by Bobby’s raised brow. “Finally getting some savings together.” It’s not an outright lie—the savings just don’t come from his firehouse salary.

“One more question, then.”

“Shoot.”

“You knew what Buck was, before the engine fire.” Eddie nods. “Is there a reason he might have trusted you with that information?”

Eddie bites his lip. Has Bobby figured him out? He doesn’t think he’s given himself away, in strength or heightened senses, but as captain Bobby would notice more than Eddie could expect. He weighs his choices, then sighs. Worst case, he too loses his job.

“Vampires aren’t the only nonhumans,” he says, a little stilted. It’s hard to find a mix between explaining the supernatural to his son and his captain. “I… I’m not human, either.”

Bobby waits, but Eddie doesn’t feel the need to say more. It’s unfair, probably, to Buck who was put on leave for the depth of his explanation, but Eddie thinks that even if he were a vampire as well, Bobby wouldn’t have reacted the same.

“Thank you for telling me,” Bobby says. “I hope you’d trust me if there was anything more I needed to know.” Eddie acknowledges this with a nod. “Then I shouldn’t keep you.”

Eddie stands, the scrape of the chair loud in the isolated room. It makes sense, why Bobby always keeps the door propped open—with it closed, the room feels entirely apart from the firehouse.

He feels Bobby watching him on the calls for the rest of the day, though the awareness is hardly new. He only knows now what Bobby is looking for—signs of what Eddie’s true make might be. If Buck were here, Eddie’d enlist him for a little trickery. Keep Bobby guessing, if he thinks he can figure Eddie out so easily. Instead, the thought just leaves a sour taste in his mouth, and he calls Carla halfway through shift to ask that he meet her as soon as shift is over to take Chris out for an early lunch.

She pulls him into a hug, in the parking lot of the station. Eddie feels his same bone-deep exhaustion, easier to ignore with his kid in sight.

Unlike him, she’s a wolf with the guts to go through with the transformation. Eddie had asked, over coffee, why she’d chosen to come to LA, and she’d said simply that pack life, in every way that she’d found it to exist, wasn’t for her. She appreciated the camaraderie, as evident by her chosen profession, but swearing fealty ground her down. The less traditional packs didn’t need for the things she wanted to give to the world, and so she settled in Los Angeles.

“Eddie,” she says sadly, holding him by the shoulders. “What has you all tied up in knots?”

“Has Chris talked to you about his shift?”

She purses her lips, and shakes her head. Eddie’s stomach sinks. He’d been holding on to a bit of foolish hope that, despite not saying a single word to him about it, Chris had someone to confide in. “I don’t outright ask, but I’ve made it clear he can ask me anything. He shuts down.”

“Same for me,” Eddie admits with a healthy dose of shame. “I don’t think he’s shifted again, since the first time.”

“Could be perfectly normal,” Carla soothes. “Shifts under extreme duress are brought on early, most times. He hasn’t had the same reason to do it again, so he hasn’t. Best course is to show him how to call it out with other emotions.”

“Okay,” Eddie says. He doesn’t know how to act on any of that, but he can see Chris getting bored in the back of Carla’s car, if the way he shifts in his seat is any indication. “Thank you for all you do for us.”

“Eddie,” she admonishes, squeezing him where her hands rest. “Always.”

He scoops Chris out of his car seat playfully, smiles when he squeals. “You hungry?”

“Pancakes?” Chris asks with his eyes shining.

“I think we can make that happen.”

Chris gets Eddie’s phone for music on the drive, the breakfast place Eddie’d picked out between calls a little out of their way, but the pancake selection had been absurd, and Eddie had looked forward to seeing Chris’s face since reading through it. He’s been on a kick with loud pop songs recently, and Eddie finds himself tapping his fingers to the catchy rhythm.

He wonders when Chris will be old enough to recognize this kind of outing as a trap for a conversation. Obviously, Eddie would spoil his son without hesitation every day, but some occasions just feel obvious in intention.

“Woah,” Chris says when they pull into the parking lot. There’s a giant sign that says pancakes, and his son mouths the word in wonder. “Dad, you have to get some too. No boring food.”

“Maybe if they have bacon pancakes,” Eddie says, knowing wholly that they do and setting himself up for an overly sweet meal.

Chris, predictably, points with excitement when he finds them on the menu. Eddie sighs dramatically, just to see him giggle, and puts in a begrudging order with their waitress, along with a side of eggs so he doesn’t actually starve.

He asks after Chris’s day, listens attentively to his retelling of a very exciting few hours at the park. A dog had gotten loose, apparently, and made a beeline for Chris. “And I knew to be careful,” he adds thoughtfully, probably upon seeing the beginnings of a frown on Eddie’s face. “I didn’t reach for her face. But she really wanted to be pet.”

His recapping of a book he’d picked out at the library—not one Buck was at, Eddie didn’t know how that would go down—is interrupted by the delivery of their food. Chris’s eyes go wide as saucers when he sees his giant pancakes, topped with things Eddie doesn’t even want to think about for fear of his teeth rotting.

Conversation pauses as they both dig in. Eddie is shocked to find that he doesn’t mind the taste, weird as it seems. Loath as he is to admit it, his sweet tooth is nearly as voracious of a beast as his wolf, and the combination hits the spot perfectly.

Chris gives him a smug look when he declares his liking. Eddie latches on to the opportunity. “Can I ask you about something, buddy?”

Not on edge yet, Chris nods, chewing through a bite that Eddie should probably admonish him for.

“Is there anything you want to talk about? Since you shifted. I know it can be scary, and confusing-”

“It’s not,” Chris says. Eddie quirks his head in dismay at him speaking with his mouth full.

“Okay, but if it was-”

“Dad,” Chris glares. “I’m fine.”

Eddie is in for hell when his kid reaches the teenage years. “I’m here,” he says lamely.

He should push, but even with all the conviction he’d tried to build up, he finds that he can’t. It’s insecurity that hobbles him. What does he have to offer, if Chris really were struggling?

“Alright,” he says placatingly, and then takes a huge bite of his own remaining food even though the taste has gone stale against his tongue. It makes Chris light up again, and Eddie stews in his shame.

It only compounds as the week wears on. He doesn’t manage to catch even a glimpse of Buck, worry and anger added to the pot for every location Eddie checks. When they fix things, Eddie is going to make sure this sort of thing never happens again. A tracking chip, to the extreme, though he’s heard good reviews of phone location services.

Bobby still handles him with kiddie gloves, like despite Eddie’s conviction to the opposite he’s thinking of laying him off the team too. It’s a strange dance, to put his best foot forward even as everything in and around him feels brittle.

So it’s hardly a surprise when Eddie finds himself back in a gutted warehouse as soon as word of it reaches him. It’s the night of a full moon, the rafters above them casting skeletal shadows on the concrete floor, and Eddie faces down a wolf that’s half lost in his shift.

He’s hunched over, as if close to walking on all fours, and his face twitches between human and not, over and over. Adrenaline courses through Eddie’s veins, burning through him, and he leans ever closer to the moment of first contact.

The crowd, too, is affected by the night. Where normally the howls are few and far between, tonight they dominate. No order of call and response. They overlap, eerie and echoing, and Eddie feels them sink into his skin, call forth his caged wolf. When he strikes, he’d swear he feels it move with him, rather than be dragged along for the ride. He hits hard. A first swing to the face, a lower one to follow that impacts the ribs of the wolf and leaves Eddie’s hand stinging wonderfully.

The wolf snarls in his face, cut through by a high-pitched whine. It only eggs Eddie on. He pushes the wolf back with body and fists, until he’s brushing up against the crowd. They jeer, a dozen hands pressing the wolf back to Eddie.

He’s heard the murmurs about him. That he’s never once broken enough to show even a slip of his own wolf. His control must be unbelievable. Hah. If only they knew.

In his pain, Eddie’s opponent retreats back to a more human state. A mark of a weak wolf, his mother would say, one who fears what it is. There’s no call to end the fight, and still they circle and circle. Eddie has hardly been hit. He lets a wildly thrown punch graze him, claws at the bright burst of pain and returns his own blow, another directly at the face.

It should be just another among a dozen punches thrown, but something about the way the hit connects sends the wolf sprawling. The last of his shift falls away, a very human body left to lie on the floor, nose crooked and bleeding.

The crowd roars its approval, but Eddie can hardly hear it over the buzz in his ears. There’s so much blood, and breathing that comes too shallow.

“Someone call 911,” he shouts. The noise of the crowd shutters, turning angry and nervous in an instant.

“Are you crazy,” someone near Eddie hisses. “We can’t have the cops here. And what would you tell them when he wakes up fully healed? A miracle?”

“He could die,” Eddie growls.

“And it would be on your hands,” a different voice says. “Wolfy law would say you get his property, hah! Well played, killer.”

There are more things being shouted at him, the energy turning back on itself. Everyone’s got something to say. Eddie ignores them, wiping blood as carefully as he can from the airways of his opponent—and now, his patient—checking for breathing. He can’t feel a snap of healing. His pulse is weak and flighty, and Eddie has to fight to keep his hands steady. It’s all a terrible reminder that he was the one who hurt this man.

“Come on,” he pleads. But there’s no change.

Eddie grits his teeth, and he stands. Turns to the crowd. Someone is recording, which can only end poorly—Eddie grabs their phone, presses the buttons the way he’d taught Chris to SOS straight to emergency services.

It’s autopilot, to report the situation and the address to the dispatcher he gets. It’s a small miracle, maybe, that it’s not Maddie, but as the moment unspools further, Eddie can feel the implications of the night sinking into him, a dozen pinpricks of worry.

He could run, as much of the crowd does when they catch on to what’s happening. He’s sworn at, though no one tries to get physical, more worried about saving their own hides. But Eddie stays—he watches over the wolf, ready to start CPR if his condition worsens in the slightest. He’d have started already by now, on a human, but fear of impeding healing worries him. Everything worries him. There’s no roof to close in, but Eddie feels pinned regardless.

There’s a burst of sirens, and the last of the onlookers flee. Familiar red and blue lights spark in Eddie’s vision, and he shuts his eyes to them, accepting whatever is to come.

Paramedics take the man from Eddie, and he’s grateful that he doesn’t recognize their voices. “You alright?” one of them asks, and Eddie shakes his head.

“It’s not my blood,” he says hollowly. It earns him a sharp intake of breath, and the sting of handcuffs.

He’s silent in the back of the police car, dead to the world as he replays the night and, on loop, the events that led him to this point. A cascade of misfortune that Eddie wasn’t fit to handle, a true nature he could no sooner shy away from than tame.

When presented with a phone call, he flounders. Carla has Chris, and he wouldn’t dare to disturb or worry her. Buck is unreachable. There’s Lena, but Eddie isn’t sure he can face her—doesn’t want her to take the blame, for his own failings.

“Bobby Nash speaking,” buzzes the phone.

“Bobby,” Eddie chokes. He tries to steady himself on the calming bastion of Bobby’s voice, but it’s not enough. His body feels entirely unmoored, stuck in the midst of the fight. “I need your help.”

He’s not released until morning. Technically, they didn’t have any charges to hold him on, since the man whose blood had been under his fingernails made an unheard-of recovery overnight. Eddie’ll get a slap on the wrist, at worst. It’s not the legal repercussions he fears, even as he squares his shoulders to face the consequences he called upon.

Bobby’s gaze is steady on him, where he leans against the passenger side of his car. “Should have known,” he says in greeting. Eddie tilts his head in cautious inquiry. “Brought you on to keep Buck out of trouble, and look what happens when I separate you.”

Eddie lets out a disbelieving laugh. “Cap, thanks for coming, but am I about to lose my job?”

With a sigh, Bobby uncrosses his arms and sets a heavy hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “No, you’re not. I’d tell you not to do it again, but I’d hope you’d figure that part out on your own.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Eddie says. “Might look into a gym membership, though”

“I can give you a list of the ones that give discounts to firefighters. You’re off shift today, obviously. Where do you want me to take you?”

“My truck,” Eddie says with a grateful look. “Shouldn’t be far from here. And I’d like to avoid getting any tickets,” he ends with a huff, a little ironic after his brush with the law.

He doesn’t tell Chris about any of it, when he’s dropped off, and drives home. A funny story for them to laugh about when he’s older, if Eddie can shake the dread that hangs over the event.

The two of them fall asleep on the couch, Eddie worn out from a poor night’s sleep and Chris falling in rhythm with his breathing. It heals a part of him, to be safe in his home with his son close. Hardens his resolution, too, to set things right.

“Chris,” Eddie says over their dinner. He’d tried his best on an easy recipe he’d begged off of abuela, but it hadn’t come out quite right. Like a champ, Chris is making his way through his plate, though Eddie vows to reward him with pizza if all goes well. “I know I- That I keep asking you about this.”

Chris looks at him warily, but doesn’t interrupt.

“But you really gotta tell me how you're feeling about your shift, buddy. I’m worried about you.”

He recognizes the look that plays across Chris’s face as one he’s worn a thousand times—closing off, for fear of asking too much. It hurts Eddie’s heart, to think that his son has picked it up from him.

But then Chris surprises him. “I’m scared,” he admits in a small voice. Eddie is across the table to wrap him in his arms in seconds, though he gives him the space to keep talking. “When it happened, everything was s-so bad. Buck was missing, and I didn’t have you, and there was water all over. I wasn’t supposed to be scared.”

“It’s always alright to be scared, mijo.”

“You get scared?”

“All the time,” Eddie admits, easily. “Did being scared make you want to shift?”

“I wasn’t thinking about it like that,” Chris frowns. “I just wanted to be okay.”

“And you must have called to your wolf,” Eddie says, somewhere between an explanation and his own puzzling of the situation. “I’m proud of you.” He ruffles Chris’s hair, gentle, and smiles when Chris leans into the touch. “You haven’t done it again since then?”

“No. Should I?”

“If you want,” Eddie says carefully. “But it’s okay if you’re not ready.”

Chris hums, and then seems to shrug off all his worry. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Eddie echoes, pressing a quick kiss to his temple before standing. The effects of the night and sleeping on the couch translate to a creak in his knees, and Chris shamelessly laughs at him.

And then, later, when he’s tucking Chris into bed, he says, “Hey. What do you say we get our Buck back?”

Chris’s eyes light up, a response Eddie usually tries ot avoid around bedtime. “Really?”

“We’ll try,” Eddie promises.

Eddie drops Chris off the next morning with a mission plan nicely laid out. Despite dropping off into sleep pretty much as soon as his head had hit the pillow, the pieces of it had just sort of fallen into place, as he poured Chris his breakfast cereal and himself coffee. It was nothing fancy, Eddie’s form of deception not particularly subtle, but he had more than enough conviction to act.

“Bye buddy!” he calls out the window. Chris waves, but in a small sort of way that tells Eddie he’s going to have many duties as an embarrassing dad when his kid gets a little older—and he will take to them with glee.

Today, inconveniently, he’s pretty certain that Buck will be at the library nearest the 118’s firehouse. Inconvenient since it’s in the opposite direction of Chris’s school, but a drive Eddie is familiar with, allowing him to zone out—a safe amount—and think on his plan. Or, the aftermath of his plan. Everything coming together nicely, Buck spending evenings under the same room as the Diaz’s again. Beer bottles clinking, and Eddie’s scent all over Buck the way it should be. He smiles to himself, and doesn’t care that the tinting on the windows of his old truck will do little to hide it. Maybe the shiny new one he has his eyes on is fit for the job.

He’s relieved to see Buck’s Jeep in the lot. It’s grounding, but he doesn’t take the time to linger. It’s been an hour, a day, a month too long without Buck. No more waiting around.

The library doors open with more drama than Eddie had intended, but he hardly cares about the glares he receives. Buck likes fixing things—he’ll smooth it over. The only eyes that Eddie cares for being on him are in a corner, seated with papers and markers strewn in front of him. He looks down as soon as Eddie catches his gaze, poking his tongue out as though his focus on his work hadn’t been broken.

“Hey,” Eddie says by way of greeting. His voice is mostly lowered. Mostly. Buck pulls his shoulders up by his ears, and draws a rather violent line on what Eddie can now see is a posterboard. He tilts his head to see it better, slightly sloppy bubble letters informing patrons about an event. It looks, in Eddie’s opinion, to be finished. So he doesn’t feel bad about saying; “You’re coming with me.”

Buck glances up at him, startled bewilderment written clear across his face as his dear lettering, and then right back down. “I’m busy.”

“Don’t care,” Eddie says, half sing-song. “This looks like they have you doing busy work, Buck.”

“Rude,” Buck grumbles. “Maybe try flattery if you want me to listen to you.”

“I miss you,” Eddie replies without missing a beat. “I didn’t think I could call you when I got arrested. Chris misses you. And you’re making yourself miserable here, no matter how you lie to yourself.”

“Hold on,” Buck says. “Can you like, repeat all of that.”

“If you get in my truck.”

“This is a kidnapping,” Buck hisses. “And also coercion.”

“I will drag you out of here.”

“That is not a good defense.”

“I’ll admit to the kidnapping,” Eddie can’t help his smile, and it twists his voice up a little high for their surroundings. “Is that what you want?”

“I want-” Buck laughs, dryly. “Don’t get me started on what I want.”

“How about this,” Eddie says. He kicks a leg of Buck’s chair until he gets begrudging eye contact. “I go sit in my truck, and if you want to come with, then you’ll follow.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I’m really, really not above kidnapping.”

There’s an awkward beat of silence, broken only by someone coughing across the building. Eddie raises an eyebrow at Buck, and gets an incredulous look in return.

“What?” Eddie asks, crossing his arms.

“Thought you were going to stomp off again,” Buck says. “Prance out of here with your last word like a tennis ball.”

“Oh, well, I was trying to let you have it this time. But then you had to make the dog joke.”

Eddie leaves. He’s self-aware enough to admit that there’s a little more bounce in his step than normal, but it’s in a dignified, human way.

Buck, predictably, tries to make him sweat. Eddie hardly minds, sitting in his truck with the radio playing softly and the AC on medium blast, convenient shade keeping him from squinting or literally sweating. He imagines Buck is informing whatever supervisory figure exists for his position that he’s been called away on very important business, maybe huffing and puffing the whole way through. Eddie sure hopes that Buck is in good enough spirits to be dramatic.

But the wait really is only a few minutes, somewhere in that hazy space between five and ten. Eddie isn’t even bothered to check the clock—he knows he’s successful, had clocked it the moment Buck looked at him.

He wouldn’t characterize Buck’s recent actions as an explicit call for attention. It was an element of course, but Eddie really did believe that he’d picked it out as his best way forward. And with the blinding goggles on of getting the job back keeping him in a straight, unretractable line, it was a wonder that he hadn’t settled for something more absurd. Maybe there was a world where Buck took a legal route to getting the job back. Eddie could only imagine—and thank the stars that it hadn’t happened—the stress of that.

As much as he basks in the feeling of things sliding into place, he’s also aware that they aren’t going to fit perfectly. Even if he can get his words right, convince Buck to let him back in, it doesn’t solve the problem of Buck wanting his job back, and Eddie being mostly opposed to it.

The passenger side door cracks open, and Eddie whips his head around to look, unable to bite back a toothy smirk.

Buck doesn’t say anything as he swings the door the rest of the way open and then crawls in, but Eddie gets to observe the beautiful journey his face goes on. He’s angry, and a little miffed, given away by the scrunch of his eyebrows and the pout of his mouth. But when his butt’s in the seat and his back settles into the chair that might as well be molded to his body, it transforms into something softer, tentative hope shining even in his guarded eyes.

Eddie breathes him in. Here, in the shaded sunlight, he feels a universe away from the night on the street, a very different vampire close where Buck had been far. He’d been worried, in a private part of his mind that he scarcely treaded, that some of his fear and anger from that night would color his view of Buck. But drinking him in like this, eyes bright blue and birthmark a startling pink against pale skin, Eddie doesn’t think anything could change the way he sees his best friend.

“I’m sorry,” he says. There’s no need for extra emphasis on the words. He only says them with the raw truth. “That I don’t know how to- how to be there for you the way I want to.”

Buck swallows, throat working around it. Eddie wonders if the nakedness of it scares or awes him, if he’s going about this the right way at all. But then Buck looks back, and Eddie would swear he can see his own desires echoed right back at him—a wolf crouching in the dark of Buck’s pupils, aching for the same sort of closeness. Eddie projecting, surely, but he delights in seeing it regardless.

“I missed you, too,” Buck says. “I mean, of course I missed you.”

“I know you did.” Eddie starts the truck. He wants Buck to acknowledge his apology, but he’s a little scared, too. It’s easier to let the silence settle over them again, to relearn what it feels like to share space.

Eddie had forgotten how little space Buck tries to take up. It’s more prevalent than ever now, the way he keeps his arms tight to his chest and his legs pressed close, and Eddie can’t help but note his own posture—as comfortable of a sprawl as he can manage while driving, settled in the space that smells like him.

He mulls over what to say next, alternating his gaze between scanning the road and looking at Buck. It’s a steady train of thought, complex in its working and entirely thrown off track when a screech of brakes in front of them draws both of their attention.

A car has come to an abrupt stop midway through a right turn, brake lights burning red. Eddie scans for a second car, but finds none. His heart drops to his stomach, and he’s throwing the truck into park as far onto the shoulder as he can get, and running toward the scene, Buck close on his heels.

Just as he’d feared, but worsened, there are two pedestrians lying prone on the asphalt. There’s a young woman standing aside, hand over her mouth in shock even as she has a phone pressed to her ear, hopefully calling for help.

It’s a stark contrast to where Eddie had found himself less than twenty-four hours ago, and already he knows this won’t turn out as well, even as all the people around him do things right.

He goes through the motions. Makes Buck check on the man who can sit up with help, though he’s clearly quite out of it, dazed and unable to focus on Buck. Takes the pulse of the other man, who hasn’t moved at all, and finds nothing. His hands are steady when he starts CPR, but inevitability weighs heavy on his mind.

There’s a background hum of Buck talking, slowly coaxing a story out of his patient. Eddie focuses on the timbre of Buck’s voice, only tuning it out to listen for approaching sirens. It feels like everything takes too long, each moment stretched thin and fragile, but finally the scene is subsumed in lights and sound.

Eddie gives a small head shake to the paramedics that come to him, recognized with a tilt of the head even as they check his work, and then signal a DOS.

He turns to Buck in time to see his patient collapse back onto the street, all dead weight as the paramedics rush in. Numbly, both Buck and Eddie watch as they try for resuscitation, and report a twin fatality.

Buck and Eddie get their statements taken, though neither of them saw much of the actual moment of the crash. It takes an embarrassingly long time for Eddie to realize that the team on scene is C-shift of the 118, and not for a lack of knowing them—everything feels just out of focus, insubstantial. A call they could have been on, in another life, the kind that would have resulted in a quiet ride back to the station and time spent as a team, processing together.

“This wasn’t how I thought the day would go,” Eddie says, trying for brevity and falling flat, standing on the sidewalk with Buck. The engines are clearing out now, the police ready to unblock the road, so they’ll need to get back to the truck. But it feels wrong, to move on so quickly. So they stand vigil, even as the sun beats down.

“I was thinking you didn’t have much of a plan,” Buck says back, after a beat. He sounds as hollow as Eddie feels, and pressing their shoulders together to steady them both is the best Eddie can do by way of comfort. “But it’s kind of hard to be- upset, or whatever, now.”

Traffic is starting to trickle past them again. Eddie sighs, gives the street one more glance, and then heads for his truck. Buck, again, follows.

“I think it’s good,” Buck says into the dead air around them while Eddie gets them back into the flow of vehicles. “That- that they went out together.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. They were married, he told me. B-by law, but much longer just- in spirit. I don’t know. It was like- as soon as he knew that his husband was gone, he was, too.”

Eddie nods slowly. He feels bad, to compare a human tragedy to his own perspective on life, but it’s hard to avoid when the parallel is so stark—mates who die within hours of each other, the most important bond in their lives severed, their wolves left unfixably hollow.

Buck’s eyes have gone shiny, and Eddie tries to keep his own fixed on the road, to give him the space to process, but it’s hard. All Eddie has wanted for weeks is to see Buck open and vulnerable, and he’s found it in a terrible way.

“I’ve never had anything like that,” Buck admits on a breath, voice low and shaking. “I don’t think that- that it’s possible for me too. I’m- I’m cursed.”

“Curses aren’t real,” Eddie says, not because he thinks it’ll soothe Buck, but because something else rises in his chest, something big and bloody and terrifying. “So, you know.”

“Eddie,” Buck says with an incredulous laugh, wet with unshed tears. “I’m a vampire, in case you forgot. The- the definition of cursed.”

“What? No.” Eddie wrinkles his nose, tries to imagine thinking of his own existence as some sort of punishment, and then quickly shuts it down. “It’s what you are, I guess, but it’s not- who you are.”

“I don’t think that makes any sense,” Buck tells him. “But if it means you’d ask Bobby to give me my job back…”

Eddie winces. “It not being a curse doesn’t make you fireproof.”

The mood dips, and Eddie flounders. He can feel and see Buck shrinking in on himself again, probably thinking worse versions of the things he admits out loud and Eddie just- he can’t stand it.

“But I think you should come back anyway,” he rushes out.

Buck’s eyes are on him instantly, even going so far as to lean over the center console. “Oh?”

“I miss you,” Eddie repeats, the admission just as hard wrung as it had been earlier. It would be easier, to couch it in something else. The team isn’t the same without you. We all think you should come back. But it feels important, to make sure Buck hears it from Eddie. “And I can’t have your back, when we’re not together.”

Buck gives that a satisfied hum, and Eddie presses the hand that’s not on the steering wheel to his stomach, wondering at the fluttery feeling there.

“So… If I called Bobby right now…”

“Maybe we wait a bit,” Eddie protests. “C-shift might have some good words to say about you.”

Buck brightens at that, and Eddie is so happy to see it that he almost is ready to dial Bobby’s number and beg for another favor. He holds off, instead contemplating the hours they’ve got until he needs to pick Chris up—and how he can keep Buck with him until then.

“Hey,” he says, shooting for casual. “I have some errands to run.”

“Are you kicking me out or telling me the kidnapping is still ongoing?”

“Second one,” Eddie says cheerily. “Have you figured out lunch food yet?”

Buck scoffs. “Kind of need Bobby to talk to me for that.”

Oops, Eddie thinks. “Well, maybe we could try it out together. Can’t be that hard, right?”

It is. The results are—well, Buck makes it well known that he’s glad food all tastes the same to him, while Eddie chokes it down. He’s not even entirely sure what they made, but it manages to smell and look awful. He has to open all the windows of the house, and Buck ends up sitting on the floor in a patch of shadow.

Despite it all, Eddie laughs when he sits next to him in a nearby bit of sunlight. It feels good against his skin, warms him all the way through, and he leans back on his hands and lets his head lull.

He can feel Buck studying him, a sixth sense of awareness, and he wonders what Buck sees. Is Eddie weak, in his eyes? Unable to shift and stuck human? Or does danger still ping at the instinctual parts of his brain, leaving him always on edge? Is Eddie cruel, to want to badly for them to simply exist in proximity?

“You really like this, huh?” Buck says, the sort of question that curls in on itself, not really searching for an answer. Eddie tilts his head to squint at him. “I mean, uh, me being here? It’s like, a wolf thing, I know. I guess- I didn’t know. I thought it would be the opposite, th-that you wouldn’t like that I was on your territory or whatever. But you never seem- tense. Or nervous. I- I mean, I could be reading it totally wrong-”

“You’re not,” Eddie cuts him off gently. “And sure, it’s a wolf thing, but it’s an us thing, too. I like you being here because you’re you. And are you still living in Abby’s apartment?”

“The market is bad!” Buck squawks. “And my credit score- Man, you don’t even want to know.”

“Shouldn’t you have an unfair advantage?” Eddie scoffs. “You’ve got years on the rest of us.”

“It didn’t always exist! I hardly exist, really.”

Eddie takes equal parts joy and horror from grilling Buck on the specifics of how he’d wrangled all his paperwork together, and the afternoon slips away in easy conversation. It’s only a buzzing reminder on his phone that tells him; “We gotta get Chris.”

Standing is a painful after sitting on the floor for so long. Buck doesn’t offer a hand up, though some part of Eddie can tell he wants to—what holds him back, Eddie can’t figure.

Buck doesn’t contest the we, and in fact seems quite happy to pile back into Eddie’s truck and set off for Chris’s school. He gets on a rant about roundabouts, somehow, and Eddie smiles to himself while he listens.

Chris’s embarrassment from the morning is entirely gone when he sees Buck waiting for him, his crutches clattering loudly as he makes his way over, face so bright that Eddie has to squint to watch—and maybe wipe away a few errant tears. He doesn’t think anyone notices.

“Dad did it,” Chris cheers, right in Buck’s ear. Eddie laughs, open and free, when Chris gives a very thorough report of the little information Eddie had given him about the plan, now proven to be successful.

They swing by a shop to pick up pizzas, rather than risk another cooking incident, and Chris drags Buck into his room to show him all the books he’d gotten since Buck had last been over. Eddie can admit that the number is higher than it probably should be, since he’d poured some of his worry for his son into gifts. He watches basketball with the volume low, half asleep while Buck and Chris talk and talk.

Eventually they emerge to demand pizza be heated up. Eddie buzzes with warmth and satisfaction as he dishes it out, especially when Buck wolfs down as many slices as Chris.

He’s peripherally aware of Chris acting a little off. Not bad, in any way, but the same buzz that lives under Eddie’s skin seems to be hitting him, making him act like he’s had too much sugar as he talks at a mile a minute and can’t seem to sit still. He could write it off only as excitement to see Buck, but something is pressing at Eddie’s instincts, telling him to look closer.

“Do you have any board games, Eddie?” Buck asks while they’re clearing the table.

Eddie hums, wondering which of the half dozen he’s got tucked away in a closet would work best. He assumes he’ll be ganged up on, so one he’s good at would be preferable. He’s opening his mouth the answer when Chris, still seated at the table, cuts in.

“I think I want to shift,” he declares.

Eddie freezes where he’s holding a plate under the water. His heart jumps in his chest with excitement and nerves, and Buck is at his elbow looking much the same.

“I feel like I can,” Chris continues, wiggling in his seat.

“I think that’s a great idea,” Eddie says. He frees his hands up, the dishes suddenly irrelevant. “And you know, it’s okay if you can’t.”

Chris graces him with one nod of acknowledgment before reaching for his crutches and leaving the area. Eddie frowns after him. “You have somewhere to be?”

“I don’t think I can do it if you’re watching,” Chris says, matter-of-fact. “I’m going to my room.”

“Alright,” Eddie says, tapping his fingers against the countertop a few times to dispel his nerves. “Just remember to leave the door open a bit, since you won’t have thumbs. And call if- If you need anything.”

“Okay, dad,” Chris calls over his shoulder. Eddie listens for the click of a lock, but it doesn’t come, which settles him somewhat.

“Is this-” Buck starts, voice shivering with feeling. “Is this the first time he’s going to- Since the tsunami?”

“It is,” Eddie says slowly, forcing a breath out of his chest until his lungs ache for air. “And it’s going to be fine.”

Buck nods, and he looks so much like a bobblehead that Eddie can’t resist flicking lightly at the underside of his chin. He has to step closer to do it, and he’s trying very hard not to think of another night in the kitchen, though the pounding of his heart returns.

In the glow of the moment, he can’t help but think how it would feel to give Buck a bite of his own. Fulfill the urge Eddie’s been having all day, to get his scent all over Buck. Return the favor of scrambling his damn brains a bit, since Eddie can’t seem to shake the memory. Maybe discourage Buck from trying to run away from him again.

Eddie has to look away before Buck can catch the flush that colors his cheeks, feigning interest in a speck of food stuck to the counter. It’s harder now, to convince himself that he had a part in chasing Buck off—all signs point to his vampiric friend enjoying the wolfier side of himself that Eddie occasionally indulges in. It doesn’t mean he’s really going to sink his teeth in—wouldn’t do much anyway, with their human bluntness against supernaturally tough skin—but he has to admit that Buck probably wouldn’t mind all too much.

The click of claws against wood floors is a distinctive sound if Eddie has ever heard one, and it comes in a pitter-patter that betrays swelling excitement. Eddie only has a scarce few moments to ready himself, steady his swelling heart against the joy of seeing his son achieve something he never will, before Chris is skidding into the kitchen on four paws.

Eddie’d never imagined what form Chris’s wolf might take, the lightness of it buried under the worry that usually shrouded the subject. But looking at him now, with bright fur and paws too big for his body, Eddie can only think that it suits him perfectly.

“You did it,” he says, soft for worry of Chris’s ears being more sensitive in this form, but joyous all the same. He crouches, and Chris presses against his legs, getting his scent all over Eddie as his instincts are surely screaming for him to do. The click of his claws against the floor echoes around the small kitchen, and Eddie finds it just a touch too overwhelming. With gentle herding, he stands and gets Chris out into the living room, where he can sniff at everything and sink his paws into a rug.

Buck hangs back but follows them from room to room, a cautiously delighted look on his face. Eddie can read a hint of disappointment in the slope of his shoulders, likely from Chris’s lack of acknowledgment. But Eddie knows his son, the way he gets when things are new and exciting—if something isn’t right in front of his nose he’ll forget it, until-

Chris’s head shoots up, ears perking, and then he launches himself across the room and at Buck’s legs. Buck catches himself on the wall, then seems to reconsider. He slides down, lets Chris sniff his face and rub his nose in the crook of Buck’s neck.

“Hey buddy,” Buck says. Chris nips lightly at his offered hand, teeth only barely dimpling his skin. “Nice to see you without so much water around.”

Chris sneezes at him. Buck doesn’t seem to know what to do with that, which Eddie finds strangely endearing. Has the man never had a dog? Chris butts his head against Buck’s chest, and then whirls away to sniff around the perimeter of the room.

Eddie’s heart feels too full, bursting at the seams with a soft and sweet love. He feels like enough, for once, not too little of a wolf or too much of a man. He is exactly as he should be, exactly where he’s meant to be.

Chris wears himself out with his investigation, tripping over his paws a few times and stumbling nose first into furniture. Eddie was never around for the baby-proofing when Chris was born, but maybe he’ll have to look into some wolf-proofing—more rugs, fewer sharp edges.

When Chris slips away, back in the direction of his room, Eddie has to hold himself back from following. His throat is raw with emotion, but he feels like he needs to say something, to break the silence that falls over the house.

“Good luck with that,” Buck says for him. Eddie gives him a quizzical look, which Buck answers with a lopsided grin. “The puppy-dog eyes. Unbeatable, now. Good thing you didn’t get the- the powerup. We’d never get anything done in the firehouse.”

“A powerup?” Eddie asks incredulously. A pang to his tender heart—to know Buck thinks of his own existence as a curse, and Eddie’s as a gift. “And I do not-”

“Ah, gonna stop you there, before you lie to me.” Buck snaps his fingers and then giggles at his own action.

Eddie huffs, wishing he was close enough to kick at Buck’s legs.

Chris reemerges a moment later, his pajamas on and askew, as if he’d scrambled into them in a hurry. A huge yawn splits his jaw, replaced by a sleepy smile that he gifts to Eddie. No longer able to resist, Eddie pulls his son into a hug.

“Dad,” Chris whines, but it’s a weak protest.

“I’m so proud of you,” Eddie says into his curls, the words sweet as sugar on his tongue.

“I’m good at being a wolf,” Chris hums.

“The best.”

Eddie feels Chris’s giggles in the puffs of air against his neck and where they shake through Chris’s body. They taper off surprisingly quickly into another yawn, and Eddie squeezes him tight once before holding him out at arms' length, squinting like he’s looking at something truly indecipherable. “Are you falling asleep?”

“No!” Chris squeaks in defense, opening his eyes big and wide like he can prove it.

“You have the energy to brush your teeth, then? There might be more of them than before.”

Chris pokes at his teeth, though the results are apparently inconclusive because he’s off to the bathroom a moment later, crutches clattering against the floor in a similar cadence to his claws, minutes before.

Eddie sits back on the floor for the second time that day with an exhale, basking for a minute in the warmth of it all.

Not for a moment had he forgotten Buck’s presence. An additive to the night, making it richer for his observance and participation. Eddie looks at him now, just to drink him in, and finds his actions mirrored. He won’t voice the little thread of desire that runs through him, to have Buck close, to let Buck taste. He settles for hoping that Buck can find something substantive about the energy alone to chase the dark circles from under his eyes.

But he can be a little greedy.

Not wanting to repeat earlier mistakes, he only let himself linger on the floor for a scant few minutes, before standing with a performative groan.

“Getting too old for this,” he says as he approaches Buck. It earns just the reaction he’d hoped for, a wrinkle of Buck’s nose and a knowing twist of his mouth. “But if you can do it,” he teases, offering a hand. “Then what am I complaining about?”

“It only gets worse,” Buck says with a put-upon sigh. He takes Eddie’s hand, and the cool contrast of his skin is what Eddie’s been missing, all this time without Buck at work. He tugs a little, pulls Buck from sitting and into a one armed hug that leaves their hands smushed between them.

“You’ll have to tell me all the tricks,” Eddie murmurs as he breathes Buck in, his scent mixed with Chris’s, marking him as theirs. He’d live in this moment forever, if it didn’t mean giving up all the good things that he can see spun out for their future, more soft nights and new experiences. Certainty settles him, grounds him in Buck’s hold, and Eddie teeters toward a line drawn in the sand, knowing his feet will find solid ground. A shadow of an earlier thought—his lips touch the skin at the meet of Buck’s neck and shoulder, too fleeting and soft to be a bite, disregarding even the lack of teeth.

Buck shivers. Eddie pulls away with a satisfied grin, lets his hand linger in Buck’s for a moment longer. He wants to warm Buck, not to chase away the cold, but to give up a piece of himself.

“I don’t have any more,” Chris announces as he slumps back into the room. “But they’re sharper!”

“Better for eating vegetables with,” Eddie says wisely. Buck laughs, spurred on by the truly indignant look Chris shoots Eddie. “You ready for bed?” He’s glad he’s taught his son honesty, because even as excitement clearly thrums through him, he nods. “Alright,” Eddie says. “You,” he pokes Buck’s chest, finally releases their hands. “Sit. Stay.”

Buck opens his mouth like a fish, but does just as Eddie says with a little awkward maneuvering to get to the couch.

It’s bittersweet, really, that Eddie doesn’t even need to read Chris a story to get him to sleep—as soon as he’s situated under the covers, he’s out. Eddie makes sure to tuck the nearest plush toy, a shark, into his arms before leaving.

“Beer?” he offers Buck, voice hushed by the dimmed lights. Eddie, strangely, feels like he needs the buffer of alcohol. Everything else is too close to the surface, his tongue loose and actions unrestrained. It’s a ritual more than anything, to grab two bottles out and toss one to another beast who, like him, will be entirely unaffected by it.

But he settles onto the couch with a sigh, the cool press of the bottle a mimic of Buck’s hand, his lips wrapped around the rim something more, something he doesn’t care to consider. He is, by self-enforced rule, content with all he has.

It only gets better when, after begrudgingly dropping Buck off back at his Jeep the next day, he’s followed back to the station, with Buck only cheekily reporting that Bobby’d asked him to come in when they’re in the parking lot. Why they couldn’t have just driven in together, Eddie will never know, but he lets Buck get away with it with only an eye roll and a light punch to the shoulder because he can tell Buck is a little nervous.

Eddie takes his sweet time in the locker room while Buck disappears to Bobby’s office. He can tell Hen and Chim are doing the same, though none of them talk about it. It feels like—well, not a jinx, since they aren’t real, but something fragile.

When Buck enters the locker room with a grin splitting his face, they’re all on him in an instant.

“You’re looking at the newest reinstated member of the one eighteen,” he says with a dorky double-handed point to himself, followed by an oof when he’s pulled into a crushing hug by his team. Eddie makes sure to get in real close, squeeze as tight as he can.

“Are you starting today?” he asks when they’ve all fallen back a bit, though not too far.

“Bobby said I could hang around the station,” Buck shrugs. “Probably can’t help on calls or anything. But-”

“But you’re here,” Hen finishes, smiling warmly and pulling Buck in for another hug.

“Good to have you back,” Chim says. “I was running out of material for your sister.”

Buck spins on him immediately, the locker room quickly filling with the sounds of their bantering.

It’s the quickest a shift has ever flown past for Eddie, save for the shift after, when Buck officially rejoins the team, and takes back his place as Eddie’s partner.

“I missed this,” Eddie yells down the ladder, while they climb toward a balcony. Not the most professional action, but who can blame him! Buck is back, and he’s got enough color in his cheeks to give away that he must have fed, sometime between shifts, and it shows in the speed and strength he uses on every call.

“I did too,” Buck says, when they’re back on solid ground.

Despite being inseparable outside of work, it’s like something about the firehouse makes them worse. Eddie follows Buck into the bunkroom in a lapse between calls. Buck stays glued to his side when Eddie starts on his chores, talking his ear off about the architecture of a building they’d been called to and the article he’d found on it. Bobby seems to acknowledge this with a begrudging acceptance and a little delight of his own, every call for BuckAndEddie newly refamiliarized in his voice.

It’s a cold and rainy night that tears everything apart.

Eddie is going down. The kid knows him, heard his voice. For every moment they waste, when the water could be rising, he feels his own chest getting tighter. Panic will ruin him, if he lets it take, so he tries to pull from the conviction that swells in his voice with ease when he volunteers for the job.

As he straps into a harness, Buck hovering near him, his path feels predetermined. Maybe it slid into place when he volunteered himself, or when his voice was piped down into the earth. Or perhaps it had been set long before, unswayed by any action Eddie took.

He does not think of it as noble fate, or glorious sacrifice, as his feet fall heavy on their path. Everyone has words for him, advice and well-wishes and the ones he needs, the instructions. And then-

“Wait,” Buck hisses. Somehow, the two of them have ended up a distance away from the others, and Eddie knows he needs to take the moment and ground himself. It’s not a slip of time, or a waste. He’ll need to be steady. "You're going to get him out."

Eddie can tell he means it, with the full force of his being. In the same way that Eddie feels sunk into his path, Buck sees the flipside—Eddie, returning. Eddie, once again the hero.

His conviction is misplaced, probably, but Eddie anchors himself on it anyway. He doesn't have words for Buck, but they don't need them. When he nods, Buck responds in turn, and Eddie knows that it's going to work out.

It has to.

When things go wrong, he doesn't hesitate. His line cuts easy as anything, but the physical affect of it hits him harder than he'd expected—with his radio dead, he's entirely alone, save for the kid he has to save. It's like standing among a room of wolves, each of them caught in a web of bonds that Eddie is incapable of accessing.

His team knows what to do. Chim appears like a guardian angel, his line secured, and Eddie hands the kid over, smiles when Chim promises to send a line down for him.

He doesn't need something supernatural to connect all of them. Doesn't need it to help his son through a shift, or bring Buck back into his life. He's built something real for himself, far from the controlling claws of his parents.

He's freaking out a little over the confines of the tunnel, how close the walls feel. Breathing through it only works for so long. He tries his radio again, but gets only crackling static in response, an eerie sound to fill the space, joined only by the distant roar of the storm.

In the end, he doesn't even know the exact moment everything truly crumbles. There's dirt and water falling on him constantly, his mind playing tricks to convince him that the rate is ever-increasing. Somewhere above ground, lightning strikes in the wrong place at the wrong time. Eddie is slowly, slowly, buried alive.

He doesn't want to go out quietly, but what is there to say?

"I'm still alive," he whispers. It falls over him, sinks its fangs in; comforting, in the way that holding Buck close had been . He chases the feeling, grabs at the dog tag and medallion around his neck. They dig into his fingers. Alive.

He's curled in on himself. It's cold down here. Empty. Dead. Dark in the way places in Los Angeles don't really get.

When he closes his eyes, he thinks of Chris. His wolf, golden like sunlight. Eddie's only seen him shift once, and it wasn't somewhere he could stretch his legs and feel free. His life is entering a new stage, and Eddie needs to be there for him—or he needs someone to be there, if he can't.

Chris'll go to his parents, if he dies down here. They'll do their best to mold him into the perfect little heir that Eddie never could be. Tell him that his dad was never a good enough wolf, that he died in a pre-dug grave.

It hits him, all at once, that if he wanted Chris to go to anyone, it would be Buck. Buck, who saw him shift for the first time and kept him safe. Put his own body on the line for it. Buck, who would fight for his son like no one else.

Eddie doesn't want to die down here.

He's got so much more life left to live, with them. He wants to knock his knees against Buck's in the engine, wants to watch Chris learn to howl at the moon.

Something presses at him, closer than the walls. He feels as if he's been flayed open, insides turned out—but it doesn't hurt. He's remade, in the face of death and made of want, into something new entirely.

The sky is hidden from him, so the earth calls out. It says, there is life here, too, and it says, here there are roots and here there is cycle of all things, and it says, you feel the moonlight and you feel the earth and only with both together can you stand.

Eddie is curled in on himself. Collapsing in on himself, a dying star.

He reaches out, up through the earth. Buck is there—clawing at it. Through it. His fingers are stained and his face is streaked with tears and Eddie brushes an immaterial hand through his hair and he thinks I will see you again.

And beyond him, somewhere in the city, is Eddie's son. He smells like warm wood chips of a playground, turns in his sleep with nightmares. Eddie sees the bond between them. It's not just one strand, as he'd always pictured them to be—it's a thousand, a million of them, all the shared moments of laughter and frustration. Eddie in the same room but feeling miles apart. Eddie across the world, but feeling near with his babies laugh coming through a shitty speaker.

It pulls.

Eddie is changing.

It's not an erasure, of everything he'd built to this point. Instead, it's a building transformation, nails lengthening into claws and teeth sharpening to deadly points. He wonders if the first wolf felt like this, begging and pleading for anything to save his family, gifted something irreversible.

His claws dig into the soft earth, newly displaced, and he feels a strange kinship for it. How strange, to be reborn where no one can see.

Chapter Text

Buck isn’t expecting it to go wrong, is the thing.

There’s a nervous, frantic energy on the call. There tends to be, when kids are involved, and this one has been particularly drawn out and tense, every moment important, building like the storm clouds on the horizon.

When Eddie volunteers to go down, it just makes sense—it’s Eddie. If anyone is going to get that kid out, it’s him. He’ll emerge, at the last second, for dramatics only, with an artful smear of mud across his face and a shaky but whole kid in his arms. The team will let out a collective sigh of relief, and that’ll be that.

He doesn’t know the exact moment it goes wrong. There’s no shift in the air, no dread that settles in Buck’s gut without physical proof of the undoing. Like everyone else above ground, he finds out that Eddie had cut his rope when it’s reeled up, the fibers frayed and dirty. Then, and only then, does the reality of it hit him like a truck.

And then a moment later, he bounces back. Eddie just needs a little more time—Buck will go down for him.

“Cap,” he says, stepping away from the winch and going for a harness. “I’ll get him out.”

“No you will not,” Bobby says firmly. “Han, suit up. You’re still on the ropes, Buckley.”

Buck stops in his tracks, aghast. Even in the mill of people, spinning faster now that things have been turned up another notch, he wants to plead his case. He’s perfect for this job—Bobby can hold him back on fires, be as overcautious as he wants. Buck is built for this. The force of the earth wouldn’t be enough to crush him, the lack of oxygen hardly a worry. And he’d fed just a few nights before.

Bobby meets his eye, solid but not cold. Buck trembles with unshed energy, pleads with everything but his voice, but Bobby just shakes his head, turns to make sure Chimney is ready.

It’s- fine. Sure. Buck tends to the ropes, gives Chim an encouraging nod when he looks his way, and focuses hard on controlling his slack.

He’ll be here when Eddie comes up. The first to offer a hand, and a close call, man. Eddie will be rosy with adrenaline, warm despite the rain. Maybe the water will halo him where it refracts with the bright lights set all across the scene.

Chim disappears into the earth. Everyone gets a little more tense, the energy sinking into Buck’s veins and calling up old memories.

His rebirth wasn’t a dramatic affair. Enough dirt tossed over his body, once he’d tasted death, to count as a shallow grave. It was loose enough that all he had to do was sit up, and there had been his sire. No hand was offered, but Buck hadn’t minded. He was driven, then, by grief and rage.

He’s never been able to figure out if his drive was smoothed over or snuffed out. Like a boulder worn into a pebble, he had lost parts of himself with each passing decade. It was a terrifying thing, to build oneself around a few core tenets, and Buck had never been all that good at it. Always, there was more to be found, even as he was herded like a stubbornly useful animal across continents.

The line jumps, two tugs, and Buck reverses his motions. Undone, undoing. The rope rolls in toward him again, holding more tension than the moments before it was revealed that Eddie had cut his line.

And there—Chim emerges, his arms wrapped tight around the little boy. Buck lets out a breath of relief at the sight, though he hangs back while Hen and Bobby and a handful of others rush in, both of them sufficiently taken care of.

He’ll drop another line for Eddie. It’ll be Buck who reels him in, brings him home. Penance, maybe, for the night in Eddie’s kitchen that lives on in perpetuity in Buck’s mind. Every taste of blood he’s had since then has both called to and paled from it. A definitive shift, in the course of Buck’s life. If he pulled Eddie from the earth a thousand times, he could never repay him fully.

Buck prepares the line. He moves fast, but everything seems to have gone slow and syrupy around him, like a storybook. Lightning flashes, thunder rumbles, and machinery looms high overhead. Eddie is the hero, clear as day in Buck’s mind, his cause noble and true, delayed through his own sacrifice. Buck isn’t sure where he fits into the story, but he’s happy to live in it.

Eddie is alone. Thinking, probably, of getting warm. Of knowing the boy is safe and in his mother’s arms. Certain that Chris will soon be in his.

The line is ready, and Buck has it in position when there’s a crack of thunder so loud it leaves a ringing in Buck’s ears, followed—or preceded, or perfectly in time with—a bolt of white light.

Buck knows, logically, that fire and lightning are two different beasts. As different, even, as a wolf and a vampire. One can cause the other, certainly, but there is nothing he has to fear from the arc of electricity other than its aftermath. And yet, he flinches terribly, hands slipping on the rope, feet scrambling in the mud, heart beating, beating, blood pounding in his ears when the ringing recedes. Surely some of it is still Eddie’s—his body would know to hold on tight.

He thinks he’s imagining the chaos for a wasted moment of time. The aftermath is upon him, and yet he only watches dumbly as the world topples, as fire springs to life despite the rain, as the earth closes its maw.

A vampire's grave dirt could kill them. Buck’s is somewhere in Pennsylvania, a place he never plans to return, probably scattered or layered under years and years of mulch and debris, pressed into something new.

Eddie’s, in his hands, feels too large. He claws at the earth, screams his throat raw, but he can’t even reach through it. It only goes deeper, deeper. Muddied by the rain that hasn’t abated, even when the world should have stopped spinning. He wants to bottle it all, to have it loaded into the machinery they’ve brought to this place and spread across the earth, to take it into his mouth and carry it with him until he finds his own grave.

Bobby pulls him away. Buck goes numb at his touch, his screams twisted into sobs that wrack his body rather than escape his mouth. Movement, all around him, harried but not so frantic—there’s a subdued, accepting nature to the way the earth is addressed. Convenient for a man to crawl into his own grave.

No.

It’s not the kind of death Eddie deserves, Buck would scream if he thought the universe could be swayed. If he thought the universe would listen to him. He has no bargaining power, so he won’t call for it.

“We have to dig,” he says. His voice is strong, a creature of the night come alive. Eddie’s blood and Eddie’s heart are down there. Buck’s, by right.

Bobby is shaking his head, looking terribly stricken. Buck hates it. “We can’t. The conditions are only getting worse.”

“Eddie’s down there.” He shivers at he words, as if speaking them aloud has truly solidified it as reality. “We can’t-” bile rises in his throat, swallows the horrible truth of his words. They can’t leave him down there, but they will.

He stumbles back. Hits something with his full weight—the pulley system. God, he wants to tear it into pieces. His useless prepared line is coiled in the mud, dirtied as if it’s truly seen action. Abstractly, he can position it as a representation of his own failure—unable to form the bonds that Eddie talks circles around, those mythical ties between wolves. All he has to show for the worry and dread that fill him is a rising tide of hopelessness.

Somewhere in the falling rain, he’s pulled into a huddle with the remnants of the team, wrapped in a mylar blanket. They all wear the same sort of shellshock, the speed at which things had happened leaving no time for processing. It settles in now, looking at their little group of four. Eddie’s absence screams, and Buck can hardly stand to be within it.

There are concessions that could be made—once the weather clears, they’ll get the drills running. No one will say them out loud, because they all know the only thing to turn up would be a body. Human, in death, Buck knows. The fleeing spirit of his wolf trapped below the earth, not even a sliver of the moon for it to see.

Usually, when he’s with his team, Buck feels as if he’s been dropped into a bubble. When their bodies are close, their voices hushed, the outside world fades away. But in this moment of misery, the world moving on around them is too loud. Buck can pick out the heartbeats of the other rescue workers, the slowly easing beats of the family they were called to help.

There’s no chance of his senses penetrating the earth, but he tries anyway. Strains to hear even the final dying beats of a heart he knows best of all, whose pattern bled against his tongue.

And he finds nothing at all, but a great dead space trawled only by worms and sprawling mycelial networks. He’d had a kick on decomposition, somewhere in his years of undead living. Was his true power in being immune to it? His DNA incorruptible despite replication, his body trapped forever, forever, in the moment of his truest death? He’d never know the absolution of returning to the earth. It was the price a vampire paid for eternal existence, removal from the cycle of the living and the dead. Distance, by necessity. Separation for power, life through death and death through life and a hunger to underlie it all.

There.

But it’s not—it’s the rhythm he’s been searching for, the one he knows so intimately, but changed. Quickened, but not by something so temporary as adrenaline. Feral, nearly, in its unrefined intensity.

He stumbles away from the huddle. It may be hallucination, preying on his mind at a moment of weakness, but his good sense is similarly inhibited, so away he stumbles.

There’s no clear path in his sight. The world is a mess of running colors, most of them grey and brown and soaked through. Even the lightning has stopped, as if sated from a grand act of destruction, and the lights that had once loomed so large over the scene now flicker and fail, sending darkness sprawling.

Buck is uniquely, solely equipped to see through it. To follow that tantalizingly familiar heartbeat away from the dulled chaos into deeper patches of darkness.

Something about the rain changes. It still comes down in sheets, but just in front of Buck the way it falls has shifted its tone. From the dull thud of the earth to a meeting of likes, pitter-patter to roar.

A body of water. Formed by the rain or only bolstered by it, Buck doesn’t know. But if what he’s hearing is—then he’s close.

He’s far enough away from everyone else that there’s nothing for his ears to pick up on but the continuous rainfall, so monotonous over the water that it’s almost tranquil. To call out would be to shatter it, and that feels entirely wrong. When Buck rose from the earth, the night had been silent, as if holding its breath. Affronted by his callousness to the natural way of things, not wanting to give audience.

This night is loud, and Buck dares not disturb it. He only watches, watches, watches. Waits.

The water parts. The shape that emerges is a hulking thing, its movements flailing as if it’s not yet certain of how to work its limbs in their current state. Buck feels himself go still, so entirely that only one heartbeat dominates the night—Eddie’s.

His wolf—and it is his, Buck would know it without sound, without sight, even, from the weight of his presence alone—heaves itself out of the water, onto land that can only claim a slight degree of dryness over the water itself. Buck has never considered himself blessed, but he finds it hard to cite any other explanation for bearing witness to such a miracle twice in his overextended life.

Fur the same brown as Eddie’s hair and a head that comes up to Buck’s chest, all shown off with a great shake that amounts to little change, with the rain still pouring down.

Buck drops to his knees.

The relief that crashes over him is more akin to stepping into a patch of sunlight—before, of course, it came to weaken him—than being caught in the curl of a wave. His worry burns away in layers, the surface first before warming to the core, where a part of him had already been trying to conceptualize a life without Eddie. In a way, having it reversed makes the terrible chance at that reality all the worse, all the more distant, because once again—Eddie has made it out.

Buck can hardly look at him. Everything he is feels too real, like he’s a three-dimensional character placed into a 2D world.

Not looking, however, is a no-can-do.

Eddie looks right back at him. It’s impossible to track human motions onto his face, a new thing in its entirety, but Buck would swear that fear dances in Eddie’s eyes. Not deep-seated, but near the surface. Easily dispelled.

Buck holds out a hand, and then thinks better of it. For every time that Eddie has scoffed at Buck comparing him to a dog—should he bow? Duck his head or offer his neck or-

The earth seems to shake, when Eddie steps toward him. His fur is so soaked through that the falling rain bounces off, creating a strange pale halo around him. Behind him stretches a trail of great paw prints, embedded in the mud as if to mark the passage of something grand, something important.

“Eddie,” Buck breathes, because for a time he had feared he could never say the name again without grief haunting every letter. “Y-you’re alive.”

Eddie huffs, and Buck has to amend his earlier thought about his gestures not being human—he captures it exactly, laughing at Buck like this, as if to say of course I am.

“And you’re a wolf,” Buck adds dumbly. Eddie is close enough that, with Buck still kneeling in disbelief on the ground, he has to look down for their eyes to meet. Up close, they’re still the same deep brown, beautiful and gentle even in the face of a creature so powerful—one that pulls on the basest of Buck’s cursed instincts, urges him to run and never look back if he values his own life.

Buck brushes a hand over Eddie’s neck. His fur is thick, and soft in spite of the water, and Buck wants nothing more to tangle his fingers in it and remind himself that Eddie is here, and alive.

But they’re still on a call. The rest of the team- the rest of the team still thinks Eddie is dead, and they have no idea that he’s a werewolf. Something flares to life, bright and demanding, in Buck’s chest—he has to protect Eddie.

Memories of the tsunami crash over him—Chris, coaxed back to human. The water sweeping him away, Buck berating himself again and again and again as the sun beat down on him, that had Chris just stayed in his shift he might have been better off.

This night is a twin, and a total opposite. Water trickles down Buck’s skin, but doesn’t leave salt where it dries. Eddie’s fear has faded, though exhaustion has clearly taken its place if the way he leans into Buck is any indication.

“You have to change back,” Buck says. He alone can hear the words echo through time, shivers under the weight of it. “Th-they think you’re dead, Eddie. I m-mean I could tell them for you- about you.”

Eddie shakes his head, sits back on his haunches. There are a few scraps of clothes clinging to him, mostly around his middle and his neck, which means the rest are somewhere deep underground. Buck isn’t too sure how they’ll explain it, but maybe the shock of seeing Eddie alive will keep questions at bay until he’s had time to come up with a good story.

“Do you know how?” Buck asks. Chris had figured it out, obviously, but Chris had gotten his shift at the normal time for a wolf. For all Buck knows, getting it as late as Eddie could mean a life stuck on four legs.

Eddie huffs at him again, stands and turns in a neat circle like he’s a dog fluffing up its bed. No. Not like that at all, actually, and Buck never thought it. Everything Eddie does is regal and dignified, even when he hesitates, and then turns in another circle, though this one is counterclockwise to the others clockwise.

“He doesn’t know how,” Buck mutters to himself. He thinks he might be in minor shock, and it’s a damn good thing he can’t get pneumonia. Eddie shoots him a glare that really, really should be terrifying but—his eyes are just so big, and so brown. He gives Eddie a double thumbs up, and then hopes it’s not offensive to parade around his thumbs when Eddie doesn’t happen to have them.

Unfortunately, the clock is probably ticking on someone from the team coming to look for Buck. Touching, certainly, but he needs them to give him a theoretical moment in his grief that has, quite thoroughly, flown the coop.

“I don’t think it’s the circle thing,” he says when Eddie makes like he’s going to try it again. “I think Chris just- he just thought about it. Or something. Like- there wasn’t a specific action.”

Eddie’s ears perk up at the mention of his son.

“Yeah, think about Chris,” Buck says with an encouraging nod. “And ah- your parents? No, definitely not. Pepa and abuela,” he says with a snap of his fingers. “All of them. Your family.”

Eddie tilts his head, looks right at Buck—clearly not thinking of people to ground him, or whatever technique Buck is trying to encourage right now. “Just try,” he pleads. Some of his worry is trickling back in, though it’s not so sharp as before. He’s not sure if Eddie’s continued focus on him is an ask for more ideas, or if he’s settled on being discovered.

There’s a change. Eddie is looking at him, still, gaze unbreakable, but his face is pulling back on itself. Snout shrinking to a nose, teeth pulling up into gums. It gets more abstract, from there, things folding and undoing, and it makes Buck feel dizzy in the same way being dropped off the edge of a rollercoaster track does.

Buck blinks, though he doesn’t want to look away, and when his vision clears the wolf is gone, and in its place is the Eddie he knows best.

He doesn’t hesitate even a second to wrap Eddie in his arms. Buck’s still in the heavier gear required for the call, so he can’t feel any of Eddie’s body heat, but the returning press of his arms around Buck is more than enough to make up for it.

They hold each other, in the darkness and the rain, for a long, long moment. Buck breathes Eddie in, traces over the new tempo of his heartbeat. Wishes that he could press his fingers to Eddie’s neck and count it out exactly, but he settles for hearing it so close.

Eddie shivers once, a powerful full-body motion that rocks through him. It dissolves into micro shakes, and his teeth start to chatter with sharp clicks.

It’s then, after holding on to Eddie for what has to have been multiple minutes, that it truly sets in for Buck that Eddie is naked, in the rain, covered in mud. His energy spent from shifting and- and pulling himself from the earth.

“Shit,” Buck hisses, pulling out of the hug and scrabbling for the blanket still wrapped around his shoulders. Eddie stays still and close for him to wrap it around him, tucking his fingers into the edges to pull it tight. “We need to get you back.”

“You d-don’t like the scenery?” Eddie jokes, voice creaking like his vocal chords are still settling in place.

“I don’t like you freezing your ass off.”

“You’re worried about my ass?”

Buck blinks, then shakes his head. Eddie might have hit his head, getting out. “We have to-”

“Buck!” someone calls, voice carrying over the rain. A flashlight sweeps through the rain, and Buck lets out a breath of relief.

“Over here!” he calls.

He gives Eddie a quick once-over, though he’s not sure why. Checking that his ears haven’t stuck around? Maybe if he didn’t have the blanket wrapped so tight around him, he’d have more hair on his chest. Had Buck hit his head in the past few hours?

“I’m fine,” Eddie says with a toothy grin. “I’m alive.”

And Buck, some part of him holding on to his fear until Eddie was able to take it away, finally relaxes.

They’re let off of shift early—obviously—all of them told to go home and get some good sleep. With a stubborn will that no one has the energy to fight, Eddie gets away with avoiding a trip to the hospital, under the conditions that he allows Hen to look him over, and that Buck goes home with him.

Buck doesn’t hover, while Hen is poking at Eddie’s unharmed skin, but it’s hard not to look because he’d ended up wrapped in a jacket with Buckley emblazoned across the back, some of the only spare clothes they’d been able to find in the engine.

Eddie seems torn between buzzing with a strange, wild energy, and falling asleep where he sits. Hen is baffled by it, but she declares him fit enough to be sent off on his own, as long as he promises to go heavy on the blankets and warm drinks. Buck sees Bobby squinting at Eddie a few times, looking over his shoulder from the front seat of the engine, like Eddie is a mystery he can’t quite figure out.

And then it’s just Eddie and Buck, in Buck’s Jeep in the dead of the night. The world has taken on a strange, almost ethereal quality, and Buck feels like he’s moving all his limbs wrong, that his lungs have forgotten how to move air even in their normal petty imitation of human function.

Eddie keeps looking at his own hands. Palm, for a long few seconds, and then back.

“You okay?” Buck asks, voice hushed under the weight of everything.

Eddie looks at him, and his eyes reflect the lights of the parking lot in a way Buck has never seen. “Not sure yet,” he admits lowly, voice gravelly. “But I think- I think I will be.”

Buck forces out a deep breath, until he feels hollowed out. And then he starts the Jeep, and starts them off into their new reality.

He’s very serious about watching over Eddie, following him into his darkened house like a lost, and very needy, puppy. It’s him who latches the deadbolt, him who shuffles around the house to make sure all the blinds are closed.

“You want something to drink?” Buck offers. “Ah, tea? Coffee?”

Eddie purses his lips, considering, then shakes his head. “Sleep.”

“Right,” Buck chuckles. “Okay caveman.”

With a roll of his eyes, Eddie disappears into the bathroom. It feels like no time at all until he’s back out, though Buck may have nodded off leaning against the wall—his perpetual question of if he really needs sleep currently answered by a bone-deep exhaustion that sure feels like more than placebo.

Eddie nods his head in the direction of the room he’s just vacated, and Buck takes that as his cue to get ready himself. By now, he’s built up quite the collection of spare clothes at Eddie’s, tucked into the hall closet, and he grabs them before ducking into the bathroom to pull off a quick shower before taking his spot on the couch.

And it really is a quick shower—he finds that he doesn’t like Eddie out of his sight, or the sound of water rushing in his ears. He barely runs a hand through his hair and soaps over his body before he’s stepping out and toweling off, the most thorough step he allows for.

When he steps back into the hall and finds Eddie having taken his spot leaning against the wall, watching and waiting, he nearly jumps out of his skin.

“Why aren’t you in bed?” he asks softly.

Eddie has to blink himself awake before answering, but the fog of sleep is quickly replaced by a steely determination. “I’m not going alone.”

“To bed?”

A nod. Buck, quite frankly, has no idea how to respond to that. There are a million and one incredibly valid reasons for Eddie to be asking, even if Buck can’t provide the warmth he’s been prescribed with his lacking body heat, and no reason for Buck to refuse. A rough night means they’ll both crave the comfort of a friend. But something deep in the back of Buck’s mind goes tense at the suggestion. He thinks that it must be stupid vampire instincts, afraid of vulnerability, so he ducks his head in acceptance.

“Good,” Eddie says with a self-satisfied flush that Buck tells himself he’s too tired to think about, and then reevaluates, because he knows the explanation to be quite simple—while Buck is rejecting his vampire instincts, Eddie is leaning into his newly bolstered wolf ones. He’s not so self-loathing to think that he means nothing at all to Eddie’s wolf, enough of a consolation for his son being absent, so he follows in Eddie’s padding footsteps into the bedroom.

He’s been in here before, obviously. Many times, in fact. Sat on the bed to continue on a rant to Eddie, rifled through his drawers when his spare clothes weren’t enough. Always, he thinks that it never quite looks like Eddie belongs in it.

Tonight is different. There’s moonlight coming in through the cracks in the blinds, scoring the walls with slanted patterns to make up for the lack of decoration. Eddie himself is enough of a spectacle to cover every other shortcoming; the way he holds himself changed. Shifted.

Eddie crawls into bed first. He takes the opposite side to Buck’s usual, a small relief among a dozen earth-shattering ones that warms Buck disproportionately—a sign that he and Eddie fit together, somehow, clear as day in the quiet of Eddie’s bedroom. He lies on his back, still and with his eyes already closed, and Buck feels no trepidation in following him.

As soon as he’s lying down, also on his back, he feels the bed shift as Eddie rolls onto his side, inches closer to Buck. Something pulls at Buck to do the same, and when he finds his position mirrored to Eddie’s, their faces are close enough to share breath. Buck holds his, subconsciously, only feeling the warm hint of Eddie’s tickling at his face.

It’s not that things have changed noticeably about Eddie, but they are different. His eyes, for all that Buck gazes into them now, hold the remnant of the wolf he temporarily was.

As if reading his mind, Eddie asks; “Was I cool?”

Buck stutters over a breathless laugh. “What?”

“My wolf,” Eddie says warmly. His eyes drift closed for a long moment, and though Buck mourns his chance to study them, he wouldn’t begrudge the sight of Eddie at ease for anything.

“Eh,” Buck says. Eddie’s eyes shoot open, squinting at him, and his lip curls in a pout. “It was okay.”

“You weren’t looking hard enough,” Eddie protests. Buck chuckles under his breath at the untruth of it, which Eddie seems to take as further teasing. “Water in your eyes.”

“I did think you were dead for like, ten minutes,” Buck says, sobering.

The bed shifts again when Eddie rolls onto his back. Buck stays on his side, traces his eyes over Eddie’s profile. The dip of the bridge of his nose, the curve of his eyelashes, down to the line of his neck, each in the soft relief of low light.

“It was close.” Eddie’s still, now, save for where his fingers play with the hem of his shirt. Buck wonders idly if Eddie always sleeps in so many clothes, or if tonight's sweatpants and thin shirt are a holdover from the cold. It’s not information he’d ever feasibly need, and yet still he wonders. If Eddie had died tonight, the holes left in Buck’s understanding of him would have been terribly large.

“I don’t know what I would have done if- if you were in front of me,” Buck blurts out. He sees Eddie’s confusion in the twitch of his brow, bites his own lip to soldier on. “If I knew you were dying.” He swallows. “And it was h-happening where I could see. Where I could change- things. Stop you from dying.”

Realization settles over Eddie, though he doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. Buck watches, stilled, as he traces the skin where Buck’s fangs had sunk into his skin with his opposite hand, fingers exploratory but heavy in their path.

“I-” Eddie starts. In the pause, Buck searches the single syllable for any giveaway to his emotions—fear? Anger? Disappointment?

No part of Buck regrets the admission. It wasn’t so much a weight on his chest as a sour taste in his mouth, cleansed with the words set free. Eddie knows—he can judge Buck as he wants, and Buck will take whatever he’s given.

“You think I’d be a good vampire?” Eddie asks. Any brevity found in whatever he’d meant to say before has been washed over by light humor. Buck accepts the sidestep begrudgingly—it hadn’t been a plea for permission.

“Better than me,” Buck huffs. “You’ve got more- more grandeur.”

Eddie laughs at him. Buck feels it, warm in his chest and shaking through his limbs, and he scoffs with a smile on his face.

“Give me more than that,” Eddie says. “Sell it to me.”

Buck blanches. “I don’t want you to be a vampire.”

“Okay. But hypothetically, if it did happen, would I be any good at it?”

“You’re good at everything,” Buck grumbles.

“You trying to flatter me, Buckley?” Eddie tilts his head to the side, and Buck gets a flash of teeth. His canines are pointed, the way he’s mostly sure they’ve always been, and yet they seem to catch the faint light more than ever, drawing Buck’s eyes. “It’s not working.”

Buck hums, really thinking about it. The AC kicks on, white noise filling the room, and Eddie pulls the blankets tighter around him.

“I don’t know,” he mutters, a little miffed at how hard of a time he’s having dressing Eddie in the visage of a vampire, even in his head. Everything about him just fits to the wolf that he is, especially bolstered by his shift just a few hours ago, now. Buck can’t remove Eddie from the image of the great wolf looking up at him from the water with recognition. “You’d, uhm, you’d hate needing permission to get in places.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“It’s not so bad,” Buck shrugs, rolling his shoulders against the pillows. “Except- my first shift, oh man. I had to stand outside the station until someone came by and saw me. And it was just my luck that they were all having lunch. I- I don’t know what Bobby even thought. That I was the greenest probie ever, probably.”

“It never affects you on calls?”

“Uh- no? I think because like, we as a team were invited, I can go in. Maybe I shouldn’t think about it too much.”

“You can overthink yourself into a- well, I guess it’d be getting out of a loophole.” Eddie’s vague amusement is underlied by creeping exhaustion, drawing his vowels out and deepening his voice.

“Absolutely,” Buck chuckles. “I think that the whole thing is just- just a mindset thing, anyway.

“So you think of Abby’s place as yours?”

“Uhm.” Does he? “No. Still hers. I- I mean I’ve been paying the rent since a few months after she left, but-”

“It’s yours.”

“Her name’s on the lease.”

“How does that work?”

“Magic,” Buck says, frowning when Eddie laughs like he’s joking. “No- I mean, it really is. Not- not so obvious or anything, but i- if a vampire is welcomed in somewhere, it’s a powerful thing. And we, ah, believe it, the world bends itself to make it work.”

“Or her landlord just wanted to keep getting money out of you.”

“It’s- well,” Buck frowns. “It kind of is expensive.”

“So move,” Eddie says, blunt but not cruel. His voice is- well, Buck would have a hard time saying no to him in the normal circumstances of a near-death experience, but compounded with the voice, he’s half a second away from calling his landlord right then.

“I’ll think about it,” Buck says, and he means it for the first time in Eddie’s long tirade of nagging.

Not pleased with this, apparently, Eddie groans. “Well, she never said you could stay, right?”

“Eddie,” Buck laughs. “Are you trying to get me to kick myself out?”

“Mmm,” Eddie says sleepily. “Maybe.”

“Well, if it works, I’m going to have to crash on your couch.”

The poorly hidden pleased smile that earns him isn’t a surprise to Buck. He might as well be dangling candy in front of Eddie’s nose.

Would it be so bad, to move on from Abby’s? Buck is pretty sure he’s not in love with her anymore. He stopped texting many months ago, though on lonely nights he does still get the urge to. Moving out does feel like the closing of a final door, the realest relationship he’s ever had officially marked as a failure. Does he try dating again? He thinks his life might be set in stone as a series of fleeting moments, each smaller and smaller in the relative scope of things as it drags on and on.

Somewhere in the lull of conversation, Eddie’s eyes have drifted closed. Buck looks at the smooth skin of his eyelids, imagines what it would feel like to touch—soft and delicate, a deep act of trust. He’s pulled, as he has been since seeing the wolf, to thoughts of it. In that form, his eyelids would be warm with fur. Buck could sweep his thumb in a gentle arc up, touch Eddie’s ears until they twitch in reflex.

With a tremendous amount of self-control, he rolls over onto his back and whispers a “Goodnight, Eddie,” to the ceiling.

“Night Buck.”

When morning comes, after a long night of Buck being awake enough to tell that time was passing, but too out of it for his mind to really be producing thoughts, he leaves before Eddie wakes up. Still wary of the trauma of the night before, he does give him a quick once-over, but his skin has returned to a normal, healthy color, and his breathing comes steady and slow, so he’s confident that his healing worked its magic.

The drive back to his apartment feels strangely empty. Even turning up the radio doesn’t help, the music flat to his ears, so he drives in silence.

There’s lots to think about, but none of it feels particularly pressing. If he hadn’t spent the night with Eddie—seen that he still accepted Buck in just the same as before—then he’d be wracked with worry that his shift would change something between them. But Eddie, as far as Buck can tell from his limited exposure, just feels more settled in himself. The more Buck puzzles it over, the more he can’t help but feel excited, to see this new phase in his best friend’s life.

And there’s his living situation, of course. Any ties he’d felt to the apartment had faded in the long first few months of Abby’s absence, but he was nothing if not an expert at clinging to things.

So he walks up to the door with a little trepidation. His key presses hard into his fingertips, leaves toothed marks, and it might feel like belonging.

It fits in the keyhole, just as it has a hundred times before, and before he even turns it, Buck knows it’s not going to work. Maybe that’s what damns him, or maybe Eddie’s joking words had done it. Either way, the key won’t catch, the door won’t budge, and Buck can’t get into the apartment he’s coming to realize never felt like home.

His only way to deal is to let out a disbelieving laugh, and turn back to his Jeep, tires pointed back the way he’d come.

Eddie is awake, when he marches through the door, looking refreshed and achingly alive, existing in his home and sipping a mug of coffee, certainly topped off with his weird flavored creamers.

“You,” Buck says accusingly. Eddie raises his eyebrows at him, taking a pointed drink.

“Where’d you go?”

“Tried to go h- to my place. But you know what happened?”

“I might have an idea.”

“Well, I need you to come back with me.” Buck crosses his arms, tries to look serious. “Like, now.”

“I need to pick Chris up,” Eddie says.

“We can get him first. Your truck is still at the station anyway.” Eddie hums, clearly being difficult. “I just- I need to get at least some of my things out.”

“You’re moving?” Eddie brightens up instantly, and Buck is deep enough in his acceptance of what’s currently happening to enjoy it. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“Well I can’t get in,” Buck huffs. “Thought it would be obvious.”

“I thought you were going to make me take the door off the hinges or something.”

Buck had not thought of that. Maybe he’d accepted his fate of moving into Eddie’s for a bit too quickly. “Wouldn’t work, anyway. I can’t cross the threshold.”

“Let’s hit the road, then,” Eddie says excitedly, draining the rest of his coffee in a move that must call on his healing to fix up burns to his tongue. “We need to get my truck first? How much do you need to move?”

“You could pretend to be a little- I don’t know. Disappointed to have a roommate.”

“I don’t lie, Buckley.”

“Entirely untrue,” Buck says. “And we can fit everything I’ll need in the Jeep. I’m ah, used to traveling light.”

Eddie cocks his head. “You’re used to it, or you like it?”

“Didn’t you say we needed to hurry to get Chris?”

“I lied.” Buck makes a face at him. “We’ll grab your stuff first.”

Living with Eddie is not as much of an adjustment as Buck thinks it ought to be. It’s different, of course, than spending the odd night on the couch—he’s more than grateful for his lack of need for sleep, and his body's ability to adjust to lying in strange positions—due to consistency alone. He gets to build routine, now, in when he wakes up, what he does with the time before shift starts or when they have nothing to do for the day.

Of the two of them, Eddie is more obvious in his changes.

There’s a convenient window of time, a few weeks out from Eddie’s first shift, where they have a seventy-two off that falls over a full moon. Eddie calls in favors with Pepa to get her to call the pack they’d both left for advice on where was safe outside LA to shift, and she’d come back with a myriad of answers that Eddie and Buck had gone through together. Eddie had worried that news of him or Chris getting their shifts would get back to the pack, somehow, but Pepa had promised him her utmost secrecy with a gravity that Buck rarely saw from her.

Most of them were large campgrounds, bordering national forest. It would be at least a few hours drive, no matter where they went, and Eddie had contemplated just biting the bullet and driving out to Utah where he remembered some of his pack going, sure to be safe from humans but not guaranteed to be free of wolves. Buck had talked him out of it—reassured him that with their superior hearing and scent, Chris and Eddie would know before anyone could get too close. It had been nice, to talk Eddie off that ledge.

“And you’ll be keeping an eye out too,” he’d said idly, looking away from the laptop screen and blinking hard. It was amusing how little screen time he could handle, quite the opposite of Chris.

But then what he’d said sinks in, and Buck flounders. “I- What?”

“You’re coming,” Eddie says, like it’s obvious.

“I’m not- I mean, I’m not a wolf.”

Eddie tilts his head, hair flopping where he’s been running his hands through it, and smiles at Buck like he’s being a bit of an idiot. “I’m not asking you to come because I hit my head and forgot you’re a vampire. I actually didn’t think I even needed to ask, but- Well, that was dumb of me, I guess.”

Buck would blush, if he had the blood for it. Eddie just says things, with all the earnestness in the world, and Buck is never sure if he has the capacity to hold on to them.

“I don’t think I should go,” Buck says. Eddie immediately opens his mouth to protest, but Buck shakes his head and hurries on. “I mean- not because I feel like I would be intruding or- or because I feel like you don’t want me there. But it’s you and Chris,” he smiles, all soft edges. “Your first full moon together. It should be just the two of you.”

“Neither of us would be where we are without you.”

“And I’m not going anywhere. Next full moon—I’ll make the snacks and drive you all the way to the middle of Utah if that’s what you want to do.”

Eddie drops a hand, heavy, on Buck’s shoulder. He doesn’t even have to force the eye contact—Buck meets it easily, hopes Eddie can see that he truly means every word. No part of him is worried, in this moment, about being unwanted or a burden.

“Fine,” Eddie relents, though he doesn’t let go of Buck. The lingering contact isn’t new to the post-shift Eddie, necessarily, but Buck can’t help but feel that everything he does is less intentional, in a way that makes his head spin.

Before, Eddie had been touchy. More than anyone Buck had ever been close with, certainly more than his parents. But every move was, in a way, a choice. Telegraphed in the movements that preceded it or part of a routine, built into the way Eddie intentionally interacted with Buck.

Now the touch just happens. Like Eddie needs it, like it’s more to him than breathing. Lifeblood, flowing freely, more than an action or a choice.

Buck doesn’t know what to do with it. In a way, it fuels him, too—he’s had to feed far less since he moved in with Eddie, and the pangs of hunger are dulled nearly beyond acknowledgment. When he does need to, he doesn’t seek out the balm of pleasure beforehand. Sucking down a blood bag is perfunctory, fueled by memories of the night after the tsunami, if he really needs it.

When the weekend of the full moon comes around, Buck waves until Eddie’s truck—newly bought, loaded with store-bought snacks from a joint shopping trip that had mostly involved both of them sneaking as much beef jerky into the cart as possible—disappears from view.

He’s alone at Eddie’s. Not for the first time, but certainly the longest uninterrupted period. It’s not like he has any chores to do, really; Eddie has no pets and no plants, and besides a few errant things Buck has already set his eye on cleaning, the house is tidy.

And Eddie had said that Buck could take the bed if he wanted. It wasn’t a thing. Buck took the couch because it truly did not at all affect the quality of the sleep he barely needed, and he was a guest. There was little point to him sleeping in Eddie’s bed, but Eddie had offered in an offhand comment, and Buck hadn’t quite been able to shake it from his mind.

It felt in a way like he was walking a tightrope. Refuse, because it would bring him no material change. Accept, because it would be no change. The only other factor to influence his decision would be derived from something outside of function and Buck doesn’t know what to do with that.

So he sleeps on the bed, and then makes it up to look exactly as it had when Eddie left, and doesn’t think of it again, through a great effort.

Eddie likes when Buck smells like him. It’s not at all a secret between them, given away by touch and clothes jumbled together in the wash, Eddie’s nondiscrete scenting of Buck after they’ve spent a shift together. Buck will step out of the shower, and Eddie will greet him with a shoulder bump or an arm around his waist. It’s a wolf thing, obviously, spurred on by Eddie’s shift, and Buck—grows used to it.

When Chris and Eddie come home from their weekend away, Buck knows he doesn’t smell much like them, despite living in their house the entire time they were gone. Chris hugs him, and then pulls him to the couch to explain every detail. He’s good at it, Buck thinks fondly, as Chris’s words pull him into the woods, into the mind of a young wolf surrounded by unfamiliar smells and miles of untamed land to stretch his legs in.

Eddie, without any preamble, takes the spot on the side of Buck, and thoroughly drapes himself over Buck’s back. With the way he's angled to face Chris, Eddie has to rest his chin over Buck’s shoulder to see his son, and Buck can’t help but feel that he’s exactly where he’s meant to be.

“Did you tell him about the squirrel?” Eddie prompts, voice rumbling through Buck.

Chris pulls a face, and Eddie laughs. “Dad,” Chris groans. “That was so gross.”

“Well now I need to know,” Buck says.

“Dad ate a squirrel.”

Buck, drinker of blood, has no right to be grossed out—and yet. “Ewwww, Eddie!” he exclaims. He makes like he’s going to move away, and Eddie wraps his arms around his middle to keep him close.

“Yeah,” Chris continues, picking up steam now. “And then- he didn’t say it, because he was a wolf-”

“Would have been way weirder if he wasn’t,” Buck jokes.

“But he thought it was good. I could tell.”

“It wasn’t bad,” Eddie says. “Too much fur.”

“How do you guys, ah, communicate then?” Buck asks, perking up as the intrigue of it catches hold of him. “Can you like- bark?”

“No,” Chris says, offended. “We’re not dogs.”

“Pack bonds,” Eddie says delicately. “They’re not as precise as talking but- It’s like when we’re in the field.” His arms are still around Buck, solid and warm, and he squeezes as if to emphasize his point. “And you just know what I’ll need, or I can anticipate what reckless thing you’ll do next.”

“Huh,” Buck muses. “That’s cool.”

Eddie and Chris both scoff at him, Chris diving in to try to explain more—and Buck hangs on to every word.

He thinks he gets it, though. Eddie’s example rings true, shows itself after every BuckandEddie Bobby calls out. Buck isn’t a wolf, and yet Eddie lets him in in every way he knows how.

Buck’s been learning lunch. Bobby had been very meticulous about breaking down the mental barrier Buck had put up, between what he knew and what he didn’t, explained and demonstrated that all Buck knew from his thorough explorations of breakfast translated into cooking for other meals. He seemed vaguely amused, that Buck wasn’t able to make the connection on his own, but never was there any cruelty in it.

Getting his job back had been the biggest wave of catharsis Buck ever felt. He was welcomed back to the team with open arms, all of them keeping watchful eyes on him, but Bobby most of all.

He was mostly successful in accepting it as part of being wanted. Bobby didn’t fear him, as he’d repeated when giving Buck his job back, but for him. He kept Buck back on fires, had him triaging far outside the radius. And it sucked—it really, really did—but Buck was back. He had purpose again.

It was sort of arbitrary, the calls he was allowed to go full in on. A small kitchen fire? He was at Eddie’s side before Bobby could second-guess, fearing nothing as the flames were quickly beaten back. Structure fires were an obvious no-go, of course, but flaming cars were allowed.

And then there was the train wreck.

No fire, there. Just a big gamble, and Buck’s stupid, bleeding heart. There’s little real risk in it for him—absolute worst case, he falls from the suspended traincar onto an inconveniently placed jut of wood, and his life ends with a dramatic and ironic flair. He doesn’t want to die—an oft-repeated reminder—but seeing Abby does bring back a flood of memory and feeling, harsh against the places where Buck would swear he’s smoothed out everything he felt for her into something to comfortably fit in the past.

He’d always thought she was the first to ever really see him. She thought he was capable. Strong. Someone to lean on, as she went through a truly awful period of her life. Maybe in another life, if he wasn’t cursed to drive everyone away, exist outside of the confines of mortal life, they could’ve worked.

In this one, he rescues her fiancé. Gets the cold shoulder from Bobby and Eddie for it, accepts Abby’s invitation to coffee. Gets as much closure as he can, with the uncomfortable truth hanging over him alone that despite all the ways he can accept that she did what she needed, the understandable regret she holds, it will ultimately always be him who doomed them.

He slumps into Eddie’s, after. What he wants to do is crawl into a hole in the ground and let roots grow through his skin, but he’ll settle for lying on the hardwood floor in the hallway, staring unseeingly at the ceiling and replaying every part of his life like he might be able to change things if he can just pinpoint what’s going wrong.

Maybe it’s this—him playacting at being a werewolf. He wears Eddie’s scent, lets himself believe that what they have is anywhere close to the depth of a pack bond, lives out of his pocket, like Eddie’s really his- his alpha.

Among the chaos of the train wreck, it had felt like it. Eddie had stuck by his side, even when he disagreed with his decisions, glared at Abby like he’d internalized every long month Buck had gone waiting for her to return. It was strange, to want everything that Eddie gave him without hesitation, and yet feel entirely undeserving of it. Or maybe it wasn’t unfamiliar at all.

The front door opens and closes in quick succession, and Buck should stand but—the floor is nice. As nice as he deserves.

“Didn’t go well?” Eddie asks, coming to stand with his head over Buck’s, peering down at him with a tilt of his head that’s become familiar. “She-”

“It wasn’t her,” Buck sighs. “It’s me. It’s always me.”

“She left you,” Eddie says flatly.

“She- she left for a lot of reasons.” Buck has to close his eyes—Eddie’s gaze is too intense. “But I just- I drive people away. It’s my curse.”

“You’re not cursed. And what is your sister, who found you? By- fate, or whatever the hell you want to call it.”

“She loved me before the curse,” Buck mumbles. “It can’t get her. Or maybe it’s just waiting,” he laughs dryly. “Until it’ll hurt the most.”

Buck feels Eddie’s foot nudge against his ribs, the pressure of it pulling him back down to earth. It’s harder to think of his life in broad strokes, when he opens his eyes and looks up at Eddie’s face.

“I think I just need to mope for a bit,” Buck says, deciding to mean it. “You know any good sad movies?”

He cries like a baby to Marley and Me. Watches Eddie’s face more than the screen while The Notebook plays, Stays perfectly still when Eddie falls asleep against his shoulder, empty bowls of symbolic ice cream left out overnight.

Eddie’s plan to convince him he’s not cursed is, apparently, to make a big deal out of every good thing that happens to Buck.

The sky is delightfully overcast on a day where they plan to head to the park? Look at that, Eddie will say. Just for you. News of a virus spreading? Bright side is, it can’t infect either of us.

Well. The world shuts down. Any progress Buck had made in tentatively looking for a new place to live is thoroughly put on pause. Eddie and Buck both throw themselves into work, their shared need to do all the good they can with the advantages afforded to them driving sufficient guilt and tireless, depressing work.

Buck tries to embrace what he is. Terrible fate, whatever had led to Doug and Maddie meeting, he can make the most of it.

There are bright spots. Maddie is pregnant, and Buck is so beside himself with excitement over it that he takes to getting up early in the morning to go on runs around Eddie’s neighborhood, unable to get through a day in those first few weeks after the announcement without buzzing with energy if he doesn’t.

“You’ll be a good uncle,” Maddie tells him, when they’re sitting together on her couch. “Just like you’re good with Chris.”

Buck frowns at that, even as his heart soars. “I’m not Chris’s uncle,” he says.

Maddie punches his arm, gives him a knowing look. “Did I say you were?”

“Kind of,” Buck grumbles.

“What would you prefer, then?”

Buck draws a blank. “Did you ever think you’d get here?” he asks, a touch too sobering of a question for the light atmosphere of the night, but it does make Maddie drop the line of questioning, and he’s been wondering—thinking over it plenty himself. “I didn’t,” he admits softly. “I- I accepted that family wasn’t really in the cards for me anymore.”

Maddie takes his hand. “I think we’ve earned it,” she says, soft. “This family. This life.”

“Just took us a while to get here,” Buck laughs wetly. “D-do you think mom and dad would be-”

“I don’t know,” Maddie cuts him off, squeezing his hand. “I know- they were never good to you.”

“But they loved you.”

“It doesn’t matter. They’ll never know us, how we are now,” a bittersweet note to her voice. “But maybe they would have surprised us.”

It’s meant to be a hypothetical. Buck is starting to think that he might be jinxed when, a few weeks later, Maddie calls him in near hysterics.

“Are you okay?” Buck asks, phone digging into his fingers where he presses it to his ear. “Maddie?”

Eddie looks over at him from where he’d been lounging on the couch, watching a game while Buck had worked on lunch. It’s a nice weekend, the weather warmer than the season suggests, and they’d been tossing around the idea of a hike.

“I’m fine,” she says, soothing but shaky. “It’s- Evan, it’s our parents.”

“They’re alive,” Buck tells Eddie numbly, when he hangs up the phone. “It shouldn’t- it shouldn’t be possible.”

Eddie gently leads him to sit on the couch, rubbing his thumb over Buck’s knuckles for comfort. “Did Maddie know how?”

“Vampires,” Buck mutters. The word sounds darker on his lips than ever, staining the carefully built peace of Eddie’s home. He feels uncomfortable in his own skin, his teeth too big for his mouth, his presence heavy. “She didn’t say more than that. I don’t- how,” he says, halfway between a snarl and a cry.

Is his family cursed? All four of them, reunited despite the centuries. Maddie the only one to truly avoid the same fate, though she’d been worse off for it.

Eddie sits with him, a steady comfort, and Buck knows he should see them. He says as much to Eddie, who frowns. “You want me to come with?”

Buck winces, and slowly shakes his head. “Better not to,” he says. “If they’re- well, they are. Vampires. And you’re-” he waves a hand at Eddie.

“Alright,” Eddie accepts, though he doesn’t look all too happy about it. “I’ll drop you off, though.”

“Evan,” his mom says, pulling him into a hug. It’s strange, how she looks mostly unchanged from his memories, only dressed in modernity. He must have the same effect on her, because she holds him at arm's length to look over him. “Maddie says you're a firefighter.”

Buck nods, and her face twists. Of course, he thinks. “I like helping people.”

“It’s clever,” his father says. “That kind of access to blood-”

“No,” Buck says sharply. His mom drops her hands from his shoulders, steps back toward his father. “I m-mean I just- I wouldn’t.”

God, he knows their faces well. The judgment hurts just as much as it had when he was younger, but he should be able to tank it by now, hundreds of years put between him and that reckless kid.

Maddie steps in, then, to smooth things over. His parents let it happen. Buck spends most of the evening nodding along with whoever’s talking, and trying to wrap his head around this shift in reality.

Absurdly, he’s feeling sort of- of overtaken. Like, he had this terrible, horrible curse placed on him, and so did his parents. What right does he have complaining at all when clearly they’ve taken to it like ducks to water, wearing their immortality on their chests.

He can’t quite figure what’s making them weary of him—besides being himself—until his dad catches him alone in the kitchen when he retreats for a little fresh air.

“Son,” he says, making no effort to hide the way he scents the air. “You’ve got the smell of wolf all over you.”

“Oh,” Buck says faintly. “I ah-” he bites his lip. Is he putting Eddie and Chris in danger, if he tells his parents, who have made their abundant connections within the vampire world clear, about them? “I don’t know wh-why that would be,” he finishes lamely.

“Watch your back,” his father says, lip curling in disgust as he stares off into the middle distance over Buck’s shoulder. “Nasty creatures. Think they have all the right in the world to get their way.”

Buck shivers.

“I never got into the hunting business,” his father continues. “Never interested in getting blood on my hands. Doesn’t stop them from sticking their noses in your mother and I’s business. Maybe you’ve got the right idea, living where they won’t.”

“I- I never had any trouble,” Buck says.

“Well, clearly there’s one hanging around you.” The way he says it, this is clearly a failing on Buck’s part. As impossible as it is for Buck to agree, he still shrinks in on himself. “You don’t notice it?”

Buck shrugs. “I’m around a lot of people. P-part of the job.”

“You’re mother and I have connections everywhere,” he says. “We heard that an ancient vampire had been killed, thought the name sounded familiar.”

“It’s been over a year since then.”

“We couldn’t be certain, but we asked those who were close to keep an eye out. When it got back to us that Maddie was pregnant—well, we thought it was the right time to come see for ourselves. And what a life she’s made for herself, alive with no bite,” there’s a curious downturn to his lips at that, and Buck realizes that his father is disappointed that Maddie isn’t a vampire. It makes him sick to his stomach, and he has to steady himself on the counter.

“And of course, we were surprised when Maddie told us that you were still alive.”

“Can’t say I was expecting the same of you guys,” Buck mutters. He knows his father hears, but he seems entirely unfazed. “How’d that, uh, happen?”

His father gives him what Buck can only describe as a shifty look. “When you know of a way to beat death, why not take it?”

“But how did you-”

“Dad? Buck? You guys okay?” Maddie asks, poking her head into the kitchen. She looks tired, with dark circles under her eyes and a slump to her shoulders, but she gives them her best smile. Buck returns it without question, more relaxed with her in the room.

“We were just talking,” Phillip says. “You wouldn’t be able to tell, of course, but it seems like your brother has a wolf problem.”

Maddie’s eye twitches, but her composure holds. “Oh?”

“If only you had the bite,” he sighs. “But there wouldn’t be the baby, then, of course.”

“Right,” Maddie says. “I just wanted to say, Buck, your ride is here.”

“He is?” Buck asks, surprised. He hadn’t given Eddie a time to come back for him but—is something wrong? “Ah- I better get going then.”

“We will too,” Phillip says. Buck catches Maddie’s sigh of relief. He lets himself fantasize, for a moment, about her revoking their permission to enter the house. He thinks she might be thinking it too, when she catches his eye and scrunches her nose, a soundless laugh shared between them.

Buck sticks around to see his parents out the door. As soon as they’re gone, weirdly flashy car disappearing down the street, Buck and Maddie both slump.

“You mind if Eddie comes in?”

“I’m going to get more talks about a werewolf problem,” Maddie jokes. “No, totally fine.”

Buck nods, sticks his head back out the door to wave at Eddie where he’s parked in the street, a flap of his hand to draw him in. It’s refreshing to see Eddie’s easy lope as he makes his way up the driveway, so different from his parents’ stiff, controlled movements.

Eddie, predictably, is sniffing at Buck as soon as he’s close enough to do so. He’s polite enough not to outright wrinkle his nose, but the way he brushes past Buck with his full body in almost slow motion is telling enough of what he thinks of Buck carrying the scent of his parents.

“Hey Eddie,” Maddie says from where she’s collapsed back on the couch, a glass of juice in her hand that she swirls like wine. “Thanks for the save.”

“I didn’t really get far,” Eddie admits, with a sideways toothy smile at Buck. “Was just driving around the neighborhood until Buck called me back.”

“Territorial,” Buck mutters. Combined with Eddie’s wording—more reminiscent of a leash than a phone call—he’s feeling warm all over, the lingering chill from being in his parents’ presence dispersing. “They were pretty weird about how much I, uh, smelled like you.”

“Oops,” Eddie says with a wince. “Guess you were right to say I shouldn’t come in.”

“What did they mean by connections?” Maddie asks. Buck had not forgotten her presence, thank you, but he does startle the slightest bit. Eddie is just—a big presence. “Are our parents in the vampire mafia?”

“As far as I know, it’s pretty common.” Eddie shrugs. “They’ll scoff at the pack system and then rely on weird vampire diplomacy. No real strong connections, but since all vampires think they’re the best, they’ll help another vampire out.”

“That’s relieving,” Maddie sighs, though she doesn’t seem entirely soothed. “I don’t know how to feel.”

Buck comes around the couch, brushing past Eddie again to sit next to his sister. “You don’t have to- It’s not black and white. It’s a miracle that they’re alive.”

Maddie looks at him, clearly thinking things over, then throws back the rest of her juice. “I need to tell Chim he can come back.”

“Did you kick him out?” Buck laughs.

“Didn’t think it was safe for him to be around, but I don’t think they’ve really got a problem with humans. Not like you and Eddie.”

“Uh- I mean, he is the father of your child,” Buck stutters. Did Maddie mean-? She gives him a cheeky smirk, already texting, and Buck very consciously does not look back at Eddie.

“You guys can stay for dinner if you want,” Maddie adds, tossing her phone to the side. Buck steels himself to meet Eddie’s eyes, but before he even needs to, Eddie speaks.

“We’d love to,” he says, with warmth that goes right to Buck’s chest.

“Does Chim know?” Buck asks. He’s not sure how Maddie would have gotten him out of the house otherwise—does he know what happened the night of Doug’s attack?

Maddie frowns. “No. I just told him our parents were, well, complicated. They won’t want him to know what they are.”

Buck nods slowly, a deep sadness growing in his chest as he thinks of Maddie keeping such a secret from the person she loves.

“I won’t tell him about you, unless you’re really sure,” she says, as if reading Buck’s mind.

“Not yet,” Buck admits. “I- I want to. And I hate that you have to lie for me.”

“He knows we have secrets. And I think- I mean, I made sure, but I think he could tell for himself- that they’re serious.”

Chim shows up a few minutes later, clapping his hand to Eddie’s in greeting and then pulling Maddie into a hug. Buck does his best to tune out their hushed conversation by sidling over to Eddie, peeking over his shoulder to read his phone screen.

“This okay?” he asks, tilting the screen so Buck can better see that he’s texting his aunt Pepa, both about keeping Chris for a few more hours, and looking into the Buckleys if she has any way to. “Totally okay if not.”

“No, no,” Buck says quickly. “It’s a good idea. How does Pepa have so many sources, though?”

Eddie huffs, pressing send on the message and pocketing his phone, turning to face Buck in the same motion. “She’s good with people,” Eddie says fondly. “Lived with the pack for a while, even when it was clear she wasn’t going to get her shift. I think she moved out here for the hell of it, more than anything. More exciting.”

“And she’ll be- safe?”

“She’s stronger than you’d think. Lots of wolves who would rush in if they heard she was in danger.”

“Good, that’s good. But what about you?”

“Me?”

“Would your, ah, pack? Would they help if you needed them to?”

A stormy look crosses Eddie’s face. “They would,” he says slowly. “But I’d- they’d use it against me. A way to get me back into the fold. Especially now.”

“Do they know?”

“Not yet. But it’ll get back to them somehow. I just-” he pauses, sighs. “I just have to accept that.”

“You guys have a preference on food?” Chim calls, leaning an arm over the back of the couch to look over at them. “We’re ordering. And paying, I guess.”

Buck lets Eddie take the lead on answering that, finds himself in the thick of conversation an hour later when it finally arrives. Despite how often the four of them see each other, and Buck and Eddie keeping pretty big secrets from Chim, it’s easy to talk.

Eddie just fits. He could be the odd one out, among Maddie and Buck, and Maddie and Chim, or be pigeonholed into only chatting with Buck—but he’s in the middle of things, easy as can be, lounging back in his armchair and nursing a glass of water. It’s Buck who ends up outside of the conversation, too caught up with observing to chime in. He catches Maddie and Eddie separately sending him concerned little looks, but he chases them off with little smiles each time—he truly is content, though not in the headspace to be loud.

He can accept his parents being alive. It’s shocking, and he feels like the entire timeline of his life has been shifted, but he can accept it. It almost feels ironic that he’d never considered the possibility—of course his parents would find a way back from the grave.

And he’s worried about what they could do to Eddie, if they knew Buck was living with him. They wouldn’t act to protect his honor, or well-being, or anything quite so noble. It would be purely selfish—the blight on their reputation if other vampires caught wind of a son who cozies up to werewolves, avoid at all costs. His worry competes with a more contrarian urge to flaunt their friendship, even play it up—hey Eddie, would you pretend to be disgustingly in love with me if I said it would drive my parents crazy? The thought is amusing enough that he smiles to himself, and gets a nudge against his shin from Eddie’s ever-observant presence for it.

“You doing okay?” Eddie asks when they’re in the car. He’s driving, apparently still not certain of Buck’s mental state, and pushy enough about it that he opened the passenger door for Buck.

“Honestly?” Buck says, letting the pause linger just to see if Eddie’ll sweat. “Yeah, not so bad.”

Eddie rolls his eyes without taking them off the road, tapping a rhythm into Buck’s steering wheel. His hands are big on it, but they fit well. “What were they like? Before?”

Buck groans. “Distant. They- they weren’t even vampires then, I’m sure of it. It was like they never knew what to make of me, never knew how to- how to love me.”

“Shitty.”

“Yeah. I mean, they’re vampires now. Like, proper ones. I could feel the power from them the same way I could with- with Doug, or my sire.” He hates to invoke them, but he can’t shake it—how did they adjust to the curse better than he had? Was it something wrong with him, or with them? “I don't know,” he sighs. “I guess I just have to get used to it, now. I don’t think they’ll stick around.”

“Anything about how they got turned?” Eddie asks.

Buck wonders at the question for a moment, and then thinks it over himself. Unlike him, and how close Maddie came to it, he can’t imagine that his parents were turned without full awareness of what it meant—just by the way they’d spoken of the bite, like it was a blessing. Had they sought vampires, looking to be turned?

Maybe it was something to do with losing both their children. For all they’d known, both Buck and Maddie had died young. Hard to embrace the inevitability of death, with that sort of thing looming over you. Or maybe it was for power, through and through. He says as much to Eddie, who nods along even though Buck doesn’t think he’s making much sense.

“I was always told there was another way to become a vampire,” Eddie says. The streets are familiar now, houses cutting shapes against the dark sky like teeth, and Buck is finally shaking the last of his disbelief. “I don’t think it’s true, but it, I don't know, makes me think.”

“Well don’t leave me hanging,” says Buck, twisting fully in his seat to look at Eddie.

“It’s- well, you’d have to be a wolf first.”

Buck blinks. He’d never heard of the process of becoming a werewolf being reversible. “A wolf can be changed by the bite?”

“No,” Eddie says, confirming what Buck knows. “It can’t be the bite. A wolf can’t turn a vampire, and vice versa. A wolf can turn a human—but it’s rare.”

“And you let me think that was you,” Buck jokes. “Did you like me believing you were a special case?”

“No,” Eddie huffs. “And we don’t do it because legend, or superstition, or whatever, says that turning others corrupts. That it’s a- a thing vampires do.”

“That’s how- that’s the other way a vampire can be made?”

“Maybe,” Eddie shrugs. “No one's ever seen it happen, obviously. It’s more of an old wives' tale—don’t go turning all your human friends like you, little wolf, or you’ll end up a vampire at the wrong end of a stake.”

“Morbid,” Buck says dryly. “I don’t think there’s a vampire equivalent to that, though we’re not quite as good at bedtime stories as you guys.”

They’ve reached the house. Eddie slides the Jeep into park, easy as can be, but he doesn’t move to get out.

“Do you believe it?” Buck asks. He thinks the answer is probably obvious, but it feels like the moment is fluttering away from him.

Eddie finally looks at him. His face is strangely lit, one half by the yellowed street lamps and the other by the harsher lights of the motion-detected ones that face the driveway out from the house. “I think that something happens to wolves who go around turning a lot of humans. They give up some part of themselves, or they get caught up in the power. But it’s hard to believe that a wolf could stop being a wolf. It’s so,” he taps at his chest, like he’s trying to capture the feeling to put in words. “It’s so deeply entwined with who we are. If you lose yourself, you become a corrupt wolf.”

“Don’t pass the blame,” Buck adds. “I get it.”

“So much of what we define ourselves as is being the vampire’s opposite,” Eddie mutters. “It’s- it’s so much more than that, to be a wolf. I think we’re more similar than any of us would care to admit.”

“Man, you need to look into a job in wolf philosophy or something. Your talents are wasted on being a firefighter.”

“Shut up,” Eddie grumbles, flushing handsomely. That’s a difference between vampires and wolves that Buck would like to note—he did not get any hotter after being bitten. Though he supposed Eddie was just born with it. Totally unfair.

The Buckleys, annoyingly, don’t just fade from their lives. They focus most of their attention on Maddie, playing the role of doting normal parents in front of Chimney. Buck can never figure out if his presence helps or hurts, so he tries to be there at least half of the time like a good little brother. He makes absolutely no effort to keep Eddie’s scent off of him—usually gets a touchier than usual goodbye if Eddie knows he’s off to see them—which drives the two of them a little crazy.

They can’t seem to decide if they think that Buck is incompetent enough to not know a werewolf is hanging around him, or if he’s hiding things from them. And they can’t grill him when Chim is around, which is most of the time, so Buck takes his little piece of rebellion and runs with it.

“What if you like, got fur on my clothes,” he says to Eddie, on a night when they’re debriefing about another tense dinner with beers on the couch. Like always, neither of them is affected by the alcohol beyond placebo, more of an excuse to talk freely than anything.

“Too bad about your healing, or I’d just leave a bite on you,” Eddie snorts. “Think of their faces.”

“A bite?” Buck asks with wide eyes, voice going hushed. “You guys do that too?”

“I’m sure I’ve told you,” Eddie frowns. “It’s- It’s a thing.”

“To make me a wolf?”

“No.”

“Just for fun?”

“I- Yeah. For fun. It’s usually, you know,” Eddie gestures between them, and then curls his hand into a fist like he wishes he could take the gesture back. “A thing between lovers.”

“Lovers,” Buck laughs. “Okay, sure. Like a hickey. A love bite.”

“Right.”

“You think my parents are convinced I’ve got a werewolf lover?”

“I think you could convince them of it,” Eddie says with a sharp grin, softened only by the blush coloring his cheeks.

“But it wouldn’t stick,” Buck pouts, before he can get too excited about the idea. “Back to the fur thing?”

“We still need to plan a weekend out.” Eddie takes a swig of his beer, settling back into the couch. “You promised snacks.”

“Tell our shifts to stop falling on the full moon then.”

“Here, here,” he raises his bottle until Buck clinks his own against it, and they fall back into planning.

Chimney is acting weird on their next shift.

He jumps when Buck comes into the locker room, all but flees before he can so much as get a greeting out. Buck frowns after him, but writes it off. Maybe Maddie had been telling embarrassing stories about him, and Chim was trying not to laugh in his face. Buck could handle that.

But it keeps happening. Chim makes an excuse to eat lunch away from the rest of the team, rides in the ambulance on the way to a call.

“I have no idea,” Hen says before Buck can even ask. “He won’t talk to me either.”

Is something up with Chim??? Buck texts Maddie when they get a free minute—interrupted, as soon as it shows delivered, by another bell. If Buck didn’t know any better, he’d think that Chim had said the q-word in an effort to avoid whatever’s making him weird.

Talk later, is Maddie’s reply, which only makes Buck more confused.

“Do you think they broke up?” he asks Eddie nervously. “Maybe our parents were too much.”

“Try not to get worked up about it,” Eddie says. He nudges his shoulder against Buck’s, a lingering touch that does work to calm Buck down. “Gym? See if we can get any reps in before the alarm goes again?”

Buck follows dutifully, lies back on the weight bench when Eddie gestures for him to go first. Eddie loads the weights for him. Buck sends him a tight-lipped smile, grunts as he goes into his first rep. Normally, he’d imagine a burn in his muscles, lactic acid and sweat building up, but today he doesn’t feel like pretending. He lifts the bar smooth and slow, arms steady.

“Could you just do this forever?” Eddie asks, peering down at Buck.

The room is lit solely by artificial light, unable to drain Buck’s strength. “If you like, hooked up a blood bag somewhere close? Maybe.”

Eddie nods, gestures for Buck to switch. He must have been counting, because Buck sure hadn’t. “‘S kinda cool,” Eddie grunts. Buck does a bit of a double-take when he realizes how much weight Eddie’d loaded, more than either of them would usually do where someone could see and ask questions.

“I guess,” Buck says. “No point to it though.”

“I like watching,” Eddie says. His breath puffs a little as he tries to keep it controlled, and Buck is having a hard time looking at his face, red with exertion and already shining with sweat. And then his words hit Buck, and it’s a good thing he’s not the one on the bench, because he would have fumbled the weights in a move that would leave a human decapitated.

“Uh, what?”

“I mean,” Eddie racks the bar, rolls his shoulders as he sits up. “You’re like a well-oiled machine. Nice to look at.” The tones sound. Eddie sighs, wiping himself down quickly with a towel like he hadn’t said anything at all out of the ordinary, while Buck stands frozen. “You good?” Eddie asks when he notices that Buck hasn’t moved.

“What? Oh, yeah, fine,” Buck says, shaking his head to clear it. He’s got a job to do, and he’s quickly distracted by Chim’s full body flinch when Buck nearly runs into him.

It’s a call at dispatch, a bomb threat. They make quick work of evacuating the place, and then Buck is left to stand outside and do nothing more than wring his hands while Eddie and Chimney do a final sweep.

When they realize Chim is with the suspect, it’s hard not to freak out. Buck can’t help but imagine him dying, the weirdness of the day forever unresolved—maybe it’d be the thing to finally push him over the edge into insanity. But the day isn’t made for tragedies, apparently, and Chim and the would-be bomber emerge alive, and not in thousands of pieces.

Chim also seems more relaxed, after, though he’s still avoiding Buck like the plague. It’s sort of more obvious, when he starts talking to the rest of the team like things are normal.

“Could you smell anything on him?” Buck asks while Eddie drives them back to the house.

“Nerves,” Eddie answers. He’s fiddling with the radio, flashes of songs playing over the rumble of the Jeep. “Maybe fear? Hard to tell.”

Buck takes a breath. “I think he knows,” he says.

“That you’re a vampire? Could make sense.”

“He’s scared of me, then.” Buck tightens his grip on the wheel. He can’t handle another situation like the Bobby thing. “I need to talk to him.”

Eddie hums. “You don’t think he needs space?”

“He had space all shift!” Buck says. “I’ll- do you mind if I swing by Maddie’s? He’ll probably be there.”

“‘Course not,” Eddie says easily.

Buck’s both relieved and nervous to see Chim’s car in the driveway when they pull in, and doubly so when he realizes his parents are also around. Eddie frowns too, when he sees, and Buck hesitates to put the car in park. “Maybe I should come back.”

“It’s like ripping a bandaid off,” Eddie says wisely. “And I do not want another shift like that one. You got this.” He holds his hand up, fingers curled over in a fist, and Buck finishes the bump with a nod, steeling himself.

He doesn’t get to knock—his mom swings the door open, greeting him with a quickly arranged smile. “Evan! Well, I suppose it’s good that you’re here. Maddie was just about to call you”

“Oh, I was actually looking for-”

“Buck,” Chim says, eyes wide when he steps into their vicinity and catches sight of him. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” Buck says, pinning Chim in place with his eyes. Would it be mean of him to flash his fangs, make sure Chim knows that Buck knows? He refrains, but it’s a near thing. “Can we talk?”

“Please,” comes Maddie’s voice. Buck’s heart sinks at the way it shakes. “Just- I just need you guys to leave now, okay?”

Buck brushes past his mom and Chimney, to find Maddie staring down their father with tears in her eyes. He’s clearly on the defensive, arms crossed and frown fixed in place.

“Maddie, you’re making this more than it needs to be.”

“I am not,” she hisses. “And-” her eyes twitch over to Buck. Her face crumbles. “I’m revoking your permission to enter.”

For a horrible second, Buck thinks she means him—but then, his dad is walking toward the door with awkward movements, like a puppet with a new director. “Maddie,” he says disapprovingly. “This is not how you should be treating your parents.”

She doesn’t say anything, just stares after him with her hands clenched into fists. Buck wants to go to her, but he has to make sure they’re both gone first—he catches sight of the door closing, Chim staring baffled after it. “Less dramatic than I thought, somehow,” he says.

“So you do know,” Buck says, and again Chim jumps when he finds Buck close to him.

“I don’t know anything,” he lies. “I was actually just-”

“Don’t go,” Maddie says, voice steely. “Everyone just- sit. Please.”

Buck and Chim exchange a glance, a temporary truce for someone they both love. Taking a seat in the living room, all of them perched on different pieces of furniture, Buck gets the distinct feeling that he’s on the edge of something.

Eddie is still sitting out in the car, Buck’s parents closer to him than Buck would like. Would they take action against him, in their frustration with their children? He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, tells himself that Eddie can take care of himself.

It’s not the only thing that’s got him on edge. Maddie looks devastated, curled in on herself, and Buck wants to comfort her, but he feels like he’s not allowed.

“There’s something I should have told you,” she says, lifting her head to face Buck. “About our parents.”

Buck nods, slowly, tries to portray calm.

Maddie’s face scrunches like she’s fighting tears. “We had a brother. He died the same day you were born. And- and I always thought it was j-just a terrible coincidence.” She shakes her head, wipes at her eyes. “They told me to keep it a secret but- they were never the same, after. I thought it was just the shock of losing a child.”

“What was his name?” Buck asks. He feels like he’s out of his body, disconnected. The words float around him, but don’t sink in. A brother?

“Daniel,” Maddie whispers. “He got very, very sick. And we didn’t- there was nothing anyone could do, then.”

Dead on the day Buck was born. One life for another, then. He was his parents’ grief consolation, and yet they never acted like it. But then- “Wait. You thought it was a coincidence?”

Maddie flinches. “I promise you, Evan, I had no idea. Th-they were bragging about it. I told Chim about them, and about you, yesterday. And they show up today, with a box of things for the baby, and it’s like- like they thought they could get it off their chests.”

“What?” Buck presses. It hurts to see Maddie like this, but he can’t stand the wait, clawing at him like the thorns of a rose. “Please Mads.”

“They were going to give you up to vampires,” she says. “O-old, forgotten magic, a life for a life. But Daniel died too early. They- they were going to turn you as a baby, Evan, so Daniel could live.”

His head spins. It hits him all at once, that this is real. That, even though it hadn’t happened right away, he was always going to be a vampire. He got the better outcome, really, not stuck with immortality and unable to grow out of the mind or body of a newborn.

The armrest creaks where he’s gripping it too tightly, and Buck doesn’t know what to do. He should comfort Maddie. It really, really sucks that she’d kept such a big secret from him, let him believe that it was them against he world. But she’d just learned of the darker truth of it too, had to hear their parents talk about it. Buck can imagine it, the two of them with their carefully affected detachment, laying out the failings of their plan like it somehow made them more human to suffer.

“I need to go,” he says. “I- I love you.”

“Evan,” Maddie says, lurching as she stands but Buck sways out of the way of her hands, blinks back tears as he marches to the door, willing his mind to be quiet.

“Buck, wait,” Chim says, and he gets right in front of him. Buck frowns, tries to step around him, but Chimney is stubborn. He follows, doesn’t let Buck leave. “Just- tell us you’ll be okay, man.”

“I’m fine,” Buck says numbly. “It’s a relief, right? To kn-know that I was always going to end up this way.”

“I’m sorry I was acting weird,” Chim says. “I wasn’t afraid of you, Buck.”

“It doesn’t matter. You didn’t do anything wrong. You’d be right to-”

“No,” Chim says firmly. “I would not be right to fear you. You’ve always been the same Buck.”

Buck shivers. Has he? “Please,” he says. “I just need time.”

Finally, Chim nods and steps aside. Buck can’t bring himself to look at Maddie. He follows the path his parents had taken, forcefully sent away from the house, and almost wishes he had the same guiding force. He’d give over the power easily, in this moment. No more thinking, no fighting to stop his hands from shaking. Just one step after another, mind peacefully blank.

He’d almost forgotten about Eddie, sitting and waiting. He gets out of the car when he sees Buck.

“What happened?”

“I can’t,” Buck shakes his head. “Just- drive.”

Eddie nods, once, only faltering for a moment when Buck ducks away from his hand. He doesn’t think Eddie even knows what he was offering, beyond wanting to give Buck a hint of their usual comfort, but everything feels too wrong for Buck to accept it.

The drive is quiet. Eddie doesn’t touch the radio, or try to talk. Buck stares out the window. Wonders, mostly, about fate.

Is he dragging the people around him into his spiral? Presumptuous to think his gravity is strong enough for that. It’s almost worse, if he’s entirely alone in it. A blip in their lives, just as they’re only a short chapter in his.

The world goes on around him. He spends nights on the couch staring at the ceiling, the theater of sleep entirely forgotten. He avoids Maddie’s calls, dodges Chim’s looks at work. Eddie treats him like he’s fragile, and Buck can’t even muster up the strength to be mad at him for it.

It comes to a head quickly, before Bobby even manages to give Buck a talking to. He’s watching, clearly, knows more than Hen, who Buck manages to feel a little bad about being the only one out of the loop. But he lets Buck work, their calls mundane for a stretch of days that feels almost torturous.

A five-alarm fire. Hazardous materials, people stuck inside. Buck doesn’t even think about his ban from this type of call—he suits up, listens to the IC over Bobby, who’s caught up in coordinating something else, and heads in.

He’d forgotten what it was like to really be in a fire. The heat, the smell, the weight. It’s exhilarating.

His team is around him, but the crackling flames subsume them. Another part of the beast that is the fire, picking their way through the warehouse, moving as one. Buck is a cog in the machine, just like he should be, not held out of place to displace their synchrony. He can tell they all know he shouldn’t be in here, but no one is going to bring it up in the midst of a rescue.

Maybe it’s his knowledge of a fire corroded by the rust of disuse, or maybe he was always going to fail, here. Unable to save even one person, the fire roaring around him.

It’s a fitting final stand, he thinks. Away from his team. Trying until the last minute, when the flames catch up to him and find his body makes good tinder. He’ll be gone in a flash of heat, no slow burn to remember him by.

This can’t have been his fate. He was meant to live forever, a parasite. His death is defiance, fiery and selfishly noble. He was a good vampire, because he never was good at being one.

And then the rope moves. The crackling, the roar, everything is drained out by a pounding heartbeat. And then three more, each of them tattooed to Buck’s very being. Maybe the fire has burnt it all away, chased the curse from his soul and left him as this—Buck, built around the love he molded for these people, theirs in return the power to find himself in a life he was never meant to have any control over

He doesn't die in that fire.

But he knows it was a near thing.

It’s Bobby who presses a bag of blood into his hands, still cold from storage, without even a word of admonishment. The hours remaining on their shift feel strangely disconnected, time only existing to be passed, and Buck knows that the world has once again shifted around him.

They all know—Eddie, Bobby, Chim and Hen, the most important people in his life. Every one of them has found out, in one way or another, that he isn’t like them, and none has pushed him away.

It makes sucking down the plasticy blood in a supply closet not so bad. He’s not sure what to do with the remains, is considering stuffing them in his pants pocket, when the door cracks open just enough for a body to slip through.

Of course he knows it’s Eddie as soon as his distinctive scent fills the room, but he still lets it surprise him a little when his best friend ends up nearly nose to nose with him in the small space. He’d been waiting for something like this—so swarmed by the rest of the team in the immediate aftermath that Eddie hadn’t been able to check him over himself, or reassert his scent to mask the smoke and ash still settled over Buck’s skin, despite a too-quick shower.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Eddie says. Buck tries to hold back his sigh, because he’s just avoided this lecture from Bobby, but Eddie proves him wrong. “But you know we’d all come for you, every time.”

“I know,” Buck says. He believes it. Through to his very core, he believes it.

“Don’t make it a habit,” Eddie teases, only a slight hint of severity to it. And then he glances down at the crinkled plastic in Buck’s hand. “Bobby beat me to it, damn.”

Buck knows he doesn’t mean offering a bagged pint of blood, and he lets himself imagine, for a moment, drinking Eddie’s blood in a supply closet in the firehouse. It wouldn’t have the same reverence of the kitchen—maybe they’d laugh, at the awkward angle or Buck’s teeth slipping and making a mess. And maybe Eddie’s blood would taste different, with his wolf fully realized. But Buck is full and, unlike after the tsunami, not so drained that he burns through the blood quickly doing his healing.

“Your turn to get in trouble next,” Buck jokes. “I mean- the well, and now me, and I didn’t even get anything cool out of it.”

“The power of friendship,” Eddie says drily. “How about neither of us does anything crazy, or reckless, or against orders. See how boring work gets.”

“Excuse you,” Buck laughs. “I could handle that easy.”

“Liar,” Eddie says, putting an emphasis on every letter. “We’re going to Utah this weekend, by the way. You can’t say no.”

“We have it off?”

“No. But I just cleared a shift’s break for both of us, circumstances accounted for.”

Buck nods slowly, letting his body fall back until he can lean against the wall. There’s a mop bucket poking at his shins, and the compounded smells are starting to give him a headache, but he could fall asleep right here, Eddie close and filling the space with the sound of his breathing, easy as anything.

Eddie must realize this, because he reaches back and pushes the door open, welcoming the low lights of the late-night fire station in. “You aren’t sleeping in here.”

“Maybe I’m embracing my calling,” Buck says, looking around like he’s really considering it. “It’s almost a coffin. You can grab a dog bed, sleep on the floor just outside.”

Eddie gives him a look like he’s starting to worry for Buck’s mental health. “Bunks are close enough to coffins too.”

“Point,” Buck says with a dip of his head.

Eddie escorts him all the way to the bunks, watches while he lies down. Buck is hardly awake long enough to hear the quiet goodnight Eddie gives him, but he’s glad, in the basest of ways, that he doesn’t have to watch him turn away.

His dreams are a weird, confusing mix. Fire burns steadily through all the places he’s known best—the house on Bedford, Abby’s apartment, his parents' perpetually cold house, the station. But when they reach Buck in a swirling roar, they don’t hurt him. It’s not the release of death, but the warmth of life. His friend’s arms enveloping him. Every hand-drawn card he’s ever been sent from a kid he rescued on a call, carefully arranged in his locker. His sister pressing a kiss to his birthmark.

He wakes well rested. Eddie is dead asleep in the bunk parallel to his, all his carefully held grace brushed away by the kiss of unconsciousness, leaving behind only rugged beauty and a little drool on his chin.

Buck thinks about the future.

He’d never realized that he was holding himself back from it, but the way it unfolds now, vanishing over the horizon of the hundreds of years that wait to overtake the ones passed, he feels present. Not living a single moment of a single night again and again, feeling himself die over and over.

The bunkroom is warm; the AC probably broken or turned off. He pulls a blanket snug to his chest anyway and shuts his eyes, with no intention of sleeping. It’s easier to listen to the sounds of the firehouse, with nothing to distract him. He’s a part of it. Has been part of it, fiercely so. He gets a real earful when the alarm blares, breaking through his reverie like cold water tossed over his head.

“Eddie,” he says, jostling Eddie’s arm when he doesn’t rouse. Buck can’t figure what has him so conked out—he was the one throwing himself at death's door.

He finally wakes with a little gasp that Buck can’t help but find endearing, one large hand coming up to grasp Buck’s where they’re touching. “Buck?”

Buck waits, and sees the blaring tones hit Eddie the same way they’d hit him.

“You’d think we could finish the shift with no more calls,” he grumbles, untangling his legs from the blanket, twisted around his ankles like he’d been hobbled by it, and giving Buck’s hand a pat before standing.

Everyone else has cleared out of the bunk room, called to duty just as they should be. It’s just Buck and Eddie. Buck feels more awake than ever, and Eddie is still shaking the last dregs of sleep off—opposed, again, Buck thinks with a giggle that earns him another of Eddie’s judgemental-yet-concerned looks.

“You could- y’know,” Buck says, shifting a little on his feet with a mix of anticipation and nerves. He can feel the absence, now that he’s staring Eddie down, even as they blatantly shirk their responsibilities.

Eddie cocks his head. “Do I?”

Buck rolls his eyes, reaches for Eddie’s hand. Being the first to make contact—and he realizes with a jolt that he’d done it a minute ago, too, shaking Eddie awake—feels wrong, almost. Like if Eddie isn’t the one reaching out, Buck is going to mess everything up. But he swallows back the fear, lifts Eddie’s hand to fall on his shoulder, the place it belongs.

Some of Eddie’s scent has stuck to him, from their close proximity in the supply closet, but it’s nothing compared to the way it sinks into him when Eddie gets the memo and rubs his thumb, carefully, gently, over the bare skin of Buck’s neck.

He thinks about a conversation snippet, bites between lovers. And then he pushes it far, far from his mind.

“Shit,” Eddie swears. “We gotta-”

“Do our job,” Buck finishes, feeling heavier. Weighed down, kept to the earth—right where he should be.

He’s always enjoyed road trips.

Had to, when the Jeep became his lifeblood, still in the flight mindset despite his sire being finally, irrevocably, dead. Strange to say, but he’d felt drawn to the car—oddly timeless, in the way that a modern machine could be. Made of disparate parts, from every time Buck had to fix it up.

They don’t take his Jeep to Utah—more legroom in the truck, space in the bed for the giant cooler Eddie pulls out of nowhere before they leave—but it doesn’t feel like a betrayal. Passing of the torch, maybe. A shared vehicle, he and Eddie switching out every few hours to keep their bodies from cramping or their minds from wandering. It doesn’t carry any of the loneliness that had dogged Buck like a shadow, too immaterial to be company of its own. He was lonely, and yet he couldn’t enjoy the quiet.

Chris sleeps most of the way, waking up intermittently to demand a song be played—he’s very impressed with Eddie’s new truck being able to do that now—or snacks be handed over. Buck and Eddie both indulge him endlessly.

The temperature drops as their elevation rises, sweeping landscapes hemmed in by great mountains, snowcapped in some places. Eddie tells Buck the plan in little bursts of information, directions for a turn here, begrudging admittance that he’d used a favor with Pepa there. Near as Buck can figure, almost eight hours into the drive, they’re headed for a cabin that belongs to Eddie’s pack, guaranteed to be empty, just like the land surrounding it.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Eddie says. Buck can tell he’s getting his excitement mixed up with nerves, bouncing his fingers off the leather of the steering wheel. “For us. Or, with us.”

“Why did I come then?” Buck asks amusedly. “No way this place has service.”

“I just mean-” Eddie starts, and then stops. It’s the most out of sorts Buck’s ever seen him, and he’s kind of loving it. “No expectations. You coming along is enough.”

“I’m excited to see your wolf again,” Buck admits. It feels like an echo of Eddie’s I like to watch, an admittance to their fascination with the other.

“‘Course you are,” Eddie says with a teasing grin.

“Mine’s better,” Chris mutters sleepily. “Are we there yet?”

Eddie and Buck both groan dramatically at that. “One stop before the cabin,” Eddie promises.

They turn off the paved road, follow a well-defined dirt one instead. The truck is jostled by it, and Buck watches out the window with wide eyes as the trees creep in, evergreens and tall pines and scrubbier bushes, falling away only when the earth does.

It’s another thirty minutes, maybe, before they pull off. Buck can see a dirt lot just ahead that vaguely resembles a parking lot, and he looks to Eddie curiously.

“You’ll see,” he says, swinging his door open. Buck takes it as his cue to do the same, stepping out into the cool air. It’s like night and day, from Los Angeles. Every scent that hits him is more vibrant, layered in the way the forest overlaps itself. He stands for a minute or two just taking it in, while the sky starts to bleed colors. “Come on,” Eddie says, appearing at his side. “Our timing is perfect.”

Eddie leads the way, Buck and Chris exchanging conspiratorial looks behind him, but no words are spoken. There’s a hush over the three of them, anticipation spilling from Eddie’s every step and glance over his shoulder.

They reach the empty lot, smooth earth coming to a stop like it’s hit the invisible barrier of the sky. Buck can’t see over the edge yet, but he knows it’s there, a pressing awareness at the edge of his mind. Eddie meets his eye with a softer smile, anticipation honed by the fulfillment of reality.

Eddie gets a careful hand on Chris’s shoulder as they step closer, a fatherly precaution. Buck tries to imagine his own father doing the same, in a place like this—no one to see, to judge him a good example through performance. In the place of even imagination lies a yawning void, and finally Buck sees what Eddie has brought them to.

The earth falls away. Buck feels as if he’s reached the edge of the world, the edge of everything, left only to watch as it spins onward—below them, land rolls on and on and on, blue and green and purple splashed over trees and mountains, loomed over by the orange glow of the sky. The sun dips a fraction lower, its color spilling onto the earth.

Chris grabs Buck’s hand. He’s quiet, and Buck has always known he’s a special kid, but seeing the scene before them reflected over his little face, captured in the small circles of his glasses, only reinforces it.

And Eddie—Buck knows he’s beautiful. Hardly a day goes by where he doesn’t think about the swoop of Eddie’s hair, the etching of his stubble. He stands tall, basking in this beauty he’s led them to. If Buck stands at the end of the world, Eddie has only just reached the beginning.

Buck thinks about the future, and he looks at Eddie.

The sun dips below the horizon, one final burst of color. Buck imagines that he can take it into himself, bottle up the vibrancy to fill the parts of him that are missing.

“Look,” Eddie says, reverent. Where the light has gone out of the sky, the moon now stands out, pale and bright, not quite full yet—that will come tomorrow night, to pull at the wilder parts of Eddie and Chris.

Chris yawns, quiet and full-bodied.

“You want Buck to give you a ride back to the car?” Eddie asks, already gathering Chris and his crutches into his arms carefully.

“Yes,” Chris replies brightly, and Buck meets the call of his reaching hands by stepping in front of them, ducking down so Eddie can settle Chris on his shoulders. “The view is really good up here!” he declares happily, looking out over the now darkened landscape.

“Oh yeah?” Eddie teases. “I’m next, then.”

“Chris exclusive, sorry,” Buck says. He squeezes Chris’s ankles, gets a head pat in return.

They make it back to the truck eventually, Buck careful to look over the ground for anything that might catch at his feet, precious cargo still balanced on his shoulders. Eddie takes the drivers side again, better suited for driving in the dark since he seems to know where he’s going.

“You came here as a kid?” Buck asks when they’re all settled. He’s pretty sure Chris is quickly falling asleep again in the back, so he keeps his voice hushed.

Eddie hums. “Once or twice. It was just for the real wolves usually. But when they still thought I’d shift, I could tag along. Feels right, coming back now.”

“Now that you can,” Buck finishes for him with a frown. “It’s not fair they expected that of you.”

“Wasn’t,” Eddie agrees easily. “I can’t figure out if I proved them right or wrong, turning out how I did.”

“Do they know yet?”

“Still don’t think so. Can’t imagine my parents wouldn’t be busting down my door if they’d heard.”

“And if they knew what I was?”

“They’d lose their minds,” Eddie laughs. “God, I can imagine the looks on their faces. Would almost be worth it. Oh, here it is.”

A valley opens before them, cut through only by a dirt road more overgrown and far less maintained than the one they’d been on previously. When Buck looks out the back window, he confirms that they’ve driven through a line of trees, hiding the valley from the main road. It’s not perfectly protected, with high walls or magical wards, but the simplicity of existing right among cabins and fishing spots lends it the quality of a well-loved secret.

The cabin itself is tucked into a small copse of trees, the only ones to break up the valley. It’s a small a-frame, green roof and brown walls, as much a part of the scenery as anything else.

“Cuter than I thought werewolves would go for,” Buck muses. Eddie snorts, gently parking the truck on the back end of the cabin, where it’ll be hidden if anyone does happen to stumble into the valley through the same entrance they’d taken.

There’s not much to unload from the truck save for their backpacks and the big cooler. Eddie pushes the door open, unlocked, and Buck lugs it in behind him. It’s just as cozy inside as it had looked on the outside, so far from what Buck had been imagining that he can’t help but laugh as he sets the cooler down in a corner, and spins to take in the full scope of the place. If any werewolf truly had a hand in decorating, they had the tastes of a woman with at least fourteen grandkids.

Eddie disappears back out the door, and Buck snoops. The fridge is empty and turned off, the cabinets stocked with nonperishables, and one corner is piled with blankets. Stairs up to the second level are so vertical Buck hesitates to even call them such, much more like a ladder than anything, and he cranes his head to try and see what they’re working with upstairs.

“Can you get the pullout ready?” Eddie’s voice calls. He’s loud enough that Buck’s sure Chris has been roused, and he makes quick work of unfolding the couch into a mattress. Eddie waits with Chris in his arms until Buck has a fitted sheet pulled over it too, and then he’s setting Chris down right in the middle, and Buck has a very vivid memory of watching a mother cat arranging her kittens.

Dinner is more snacks passed between the three of them on the thin mattress of the pullout. Eddie frowns over crumbs. Buck sweeps them into his free hand, makes Eddie unwrap all his granola bars. The combination of a late sunset and a long day of driving has Buck feeling weirdly off balance, and he’s not surprised when Chris falls asleep with food wrappers still in hand, Eddie not looking too far behind him.

Buck cleans up, tucks blankets in tight around Chris, and then looks back at the stair-ladder.

Eddie yawns, teeth flashing, and Buck wonders if the coming full moon draws his wolf closer to the surface. “Do we sleep up there?” Buck asks, more to get Eddie moving than anything else, proven successful when Eddie stands and stretches.

They brush their teeth side by side in the bathroom, shoulders jostling. Buck makes a face at Eddie in the mirror, laughs and spits toothpaste everywhere when Eddie returns it. And then they’re in front of the ladder, and Buck feels more like he’s about to scale a high-rise than jump into bed.

“I was terrified of this thing as a kid,” Eddie says. His voice is barely above a whisper, with Chris only a few feet from them. “Some of my older cousins who had their shifts already would try to jump all the way up.”

“I bet you want to try,” Buck teases. Eddie’s wolf is probably too big for it, more likely to plow through the wooden beams than slip under them, but he can see the glint of want in Eddie’s eyes anyway.

“I’m not twelve,” Eddie says back, sticking his tongue out at Buck to entirely refute his point. And then he’s climbing, hands and feet careful but sure, a view Buck’s seen a hundred times before. Eddie reaches the top and looks back at him, kneeling and watching carefully while Buck starts up.

He feels unsteady the whole way up, the steps too small and too slippery. Eddie reaches a hand out when he’s halfway there, and Buck takes it gratefully, no part of him ashamed of being boosted the rest of the way up. And maybe he hadn’t realized how much of the heavy lifting Eddie was doing until he does reach the last step, and Buck is promptly yanked into his lap.

They blink at each other, hands caught between their bodies, Eddie knocked off balance by Buck’s weight. The fear of the stairs has wormed its way into Buck’s mind, and he’s too nervous to try and move for fear of tumbling right back off the edge, so he just—freezes. Stares at Eddie with wide eyes.

“You okay?” Eddie asks, like Buck has just been pulled from a fire again. “I told you it was intimidating.”

“Figured that out, thanks,” Buck grumbles. He’s not sure why Eddie isn’t letting go of him, but he does know why he doesn’t want Eddie to—it’s colder here, and compounded with Buck’s perpetual chill, he’s a moth to Eddie’s flame. “Are there only twin beds up here?”

Eddie turns both ways, his chest pressing closer to Buck’s when he does. “Looks like it.”

The lofted area, which Buck can see out of the corners of his eyes and directly in front of him while he tries not to stare into Eddie’s eyes, is very subject to the shape of the house—not unexpectedly, he’s not an idiot—but the walls slope up to a high point, leaving very little space where Buck or Eddie could stand at full height. There are twin beds on opposite sides of the room, and they aren’t the twin XL’s that Buck is used to seeing in college dorms when they get called in for microwave mishaps.

Buck sighs dramatically, still not quite sure how he’s meant to extricate himself from Eddie. It’d be easy to figure out if he really wanted to, but. Well. Eddie is warm. It’s colder here than Los Angeles.

“I could sleep on the floor,” Eddie says, like it makes any sense. At Buck’s confused look, he snorts. “As a wolf. Moon’s making me want to shift anyway.”

Buck’s interest is immediately caught. “Really? What does that feel like?”

Eddie gives him an amused look, eyes warm. “Like the lines are blurred. Usually I can think of myself as fully human, or fully wolf, but then the moon makes it hard to tell the difference, mixes things up. Like-” he lifts the hand that’s not stuck between them, flexes his fingers. “I feel like I could just-” his nails sharpen, thicken into claws. It’s sudden, and Buck gets the same feeling that he has to look away, just like every other time he’s seen Eddie or Chris shift.

“Woah,” Buck breathes.

“Didn’t know I could do that,” Eddie says, similarly out of breath. The claws recede, Eddie’s fingers human again, but Buck can’t make himself look away, even though it makes his brain hurt.

“Maybe you’re wrong,” Buck blurts out. Finally, finally, he does an awkward sort of move to roll off of Eddie, landing on his side with his legs dangling over the space where the floor drops off. There’s a thin rug under him, softening the wood just enough that he feels perfectly comfortable looking up at Eddie, his whole world tilted sideways.

It takes Eddie a moment to move, still caught in the awkward kneeling pose Buck had trapped him in, but then he shifts his legs, flexes his toes as he stretches his feet out, socks pushing against Buck’s stomach. He doesn’t curl back in on himself, instead leaning back on his hands, still touching Buck. Buck sort of wants to touch Eddie’s ankles, the sliver of skin where his sweatpants have ridden up from his socks.

“About what?” Eddie asks, and it takes Buck a moment to remember what he’d said.

“The uh- the separation?” he says tentatively. “Like, you’re either always a wolf or always a man- I don’t think that’s how it works.”

Something complicated passes over Eddie’s face. It’s reminiscent of the look he gets any time his old pack is brought up, and Buck winces a little too himself. Here he goes, running his mouth and making things worse when the night was going so well.

“Never mind,” he says quickly. “You, I mean, obviously you’d know better than-”

“No,” Eddie says carefully. “You’re not wrong. And don’t say you wouldn’t know,” he presses his foot harder to Buck’s stomach, teasing. “We’re not so different.”

Buck runs his tongue over his flat, human teeth. It’s not as dramatic of a change as Eddie’s capable of, obviously, but for both of them there’s always something tucked just under the skin, kept hidden. Only allowed out in times of desperation or, and Buck warms as he thinks it, around those they trust. It doesn’t take much to let his fangs drop with Eddie so close, the memory of the taste of his blood still stuck in his gums.

Eddie smiles when he sees, Buck flashing him a shy, toothy smile. His words are garbled when he says, “Am I a real vampire now?” and he can’t help but laugh at how ridiculous it sounds.

Eddie scrunches up his face, and then bares his own sharpened teeth at Buck, a low rumble starting in his throat that seems to surprise him, if the way his eyes widen and then drop down, as if he can look at his own neck, is any indication.

“Are you purring?” Buck teases, finally giving in to his want and grabbing Eddie’s ankle, laughing under his breath when Eddie winces away from his cold hands. The rumble cuts off, and Eddie’s teeth get a little less wolfy, though Buck would swear they’re not entirely human.

“We should sleep,” Eddie says around a yawn. “I think Chris’ll be up early.”

Buck isn’t at all tired, but he’d loaded books onto his phone, more than enough to pass the night and the drive, had he not spent it yammering Eddie’s ear off. “Good idea,” he says, letting the yawn infect him, too, a mirror to Eddie.

Eddie pulls his shirt over his head. Buck is caught staring for a long moment, before he realizes that Eddie hadn’t been joking about sleeping as a wolf, and quickly turns away before more clothes come off. The angled ceiling proves an ample distraction—he finds a cobweb tucked up into one corner, a bit of wood with claw marks. It’s a strange dichotomy between lived in and loved, and left to collect dust. Buck’d like to come back, if Eddie would have him again.

A cold nose presses against the back of his neck, and Buck just barely swallows back a yelp that could have woken Christopher from his slumber, a bear he most certainly does not want to poke. He turns to find Eddie’s big, wolfy face right in front of his, the offending cold nose almost brushing Buck’s forehead.

“I’m going to put a bell on you,” Buck tells him. Eddie makes the rumbling noise again, deeper now that he’s a wolf, and there’s no self-conscious glance this time. “And you shifted before saying goodnight,” Buck adds with a put-upon sigh. “Some best friend you are.”

Buck never thought he’d see a wolf big enough to eat him in two bites roll its eyes, but Eddie checks that off his bucket list.

“‘Night,” he says, just to rub it in, finally sitting all the way up and pushing to his feet. The twin bed doesn’t look any more appealing from his slightly hunched-over viewpoint, but he walks over and flops down on it anyway.

The only warning he gets before being attacked is a rapid click of claws, and then Eddie jumps onto the bed and lands on him, paws careful where they press against Buck. He still lets out a woof of air, more out of surprise than anything, and only just manages to roll over before Eddie flops down on top of him.

It’s ridiculous—they are nowhere near close to fitting on the bed. With the top of his head almost brushing the headboard, Buck’s feet still hang off the end. Eddie is falling off of him and the mattress, making a very valiant and wiggly effort to stay up. He sort of gets the hang of it after stepping on all of Buck’s organs, giant paws resting on Buck’s chest, and a giant head right on top of them, staring Buck down like he’s one of those squirrels that met an unfortunate end.

“This is not what I meant,” Buck informs him. “You could’ve, like, tried tapping something out in morse code. I learned it once.” Eddie tries to lick his face, and Buck can’t really escape it. “Was that the goodnight? Yeah? Okay, well, you can go sleep now.”

Buck ignores the slow drooping of his own eyelids, the pleasant sleepiness seeping into him with Eddie’s warmth all around. He’s hardly surprised when Eddie doesn’t move. It’s another of the consequences of the full moon being close, as near as Buck can figure; Eddie needs more touch, wants Buck and Chris both near him at all times. Getting the three of them on a long road trip and then into a cabin where they can barely move without bumping into each other is probably like, his perfect weekend.

He’s getting better at accepting that Eddie really does want him around. It’s hard to ignore in situations like these, syrupy and warm all over, but the consistency is what has truly stuck with Buck, remolded him into something brand new. Eddie has never faltered in showing Buck that he is welcome.

It’s been easier, lately, for Buck to accept the more vampiric parts of himself. The fire, and his near death were a big part of course, but it’s hard to hate any part of himself when Eddie—and Chris—so easily accept him in his entirety.

Chapter Text

Buck goes for a run while Chris and Eddie eat breakfast. Eddie watches out the window as he crosses the valley, gait slowly changing from a walk into a run. He follows the line of the trees, doesn’t leave the valley, and Eddie relaxes.

His pack has sole rights to most of the area around them, but that hardly stops loners from wandering through, especially with the full moon over them. Buck could handle himself, but Eddie doesn’t want him to have to. This weekend is meant to be good for all three of them.

“You sleep well buddy?” Eddie asks, watching fondly as Chris shovels food into his mouth. His night had been great, though he wonders if he should have invited Chris into the cuddle pile. Tonight, then—he doesn’t think Buck wants to go up the stairs again, which is greatly amusing to Eddie after having seen all the stunts he pulls at work.

Chris opens his mouth, full of food, to respond, but at Eddie’s light glare, he waits until he’s chewed. “It was quiet.”

Eddie hums. “Very different from home, huh? And from Texas?”

“Weird different,” Chris says.

“You’ll like how easy it is to run,” Eddie promises. “And you don’t mind that Buck came, right?”

“No,” Chris replies shaking his head to emphasize it. “Buck should always come.”

Eddie grins. “I agree. You think we can convince him?”

“Duh,” Chris says, and Eddie has a vision of his future with a teenage Christopher. “He should be your mate.”

Eddie splutters, while Chris just blinks at him. “He- what?”

“So he stays with us,” Chris says, like he thinks Eddie’s being a little slow on the uptake. “You always hang out with him anyway. And he’s your best friend.”

Eddie feels like he should tell Chris that there are more reasons to make someone your mate than being best friends, but now doesn’t feel right for a talk. He’d always explained his bond with Shannon like that—they were best friends who loved each other very much. Of course Chris would see the same thing between him and Buck. And despite lacking all the context for what it really means to have a mate, Eddie doesn’t think his son is wrong.

He expects the realization to be jarring. A reform of his worldview, a bolt of fear straight to his heart.

The reality of it is more like shifting, slipping into a form where the world opens itself up to him. He understands his own feelings better—why he always wants Buck so close, how easy it is to fit him into their lives—and he understands how much potential exists before him.

Would Buck feel the same? He’s not a wolf, obviously. But Eddie’s always thought werewolves mystified their feelings too much, an attempt to separate themselves from the humans they saw as below them. He doesn’t need a bond to know how much Buck means to him. Doesn’t even need their relationship to change, really, but Chris has a point—he wants Buck to know that he’s always wanted, always welcome.

“You’re pretty smart, mijo,” Eddie says teasingly. He reaches out to ruffle Chris’s curls, laughs when he tries to duck away. “Maybe I should listen to you more.”

“Pancakes every morning?”

“Don’t push it.”

Chris gets into a cabinet full of games while Eddie does the dishes, the spring-fed water shockingly cold against his skin. It’s the only thing keeping him from drifting entirely into the warm, fuzzy thoughts that circle him. He imagines spending every night like the last, curled up close to Buck without so much fur between them. Buck’s cool skin is a perfect balm to Eddie’s frequent overheating, and just this morning he’d taken an extra moment of rest just to bask in the knowledge that Buck was warm under him because Eddie had shared some part of himself.

When Buck comes back, he looks no different than when he’d left, save for a small handful of wildflowers held carefully in his palm. Eddie wordlessly hands him a glass half full of water to set them in, and watches with a pounding heart as Buck offers them to Chris.

He thinks he’d known, before Chris made it inescapable. The warmth in his chest is familiar, easy and welcome.

They play a brutal few games of Uno. Eddie didn’t even know there were as many cards in the deck as he ends up with in his hand, teamed up on by the other two. Chris is nearly in tears laughing at him trying to shuffle through, and Buck wins so consistently that Eddie is pretty sure he’s cheating.

When Chris starts eyeing the monopoly board, Eddie excuses himself to make lunch. It hasn’t really been long enough since breakfast to justify it, but they’ll use a lot of energy up tonight. He makes grilled cheeses and a platter of sliced fruit, feels vindicated when Chris falls asleep for a nap just after eating.

“You mind if I go for a walk around?” Eddie asks Buck. “Chris’ll probably sleep the whole time.”

“Go for it,” Buck says with a wave of his hand. “It’s gorgeous out here.”

Tempted as Eddie is to shift again, he wants to save some of the magic of it for when the moon has risen to greet him, so he circles the perimeter of the meadow with human feet.

It truly is beautiful. The land is largely untouched; this part of it has avoided even the regular grazing that some nearby plots are subject to. Everything is a little overgrown, a little desperate for the limited resources, and Eddie drinks in the wildness of it.

Up at the opposite end from where they’d driven in is the spring that feeds the cabin, and he gives it a once-over for anything obviously out of place. It burbles happily, water clear, and he decides it’s good enough.

His energy is weirdly off balance. Too much, almost, for him to hold within himself, so he sets off for a second lap at a quicker pace. The footing is uneven, nothing like running on pavement through the city, and keeps his mind aware of every step. He soaks in the sun. Licks the salt that collects on his upper lip, shoves his hair out of the way of tickling his eyes, and everything feels good. He’s not on top of the world, no need for such distance, but he sure feels in tune with it.

When he’s had enough of running, he turns back to the cabin, his excitement building with every step he comes closer to seeing Buck and Chris again. He all but tumbles through the door, startling Buck where he’s dusting some of the higher shelves—ridiculous, wonderful man—and waking Chris from his nap.

“Sorry,” he laughs, not quite meaning it. Buck looks at him, and Eddie can feel the weight of his eyes as they travel from the flop of Eddie’s mussed hair to his reddened face. He preens a little under his gaze, watches Buck’s face closely as he draws closer. “Miss me?”

“I could see you the whole time,” Buck says.

“You were watching?”

Buck ducks his head. Eddie can imagine the flush that would color his cheeks, reach the tips of his ears. He’d let Buck drink from him here, in a cabin belonging to the pack he’d left, just to see it.

Both Chris and Eddie’s scents already cling to Buck, but Eddie reaches out anyway, drops his hand just above the collar of Buck’s shirt and dips his thumb beneath it to rub at his collarbone until cool skin warms. Buck sways toward him, trust written in every line of his body and face. Eddie wants to explore every bit of it, poke and prod until he understands exactly how to make Buck feel this way all the time.

The moment breaks eventually, and Eddie is pulled in for a game of Monopoly despite all his attempts to avoid it. He doesn’t go down as easily as he did in Uno, though—he gets Chris to team up with him, and then they both lose thoroughly to Buck.

“He’s cheating,” Eddie stage-whispers to Chris. Buck narrows his eyes at them, obnoxiously counting his money, “There’s only one way to win against a cheater.”

“How?” Chris asks, tilting his head and hanging on to Eddie’s every word.

“Be a better cheater,” Eddie says.

Despite being across the coffee table from them and listening to every word, Eddie still manages to catch Buck unawares when he rounds the table and launches himself at him, sending colorful money flying everywhere. Buck fights back, laughing while Eddie grabs for his wrists, and it takes a moment for Chris to get the memo and start scooping money up, from Buck’s piles and where it’s scattered on the floor, and even from the bank. Eddie is so terribly proud of him.

“Someone call 9-1-1,” Buck groans when Eddie has both of his wrists pinned in his grip, going limp.

“No service, bud,” Eddie says.

“Can we steal his cards?” Chris asks, eyeing the neat rows of Buck’s properties, the only undisturbed part of the table.

“I don’t know,” Eddie muses. “Maybe we should give him a chance.”

“Just take it all.” Buck falls sideways onto Eddie, tossing his head back like he’s given up. “Leave me here to die.”

“Maybe I’ll turn you into a wolf,” Eddie says. He pulls Buck closer with the arm he’d been using to hold his wrists, tugs him against his body and turns his face into Buck’s neck. “Let you keep the houses if you join our pack.”

Chris cheers, gathering up Buck’s cards and mixing them with his own—Eddie can’t help but notice that some of his money has gone missing, and his two railroads have mysteriously been misplaced—but he just hides his smile against Buck’s skin and breathes him in.

“Fine,” Buck sighs. “If it’s the only way I can go on living.”

“‘S not so bad being a wolf,” Eddie says. “You’ll be a good one.”

He feels Buck’s full body shiver everywhere, and then he really does have to sit back so he doesn’t do something stupid.

“A draw then?” He looks at the board, houses flung off of their properties and game pieces clustered in the center.

“We all win,” Chris says. He’s still hoarding the money. “But Buck wins less.”

“Sounds fair to me.”

“Do I get a say?” Buck grumbles, picking up his little metal dog and twisting it in his fingers.

“Lowest ranking pack member? No way,” says Eddie.

There are more games. None of them go exactly as they should, and Eddie has to try to explain to Christopher that cheating is only allowed sometimes through his laughter. Outside, the sun reaches its peak and then begins a freefall toward the horizon, each passing hour growing the moon's influence over Eddie and Chris.

They’re both buzzing with it when the sky starts to bleed colors again, bathing the interior of the cabin in warm light. The whole world feels like it’s been concentrated in this small room, the three of them the last beings alive to see it.

“We’ll stay in the meadow,” Eddie says. “If you can’t see the cabin, you’re too far.” Chris nods dutifully, though his eyes don’t leave the window. “If you see anything strange, call for me. I should- I should feel it, before you need to, but I don’t have any connection to these lands.”

If Eddie were still part of the pack, if he’d spent more full moons exploring the meadow and the forest beyond, he’d be in tune with the land enough to sense if anything was out of place. Older members of his pack could sense a deer from miles away, no scent needed, and Eddie would always be left wondering what it was like, to know the land that way. He might be a full wolf now, but he’d never have a territory like this.

But he’s truly not worried. No strange scents carry on the air, and Buck is fully alert when they finally step onto the porch, all three of them together. “I’ll stay close by here,” Buck says, soft and careful. “So you know where to find me if you need.”

Eddie knocks his shoulder against Buck’s. He wishes Buck could run with them, but despite the frankly ridiculous length of his legs and the vampiric strength coursing through his veins, he wouldn’t be able to keep up. Four paws are better for navigating the uneven ground of the meadow, and besides, it’ll be good to have him as a home base.

“You ready Chris?” Eddie asks, looking to where Chris is bouncing on the balls of his feet, leaning against the porch railing. He beams at Eddie, teeth sharp and the moon reflecting off his eyes. At Eddie’s small nod, he shifts, the blanket wrapped around his shoulders falling with him, landing low on his back. He shakes it off with a playful growl, and then jumps off the porch to roll around in a patch of grass, legs flailing in the air.

Eddie hadn’t thought to bring a blanket, instead dressed in a sacrificial pair of old shorts and a worn t-shirt. He does pull the shirt off, tosses it at Buck’s head and laughs at his spluttering.

The first few times he’d shifted after the rain-soaked night of the well, he’d felt a flicker of fear, like it was trained into him to need it to shift.

Now, on a clear and beautiful night with Buck at his side and his son digging up a flower, he feels only content, overflowing happiness. He reaches for his wolf, finds it waiting at his fingertips, all soft fur and claws and teeth and slobbering tongue.

He’s back on the edge of the cliff, the world spread out before him, made up so prettily by the disappearing sun. His wolf waits, just over the edge, and Eddie falls into it.

The world exists in different shades, through the eyes of a wolf. Buck and Chris are bathed in a different light; bright as the sun, warming everything around them. Eddie is drawn to them like a moth to a flame.

He brushes against Buck, full-bodied, just as claiming as every touch of his fingers to Buck’s neck.

Buck gives him a little nudge, and then Eddie is bounding off the porch, chasing Chris away from the freshly turned dirt pile that stains his paws and muzzle with a teasing grumble. The scent of earth fills Eddie’s nose, and he only doesn’t turn back to do some digging of his own because running feels so good.

He and Chris do one big lap around the field that turns into a spiral, circling closer and closer back to the cabin. Marmots chitter at them, ducking into their wood piles and sprawling underground networks, and Chris gets so excited to chase after them that he stumbles over the paws he’s yet to grow into, rolling back to his feet with a shake of his head.

Buck is sitting with his legs dangling over the edge of the porch, arms resting on the railing, and he grins when he sees them come close. Chris runs right up to him, greets him with a nip to the ankles, and then turns right around to run full force at Eddie.

Eddie goes down dramatically, body thumping against the ground. Chris pounces on him. Sticks his nose in the thick fur around Eddie’s neck and growls at him, dancing away when Eddie lifts his head and chuffs at him. His body is a wave of unending motion, paws tapping under him as he bobs and weaves close to Eddie and then away, again and again, jumping at his tail when it flicks and then getting distracted to chase his own.

Buck watches over them, just as the moon does. Eddie can always feel his gaze, warm and heavy but apart, and when Chris darts off to paw at a few wildflowers, Eddie heaves himself off the ground and goes to Buck.

“Hey,” Buck says softly, as if scared to break through the quiet of the night. “Everything okay?”

Eddie butts his head against Buck’s knee. Lies down, with his back to Buck in an open show of trust, and watches with his head pillowed on the dirt as Chris tries to drag a stick somewhere.

He’ll get up and run again, eventually. The sky will lighten and the moon will wane and they’ll drive home, together, to tuck into the house that Eddie never imagined could become all that it has.

But for now, he sits with Buck’s steady presence and basks in the perfect night.

Returning to LA doesn’t make it any clearer to Eddie what’s to be done with his newly realized feelings.

They’d almost fit better, under open skies and across sprawling plains. The mountains were always looming larger, the branches of trees sorting them from the air like fine-toothed combs.

In Los Angeles, they crowd against him in a house shared by three. He lies down and stares at the ceiling and feels them hover over him, around him, in him. He sits in the engine next to Buck, and every space where they’re not touching becomes skin that could be pressed together, loved and admired.

He’s saved from giving away his feelings before sorting through them by their preestablished high levels of touch and comfort, the way Buck will plonk down right next to him at the station or at home, the ways he never shies away from Eddie’s touch. But never does he offer it back.

From Buck, there are never aborted touches or hovering hands—he just never reaches for Eddie in the ways that Eddie does for him.

Eddie’s sure there’s some twisted-up, self-loathing reason for it buried in Buck’s brain. It’s the thing that ultimately keeps him from acting on any feelings, that fear that Buck will think he’s not worthy, not ready.

He wants Buck to be ready. So, he experiments.

It starts with the probie saying quiet. Buck gets worked up over it before Eddie even realizes what’s gone wrong, and the way he groans so dramatically over the alarm going off, like it’s not an essential part of their job, endears Eddie so entirely that he can’t help but want to push at all the rest of Buck’s buttons, pick him apart entirely.

Finding out that Buck was a vampire seems to have only spurred the rest of the team on in their belief in jinxes. Eddie’s never seen any of them quite so on edge, though most of his attention is of course drawn to Buck.

“Maybe you can get rid of it,” Chim says, leaning close to Buck on the way to their first ‘cursed’ call. “Can you do magic?”

Buck shakes his head gravely. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to. It’s too strong.”

Eddie snorts.

“It’s kind of weirder to not believe in them,” Hen tells him while Chim tries to coach Buck through some sort of ritual. “You have to admit, a jinx is more probable than vampires.”

“I don’t have to admit anything,” Eddie says cheekily.

The thought of revealing what he is to the team crosses his mind nearly every shift. He knows they’d take it well, that their treatment of him would change only to include more dog jokes directed his way, and off of Buck. But something holds him back. Maybe an ingrained fear of discovery, or worry that he’d be taking Buck’s thunder. Give it a year—he’ll really think about it then.

Conversation pauses only when they arrive at their call; a dog park.

Eddie catches the gleeful look Buck sends his way with carefully affected nonchalance, following close behind Bobby as they approach a small crowd.

He steels himself to see something ugly. A dog bite and a stricken owner, or injured animals. What he finds instead is- confusing.

There is a man clutching his arm to his chest, at the center of the cluster of people. He’s got a tight hold on a leash attached to some kind of doodle—Eddie’s never liked their eyes. Too human.

“We got a call about a bite,” Bobby says, efficiently clearing a path for the rest of them to squeeze through, the crowd parting with a few groans that catch Eddie’s attention. He’s feeling a little distracted—despite the scene, there are still dogs running around, tussling on the artificial grass and chasing after tennis balls. Buck meets his eye again, and holds up a soggy ball he’d somehow got his hands on. When he mimes throwing it, Eddie has to resist baring his teeth at him, since it wouldn’t do much to disprove the point Buck is trying to make.

“That thing bit me!” the man spits. His dog is looking up at Bobby with a gaze as intense as its owner's.

“I swear she didn’t,” says a girl with her own leash, a giant dog tucked up next to her side, looking around with big eyes. She seems torn between frustration and worry, fist clenching and unclenching around the leash. “She’s trained. And she wasn’t near him or his dog.”

Eddie sees the moment Bobby resigns himself to the nonsense, an almost imperceptible slouch of his shoulders. But he nods, and looks back to the man. “Can you show me the bite?”

“Well-” the man splutters. What he’d been hoping to do here, Eddie has no clue. A cute black and white dog has found Buck and is staring up at him like he hung the stars, and it’s a far more entertaining sight. “It tried to bite me. I moved out of the way, obviously.”

“So there are no injuries?”

Buck is trying so, so hard not to pet the dog. His hands are stuffed in his pockets, and he’s staring off into the horizon.

“Only thanks to me,” says the man. “You’ll take that thing away, won’t you? It’s- it’s a wolf.”

Eddie and Buck’s heads both jerk to look at the dog in question—not a wolf. Very, very much not a wolf. Some sort of big farm dog, if Eddie had to wager a guess, big and fluffy and soft around the edges, nothing like the nobility of a wolf.

“Is your dog a wolf, ma’am?” Bobby asks politely.

The woman scoffs, and then clears her throat like she hadn’t quite meant to. “No, not at all. I’ve got his papers.”

“Well, since no one is harmed, I don’t think that will be necessary.” Bobby gives the signal to leave, and Chim and Hen shoulder their unused medic bags. Eddie extricates himself from the crowd, and is promptly swarmed—though not by humans.

Even the dog that had latched onto Buck comes over to him, joining the swirling mass of fur that spins around Eddie, noses poking into his shins.

A few owners try to call their dogs away, but most seem too baffled to even try. “Shoo,” Eddie tries, waving his hands in vain. He can feel his cheeks warming at all the attention and the strangeness of it. Quite literally in the center of a maelstrom, and the only other person who knows why is laughing so hard he’s nearly doubled over.

“Uhm,” Eddie says, walking a few steps toward the gate. “A little help?” he directs this at Buck, voice rising over the excited noises the dogs are making. Eddie has no idea what’s happening in their brains—is he a new dog to them? Can they tell he’s a werewolf?

“You’re living my dream,” Buck tells him as he steps a little closer, laughter still playing out across his face. He looks beautiful like this, and some of Eddie’s embarrassment fades away. Eddie makes a face at him anyway. “You might just have to make a run for it.”

“That is a terrible idea,” Eddie groans, getting a bit closer to the gate with every careful step around delicate paws. “They’ll chase me.”

“Just run faster than them.”

“Buck.”

“Eddie!” Buck laughs.

The rest of the team are also trying to help, Hen directing owners to pull their dogs from the fray, but it’s a tricky business. They don’t want to rile them up, turn overenthusiasm into aggression, but one by one the dogs are clipped to their leashes, and eventually, Eddie makes it outside the bounds of the dog park.

“It’s the jinx,” Buck says as soon as they’re all back in the engine. Eddie is already trying to discreetly pick the fur off his clothes and rub it on Buck, though it’ll probably all end up back at their house anyway. He seems positively delighted by everything, looking to Chim and Hen for their consensus.

“That was pretty rough,” Hen agrees. “Could have gone bad, fast.”

“You got steaks in your pockets or something, Diaz?” Chim asks, sniffing the air like he’d be able to pick it out.

“I think it’s just him,” Buck says, propping his chin on his hand and fluttering his lashes at Eddie, which does things to Eddie’s brain.

“Buck would know,” Chim and Hen say at the same time, high-fiving at their synchronization. Buck woofs, like a total dork, and Eddie spends the ride back to the station kicking him.

They’re hardly at the station long enough to get out of the engine before the tones sound again, and everyone looks at Eddie like it means anything. The tones go off! It’s their only job!

A mirror store. Eddie didn’t know there was enough demand for weird, vintage mirrors to fill a warehouse with them, but it’s what they’re greeted with when they arrive at the scene. Buck’s eyes go wide when he sees, glancing around the team like he’s forgotten they all know. But then he shakes it off and has a great time pointing out all the silver-backed mirrors where his reflection doesn’t show, while Eddie swallows back his nausea at being so close to the metal. It’s not so bad that he can’t focus, but he’s glad when the call ends and they leave.

Buck says it’s another point in favor of a jinx. Eddie holds that he’s being ridiculous. Another call comes in.

There’s a man whose cat dug up bones in the backyard, scaring him so bad that he faints. Buck whispers to Eddie that it’s okay if he wants to steal one to chew on, and Eddie gives him the silent treatment for a brutal five minutes.

A mishap at a blood bank. It’s everywhere, and when Eddie gives Buck a pointed look, the one he gets in return says jinx? Eddie mouths no, and then gets back to corralling people away from the biohazard.

Someone gets a moon sculpture dropped on their head at a museum. A small fire at a factory jarring garlic. The front steps of a frat house, and a pledge choking on a Milkbone.

“Maybe we’re not jinxed,” Hen says on the way back from that one. “Weird calls, sure. But usually they’re more, I don’t know-”

“Cursed,” Chim finishes.

“Uh, guys?” Buck crosses his arms in offense. “Half of these are tailored to be terrible for me.”

“And the other half are totally normal,” Chim argues. Eddie, who does not believe in curses and does not want to reveal himself as a werewolf, says nothing. Buck looks like he might pop trying not to come out with what he probably thinks is a very convincing argument about the other half of the calls applying to Eddie. “And you’re a vampire who fights fire. Most of our normal calls are, you know, ironic.”

“I can’t believe this,” Buck sighs. “You’re all- betrayers. I’ve been betrayed.”

He turns his pouty look on Eddie. Eddie’s mouth goes a little dry—Buck is so pink. His birthmark and his lips and a touch of color in his cheeks giving away a recent feeding that wasn’t from Eddie, it’s never from Eddie, and now there’s no way he’ll be able to think about anything else except that he wants his blood in Buck’s veins and his voice drawing it to his face and down, down-

The radio crackles, and they all groan.

But there aren’t any more out-of-the-ordinary calls. Eddie can see Buck trying to find the strangeness in them, but there’s nothing to find—it’s all mundane, the sort of calls that slip the mind as soon as they’re over.

“Not so bad for a cursed shift,” Eddie teases when they settle in the Jeep, less tired than a normal twenty-four on would leave them.

He can see the wheels turning in Buck’s brain. “I think it got paused,” he says with a small thump to the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.

“What.”

“Yeah!” Buck nods, like this is making any sense. “Whatever the point was—it wasn’t working.”

“So we’re still cursed?”

“Don’t make fun of me,” Buck says at Eddie’s tone. Eddie reaches over and sticks the keys in the ignition. “It’ll come back when we least expect it.”

“Okay, bud,” Eddie laughs. “I’ll watch my back.”

“No, I will.”

“I’ll watch your back,” he amends fondly. “Now come on, get us home. I swear I still smell like dog.”

“Nothing new,” says Buck, like an asshole.

Eddie forgets about it entirely.

In his defense, curses aren’t real, and there are more pressing things to worry about. There’s still a pandemic, for one, and things reopen and close back down in fits and starts. People are on edge and eager for someone to talk to, and Eddie ends most shifts more exhausted from keeping up a brave face than anything else.

But Buck is always there. Helping with Chris’s online homework and driving in the morning when Eddie needs a few minutes of sleep on the way into work—and most other mornings—and trying out new recipes for the three of them.

It’s another barrier to Eddie acting on the feelings that have his heart and stomach fluttering around Buck; he already has everything he could ever want.

He watches Buck climb the ladder, his own feet solidly on the ground. It’s a mildly overcast day, and Buck’s eyes had looked more blue than usual when Eddie gave his harness a final once-over before he started up. He’s in a good mood—apologies to the woman with half her body through a rotted deck, but this is exactly the kind of rescue that Eddie lives for.

When he gets the go-ahead to climb, Buck situated on the balcony below the victim, he does so with a little bounce in his step. He’d whistle, maybe, if it weren’t a total faux pas to do so.

Buck gives him a little nod when they’re level, his face drawn in focus as he examines the deck, and Eddie carries it with him while he talks to the woman, reassuring her that she’s going to be just fine. She’s shaken, obviously, and Eddie doesn’t realize a part of the why until he catches sight of her son peeking out the door. He’s pale, a common side-effect of all the quarantining, but Eddie can admit it’s certainly a good thing he wasn’t out on the rotted deck, trying to catch up on sunlight.

He only realizes that something is off when the woman wraps her arms around him so they can get her out of the deck. The strongest scent is blood, a nasty gash on her upper thigh, but just under is the barest hint of wolf—comparable, maybe, to the effect Eddie has on Hen and Chim. Regular interaction with a werewolf.

They step back into the apartment, and now that he’s searching for it, there’s that low-level scent everywhere.

“I can’t go to the hospital,” she says frantically. “Charlie-”

“I’ll stay with him,” Eddie says easily. “I’ve got a son his age.” They’re more similar than you know, he thinks.

She’s wheeled off by the rest of the team before getting a chance to agree, which Eddie feels a little bad about, but he wipes all the worry from his face and smiles at Charlie. “You hungry buddy?”

Charlie’s nervous, takes a bit to settle into himself when Eddie calls Carla and Chris, but before long they’ve really hit it off.

Eddie snoops through the fridge. Charlie tells him that he can’t eat some things, and Eddie frowns. There’s no doubt that Charlie’s a wolf—maybe his mom is just overprotective?

There’s a platter of muffins. Eddie grabs one and, without thinking, smells it. It sets his instincts off, pinging that familiar danger danger danger.

“You eat these, Charlie?” he asks casually, holding the muffin out. It takes him a moment to look up from his very emphatic conversation with Chris, but he nods when he sees what Eddie’s holding.

Eddie’s stomach turns. And there’s no way of knowing, really, he can’t make accusations based solely on instinct. He needs something more concrete.

The muffin tastes normal enough. It’s got a strong citrusy flavor, almost overwhelming, and Eddie doesn’t know much about baking but if he wanted to cover something up, he’d go overboard on a flavor just like this.

And then it hits him.

Less like a truck, and more like an egg cracked over his head—a tingling that loosens his jaw, makes his teeth feel like they fit strangely in his mouth. His shoulders slump, and the adrenaline of the rescue, already waning, fully vanishes. He doesn’t think he could lift a two-by-four right now, and when it reaches his legs, he has to lean heavily against the counter.

The door opens, and Charlie’s mom is back. She’s got a haggard look on her face, one he's familiar with from anyone after a stint in the hospital. He straightens, tries to relax even as he feels out of his body. The urge to confront her lies sharp behind dulled teeth and tastes like lemon.

“I’ll head out then,” Eddie says, smiling as Charlie waves goodbyes to Chris and Carla. “We could arrange a playdate, if you want,” he offers, fishing for her number. He feels like any chance to help is slipping quickly between his fingers, and he doesn’t have the strength to hold on.

“Oh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” She shakes her head like she really means it, and he swallows back bitter rage. “You’d better get back to your job. Thank you so, so much for watching him.”

Eddie gives her a tight-lipped smile, and then he’s being hustled out the door, with no way of getting back to the station.

Luckily for him, the 118 are able to swing by and pick him up on the way back to base from another call. He writes the address of the apartment into his notes app, and then leans against the building with a hard-fought air of nonchalance.

“You okay Eddie?” Hen says when he swings into the engine. “You look a little pale.”

Eddie waves her off, and then proves her point by falling asleep on Buck’s shoulder. It gets him sent home from shift early, taking an Uber so he doesn’t leave Buck without a car.

He passes out promptly on the couch—like, actually passes out, though no one is around to badger him into going to the hospital about it. His sleep is total and dark, not a single dream breaking through his overexerted and poisoned mind.

“Eddie?” a concerned voice says, paired with a nudge to his shoulder, full of nervous energy with how it pushes him into the cushions. “Please, you have to-”

“I’m up,” Eddie slurs, making to sit up and then thinking better of it when his head spins.

The exhaustion is still present—sunk fully into his body, encasing his bones and gelling up his muscles. He’s just as weak. A full night and into the late morning later. God. Charlie.

“We need to go,” Eddie says, trying again to sit up. “We have to-”

“No,” Buck says. He drops a heavy blanket across Eddie’s chest. Or maybe it’s just a normal one, and Eddie will never be able to walk again. He’ll lose his job, his friends, and he won’t be able to care for his son.

He can’t smell Buck. Desperately, he seeks out Buck’s eyes and holds them for a long, long moment, trying to get his breathing even. But every breath feels too shallow, when it doesn’t give him the depth of the world he’s used to, and it makes his chest feel fluttery.

“I’m here,” Buck murmurs. Eddie can’t miss the panic flashing across his eyes, turning the blue stormy.

Eddie breathes. And breathes, and breathes, and breathes. He can pick up on some things—a new air freshener that hasn’t quite faded to the background of the house's smells, a bit of smoke clinging to Buck. It’s nowhere near enough, but he anchors himself to the things he can find and finally gets his breathing even.

“It must be wolfsbane,” he says, for lack of a better way to start. It only serves to increase the panic in Buck’s eyes, his hands fluttering over Eddie like he has no idea how to help. Eddie should tell him that just being here is steadying him, but he needs to save his strength for words more important than those pertaining to himself. “Charlie.”

“That’s the kid you stayed behind to watch?” Buck asks, connecting the dots. “He’s a wolf?”

“Was. Is. I don’t know. His mom is poisoning him.”

Buck nods, a steely reserve hardening his face. “She wasn’t though?”

“No.” A small shake of Eddie’s is all he can manage, but he wants to pace. Wants to be out the door already, to explain everything to Buck while they drive. “His father must have been. And she- she must not like it.”

“Okay,” Buck says. His jaw works as he clenches and unclenches it, and Eddie thinks of his horrible parents. If there was any vampire that could make Eddie believe in curses, he’d hand the award off to them. They embodied it in a way that chilled him, so different even from what Eddie had seen of Doug. “What are we going to do?”

“We’ll go back. A- a wellness check. Something.”

“You won’t be able to do anything legally. Unless you think you can prove something without having to reveal that he’s a wolf.”

“Shit,” Eddie breathes. “I think she’ll run. Maybe we just- we go. Talk to her.”

Buck shuffles nervously, but Eddie can see the determination in him. He’s sure that he’s thinking about Chris, just like Eddie is, and how pale the boy was. Cooped up in an apartment because his mother can’t accept what he is. Feeling what Eddie’s been given a fraction of, every day of his life.

“Help me up.”

“No way.” Buck shakes his head, holding his hands out but not touching like he’s learned the vampire compulsion they tried for all those months ago. “You can barely move, Eddie.”

“I’ll adjust,” Eddie grits out. He rolls his shoulders, manages to sit up with his arm slung across the back of the couch.

His muscles feel like jelly. His arms move when he tells them to, but it’s too slow. He misjudges swinging his legs off the couch, has to twitch them over the edge. Fully sitting up lets him judge better what he’s capable of, and he frowns down at his body.

“Okay,” Buck says, voice level like he’s speaking to a spooked animal. “I’m going to make you food, and you’ll eat all of it. And then we’ll go.”

Eddie snaps his teeth shut around a protest. It feels like every minute they aren’t moving is a waste, but Buck has a point. The best way to flush this from his system is to eat and drink, especially after his egregiously long nap.

He dips his head in acknowledgment, and Buck all but runs to the kitchen.

Eddie doesn’t lie back down. He works through the catalogue of his own body, tensing every muscle he can think of one by one. His fingernails dig into his palms. His shins press back against the couch. His neck pops, when he tilts his head sideways, and his teeth feel small and useless when he clenches his jaw.

But he can move all of them. Leaning forward to pick a book up off the table, one of the battered mass market paperbacks Buck prefers, is doable. When he fans the pages out right in front of his face, he can smell paper and glue and dust, but no hint of Buck’s familiar metallic scent.

It’s almost laughable, how he’d spend years thinking of himself as nearly human. Years of enhanced senses and great strength, and he’s spent most of them moping that he couldn’t complete the final step.

“You doing okay?” Buck asks, poking his head out of the kitchen. His curls are messy and his lips are so pink where they’re pursed in worry.

“Better,” Eddie lies.

Buck frowns at him, then vanishes back behind the wall.

His nervous energy builds the longer he sits and waits. It’s an awful contrast to the drag on his body, like he’s trapped back under the earth, dirt and water closing in over his head. There’s no getting away as a wolf this time, no life-changing transformation to guide his head to the surface. Buck, of course, is always present.

He emerges with plates balanced precariously on both arms, piled high with meat and veggies. Where he found everything is a mystery to Eddie, but Buck probably knows his fridge better than him by now. The warmth that blossoms in his chest at that thought is enough to power him through sitting up and digging in, as if his wolf, wherever it's been kicked to, managed to fight through the haze of the wolfsbane.

“I think we need more of a plan,” Buck says hesitantly. “Do you think it’s possible that- that child services could do something?”

Eddie shakes his head.

It’s almost hard to focus on anything but the food. He can’t even taste it with how quickly he chews and swallows, but the more he eats, the better he feels. A placebo, more than likely, but Eddie is starting to suspect that most of the effects from the poison are in his head.

“Is there anything werewolves could do? A- a pack that would be willing to help?”

The next bit of food goes down bitterly. There is—the pack that Eddie had belonged to, once, would do anything to help a young wolf. Most packs would. It was about the numbers, sure, but protective instincts weren’t just instilled in their bodies, but also written into pack tradition.

All Eddie needs to do to ensure Charlie’s safety is call his pack, face his parents. It would undoubtedly be a cascade of change. His parents in LA, realizing that both him and Chris have gotten their shifts—Eddie doesn’t know what they’ll do.

But it’s not even a question.

His phone is nearly dead, left in his pocket since he left shift early. His contacts are full with the numbers of his pack, untouched in either direction. He’s been excommunicated, in every way but formally, yet the barrier feels so easily breakable.

Buck is looking at him nervously, like he’s second-guessing himself.

“You’re not overstepping,” Eddie tells him. “I’m probably not thinking clearly. If there’s nothing else, I’ll call someone from my pack.”

Frustration written clear on his face, Buck pulls out his own phone and starts typing. “An anonymous tip? That just gets us to the same problem. I could ask Bobby- he might have an idea.”

“Not enough time,” Eddie groans. The plates are all cleared, and when he stands, he hardly falters. Buck’s hands flutter like he wants to steady him. “I’ll call. They might have contacts- are your parents still in town?”

“They wouldn’t help a wolf,” Buck says with a dark look.

“Right. Mine, then.”

Eddie takes a breath. His thumb is already hovering over his mother’s contact, more likely to pick up at this time of day. He feels a little sick to his stomach, nausea that isn’t just a side-effect of the poison.

She answers before it even rings once fully. “Eddie?”

“Chris is fine,” he says. It takes everything in him not to read into her tone, garbled as it is by distance. “But I need help.”

He explains as quickly as he can, skipping over the details of how he’d found out about the wolfsbane. She stays mostly quiet, though he thinks he hears something when he mentions his job. In theory, she’d known what he planned to do in LA. Had drilled into him about it, even, running away to California without a plan, Edmundo, really?

“You’re sure the mother is a human?”

“Yes,” Eddie says, and then pauses, curses himself. “Unless she’s hiding her wolf. Is that possible?”

“It could be,” Helena says. “But you’re probably right that it’s the father he gets it from. Write this down-” Eddie scrambles to look for paper, but Buck shakes his head and holds up his own phone, and Eddie gives him a grateful look as his mom lists off a phone number, enunciating each carefully, like she’s on the phone to the bank. “That’s a representative of our pack in LA. Call her.”

And then she hangs up. Eddie holds the phone out from his ear like it might bite at him, and then sighs.

“Did that go… Well?”

“I gave it away,” Eddie groans. “When I said I was sure she wasn’t a wolf. She’ll know I shifted.”

“How?”

“It’s like a sixth sense. Like calls to like, or something. A wolf can hide their scent easily from vampires or wolves who can’t shift and are more likely to be rogue. It doesn’t matter. I need to-” he gestures to Buck’s phone, and with an oh, Buck hands it over.

The call to the representative is much the same, though without quite as much shame coursing through Eddie’s stomach. She’s professional, doesn’t ask any questions about him, and promises to meet them at the apartment building as soon as possible—she’s closer than them, in fact, and on her way already.

What exactly the plan is, Eddie has no idea, but he tells her to wait for them, and then looks to Buck.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asks. Eddie straightens his shoulders, bounces onto his toes. He’s still weak. The food has helped, and adjusting to his limits has too, but he’s nowhere near full strength.

“I’d make you stay back if I could,” Eddie admits. “I don’t know how she’ll react to a vampire, but I need you, Buck.”

“Let’s do this then.” Buck offers his arm for Eddie to lean on, and without hesitation, Eddie takes it.

They take the Jeep, Buck in the driver’s seat and Eddie tapping his fingers on his thigh in the passenger. The call had been at the edge of their range, the other end of the city from their home, and it’s a grueling drive. Eddie can’t even have the irate satisfaction of blaming it on traffic—they have really, really bad luck with the lights.

“The damn curse,” Eddie grumbles, just to see a laugh break through the nervous hunch of Buck’s shoulders.

“Don’t even joke,” Buck says, shaking his head at the steering wheel even as a small smile crinkles at the corners of his eyes. “You have to put good energy out, Eddie. Everything is going to work.”

“Fine,” Eddie says, forcing his shoulders to relax against the ache, like he’s just been through a five-alarm fire.

His phone rings.

He answers quickly, confusion at the unknown number turning quickly to dread when he hears a familiar voice.

“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” Charlie sobs. “I don’t even know what happened.”

Buck presses on the gas, the Jeep jolting like it’s been prodded awake. Eddie grips the fabric of his pants so tightly that his knuckles go pale.

“Are you okay?” Eddie asks, putting as much calm as he can muster into his voice. Charlie sounds so, so scared.

“My mom- she’s on the floor and she won’t wake up and I- I did something. Something happened to me, and I can’t remember what it is and she’s breathing but there’s so much blood-”

“Head wounds bleed heavily,” Eddie says. It feels cruel to cut him off, but he needs Charlie to breathe. “That’s where she’s hurt?” A shaky hum. “Okay. I’ll be there in-” he looks at Buck, who glances away from the road long enough to hold up three fingers. “Five minutes,” Eddie says, to be safe. “I want you to keep the phone call going, okay? Talk to me about what you remember.”

“I felt really good when I woke up. Usually, I feel really sick in the morning, especially after breakfast.” Eddie’s stomach flips. “But mom slept in a lot this morning, said th-that her leg was hurting.”

“Did you eat anything?”

“Some fruit,” Charlie says. Eddie can hear his breath starting to level out. “M-mom usually makes me eat these muffins that she makes. She says they help with my sickness. But I wasn’t hungry enough to eat one, s-so I didn’t. And I lied when she asked if I did,” his voice trembles, and Eddie knows the poor kid is blaming himself.

“And then she finally got up,” he continues. “A-and I was so happy to see her, that she was feeling better, and then it just- something just- I felt so-”

He shifted. Charlie wouldn’t have the words for it, wouldn’t know what the rearranging of bones and skin meant, but it all lines up—strong emotion, and a lapse from the wolfsbane keeping his wolf away. It must have come out at the first opportunity, so strong that Charlie could have fully lost himself. And it wouldn’t have taken much to knock his mom down, an excitable wolf cooped up in that small apartment, her already on shaky legs.

“I’m going to help you,” Eddie says. “You’re doing okay, Charlie, and you didn’t do anything wrong.” He recognizes the street now, the shape of the buildings. Something about it catches on his mind, but he shoves it away. “Did you call 9-1-1?”

“Before I called you,” Charlie says nervously.

“That’s good,” Eddie tells him, frowning at the complication for their hastily cobbled together plan. There’ll be scrutiny now, no matter what happens, the kind even wolves have a hard time ducking around.

As if on cue, a fire engine and its trailing ambulance appear, roaring up the street. Buck swings into a parking spot, and Eddie jumps out of the Jeep so quick he forgets himself and nearly falls flat on his face.

“Eddie,” Buck gasps, grabbing him by the elbow and bodily yanking him to the curb. Eddie takes only a moment to steady himself, clapping his hand over Buck’s, and then they’re off.

By some miracle‚ they beat the firefighters up. Maybe it’s Eddie knowing right where to go, or Buck all but carrying him up the stairs, but Charlie looks up with red eyes and a tear-streaked face when Buck kicks the door in, and Eddie’s heart breaks.

He hates that he has to do it, but he’s relieved when a quick glance around the apartment reveals no sign of Charlie’s transformation, save for shreds of clothes. Eddie jerks his head at them, and Buck hustles over to kick the scraps under the couch.

“Hey buddy,” Eddie says gently, crouching down beside Charlie. He can’t smell wolf on him, but it’s certainly more of a consequence of Eddie’s incapacitation than anything else—there’s a wild look to Charlie’s eyes that Eddie knows well. “You’re okay.”

Charlie sobs, turning his face into Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie rubs his back, strains to hear for the approaching firefighters, but catches nothing. Buck is hovering over Charlie’s mom, fingers pressed to her neck to check for a pulse.

They need a story. Eddie needs to call the pack representative. He needs to sleep off the rest of the damned wolfsbane. It’s all overwhelming, too big and too scary, all threatening Charlie, who’s done nothing wrong. Eddie wants to clutch him close, to shift and snarl and snap at anyone who comes too close, but the events of the day are already in motion.

Finally, the pounding of boots echoes into the hallway and through the door where it hangs off its hinges. Eddie recognizes the team that comes through, reliable and level-headed from his limited experience, and it’s more reason to relax. Maybe, maybe, things will work out.

There are questions, of course, but it’s not on the firefighters to ask them. Eddie’s not sure what Charlie told the operator for there to be no cops, but he’s sure they’ll turn up soon enough.

With Charlie in his sights and unharmed, Eddie’s adrenaline quickly wears off. He answers questions outside, leaning against Buck, about how he’d met Charlie and why he and Buck had been there. The ambulance leaves with both mother and son, which makes Eddie nervous, but there’s nothing to be done for it save catching the eye of the pack rep, lurking near the building and looking at him with knowing eyes.

“Of course it’s the 118,” the captain says. His name is somewhere in Eddie’s memory, probably easily accessible if he weren’t so foggy. He gestures at the uniform shirt Eddie’d accidentally slept in, wrinkled and far out of code. “Wouldn’t be an interesting call if your house wasn’t involved somehow.”

Buck chuckles hollowly.

Eddie is so, so tired, but there’s a spark of hope keeping him up. The air and Buck’s presence are warming him, all the food finally digesting and flushing more of the wolfsbane out of his system.

“We good to go?” Eddie asks. Maybe if he wasn’t so out of it, he’d notice the feeling of being watched. Maybe if he weren’t so determined to put up a good look, he wouldn’t have stepped away from Buck to offer the captain a handshake. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Buck is looking at him, some of Eddie’s exhaustion reflected in his eyes. Relief, too, and Eddie hates the few feet of distance between them, wants to drag Buck to the couch or his bed and hold him close until he feels right again.

There’s a loud crack. Eddie’s jumped more times than he can count at cars' backfiring. A holdover from those terrible days overseas, never sure if he’d survive to see his son over blurry video call again. He doesn’t flinch.

The impact is all-consuming. Familiar, terribly. Eddie is back in the desert, riddled with holes that are healing too quickly. Metal closed into his body, burning, burning. He’s in a med tent, writhing on the table as the doctors talk nervously over him. Never seen anything like it, they say. We think the bullet is still in there. But that would mean-

He’d fought, then, through the fog of pain to grab for a scalpel the minute he’d been alone, hands shaking so terribly he’d made the cut jagged. But he’d done it—he’d cut into his skin, dug his fingers through blood and gore and pulled the bullets out. It’d healed over by the time the doctors had come back. They’d honorably discharged him, because no one could deny that he’d been wounded in combat.

No scars to show for it. Just a medal and a twisted sense of irony every time he said the name silver star.

He’s falling. Nothing to stop it, no throwing his arms out to brace himself or turning to the side. Blood pours from the hole in his shoulder, and there’s no rapid knitting together of skin, nothing to stop it. It soaks into his uniform shirt, and he’s going to die here. Bleeding out like a human, made fallible by his nothing but his own choices. For Charlie, he’d do it all over again.

Darkness crawls at the edges of his vision. He can’t hear anything, more shots or screams or even the noise of the street, and maybe he could go easily into the darkness if he didn’t feel so alone. This isn’t how it should be. This isn’t how it goes.

Cool skin touches his, and Eddie is hot all over, burning up, and there’s a sharp, biting pain above the dulled enormity of the ache he’s settled into. He’s wrenched across the pavement. The world goes dark, but it’s not the absolution of death. He’s at the mercy of the world, but the hands touching him are familiar, known, loved.

“Hey, hey, hey, stay with me.” Buck. His hands are pressed to the hole in Eddie, like he can hold him together.

Buck is all Eddie can see. There’s blood on his face, smeared around his mouth. It’s Eddie’s. Eddie knows it is, but Buck is panicking, pressing harder against Eddie’s chest and his eyes are wild and blue. Eddie’s not under an open sky anymore, but he finds it anyway.

“Are you hurt?” He touches Buck. Moves his uninjured arm, wipes at the blood staining Buck's lips. He looks beautiful, like this. Eddie would give up all his blood to keep Buck safe. He’d take every bullet, every poisoned offering.

“No- no,” Buck says. Eddie’s hand drops. He doesn’t want it to, but the darkness is coming in again. “Eddie, hey, you have to stay awake. Please.” Buck pleads, but he does not compel.

Eddie only knows he’s in the hospital when he opens his eyes to it. White and pale blue and shining silver. Soft with hard edges.

He’s dulled. There’s an IV hooked under his skin, pumping him full of painkillers, probably, but it’s the awareness that he’s missing something that really alerts him to it. He can’t panic about the state he’s in due to the state he’s in, so he tries to just breathe. In-in-in-out-out-out.

Strange that he’s alone. It’s his first time in the hospital, first time his healing didn’t take care of an ailment before he could land here. Panic breaks through the haze of exhaustion and pain. A beep that he’d ignored for its background presence pitches higher, speeds up, mocking.

And then there are nurses surrounding him, talking at but not to him, and he doesn’t know what they do or why they do it. He focuses all his energy on centering himself, trying not to panic at all the hands touching him, doing things without his control. To help him, he thinks forcefully.

The seconds drag on, but it does come to an end. The room clears out again, Eddie left behind again.

But it’s only for a moment.

He knows the gait of the footsteps, knows the weight of Buck’s presence when it’s close enough to fall over him.

“Eddie,” Buck breathes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t- It’s past visiting hours, and they keep kicking me out but- You’re okay. You’re awake.”

“Charlie?” Eddie asks, voice creaking. “Chris?”

“Chris is okay. Worried about you.” Buck sniffs, like he’s holding back tears, and Eddie tries to reach for him but he can’t move his arm. “And Charlie- Your pack tracked down his dad. His mom was hiding him and he- they’re together, now. Couldn’t get the mom on anything legally, but-”

“He’s okay,” Eddie repeats. Charlie’s pale face and terrified eyes peer out through his memories.

“Your parents are here,” Buck adds, speaking fast like he’s ripping the bandage off. “Not- not in the hospital. Yet. I, ah, I’ve been avoiding them. Carla talks to them. Says they’re worried about you a-and Chris.”

“Good news, bad news?” Eddie jokes weakly.

He can face his parents. Owes it to them, probably, for the help. If he were Chris—if he were in his parents’ shoes—he owes them a lot, actually.

Buck’s face crumples. “There’s more. You, uh, probably noticed that you aren’t healed.”

“And I can’t smell you,” Eddie grumbles. “Is it the wolfsbane still? I don’t- it can’t have been that strong.”

A flinch hits Buck full body, his hand falling to his pocket and then away like it’s burned him. “I’m sorry Eddie- Carla, and- and she asked your parents too- You’re still being dosed with wolfsbane.”

Eddie takes that in. It’s easy to believe it, still injured and weak. And Buck—is he the one administering it? Creeping into Eddie’s hospital room and dosing him with poison to help his wolf? The imagined scene has a hazy glow to it, the fairytale quality of forbidden love. Eddie warms.

“It’s something to do with your healing,” Buck adds. “Like, it’ll overcorrect if it comes on too fast. Could be c-cancerous.”

“Oh,” Eddie breathes. “Thank you. For everything.”

“You asked if I was okay,” Buck laughs wetly. “You were bleeding out and you asked if I was okay and- and you’re blood was in my mouth. Again.”

It’s the first time Buck’s acknowledged that night, maybe ever. Words crowd Eddie’s mouth, but he can’t get any of them out.

“And you don’t believe in it, but I kept thinking about the stupid curse.”

“Buck-” Eddie tries, but Buck charges on.

“Like I did this to you, somehow. Karmically, or magically. It’s all so- I had to go back, you know, to that witch who gave us the silver muffins, to get the wolfsbane and- and it just felt too convenient. Something that happened to us, that hurt us- And I had to keep hurting you. To keep you alive.”

Eddie can feel his eyes falling closed, even as—or maybe, because of—the enormity of his emotions eclipsing all the pain, all the weight of the events hanging over them. “We’ll share it,” he says, slow, each syllable a battle. “And I wasn’t- I needed you to be okay. For Chris. And-” Everything is dark and quiet, but Eddie isn’t alone. “And for me.”

When he wakes again, an indeterminate amount of time later, Buck is gone. Eddie feels more settled, helped by Chris’s happy cry when he notices Eddie’s eyes open. Carla is sitting with him, in chairs pulled close to the bed, and Eddie smiles big and happy at them, and it comes easy. The pain meds, probably.

“Dad!” Chris says, lurching forward to throw his arms around Eddie, and it’s not gentle but Eddie would hate if it was. He brings over his uninjured arm to pull Chris close as best as he can, rubs his back and murmurs about how happy he is to see him.

“Good to see you awake, son,” says a voice from the opposite corner, where Eddie can’t see, and suddenly he feels vulnerable. His arm tightens around Chris, and then he forces himself to relax.

“Dad,” Eddie says neutrally, sitting back on the pillows. He doesn’t have the leverage or strength to sit up, and Chris has curled into his side, but at least he can see them now, even if it’s not with the dignity he’d like. “Mom. Welcome to Los Angeles.”

“Edmundo,” his mom says, her voice dripping with emotions that Eddie can’t even begin to parse. “You should have told us.”

“I didn’t think you needed to know,” Eddie says levelly. His shift. She says it like he owes her news of something so personal. And the same for Chris’s—they aren’t her pack anymore. “Thank you for the help, with Charlie.”

“Of course,” she says with genuine, easily discernible emotion. “Were you thinking of Christopher, when you poisoned yourself to help him?”

Eddie flinches. Chris’s hand fists the fabric of his shirt. “I’d do it again,” Eddie says, a vocalization of his thoughts immediately following the shooting.

“And are you aware that your son smells like a vampire?”

“I am,” Eddie says coolly. “He’s my best friend. Chris’s too.”

He remembers, awkwardly, that Carla is still in the room. At least she’s familiar with werewolf dramatics.

Helena stands, her chair scraping against the hospital floor. The shriek of it makes Eddie’s head spin, and he has to blink a few times to come back to himself. “You are putting your son in danger,” she hisses. Ramon is a few steps behind her when she comes right up to Eddie’s bedside. “You think he’s different? You think he’s good?”

“He’s one of the best men I know.”

She tsks, and he feels like a kid again, staring at a pan of burnt food. The air smells just as acrid now, all the chemicals of the hospital burning his nose and stinging his eyes.

“He’s tricked you,” she says. A look over her shoulder to Ramon brings him into the fray, standing shoulder to shoulder with her. Absurdly, it reminds Eddie of Buck and himself, facing things as a unified front. Oh, how they’d hate the comparison. He should put it on a Christmas card.

“It can be very hard to see through their deceit, son,” Ramon says. Eddie glares at him from where he’s lying down, still, not even able to face them eye to eye. “There’s no shame in it.”

Eddie doesn’t even pretend to consider it. No part of him believes Buck capable of it, nothing in him doubts what they are. And, he decides in a split moment, he is going to court the shit out of the vampire his parents hate without ever having met.

“You’re wrong,” he says coolly. “And I think you should leave. Thank you, again, for the help.”

“You can come back you know,” Helena says. She’s looking at him, and Eddie sees the love there. The belief that she is doing everything right. It hurts, hits him in the ribs and takes his breath away. “The pack would welcome you. And Chris-”

“He needs to be around wolves,” Ramon finishes. “He’s going to be a great one.”

“He is,” Eddie says, cupping the back of his son’s head and pulling him closer. “And I- I don’t want you to not be part of his life.”

They both blink at him, like they weren’t expecting it.

“Mijo?” Eddie asks gently, waiting for Chris’s small hmm? To continue. “Can I talk to you about something?” He looks at his parents, hopes they aren’t so dense as to miss the obvious please, leave in his eyes. “Just for a few minutes,” he adds, holding his mother’s gaze until she dips her head.

They leave with little fanfare. Eddie relaxes, tension he hadn’t been fully aware of holding draining from him so rapidly that he feels a little woozy.

“Carla-” he starts, when she too stands to go. “Can you tell me- How has Buck been?”

She frowns, and Eddie wonders how many extra lines he and Chris and Buck have added to her face. She wears them well, though, gentle even as she takes a moment to gather the words.

“He’s very good with your Christopher,” she says gently. She comes closer, puts a gentle hand on Chris’s head, and then brushes it against Eddie’s cheek like Pepa would. “Worried. Hiding his feelings in caring for him, I think. And-” she hesitates again, and Eddie holds his breath. “He’s reckless. More than normal.”

Eddie thinks to question how Carla knows, not because he doesn’t believe it. It fits, of course it fits, but he wants to object, somehow. “I’ll talk to him,” he says. “Thank you for everything.”

“Of course,” she says warmly. “I’ll wait just outside to take Chris when he’s ready to leave, alright?”

Eddie nods gratefully.

He has to take a few minutes to recuperate when she’s gone, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. His strength is draining rapidly, and there’s still so much he needs to do.

“Dad?” Chris says.

“Hey buddy.” Eddie opens his eyes. Chris’s face is close to his, and Eddie tugs him close again. “You doing alright?”

“I had to tell Buck he was going to be okay,” Chris says with a small laugh. “It was scary. But you’re okay.”

“I am,” Eddie says. “I’m going to be hurt for a while, though.”

Chris nods seriously, tucking his little face into Eddie’s neck. Eddie wonders if his scent is dampened, if he smells as much of a wolf as he feels like one.

“So I’m going to ask you something. And I want you to promise that you’ll answer me honestly, okay?”

Chris nods. His hair tickles Eddie’s neck. “Okay. Promise.”

“Do you want to go to Texas? With grandma and abuelo?”

“Why?” Chris asks, lifting his head and blinking big blue eyes.

“I’ll be off work while I heal,” Eddie explains. “And- and I don’t want you to feel like you’re not able to talk to your family.”

Eddie is nervous about the healing process, scared that Chris is going to end up cooped up inside with him, that Buck will shut himself away and obsess over helping Eddie heal. The thought of it makes Eddie feel squirmy.

“But they don’t like Buck,” Chris states. Eddie hates that he had to hear that.

“They don’t know him, buddy. And- they think all these things about vampires. They’d never give Buck a chance.” Chris frowns. “But it’s because that’s all they know. And I don’t- we’re never moving back there for good, okay? We’re home. But if you want- and only if you want- we can go for a few months. However long it takes for me to be better. And then we’ll come right back, and you’ll know your family and your wolf a little better.”

“Like summer camp,” Chris says. “Werewolf camp.”

Eddie smiles softly, rubs his forehead against Chris’s until they’re both giggling. He’s sure his parents will be back soon to spoil his good mood and remind him of exactly what he’s signing up for, but with Chris close and happy, he thinks he can take on the world—even with an arm out of commission.

“We have to call Buck every day,” Chris says. Eddie nods easily. “And we can come back? If it sucks?”

Eddie snorts. “Of course.”

“Okay,” Chris says. His face brightens in excitement, and Eddie smiles back at him.

He falls asleep with Chris held close to him, and wakes up alone on the bed. Buck startles back when Eddie shifts, and it takes him a moment to realize that Buck had been leaning over him, and that he’s holding his hands behind his back like Chris with the praying mantis that he’d brought in the house.

“Hey Buck,” Eddie says. “Still hiding from my parents?”

“I could use some tips,” Buck grumbles. “You did so good staying away from mine.”

Eddie curls his lip at the memory of them. Buck always got- smaller, after extended time around his parents, like they made him less of himself. Avoiding them had been easy enough, because Eddie wanted nothing to do with them.

“You don’t have to,” Eddie says with an ineffectual shrug. “Let them see you.”

“Uh.” Buck blinks, forgetting that he’s hiding something behind his back and bringing his hands in front of his stomach to fidget with a small plastic pot. Eddie squints at, trying to be discrete, and he’s sure that he only succeeds because Buck is distracted. “You- They hate me? Right?”

“They hate vampires.”

“Of which I am. One. You know.”

“What’s in that?” Eddie asks, catching Buck off guard. He moves like he’s going to hide it again, and then sighs. “It’s the wolfsbane, right?”

Buck twists the lid off, and Eddie flinches back. He can’t smell it, and it looks unassuming enough—it could be a scented lotion by appearances—but something in his gut screams danger.

“It is. I have to- I mean, I’ve been applying it for you.”

“How often?”

“Twenty-four hours? Ish?”

“Thank you,” Eddie says. He feels like—not that he owes it to Buck, but that he wants Buck to feel it. How much Eddie appreciates him.

“It should have been me,” Buck blurts out. He scrunches his face up like he hadn’t meant to say it, but doesn’t take the words back. Eddie’s smile drops slowly, a tide of sadness rising in his chest. “I- I would have been fine. And even if I wasn’t- me- You have Chris. And- and I can’t stop thinking about how I should have reacted faster, or-”

“Buck,” Eddie says. Buck is still talking, but Eddie can hardly hear him over the ringing in his ears. Buck doesn’t get it. And maybe it’s Eddie’s fault—he knows Buck well enough to see the way his insecurities rise to the surface, knows the shapes they take. It’s all tied up in the ways Buck thinks he’s cursed, his unwavering belief in the universe’s plans. “Can you- help me sit up?”

He can tell Buck’s going to say no, so he does his best attempt at the wide eyes that Chris uses to get both of them to crumble, and bites back a little smile when it works.

Buck’s hands press at his back and front, leverage him to sitting. It clears Eddie’s head, surprisingly, and makes the ache in his shoulder sharper, but he doesn’t mind.

“After the well,” Eddie starts. Buck is still standing, hovering close like he wants to keep his hands on Eddie, make sure he’s really alive and solid. Sitting up has freed up space at the foot of the bed, and Eddie inclines his head toward it in clear invitation. Buck takes it—sitting, first perched on the edge of the bed and then seeming to notice the awkward angle he has to hold his body at to do it, and lying back. Eddie taps him through the thin hospital blanket with his foot, a little of his own reassurance that Buck is really here.

He thinks of that morning in Bobby’s office, just a few days removed from Eddie’s grave. He’d still been getting a feel for the changes in his body—it was like he’d suddenly become more comfortable in it, and he didn’t know how to hold himself without overthinking. His mind would reach for something to worry over, and then find that he was perfectly content just the way he was, like how he’d dropped himself into the chair facing Bobby’s desk with his legs casually spread and shoulders loose.

“Don’t tell me you’re here to ask to come back early,” Bobby’d said lightly, and Eddie could practically see the highlight reel of the rest of the team—mostly Buck—begging for shortened sick leaves like a bunch of freaks.

“No,” Eddie said. “It’s something else. A favor.”

Bobby looked a little weary, and Eddie could hardly blame him. But his voice was warm when he said, “Of course. Whatever I can help with.”

“If I die, I want Chris to go to Buck,” Eddie said it calmly. The words had lived under his tongue since he’d emerged from the earth and seen Buck waiting—or maybe earlier. They settled easily into the air, and Eddie didn’t feel the least bit nervous, which probably didn’t help the incredulous look Bobby gave him.

“I think that’s usually something lawyers handle,” Bobby’d said mildly. “You might be able to ask the union for help with a will.”

“Sure.” Eddie had struggled for a moment with how to make Bobby understand, without explaining that his parent’s probably wouldn’t respect a will, how he needed Buck to know that he was allowed to fight for Eddie’s son, though Eddie trusted implicitly that he would. “I just- I want Buck to know you have his back.”

“Did he think I wouldn’t?”

“Well,” Eddie paused. “He doesn’t know. Yet.”

Again, Bobby had blinked. Eddie would buy the guy a bottle of wine if not for- well. If not for him being Bobby.

“Eddie-”

“He wouldn’t say no,” Eddie said. “He loves Chris so much.”

“I don’t disagree,” Bobby said slowly. “But I do feel like I’m missing half the story here.”

“You know what Buck is.” A nod. “And how he gets. I will tell him. And I’m not- I’m not trying to hide anything, least of all from him. I’ll make things official legally, I’ll tell him eventually, I just need to hear you say that you’ll back him. Against my parents. And himself, if it comes to that.”

Eddie looks at Buck now, really looks. It’s hard to pick out a single throughline of feeling; his eyes are so soft where they fall on Eddie, and he’s relaxed as can be. Resting over him, under him, around him, is a shadow. Maybe the remnants of his worry, or a stain of Eddie’s blood. There’s no one tell to give away if what Carla had said is true—that Buck has been more reckless. It’s reflected only in his words, which Eddie needed no extra scent to verify as a worn-in belief.

“After the well,” Eddie repeats, because the silence has lapsed between them, as much as it can in the bustle of the hospital. “I changed my will. Talked to Bobby. If I die, Chris goes to you.”

“Me?” Buck asks, fragile as glass. Eddie sits up a little straighter, wishes he had the strength to pull Buck into his arms.

“There’s nobody in the world I trust with my son more than you.”

It was always true. Has been true, will be true, stretches between them like a rope anchored to their hearts. But saying the words out loud changes them. Fiber to metal, impossible to miss. Heavier, maybe, though it’s not a burden to carry.

Something keeps him from telling Buck about their El Paso plans. Eddie’s stuck in the hospital for a few more days at least, and while his parents come around more often than he’d prefer—they hover—they always bring Chris, so Eddie takes what he can get.

Eddie takes private joy in waiting for the moment that his parents run into Buck. He knows it’s Buck doing most of the heavy lifting to avoid them, and being back on shift means he pops in to visit at odd hours, but it feels like an inevitability.

Buck leaves the wolfsbane salve with him the day before his first shift back. Eddie feels a creeping sense of wrongness just unscrewing the top—upon closer look, it’s stored in a reused container for some sort of scented lotion, which is about what Eddie would expect from the means Buck had used to get it—but he pushes through.

“Do you usually put this on while I’m sleeping?” Eddie asks, a little redundantly since he has no memory of it ever being applied. It distracts him from the way he can’t keep his lip from curling back at the sight of the stuff, unassuming as it is.

Buck ducks his head. “Yeah. She said that, uh, it shouldn’t hurt as long as you keep using it.”

Eddie grunts. He touches the tip of his finger to it, and it doesn’t burn. Does he have to rub it on? Can’t he just stick his hand in?

“I can show you,” Buck offers, like Eddie doesn’t know to put lotion on—and he wasn’t that much of an absent mate, thank you—but Eddie accepts, because he’s trying to collect as many of Buck’s touches as he can get before depriving himself of them. Ironic, really, that they’ve been piling up while he’s slept, incapable of enjoying them.

He’ll fix it when he’s back. Texas is just—a temporary pause. A healing period, time to prepare for a glorious return to LA, where Eddie will take life by the reins and steer it just as he wants. It’s the kind of hope he needs to get through long, boring days in the hospital, healing as slow as a human.

Buck takes the little pot of wolfsbane back from Eddie, their fingers brushing ever so gently. He doesn’t have the same flinch when he gathers a small bit onto his fingers—Eddie is careful to take note of the amount, since he’ll have to do this himself—and looks down at Eddie, hesitation written clear on his face.

“Come on,” Eddie teases. “I can pretend to be asleep if you want.”

“Don’t do that,” Buck grumbles. “Just- Hold still.”

“Can’t do much else,” Eddie mutters, but he does as Buck says. He’s lying down still, doctor’s orders for no more sitting up after his brief stint at it had left him exhausted, and Buck is sitting closest to his injured arm.

“I just need to-” Buck says, and then he’s leaning over Eddie, his shirt riding up where he bends at an awkward angle to not brush against him. It’s ridiculous, how Eddie feels a strange mix of butterflies and amusement at the absurdity of it. If he had a free arm, he’d pull Buck down on top of him and laugh when he panicked about jostling Eddie’s injury.

Instead, he lies with his arms flat at his sides, and Buck presses the pads of his fingers to Eddie’s skin. He’s colder than the salve, but it’s a more vibrant cold than the inescapable chill of the hospital.

Like Buck had said, the salve doesn’t hurt, even as Buck presses it into his skin, up and down the middle of his arm. Like a normal lotion—and maybe this is all placebo, really, and Eddie is being dosed with nothing more than Snowflakes and Cashmere Body Butter—it takes a moment to fully disappear into his skin. There’s no magical glow or aching pain, and it’s mostly anticlimactic when Buck straightens back up.

“Do I get a sticker?”

“No,” Buck says. He looks a little—complicated. Like he’s feeling something that he can’t externalize properly, and it’s creating a little scrunch in his brow that Eddie wants to brush away. “You get this.”

He drops the lotion-salve-potion on Eddie’s bedside table—covered with cards that make him teary-eyed—sticks around for a few awkward minutes, and then ducks out with an excuse that Eddie barely hears.

Eddie is almost certain that Buck feels the same about him, shares the warm hum of love and want. He also knows Buck well enough that Buck doing anything about the thing between them is a flat-out impossibility. Eddie will fix it. He’ll draw Buck out of the shell that makes him shy to touch, make sure that he knows exactly how Eddie wants him.

“We’ll stay for a month or two,” he tells his parents. It’s just two days now until he’s let out, and he cannot wait. “We’ll have to drive—I might ask Buck to do it.”

He says it casually, watches their faces twitch with annoyance.

“Eddie, you know we can-”

“No, no, I couldn’t accept,” Eddie says. “You guys are probably dying to get home, right? You don’t need to wait around until I’m officially discharged.”

“Of course we do,” his father says. Worth a shot, Eddie thinks.

He’s less tolerant of them today—his buffer is in school, finishing out his last day before summer break—and Eddie mostly just wants to go back to sleep.

And then the door swings open, and Eddie’s heart rate picks up. Buck blinks at his parents, and they stare right back at him, and Eddie is so glad he’s finally been allowed to sit up.

“Buck!” he says, his excitement not at all for show. Patting the bed next to him when Buck hovers awkwardly in the door is a conscious choice though, one he delights in when his parents have to step awkwardly aside to let Buck through.

“Hey Eddie,” Buck whispers, like he can hide from the two wolves staring him down. Eddie nudges their shoulders together, and doesn’t move away. He’s not so weak that he really needs to lean against Buck, but he’d gladly use it as an excuse if questioned.

“You just get off shift?”

“Yeah.”

“How was it?”

“Wasn’t so bad,” Buck shrugs, and Eddie feels every movement.

“Miss me?”

Buck groans. “Yes. I’m partnered up with one of the probies and-” he tenses, seems to remember that Eddie’s parents are still in the room. “It’s a, uh, learning experience,” he finishes like he’s in a job interview. Eddie bites back an amused snort.

“Have you met my parents?” he asks. “Buck, Helena, Ramon.”

“Hi,” Buck says. He raises the arm that’s not pressed against Eddie in a little wave, and Eddie is so entirely besotted by him. “Nice to meet you.”

Like Eddie had known they would be, his parents are awkwardly cordial. He would never put Buck in a position of genuine danger—if he thought his parents would do anything to hurt him, he’d have made sure Buck kept his distance, and he would never plan for time in El Paso.

His parents leave after a few minutes, and Eddie knows that it’s time.

“I need to tell you something,” he says to Buck. Tragically, Buck scoots a bit away from him on the hospital bed.

“I don’t know if I’m ready to hear about any more of your will,” Buck jokes.

Eddie rewards that with an eye roll, though his chest warms at the reminder. “It is a favor, in part.”

“Anything.”

“Chris and I- We’re going to El Paso,” Eddie pauses to watch Buck’s face. It flickers first with confusion, and then hurt, and finally settles into something like resignation. “Only until I’m healed. I just- I want Chris to get a chance to experience pack life.”

Buck nods slowly, hands fidgeting in his lap. “And you?”

“Me?”

“You want to- to try it out too, right? Now that you can shift?”

“Oh,” Eddie frowns. He hadn’t thought much of what he’d been doing in El Paso—he’d mostly imagined long days sitting on porch swings and watching Chris tumble in the dust with his cousins. “No. I know what I want.”

“It doesn’t hurt to try though, right?” Buck’s got his head tilted, curls messy from a long shift and flopping over his forehead. “You might like it.”

Eddie levels him with a steady look. Buck meets it with his own bravado, and injury be damned, Eddie reaches for him. It’s a familiar motion in an unfamiliar world, Eddie’s hand on Buck’s shoulder, his thumb pressing against his collarbone.

“I’m coming back,” he says. “Me and Chris, we’re both coming back, and when we do, I’ll be healed. And- Will you look after the house? While we’re gone?”

It’s probably the thing Eddie feels the most guilt over. He’s stepping into Abby’s shoes, leaving Buck behind—all but trapping him, knowing what his instincts will say—and yet he asks it anyway. Maybe it’s a twisted part of him that wants to prove that he isn’t like her. Maybe he likes knowing Buck will be waiting for him to come home.

“Of course,” Buck breathes. “Eddie- You don’t even have to ask.”

Eddie laughs softly. He’s looking at Buck, and Buck is looking right back at him, but there’s all this space between them. When Eddie opens his arms, Buck folds himself right into them.

He’s gentler than Eddie wants him to be, but there’s a beauty to the softness. Both of them capable of destruction, violence built into their DNA, and yet they hold each other so tenderly.

“You ever driven to Texas?” Eddie asks into Buck’s shoulder.

He’s got a whole entourage for his official discharge. Bobby, Hen, and Chimney, his parents and Chris, and Buck. He grins wide at them, making a show of spreading his arms wide and taking in the sun. It’s a beautiful day, cloudless without being hot, and Eddie would quite like to spend it doing little more than relaxing on a lawn chair at a 118 get together, but there isn’t one planned. Things have been fraught, recently, so he takes what he can get with the little parking lot gathering. His parents leave for their own drive back to Texas after a quick series of hugs, and Eddie feels a weight temporarily lifted off his shoulders.

And then it’s just him and Buck and Chris, in Buck’s Jeep, since it was easier for Eddie to climb into. Tomorrow, they’ll drive to Texas. Buck’d tried to argue that Eddie should rest longer, and Eddie had shot him down—there’s an anxious storm in him, eager to get to Texas and start the next phase of his life, as much as he’s looking at it as a stepping stone.

Buck insists on ice cream. It’s hot, Eddie. Yeah dad! Eddie pretends to grumble about it, just to be hit with matching pairs of puppy dog eyes.

“How many shirts do you need?” Buck asks, later. Eddie is sprawled on his own bed, enjoying the comfort of his space for the one night he’s given himself. “All of them?”

“Not all of them,” Eddie says. He squints at the ceiling, tries to do the math on it, but their return date is so hazy it quickly becomes ineffectual. “Maybe go for half.”

Buck hums, and there are a few more dull thuds of clothing being tossed into an open suitcase than Eddie thinks are necessary.

He sighs, just to fill his lungs with a needy breath of air, like he can memorize his and Chris and Buck’s little house in LA if he tastes it enough times. Maybe he could, if his wolf senses were back online.

As if reading his mind, Buck asks, offhand, “What’s it like? Being- You know.”

“Weak?” Eddie suggests.

“Un-wolf-ified.”

“Definitely not a word,” Eddie snorts.

“Eddie,” Buck whines. He tosses something at Eddie’s head, a shirt with the graphics cracked with wear, and Eddie bats it out of the air without thinking. It jars his injured arm the smallest bit, and he bites back a wince. When he carefully lobs it back at Buck, far weaker than he’d like, it lands perfectly on his head, and only comes off when Buck shakes like a dog.

“Sucks,” Eddie says in answer. “I miss smelling things.” Buck hums in sympathy. “And there are so many things where I’m like, am I even being affected, or is it in my head?”

It’s the bonds, mostly. His most defined one has always been with Chris. And he’d swear he can still feel it, glowing bright and warm in his chest, but doubt colors his every thought around it. It’s never been a physical thing that he can reach out and touch, but it feels more immaterial than ever, and it’s made him question what a bond’s meant to feel like at all.

“I keep telling myself it’s not forever,” he admits, feeling oddly vulnerable. Obviously it’s not forever. What’s he even doing, complaining about something that’ll be over soon to Buck, who believes wholeheartedly that his entire life is cursed? “But I can’t help thinking that- that something might be changed, when this is all over.”

Change can be good, Eddie tells himself firmly.

“I hate change,” Buck says, and then laughs at himself. “Sorry. I mean- You know. It’s okay.”

“Thanks, Buck,” Eddie says dryly.

“I’ll be here.” Eddie hears a shuffling, and then Buck’s face pops up next to his. “No matter what, you know?”

Chapter Text

Buck doesn’t remember much after leaving Texas.

It’s probably for the best, honestly—nothing goes partiuclarly well, in those long two months that Eddie is gone.

He lives vicariously through the updates Eddie sends, through the timbre of his voice on their long calls. Chris is having a blast, apparently, and Eddie is working his way through a dusty stack of paperbacks that he swears up and down are not erotica.

Buck does remember the hug Eddie had pulled him into just inside the doors of the El Paso airport. He’d shoved his nose into Buck’s neck right there in front of all the bustling business people in their suits, and they’d held each other for a long, long moment. Buck was so lost in the feeling of it that he forgot to worry about Eddie jostling his injured arm. Chris, too, had insisted on a sleepy hug, and then Buck had turned away with teary eyes.

He made it back to LA. Had he taken an Uber from the airport back to Eddie’s too empty house? Did someone pick him up? He has no earthly idea.

It only gets worse when Maddie leaves.

Buck feels like his life has become one long, fucked up math equation—add in a new perfect and beautiful niece, take away his best friend and the best kid he knows and his sister. It’s easier to shut down than to deal with all the emotions that try to grip him.

He puts on a brave face, because he’s not sure how not to. Reassures Eddie—and means it—that he needs to follow through and stay in Texas until he’s healed. Writes down all the things he wants to tell Maddie in some twisted version of the postcards he’d fruitlessly sent for years and years, and then tosses the crumpled bits of paper in Eddie’s trash.

“Full moon tonight,” Eddie says, like Buck doesn’t have it marked down on the physical calendar hanging in the kitchen—golden retriever themed, thanks Hen—and alerts set on his phone. “You got plans?”

“Staying in,” Buck says breezily. He had a shift today. The only call he remembers is carefully lifting a bookshelf off a college kid, and the copy of Dracula she’d offered him as thanks. He’s thumbing through the pages as he talks to Eddie, enjoying the feel of old paper against his skin.

The thought to make plans hadn’t even crosses his mind. This is only the second full moon Eddie’s been away—one had fallen just a few days after he’d arrived in Texas—and already Buck’s got himself a twisted ritual.

It makes sense, really, to feed on the night of the full moon. Any firefighter—save for Eddie, probably—could tell you that the full moon always makes people act weird. And it’s not like he’s doing it because he knows Eddie is also experiencing supernatural urges at the same time—Eddie can’t shift still, the wolfsbane keeping him trapped in his human skin.

Eddie groans, slumping further down in the armchair he’s taken over. Buck enjoys his dramatics, brought on especially strong recently by proximity to his family and the deifnitely-not-erotica—if it really wasn’t, he’d tell Buck the titles!

“Hate that I can’t,” he says. “My kids out there and I’m in here. My mom, she told me she recorded the game—and she didn’t.”

Buck poorly hides a laugh. “Rough, man.”

“Man,” Eddie grumbles. He’d probably take offense to anything Buck called him right now, which does just make Buck want to press his buttons. “I’m still paying for your cable right?” Buck nods at his phone, which always feels dumb.

“I can take a video for you,” Buck jokes. He flips the camera around, points it across the living room at Eddie’s TV. It’s currently on a channel that plays a looping video of the ocean floor, that Buck keeps on most hours.

“Line her up, Buckley,” Eddie says. Buck pretends to fumble the camera around, shaking it until he almost makes himself nauseus. “You memorize this video yet?”

“Yellow fish in the top right corner- Now,” Buck says, and on queue a giant yellow fish appears on screen.

Eddie whistles. “That a vampire thing?”

“No clue.” Buck flips the camera back around, tucks his fangs back from where they’d dropped. His hunger is intense, a toll of two of the people he spends most of his time with being out of the state, but he wants this call to go on forever.

It does last a good while. He can see his own loneliness echoed in Eddie; the way he goes a little quiet and stares somewhere past the phone screen, the echo of his voice in an empty house.

But eventually, Eddie sighs. “Phones gonna die,” he says, and Buck can see him squinting at the little number in the corner. “Might as well just sleep.”

“Me too,” Buck lies.

Eddie squints suspiciously at him, but, Buck thinks with a pit in his stomach, there’s not much he can do to argue the point.

“Alright,” Eddie sighs. “Well, call you tomorrow?”

Buck nods, mumbles a night, Eddie, and then the house is plunged into true quiet.

It itches under his skin, merges with his hunger into a two-headed beast that Buck gladly surrenders himself to.

There’s a man in a bar bathroom, panting into Buck’s neck. Buck drags him up into a sloppy kiss, selfishly. He’d been too close to Eddie’s spot, a remembered, joking conversation about messing with Buck’s parents. God, how Buck wishes he had that bite now—a reminder he could never escape, that he was important to his best friend.

Is. Is important to Eddie, will be important to Eddie, when he’s healed and back in LA.

Buck bites meanly at the man’s lip, swallows his moan. It would be so easy to fit his teeth to his wrist. To take more than heat, more than the rush of skin on skin and tongues brushing.

Maybe some part of Buck can admit that that, too, is an honor he’s keeping to Eddie. There’s been nothing but packaged blood since the night of the tsunami.

The man—and Buck doesn’t think they exchanged names, so he hardly feels bad for not knowing—is moving against him. Buck spits in his palm and takes him in hand, laughing under his breath at the small gasp he earns, more due to the cold of his skin than his movement. It’s over fast, and Buck only bats his lashes teasingly when he offers to return the favor, leaving the crowded stall with a fleeting kiss.

He’s already got the blood bag tucked in a cooler in his car—decorated with stickers both to divert suspicion and because he’d thought it would be funny—but he doesn’t want to suck it down in a dingy parking lot. His mind wanders as he drives, the lights of the road a blur.

It’s not the first time he’s sought out a man for his pre-feeding ritual. He’d never considered it, really, before; but it hardly makes a difference where he gets the warmth of life from.

Eventually, he parks in a small lot that overlooks some of the city. It’s abandoned enough, his only company a car squatted in the opposite corner.

He slides his seat back a little, fishes the blood bag out of the cooler to sit in his lap and warm for a few minutes. When he closes his eyes and leans back into the headrest, he thinks of the bar bathroom. Big hands pushing up under his shirt, lips on the skin of his neck.

Quick and hungry, that’s how it always goes—like the people Buck uses are feeding off his energy.

The scene playing behind his eyelids slows down. The hands on him are teasing, running up his spine with unhurried, dragging touches. He’s looking at the ceiling, washed out in warm lighting, tracing his eyes over a familiar water stain.

Hot breaths hit the junction of his neck and shoulder. He arches into the touch, presses closer, hoping for- There. Teeth sink into his skin, claiming. Sharp and sure, hot and heavy. It’ll stick. He knows it will, feels it to his core. His lips move around a name, fangs catching on his dry lips.

“Eddie,” he murmurs into the lonely dark of the car. A cold chill runs down his spine, phantom hands vanishing into the night. Before he fully loses his conviction, he brings the blood bag to his mouth and bites in. It goes down bad, stale and lifeless, but stains his lips.

He stares across the horizon, tries his hardest not to think. It’s like trying to put a stopper on a fire hydrant.

Admitting that he misses Eddie physically is easy. His presence is defined by the touch they share, and now it’s a gaping emptiness. Hearing his voice over the phone doesn’t fulfill the same needs, though Buck doubts that Eddie is going through anything similar; he’s surrounded by wolves. Buck is a pretender, greedy for far more than he needs.

And the rest is just the wires of his brain getting crossed. Eddie is his best friend. Buck would never use him.

He worries that he’s going to give himself away, when Eddie calls next. Propping his phone on a shelf in the kitchen and making his way slowly through the cabinets with a duster is a good enough shield, he decides, and Eddie doesn’t comment on it, just settles into a retelling of Chris’s full moon night.

“And he’s still asleep,” Eddie finishes with a small laugh. “Really wore himself out.”

Buck smiles over at the screen. When he doesn’t look at it, it almost feels like Eddie’s really in the house with him—his voice bouncing off the walls, like it should.

“You guys have a dust storm blow through?” Eddie asks mildly.

“Oh-” Buck stutters. “Just, you know, want the house to be nice. For when you, uh, get back. Or- I mean, it would be nice anyway-”

“Buck,” Eddie laughs. The way he says his name on an exhale throws Buck right back into his temporary insanity of the night before, and he tries to take all his excess of energy out on a high corner shelf. “Should be soon, you know.”

Buck freezes. He schools his face before turning, tries to hide his elation. “Really?” he asks, trying so hard to keep his voice flattened that it comes out almost disinterested.

He sees Eddie’s shoulders shake with laughter. “Yes, really,” he says. “Shoulders almost healed. I’ve talked to pretty much the whole pack at this point, and most of them say the healing should be working at a good rate now, with how little wolfsbane I’m using.” He always shivers when he says it. Buck, unfortunately, finds it endearing. He should hate the stuff, for poisoning his best friend, but it’s usefulness is a barrier.

“Anyway,” Eddie says with a little shake of his head. “I think Chris is ready to be back, too.”

That surprises Buck. Everything Eddie has told him about Chris in Texas makes it sound like he’s happy as a kid in a candy store. “Really?” he says again.

Eddie hums. He jostles the screen, and Buck assumes that he’s changed positions. When he squints, he can see the yellow comforter that Eddie’s been complaining about. Not the first time he’s called from bed, but- Buck’s mind is still all twisted up.

“They keep trying to tell him all the things I used to get lectured on about vampires,” he says. “Kid drives them all crazy with stories about you.”

Buck blushes, down to his chest. It’s not just Chris sticking up for him—Eddie’s voice is so fond, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

“And I don’t exactly help,” Eddie snorts. “He gets goin’ on something, I’ll be right there with him. My mom’d probably try to ban the work Buck if she thought we’d listen.”

It makes such a clear picture in Buck’s mind—Eddie, all poorly disguised mirth, his mouth forming around the Buck Buck Buck over and over again. His parents looking on with feigned mild disapproval. He wants to take the snapshot and print it out, tuck it safe in his wallet to pull out on cold days.

His face must be saying all the things his voice can’t because Eddie’s grin turns soft at the edges. “We’ll be back before you know it,” he promises in a lower voice. Buck can’t resist grabbing the phone to cradle it between his palms, holding Eddie right up to his face. “There you are,” he says. “Got all the dust.”

“Sure,” Eddie says. “You fed last night?”

“How’d you-” Buck splutters, peering at the tiny square of his face on the phone like he’ll find a speck of blood dotted on his lips.

“You’re blushing a whole lot, bud.”

Buck groans and tilts the camera away from his face, gives Eddie a nice view of the water damage on the ceiling.

Eddie is wrong about the time passing quickly. Every day drags—and it doesn’t help that Buck doesn’t have a specific date to look forward to. Chimney leaves. The team feels hollowed out, and Buck is always looking over his shoulder for something. Each reminder of all the missing pieces stings.

He tries to keep himself busy. Pickup basketball is a no-go—he wishes Eddie were there, to tease him for his awful jump shot—and every other hobby that appeals to him takes place under the hot summer sun.

It’s pure coincidence when he ends up in a vampire bar.

Tucked into a gap between buildings, a deceptively small bouncer gives him a once-over and then shoves the door open. Buck, who’d been heading somewhere entirely different to nurse a beer and try to feed off the energy of a big sporting event, goes through with wide eyes, a litany of be cool, be cool, playing in his head.

It’s not so different from every other dive bar he’s been in—low lights, murmurs of voices overlapping, bartenders moving like wraiths behind the boundary of the bartop.

Buck peers around as discreetly as he can, eyes catching on the deep red of the drinks. He can smell it too, thick as smoke in the air, and it calls to the steady thrum of hunger within him.

He’s saved from deciding if he wants to commit to this whole thing or turn tail and flee when he hears an “Evan?” called across the room.

It’s easy to pick out the speaker, because he’s the only one who’ll meet Buck’s eyes—everyone else gets shifty, looks at him behind raised glasses or from the side. Connor isn’t the last person Buck expects to see, but he sure as hell wouldn’t be high on the list. He feels an older—younger?—version of himself settle in as he hustles to cross the floor, barely getting around a few people.

“Hey man!” he says, excitedly. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

Connor meets his offered hand with a hearty grip, pulling Buck in for a brief hug. He’s introduced to a slew of people, and it takes a few minutes of conversation to shake the cobwebs from his brain, but soon enough Buck is settled in and chatting like he’s known all of them forever.

He’d met Connor during his time in Peru, followed him to LA. It was a rebellion for both of them, two vampires sticking together and heading into no-man’s land. Connor knew his true age and never seem intimidated when it stacked up to his far fewer vampiric years. They’d made a good enough duo, though losing contact had been sort of inevitable—Buck had settled into a new life, and he learns now that Connor has too.

Married. It hardly sounds real, but Connor says it so casually—a simple my wife dropped in the midst of conversation—and Buck has to take a moment to blink, and readjust his understanding of reality.

The table is full of vampires, each of them sipping at a different drink. It’s the variety Buck’d expect at a bar, but every one is clearly flavored with blood. He waves off offers to order his own, still a few weeks out from needing to feed.

Everything seems to exist in that vein here; so close to normal that it’s easy enough to pretend. Buck has never spent so much time around a large group of vampires. He doesn’t know if he’s doing good—does he fidget in his seat too much compared to their easy stillness? Can they smell the last of Eddie’s scent on him, derived only from the left behind bits of clothing Buck’s found? It’s not like he can ask for a performance review.

But he makes it through. The crowd around them doesn’t dwindle, but their little group does, until it’s just him and Connor.

“So,” Buck says. “Tell me about your wife! I feel like I missed everything.”

“Kameron,” Connor says on a happy sigh, a smile taking over his face. “She’s the best. Human- only reason she’s not here. We’ve been talking about her turning.”

Buck tries not to let his shock show on his face. “T-turning? You’re gonna do it?”

“That’s the problem,” he says. “Neither of us want it to be me who turns her- Weird side effects, you know? I mean, some people are into that,” he holds up his hands, glances around like someone might be listening in. “And that’s fair. Just not for us.”

“Huh. I’d never even thought of that.”

“I’m sure any vampire in here would volunteer for it,” Connor mutters into his glass. “Hard to trust just anyone, though.”

Buck glances at the empty chairs clustered around their table, though not with any degree of seriousness. In an abstract way, he gets it—his experience with his sire was bad enough. He can’t imagine putting trust into just anyone to hold that kind of power.

“Yeah, we debated asking a few of them,” Connor says, as if reading his mind. “Couldn’t agree on anyone. Most of them are younger than me—still getting used to things.”

Buck nods along. “Well,” he clears his throat, tries to muster up the words to be polite when he has no idea how to navigate this situation. “Hope you guys can find someone.”

Connor dips his head in acknowledgement and throws back the rest of his drink. Midway through setting it down, he pauses and looks at Buck with wide eyes. Buck shifts under his gaze, not sure what’s caused the sudden change in mood. The voices around them seem quieter, everything steeped in a severity that seeped in through the vents.

“You’re the most controlled vampire I’ve ever met,” Connor says. “I mean- I’ve never seen you lose yourself. And you’ve got a hundred years on everyone in here, probably.”

Oh no, Buck thinks.

“I’d need to talk to Kameron, obviously, but would you- would you consider it? Being the one to turn her?”

“Of course,” Buck responds before he can think better of it. Connor’s face lights up, the brightest thing in the whole bar, and Buck offers a weak smile in return. “Your number still the same?”

“What- Oh, yeah, it is. Call me. Or maybe- I’ll let you know what Kam says.” Buck can see him fight his smile for a moment, but it comes creeping back. “Man, this is so great. What are the chances, huh?”

“This is my first time here,” Buck admits. He might have mentioned it earlier, but most of the conversation is hazy at best in his memory.

“Crazy,” Connor laughs. “I come here like, once a year to see those guys.” He waves a hand to indicate their departed tablemates. “Hey, you hardly told me anything about yourself. Still doing the firefighting gig?”

“I am, yeah,” Buck says, shaking off some of his weird mood—he’ll think about it later, he promises himself. “One of those things that’s hard to quit once you start.”

Connor shudders. “I can’t imagine, man. All that fire.”

“‘S not so bad,” Buck shrugs. “Nice to have a team.”

“Girlfriend?”

Buck winces. “Not… At the moment. My uhm, my best friend- I live with him.”

He’s not going to unpack that association.

“Another frat house situation?” Connor jokes. “Or more of a live-in grocery store thing?”

“A- oh,” Buck blinks at him, has to consciously shut his mouth from where he’s gawping like an idiot. “Only once,” he admits in a rush. “And it was a-an emergency.” Connor shrugs, like this makes perfect sense, but Buck can’t keep his mouth shut. “I wouldn’t do it again. He’s too important to me.”

Something about saying it out loud feels good. Soothes an ache of self-doubt—obviously the things he says mean more than the thoughts he can’t beat back, or strange slips lonely in his car.

“Best friend, huh.”

“My partner,” Buck says warmly. “We work crazy good together. The firefighting dream team.”

Connor gives him a look that Buck can’t quite decipher—it’s got an assessing edge, like Buck is a puzzle he’s just worked out. “That’s great,” he says after a beat. “Really. I was worried about you, you know. Running into fires.”

Buck ducks his head, wishes momentarily for a drink of his own.

He regales Connor with a few work stories, tries to be conscious of not getting too deep into it because he knows how he can be. Most of them center around him and Eddie, obviously, but talking about him seems to ease the distance, if only for a little while.

Eventually, Connor’s phone buzzes. “The misses,” he says, nodding to it like he and Buck are in on the same joke. “I’d better get going. I’ll let you know what she thinks about, you know-” he gestures to his own neck and then at Buck. “-and you get back to me whenever you want.”

Buck stands, wincing at the scrape of his chair, and is pulled into another of the quick bro-hugs that Connor seems to specialize in.

The cool night air is a welcome respite from the stuffy bar. He’s got a bit of a walk, but he takes it happily, content to be by himself—until his phone rings.

“Hello?” he says curiously, the contact as familiar to him as the ceiling of the bedroom that’s not quite his. Eddie never calls this late, though, thanks to the time difference and his old-man sleep schedule.

“What’re you doing out?” Eddie asks, his voice rumbling. Buck nearly walks into a lamp post. “Don’t you have a shift tomorrow?”

“Yes, dad.”

Eddie huffs at him, the sound bordering on a growl, and it’s the most wolfish he’s sounded in weeks. A thready strand of hope ignites in Buck’s chest. “Fun?”

“I went into a vampire bar.” He drops his voice on the last few words, though the street around him is mostly deserted. “Wasn’t as cool as it sounds.”

A curious hum from Eddie is all the prompting he needs to tumble into a drawn-out explanation of what the place had been like—he gets a little passionate, talking about the decor thanks to a recent HGTV binge. Eddie isn’t quite as responsive as normal, but Buck figures it’s only because of the late hour.

“The drinks were actually blood?” Eddie asks when Buck gets around to them. There’s no disgust coloring his voice, just genuine curiosity and a healthy dose of shock.

“I didn’t try one but-” Buck shrugs like Eddie can see him, “-looked and smelled like it.”

“Where the hell do they get that?” Eddie muses. “Surprised you didn’t ask.”

“Sometimes it’s better not to know things. I was a little distracted—Did I ever tell you about Connor?”

“Connor?” Eddie repeats. Buck is intrigued to catch a harder edge that just barely comes through the speaker. “Don’t think you’ve ever mentioned him. A vampire?”

“My roommate, before Abby.”

“Huh.”

“One of like, six,” Buck snorts. “You’re a real step up from that, in case you didn’t know. But yeah. Vampire. It was like- fate. Not that you’d think so,” Buck teases, just to hear Eddie huff at him again. “We had a lot of catching up to do—he’s married. And uh-” he stops himself, bites his tongue.

Can he tell Eddie about Connor’s ask? It might be crossing some kind of boundary, especially with Eddie being a wolf. That alone wouldn’t usually be enough to stop Buck—telling Eddie everything is second nature to him—but then he wonders what Eddie might think of it, and that rolls into poking at what he thinks of it.

“Buck?” Eddie prompts, after a few moments of silence.

“Sorry,” Buck says. “Lost my train of thought. Straight off the rails, hah.”

He’s never turned anyone. Never even come close. It’s an instinctual thing as far as he knows, how much blood to take and when to offer it back, the whole- burial. Buck assumes that Connor will handle that. Maybe it could be fun? His own memories overlay the imagined scene, and even if he tries to picture Kameron—whom he has no mental reference for—all he can see is that lonely clearing.

“Hello? Did I lose you?” Eddie’s voice fades out, like he’s holding the phone away from his ear to squint at it. “Buck? You there?”

Always, Buck thinks. “Must have lost you for a second,” he says weakly. “But uh, tell me about your day?”

“Your service dropped in the middle of the city?” Eddie asks skeptically, like he hadn’t been the one to suggest it first.

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

Buck is at his car now, and he sighs to himself as he slides into the driver's seat. He misses Eddie so much. It lives in his chest, beats at his heart and lungs.

“Why are you still up?” Buck asks softly. He’s just sitting in the Jeep, gazing across the dashboard and trying not to get too sentimental about all the roads he’s seen through this very windshield. Connor is married.

He can hear Eddie shuffling around, a rustle that gives him away as being settled in bed, probably cozy as anything, while Buck is crammed into the seat of his car. He always likes driving Eddie’s truck for the legroom alone. When he speaks again, his voice is quieter, but crisper, like he’s got his mouth closer to the microphone. “Had a big day here.”

“Oh?” Buck says. He’s got a little polaroid of Eddie and Chris on the inside of his sun visor, and he flips it down to stare at it, wonders if Chris has grown while they’ve been away.

“Yeah,” Eddie murmurs. Buck can picture his lips around the word. Maybe the drier climate of El Paso has chapped them. Maybe he’s got a little stubble, darkening his handsome face. “Last day on the wolfsbane.”

Buck feels fireworks go off in his chest, too loud and too bright for the hour and the place. He hangs up the phone, and redials it as a video call so fast the screen can barely keep up, and then Eddie’s face is in the car with him, and the world feels a little more balanced.

Eddie grins at him, and flashes his teeth—fangs pearly white and sharp and wild—with his head pillowed on his arm.

“Already?” Buck asks, tilting his own head at the screen since Eddie’s got it held sideways.

“I couldn’t shift if I tried,” Eddie says. “But I was on such a low dose that it wore off quick, when I didn’t reapply. Feels like the first shift all over again though- my instincts are all over the place.”

Buck hums sympathetically, but he’s still grinning like an idiot so it probably isn’t all that comforting. A question dances on the tip of his tongue, and he puffs his cheeks out to keep it in. Eddie is confiding in him. It’s not the time for-

“We’ll probably drive back in, oh, two or three days,” Eddie says casually. Well, he clearly wants it to be casual, but Buck hasn’t taken his eyes off him since the camera came on and he sees the way he shifts again, how his eyes meet Buck’s with a little smile tucked up in the corner of his mouth. “Say our goodbyes, make sure my healing works out right.”

Buck is going to die, for the second time, right here in his Jeep. He makes an embarrassing noise, somewhere between a squeak and Eddie’s name.

Eddie laughs as he sits up, the yellow comforter disappearing entirely from view. Buck sort of misses it, until Eddie’s face is really filling the screen, and his eyes are crinkling at the edges with laughter and he’s looking at Buck like he feels all the same things Buck is feeling.

It’s as if the hope he’d rush off with, every time without fail after a shift, thinking that Abby could have returned, has finally been paid off. Like stepping into a room and finding his parents waiting for him with open arms, no scrapes or bruises needed to draw their affection. Like a quiet night in a familiar kitchen, Eddie warm against his back and alive against his lips.

“Two days,” Buck repeats.

“Could be three.”

“Can it not be?”

Eddie shakes his head at the camera, fondness radiating off of him. Buck has the insane urge to press his cheek against the screen, like he’ll be able to feel him closer. “Hey,” Eddie says. “I’d be back there now if I could, you know.”

“I kind of stink like a vampire right now.”

“We’ll fix that,” Eddie says easily.

Buck sighs happily. Connor’s offer still hangs over his head, but it feels so much more manageable knowing Eddie’ll be back soon. He knows he won’t be able to resist telling his best friend about it when they’re face to face, and he doesn’t have it in him to feel guilty about it—they’re a two-for-one deal.

He keeps Eddie propped up in his cup holder for the whole drive home, letting his mind and his words wander to anything and everything. Eddie gets progressively sleepier, and it’s a hard-fought battle for Buck not to watch his blinks drag longer and longer.

“You even remember the address?” Buck jokes softly as he walks across the driveway. “It’s been so long.”

Eddie makes a noise in the back of his throat, not quite a growl and not quite a laugh. “You think you’re so funny.”

Buck hip checks the door to get it all the way open, gently as he can. “You give me an ego.”

“Me?”

“No one else laughs at my jokes,” Buck says lightly. No one else laughs like Eddie does—cheeks pinkening with the warmth of it.

He gets a view of it now, for the split second before Eddie moves the camera away from his face. Soon—soon!—he won’t be able to do it anymore. Buck will have unending access to Eddie’s face.

The promise of it gets him through shift the next day, starting bright and early.

He can feel that he’s more grounded. He smiles when Hen waves at him, sips his coffee slowly to enjoy it. It helps that Eddie texts him throughout the day with updates, tone growing more incredulous with every absurd thing his mother says to try and convince him and Chris to stay. He knows he’s full on giggling at his phone, but he is well and truly powerless to stop it.

It’s a sign of how out of it he’s been prior that no one even teases him. He almost wants to ask them to, bring back a little more normalcy, but he figures it’s probably better to let it happen naturally.

Shift ends. A long twenty-four off starts, and Buck triple-checks with Eddie, but they haven’t started the drive yet. “Might be two more days,” he admits, and Buck groans dramatically, though nothing can really bring his mood down. “We’re really trying,” Eddie adds. “It’s like a damn house of mirrors.”

“But the mirrors are all wolves.”

“Right.” A pause. “No.”

Buck giggles. “I’m going to enjoy my last few days sleeping on a bed,” he says as he lounges back on the couch. “Kind of got used to the life of luxury.”

“You don't have to go back to the couch.”

“You’re not taking it,” Buck argues. “And an air mattress would be so annoying to deal with.”

“We can just share,” Eddie says, like it’s obvious. “Might need a bigger mattress but, you know. I don’t mind. Spend less on electricity with you cooling me down.”

“Huh,” Buck muses. “Not a bad idea.”

Eddie makes a smug little noise. Buck drags him into an argument over acceptable temperatures to keep the house at, and the Eddie-less hours tick further down.

Hen makes him hang out during their day off. She says they both need to get out of the house, and Buck can’t disagree, so he tags along with her and Karen to a space museum. It’s arguably one of the best days he’s had, ever, picking Karen’s brain about all sorts of things and enjoying Hen’s company. They avoid the sun, a consciousness that makes him overly emotional, and he ends the day with a group hug for both of them before they have to pick the kids up from school.

He sleeps like the dead. He wakes up smiling—one more shift, plus a few more hours, and Eddie and Chris will be home.

They’ve both been sending him pictures of packed suitcases. Eddie is spending today pampering his truck, as Buck has gleefully dubbed it, changing the oil and taking it through a car wash—vetted to use the kind of machines that don’t scratch paint—all for a long, dusty drive. Buck texts i don’t know if theres room on the driveway anymore i got another jeep and Eddie says Liar you are loyal to your one jeep and Buck types back yeah I am and then he has to set his phone aside because he’s supposed to be making breakfast and smiling is getting in the way of it.

At lunch he sends are werewolves monogomous or is it like a mormon situation and Eddie sends him back three wolf emojis, which doesn’t really clear anything up.

Dinner is marked with a picture of Eddie’s truck posed and gleaming in front of a lake. Buck types out do u jerk off to that and then deletes it. During the digital silence while he tries to think of something more appropriately teasing to say, Eddie adds, sexy right? and Buck can’t hold back a snort.

He catches Hen’s eyes on him, and shoots her a cowed smile. Her’s is a little shaky when she returns it.

“He’ll come back too,” he tells her, with a confidence he probably hasn’t earned. “All the chickens, you know, they come home to roost.”

Hen swats at him, face softening. “Thanks, Buckaroo. I know you’re missing Maddie like crazy.”

“My two Dee’s,” he sighs. “And your… Nee.”

“I can also miss Eddie, you know.”

Buck blinks. “I mean, yeah? He’s pretty great. But he’s my partner.”

“Woah, put the fangs away.” She flicks him right between the eyebrows, and he scowls over his very human teeth. “I’m not getting in the way of you and Eddie’s thing. I’m just saying- you do miss Chim, yeah?’

“Yeah,” Buck scoffs. “But come on Hen, you know what I meant.”

“You love something-something D.”

“Homophobic. And half of that was my sister.”

Her raised eyebrow is truly a sight to behold. Is Buck bisexual?

“You spent half of yesterday asking my wife if a vampire could walk on the moon without a spacesuit,” she deadpans.

“It was a good, you know, hypothetical,” he says with a glance around at the firefighters filling in for their missing team, who aren’t so privy to the intricacies of Buck’s existence. “How’d you know you were into girls?”

He’s a little wired, okay? Shift has been so slow. And Eddie won’t be up to distract him with how early he’d turned in for bed to be able to get up bright and early and start the drive back. So he’s got all this energy, and Hen is the obvious target.

“You want to tell me something?” she asks, halfway to gentle. “ I’ve just always known, I guess.”

“I mean, I’ve had sex with guys before,” Buck says, easy enough. “But that’s like, normal.”

“Normal,” Hen repeats. She takes a deep breath in, closes her eyes for a moment.

Buck isn’t actually dumb, he just—he can’t properly articulate what he wants to say, with all the people chattering around them, silverware scraping on plates for on-shift dinner. He’s only had sex with men for the purpose of feeding. He enjoys it, sure, but all he’s chasing is the proximity. Is that real attraction?

“Forget about all of that for a second,” Hen says. “Past experience, if you don’t want to count it. You know what it feels like to find a woman attractive?” He nods. “Okay. Picture an attractive man.”

He shoves away the image of Eddie that pops into his mind. Rebuilds a different man in his place. A swoop of hair. Built. It’s Eddie again.

“Maybe I just think Eddie’s handsome and it’s messing with my head,” he sighs. “Werew-” he stops, tries to play off the slip with a cough. Stupid werewolf genes. The only thing he was right about that first shift. “He’s an outlier, you know?”

“I think there’s an easier answer,” Hen says.

And, of course, the alarm goes off.

The shift isn’t so quiet after that. Buck doesn’t mind busy calls when the sun isn’t out to get him, so he throws himself fully into each and every one with a fervor that earns him a few glares from tired teammates.

He just can’t stop thinking about being back on shift with Eddie. Every rope rescue is one closer to Eddie being back at the other end of his line.

And he thinks about what Hen said, in the quiet of the engine. He can’t tell her that Eddie is a werewolf, and therefore, like, genetically made to be more attractive. So he needs to talk to someone else about it, but his sister won’t answer his calls and Eddie is back tomorrow, not right this moment, so he’s alone to stew in it.

He decides that maybe it doesn’t matter—his life is pretty great, when the people he loves aren’t going through personal crises. He’s got a best friend with an incredible son, and a sister with a boyfriend he also begrudgingly likes, and an adorable niece. Hen and Karen invite him to space museums and Bobby compliments his cooking, and there isn’t really room for a romantic partner in the mess of it. Buck would probably be bad at it, anyway. Abby left.

Eddie is coming back. Buck smiles out the window.

He watches the sunset alone on the roof, lounging back in one of the chairs they keep just for this purpose. When the sun comes out to kiss over his skin, he doesn’t mind the ache of it.

Leaving now, his phone buzzes with. It’s accompanied by a picture of Eddie grinning at the camera, Chris barely in frame and already curled with a pillow against the door. Buck sends an excessively long string of hearts, pours as much love as he can into each one. Be safe >:( he adds. The clock ticks down. If all goes well, they’ll be home just after sunset.

They get one more call before shift ends, and Buck kind of hates it.

School calls are always a tossup; fun, when it’s an easy fix and they get to spend a little time letting the kids fawn over them, or heartbreaking. Buck’s favorite had been climbing up on the ladder to get a large collection of balls knocked down from the ceiling after a fire drill, and all the cheers he’d earned for it.

This one is a kid early into a seven am class—how any of the kids are awake is a mystery to Buck—who passed out at his desk with no warning. He’s awake and talking when they arrive, but clearly out of it. Hen and her temp partner are quick to get him on a stretcher and into the ambulance, which leaves Buck and Bobby to ask for details.

What’s off about it, and so entirely incidental that Buck almost doesn’t notice, is that there’s a kid tucked into the corner who won’t meet his eyes, and smells like a vampire. As soon as he does spot her, given away by the lagging beat of her heart, his stomach drops. She can’t be older than fifteen, appearance wise, but Buck knows better than to take that as any indication of true age. He’s not sure if it’s worse to think that she’s only just been turned, or if she’d been stuck in the same stage of life for a long, long time.

He’s quiet on the ride back to the station, thinking about Kameron. Connor hasn’t gotten back to him yet. If it’s a sign in either direction, Buck doesn’t know, but he’s still holding his beath over it, not making a choice of his own. It feels fair, to wait until he knows the request is real to get into his thoughts on it.

But he’s caught up in it now. It would be asked for, sure, but he’s still passing along a curse. Still dooming her to an eternal life, though not a lonely one, for as long as her and Connor stick together. Would Buck want something like that? No. He can’t even imagine it. It was a near thing, with Maddie, and still he can’t fathom it.

It’s all his own baggage. Does he let that stop him from helping a friend? He doesn’t know.

He distracts himself from the slow passage of time by cleaning the whole house and then going out for groceries. Indulges in the name brands and a platter of cocokies, rearranges the fridge three times until it’s just the right side of organized without being too imitatidating to disturb.

Something he’s learned in his time living with two werewolves is the importance of an odorless cleaning product. Eddie gets wrinkles between his eyebrows from squinting when Buck uses the real smelly chemicals, and paces like a caged animal until it fades. Buck only made that mistake once.

He’s worried now that his scent being the only thing all over the house is going to drive Eddie similarly crazy, but he’s got no way how to deal with it without covering it with something worse.

Everything else is perfect. Linens washed, pillows straightened, dust eradicated. Buck is proud of the house. Proud of himself, a warm glow of satisfaction that settles like a hand knit blanket over his back, presses a little warmth into his skin.

Eddie and Chris are so close. They’re in California. Closing in on the county line. Buck sits on the floor with his back to the couch and stares at the blinking dot on his phone in an almost meditative state. He’s made of anticipation, made of waiting.

He can see their dot close to his without much zooming out when there’s a knock on the door.

For a moment, his heart races with joy. A technology error, bringing his waiting to a close early? But a peak out the window as he all but runs to the door reveals no sign of Eddie’s dumb truck, and he resigns himself to a brief conversation of no, thank you’s.

He opens the door to his parents.

“Evan,” his mom says, her forced warmth crawling under Buck’s skin and sapping out every bit of contentment he’s won for himself.

He didn’t know they were still in LA. Doesn’t know how they knew where to find him. Fears, somewhere in the back of his mind, that they’re keeping an eye on him. The attention he’d always craved from them, awarded in the form of his privacy being stripped away.

“What are you guys doing here?” he asks, unsure of what else he could possibly say. The answer sure as hell isn’t come on in, but he catches Margaret’s meaningful looks over his shoulder.

“We’re here to ask about Maddie,” says his dad. Buck frowns on instinct. “We haven’t heard from her in a while.”

Buck chews his lip to avoid saying the first thing that comes to mind; what’s a while to them? Took a few hundred years before they bothered to check in in the first place. “She’s okay,” he answers eventually. “Safe. Taking care of herself.”

“You don’t need to protect your sister from us, Evan,” his mom says. “You know we only want what’s best for her.”

“And we can only help if we know where she is,” his dad adds.

Buck wants to scream. Wants to bare his teeth, to slam the door in their faces, to call his sister and relearn the sound of her voice. The problem is—he doesn’t know. He’s just in the dark as they are, his calls and texts and emails all unanswered. Chim is looking for her. Buck is staying put, leashed to the city of Los Angeles while everyone else leaves.

“She’s okay,” he repeats dully. He doesn’t want them to know that she’s not talking to him. They’d hold it against her, somehow, even as they’d do the same without a second thought. “Mads is smart. She knows what’s best for her.”

His mom’s face pinches inward, and he knows she’s thinking about Doug, and it’s so unfair. She’s well aware of what a vampire with compulsion abilities can do. His hand tightens on the doorframe, grounding himself in the feeling of his permission to be here.

“Maddie,” she says, with all the subtly of a bulldozer, “Knows we worry about her. She should know better than to run off without telling us again. And you need to stop pretending you’ve got any right to be in this house.” She gestures sharply at Eddie’s place, it’s cozy interior still tucked up behind Buck.

It hits him hard. Logic is hard to hold onto in the face of his mother, her anger sharp and precise as her fangs, cutting through him and draining out every drop of belonging he’s scraped out for himself.

“You’re wrong,” he says weakly. Is the house rejecting him? He’d swear he can feel it nudging him past the threshold, revoking his access just like what had happened with Abby’s. “You don’t know me. Or Maddie.”

“We raised you,” his father says, an edge of anger to his voice, though he doesn’t yell. He’s good at making himself look like the rational one. Buck is trembling where he stands.

He still feels like he’s being moved, but suddenly it clicks that it’s a pull, and not a push. His eyes lift from the faces of his parents, to watch as Eddie’s truck pulls cleanly into its spot on the driveway, breezing past his parents car parked on the street.

The truck is sexy. He can admit it, now, as heat blooms in his chest. The engine’s only just shut off when the driver’s side door swings open, and at the edge of his hearing, Buck hears Eddie says; “Just stay here for a minute, mijo. I need to help Buck with something.’’

Buck’s been reckoning with Eddie’s beauty more in the past twenty four hours than ever before, and yet the Eddie that lives in his head can’t even hold a candle to the Eddie that approaces now, lit by the warm lights of the house. Buck could kiss him.

His parents don’t move out of his way, when Eddie reaches the door. Buck is the only one who sees the small twitch of his mouth as he steps around them at an angle, quick enough that when he presses himself to Buck’s side, right there in the doorway, it feels like they’re two magnets who have finally overcome the distance between them.

“Mr. and Mrs. Buckley,” Eddie says politely. He wraps an arm around Buck’s waist, like they do this all the time. “Nice to finally meet you.”

They’re both looking at him with such strong revulsion that Buck almost laughs. No- he does laugh, and it comes easy and loud, with Eddie so close.

“This is Eddie,” he tells them. “And his house.”

Eddie hip checks him. “Our house.”

“Right,” Buck lets the lie roll off his tongue easily. “And I think you guys should go.”

“We’re busy,” Eddie adds. And then he winks. Like Chris isn’t in the car, like he wants Buck that way. “Been a while.”

“We were only looking out for our family,” Margaret says, not looking at Eddie or Buck. “There’s no need for this rudeness.”

“Maddie’ll be okay,” Buck tells her. He really, truly does not know if either of them genuinely cares for her, but he’d prefer to be naive and think they do than face the alternative. “She’s way tougher than me.”

He can tell he’s doing nothing to convice either of them, but he doesn’t hold onto the gripe, doesn’t waste any further words. Just watches, with Eddie still pressed closecloseclose, as they walk away.

And then Eddie’s arms are both around him, and his face is buried in his neck. It’s almost nostalgic, though the time they were apart is truly nothing in the scope of Buck’s life.

“We have to get Chris,” Eddie murmurs. “He’s going to be so mad I hugged you first.”

Buck tries to move away, though his heart isn’t really in it, and Eddie squeezes him tighter. “C’mon,” Buck teases, lightheaded with happiness, “What if I wanted a Chris hug first?”

“You don’t get a choice,” he grumbles. But he does release Buck, rubs his hand up and down his arm like he needs to fully cover Buck in his scent.

When Buck finally gets to open the truck door and scoop Chris into his arms, he gets a similar treatment from son as he did from father—Chris wraps his arms and legs around him, giggles when Buck pretends to drop him.

The three of them make a many-legged monster, bringing in only the essential bags and talking, talking, talking. Chris recounts the drive, all the things they’d seen, all the bad words his dad had grumbled about traffic.

Eddie is so light, moving like a wolf again as he sticks close to Buck in the kitchen while he warms up a lasagna he’d made in the hours leading up to their arrival, never going longer than a few moments without touching Buck. And Buck bounces between the two of them, can’t stop ruffling Chris’s hair or pressing closer into Eddie’s hands.

Slowly, steadily, the house starts to smell like them again. Buck makes Eddie set the table so he has an excuse to get his mitts all over the cabinets, and then teases him for it, because what kind of friend would he be if he didn’t?

They all wind down once food has been eaten, the long drive getting to both of Buck’s Diaz’s. Seated at the table still with the plates waiting to be cleared, Buck jokes, “Too tired for a movie?”

Chris’s blinks at him like a cat, long and drawn out. “A movie?”

“I didn’t watch any while you guys were gone,” Buck says. True. “I missed all the interruptions. Didn’t feel the same.”

“Our interruptions?” Eddie asks incredulously. He’s sitting right next to Buck, so close that their plates are touching. Buck had loaded his up with Eddie’s favorites just to let him steal from it. “You have the IMDb page open for every single movie.”

“I just think you guys don’t appreciate it enough,” Buck shrugs. “Back in my day-”

Eddie groans, and keels over in his chair to drop his head on Buck’s shoulder. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a total dork?”

Buck is making a point not to look at Eddie. Chris is about to use his leftover broccoli as a pillow, swaying in his chair, and Eddie is warm and present where he’s breathing down Buck’s neck. It’s everything he’d ached for in the time they were gone, and he keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop—his own anxieties to come back, or his parents to drive their rental car through the front door. But it doesn’t happen. Buck is happy, so happy he doesn’t even know what to do with it.

“Uh, no. Because it’s not true.”

“Hah,” Eddie says in a puff of air that raises the hair on Buck’s arms. “Mm. Think I’ll just sleep right here.”

“Dishes, Eddie.”

“Don’t care.”

“Chris is going to get vegetables in his hair,” he laughs. Chris stirs at his name, and then breaks into a truly enormous yawn that pulls at Buck’s jaw in sympathy. “We might have to carry your dad to bed, buddy,” he whispers across the table.

“And tuck him in,” Chris agrees. “You’re strong enough, right Buck?”

“He is,” Eddie says. “Carry me to bed, please. Extra blankets. Tucked in tight.”

Buck doesn’t even pause to think about. He stands, careful to hold Eddie up with a hand on his arm where he’s gone mostly boneless, and nudges Eddie’s chair away from the table with his foot. And to Christopher’s absolute delight—and Eddie’s surprise, if his little intake of breath is anything to go by—he picks Eddie up off the chair like he’s saving him from a burning building, thrown as gently as a human-shaped body can be thrown over a shoulder.

Eddie’s heartbeat picks up as Chris’s giggling follows them out of the room. Buck feels a little bad—he’s definitely just pulled him away from easily falling asleep—but not enough to not follow through.

He drops Eddie on the bed, made up with a blue comforter since he figured it was the furthest from yellow.

“I don’t think I’ve ever tucked anyone in before,” he tells Eddie, cocking his head to look down at him. He hasn’t moved from where he was dropped, on his back with his limbs all over the place, hair mussed and wild. Buck feels a jolt go down his spine when their eyes meet—Eddie’s are dark, almost all pupil, and he’s looking at Buck. Pinning him in place. When he licks his lips, Buck tracks the movement.

“Maybe you can practice on Chris first,” Eddie says. He scrubs a hand over his face, wiggles further toward the center of the bed. “He’d like that.”

“Really?” Buck asks, reverent. He’s helped Eddie get Chris settled in bed before, obviously, but doing it on his own is a different beast entirely.

“‘Course,” Eddie says easily. “He missed you so much. We both did.”

“I know.” Eddie beams at him, and Buck wants to collapse next to him, curl up and whisper back and forth until the last of the distance is dispelled, but- “I’d better,” he points over his shoulder. “Make sure Chris actually fall asleep at the table.”

“G’luck,” Eddie says, and Buck can feel his gaze follow him all the way out the door.

Chris, predictably, falls asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow—teeth brushed, of course. He sleeps curled on his side, and Buck is sure to tuck a blanket around him in the chill of the air conditioning that Eddie insists on.

He finds himself in the kitchen after that, trying to wash the dishes as quietly as he can. The couch is calling his name, but it’s not overpowering. He likes having more than one plate to wash, likes keeping the lights dim and setting the dishes down as carefully as he can, aware of the sensitive ears around him.

He’s almost done when Eddie steps into the kitchen. He’s changed into one of Buck’s shirts, his own all packed away still, probably, and he’s got a fleck of toothpaste on the corner of his mouth.

“Hi,” Buck says softly. “I thought for sure you’d fall asleep.”

“Waiting for my personal icepack to show up.” Eddie brushes a hand along the kitchen wall, fingers spread wide. “Too hot in here.”

“You were serious about the bed-sharing thing?”

“You’re not sleeping on the couch, man.”

“I like the couch,” Buck says defensively.

Sharing a bed with Eddie is not a thing. They’ve done it before, and Buck has liked it! A normal amount, obviously, but his appreciation of it is skewed by how well he and Eddie fit together—he’d never call it a coincidence that their body heat is a natural match, because it’s clearly a sign of their compatibility as best friends—and, therefore, not trustworthy.

“No couch.”

He finishes the last dish, a giant pan that hardly fits with the rest of the dishes to dry, and sighs in acceptance. “You can’t complain if I kick you. It’s not my fault.”

“Last time you didn’t move a single time,” Eddie snorts. “It was kind of creepy, actually. You sleep like the dead.”

“You mean when you slept on top of me?” Buck remembers that night in the cabin fondly. “I couldn’t move! We both would have, like, fallen through the floor.”

“What are we even arguing about,” Eddie grumbles. “Come on, bed. Or is it your turn to be carried?”

“You wish.” He dries his hands, rehangs the towel and walks toward Eddie. “When was the last time you worked out?”

“Too long,” Eddie sighs whistfully. “My arms are sore from driving, actually. Raincheck?”

“Whatever you say.”

Eddie follows him into the bathroom even though the evidence of his nightly routine is still flecked on his face. Buck points at it the mirror while he’s brushing his own teeth, watches Eddie’s tongue where it pokes out of his mouth to swipe it away. He does have to shoo Eddie out of the bathroom to pee, but it’s only a temporary separation.

So he’s not expecting Eddie to be waiting for him with an expression like a kicked puppy, when he makes his way into the bedroom. “Uhm?”

“Sorry,” Eddie says with a shake of his head, sliding over to his side. “I just- my instincts are loud, right now.”

Buck hums curiously, sliding under the covers and pulling them all the way up to his nose, only leaving his eyes uncovered so he can peek out at Eddie.

“Being back is great. Leaving again- it was hard.”

“I’m sorry.” Buck frowns. “You, uh, you got used to being in a pack again?”

A small twirl of anxiety spins in his belly. He doesn’t really think Eddie wants to go back to Texas permanently, but what if he wants to find a pack? He won’t be able to do it in Los Angeles.

“Kind of,” Eddie says. Buck’s surprised when he slips under the covers, though he keeps them loose around him. “But it’s also you.” Buck blinks, and Eddie wiggles a little closer. “I already said I missed you. I’ll probably say it again, until I really get used to being back.”

“Makes sense.” Buck is warm all over, the blankets trapping Eddie’s warmth and giving it to him. “It doesn’t feel real to me yet, either,” he admits.

Eddie’s foot brushes his leg under the covers. It’s not the closest they’ve been in bed together, but something about it feels different. Charged. Buck is probably still getting used to not being alone in the house, imagining things. Haunted by a filled absence.

“What can I do?” he asks, when the silence stretches for a moment with Eddie still looking a little lost.

“Lie on your back,” Eddie says. Buck rolls over, shoulder brushing the edge of the bed until Eddie tugs at his arm, gets him closer to the middle of the bed. Then, with a happy sigh, he lies down half on top of Buck. “Perfect,” he rumbles happily. If he were in wolf form right now, Buck is sure his tail would be wagging.

Carefully, Buck curls an arm around Eddie’s back. He means to just rest it lightly, complete the picture they make together, but the proximity makes his brain fuzzy, like he’s half drunk on blood, and he finds himself rubbing a hand up and down Eddie’s spine, working out some of the tension from the drive.

Eddie groans appreciatively, right into Buck’s neck. “Never letting you out of my sight again,” he says. “You okay with that?”

Buck shivers, which Eddie seems to take as a sign of him being too cold, because he flails his arm around to drag the blanket up over both of them.

Is he okay with it? Yes. Emphatically. Being kept, being let in—it’s everything he could ever ask for. It feels wholly good, rushing through his body like a fresh batch of blood, to know that Eddie asks for every part of him, when he says things like that. Not in spite of Buck being a vampire, and not because of it; somewhere in the in-between, of wanting Buck.

Sleep comes easy and soft, dreamless. He floats through the following day of helping Eddie and Chris settle back in, clothes tucked into drawers and closets, and they celebrate with pizza for dinner.

Buck has to wiggle his way out of Eddie’s hold to leave for a shift the following morning, a tricky game because Eddie’s sleeping body follows him like they’re still magnetized. When he comes back from splashing water on his face and brushing his teeth, Eddie is staring at him with half-open eyes, and the comforter thrown off of him.

“Call out sick,” he says. “I’ll be back on shift at the start of the next rotation.”

Four days to go—Buck is, admittedly, a little tempted. But he sighs, and says, “It’s such a mess right now, I can’t do that to Bobby.”

Eddie sighs like a sad dog.

Buck makes it through his last Eddie-less shift without much affair. He schemes with Hen about cake designs, even calls Chim to get his input. Eddie shows up with Chris to bring them sandwiches for lunch right when they’ve got the biggest piece of paper they could find in Bobby’s office laid out and covered with various designs—Buck keeps pushing for dog-themed ones, and Hen keeps telling him they’re not applicable to Eddie—and they have to scramble to hide it from him.

“Feel good to be back?” Hen asks, twirling her pen between her fingers.

Eddie cocks his head to look around the firehouse like it might have changed in his absence. “Can’t wait,” he says warmly. “Brought you this, by the way,” he adds, shoving a tote bag into Buck’s arms and then turning away rather quickly to ask Chris if he wants to slide down the pole for old time’s sake.

Buck opens it curiously, slowly. Something about it feels weirdly significant—Eddie’d brought lunch for all of them, sure, but he’d also made a point to hand something just to Buck.

There’s a blanket tucked in the bag, folded up nicely. A note in Eddie’s weirdly pleasing handwriting says so you don’t get cold tonight.

If Hen thinks he’s weirdly eager to rush off to the bunks later, she doesn’t comment on it. And just as he’d suspected it would be, the blanket is covered thoroughly in Eddie’s scent. He sleeps with it hugged to his chest, nose buried in the soft fabric.

He doesn’t even really get time to feel guilt over being happy that Eddie is back while his sister is still MIA, because she comes back in their three days off. It isn’t a big thing—they can all tell that neither Maddie or Chim want it to be—but they still have a little get together, ostensibly for Eddie’s return and recovery.

Buck always likes watching Eddie at these things—he settles into his skin in a way that, while not rare, is always a joy to observe. He also keeps bringing Buck food, the kinds he knows Buck will actually eat: homemade, crunchy, easy to stomach.

When his phone buzzes with a text, he expects it to be a scam, or one of those political ones that always reach him, but he checks it anyway, curiosity getting the better of him.

Sorry it’s been so long! It reads. Kam really wanted to think on it. But we both want you to do it.

“What’s that?” Eddie asks, appearing out of nowhere behind Buck, to read over his shoulder. “Oo, the Connor.”

Buck mumbles something in acknowledgment, head spinning. The thing is, he has been thinking about it. Flipping back and forth, mostly, sure that actually getting the confirmation would make it easier. But here it is, and he still doesn’t know, and he hasn’t told Eddie.

He pockets his phone. “Tell you later?” he offers, shifting nervously where he stands. Eddie brushes a hand down his arm, easy as anything.

It comes back around that night, Chris put to bed and Buck and Eddie sipping beers on the couch. Buck’d had half a mind to glue himself to Maddie’s side, but he can tell she needs the space, if only for a little longer. No escaping his conversation with Eddie, then.

“So?” Eddie prompts, tilting his bottle at Buck. “What’s on your mind?”

“A lot,” Buck says vaguely, half just to feel Eddie kick at him. “Nothing- bad. Everything is so good right now.”

“It is,” Eddie agrees easily. He doesn’t move his socked foot away, just wedges it up against Buck’s leg. “You feel like it’s too good to be true?”

“I feel like I should,” Buck sighs. “But I don't! It f-feels like we’ve been through so much. Like we’ve earned being happy.”

“Hey,” Eddie says. He sets his beer down, plucks Buck’s out of his hand, and then rolls closer, one knee up on the couch to get his face close to Buck’s. “You have. A thousand times over.” Buck lets out a shaky breath. “And you don’t need to earn happiness, Buck, but if you did, you might be the world champion at it.”

Buck huffs out a wet laugh, blinking away his tears—happy ones—before they can catch in his throat and really get him sobbing. Eddie is so, so gentle when he wipes one eye, and then the other with his thumbs, leaving his hands bracketing Buck’s face.

“I’m-” Eddie starts, at the same time as Buck says; “Connor asked me to-”

They both laugh, Eddie sitting back. Buck misses his touch as soon as it’s gone, but he doesn’t chase it. “You go first,” Eddie says, and Buck is sure he can see a telenovela playing out behind his eyes. Do they make those about best friends? Maybe Buck should ask him.

“He asked me to turn his wife,” Buck says. “That sounds- crazy. Wow. Uh, Connor’s wife, Kameron, she wants to be a vampire, a-and there are all these things that come with being someone’s sire—they don’t want Connor to be the one to do it.”

Nerves grip Buck’s spine, spasm through his fingers where he’s holding his legs. He has no idea how Eddie will react, truthfully. The worst of his worries are easily quelled by the renewed surety he has in their relationship, but he can never fully beat back the voice that whispers about curses.

“That’s… Interesting,” Eddie says mildly. Buck can see him processing in the scrunch of his brows and purse of his lips.

“I’ve never turned anyone before,” Buck adds when he can’t stand the silence. “I mean- duh. Kind of. I-it’s not hard, and it’s not that different from, uhm, feeding on someone.”

“She would have to drink your blood,” Eddie fills. “Right?”

“Y-yeah. And then the, ah, burial. But I don’t think I would be there for that. Unless-? No. Connor knows what he’s doing.”

“And you’re not sure if you want to do it.” Did Eddie learn how to read minds in Texas or does he just know Buck well? He nods. “Do you want to hear what I think?”

“Please,” Buck answers embarrassingly fast.

“Don’t do it,” Eddie says.

Buck’s stomach sinks, and he realizes what he’s been afraid to admit to himself—he was never going to be able to say no.

Eddie must see this written on his face, probably knew it before Buck did. “You don’t owe it to them. You don’t have to do it, just because you think it doesn’t cost you anything.”

“They asked me,” Buck pushes back, weakly. “They’d trust me.”

“And that’s- that’s so good, Buck. And it wouldn’t change my opinion of you if you did turn her.”

He’s almost too rational. Buck wants him to yell, to tell him it’s a stupid idea. “They want to get lunch. Talk details, you know. Would you, uhm, and please say no if you don’t- would you come with me?”

“You don’t even have to ask,” Eddie says. He slumps back into the cushions, takes his beer back up and downs a good bit of it. “I’ll pack a pointy stick.”

“No,” Buck chokes on a laugh. The heavier mood dissipates easily, and Buck slouches down on the couch to run his hands through his hair. “It’s kind of insane, isn’t it?”

“I’m not answering that,” Eddie says magnanimously.

“That’s answer enough,” Buck snorts. “How’s it work for wolves? Just one bite, no swapping fluids?”

Eddie makes a face at the phrasing. “Yeah. No burials either.”

“Lame.”

“Efficient.” There’s a pause, while they both drink. And then; “You ever think about how similar we are? We- wolves and vampires. Only difference really is the pack stuff, and you take to it well enough.”

“You can’t use me for reference. I’m like the worst vampire ever.”

“Okay,” Eddie huffs lightly. “Me and you. Not so different. I bet you could trick almost anyone into believing you're a wolf.”

“Because I’ve got your scent all over me.”

“That helps,” Eddie says, cheeks coloring. “Guess I’m just rubbing off on you.” Now it’s Buck’s turn to blanch at the phrasing, Eddie’s smug laughter settling over Buck like the gifted blanket. “My homemade wolf.”

God. Buck is going to die, right here on Eddie’s couch, smelling like he really belongs.

It’s, maybe, part of why both Kameron and Connor give him surprised looks when he shows up to their lunch with Eddie in tow. He’d told them he was bringing a friend who was aware of everything, but he had failed to mention that he was a werewolf.

“Kameron?” he asks, just to be sure, offering his hand for a quick shake when she nods. Connor pulls him into an equally brief hug, and then two sets of eyes fall to Eddie, where he’s lurking behind Buck’s shoulder, all dark and handsome. “This is my friend Eddie Diaz. Work partner, too.”

They don’t ask why Eddie’s come along, probably to avoid the social faux pas of making Buck explain that he needs the emotional support.

The location is perfect—tables spread far enough apart, atmosphere lively enough to cover the details of their strange conversation. They don’t fall into it right away, instead exchanging slightly stilted small talk.

Buck learns about the wedding, and Eddie talks a little about his life before LA, leaving out the unspoken werewolf details. Connor tells a few stories from his and Buck’s time in Peru, and Eddie happily shows off pictures of Chris. It’s almost nice, but the weight of the real conversation hangs over them, a shadow that kills most of Buck’s ease before it can even come to fruition.

None of the three vampires order food, and Eddie follows suit. Buck makes a promise to himself to cook the biggest steak he can find tonight.

“So,” Connor says, pushing his untouched water aside and leaning his elbows on the table. “I know it’s a lot to ask.”

“I totally understand if you can’t do it,” Kameron adds. Buck likes her well enough. She fits with Connor, matches his energy.

“You two have really thought about this?” Eddie asks, and Buck turns to look at him, a little startled. He knows Eddie can be blunt. It’s one of his best traits, on the job. He hadn’t expected to see it here, though, with two people Eddie has no connection to, and all because of his worry for Buck. It’s a little overwhelming, in the best way, and Buck misses the reactions to it. “Sorry,” Eddie amends. “I don’t mean to be rude, really. I just have to ask. As his partner, you know?”

Buck does catch the reaction to that—Connor’s eyebrows shooting up, his gaze darting over to Buck. “We have,” he answers, serious. “We’ve been talking about it since I proposed. And it feels like fate, to have Buck show up. That really means something to us.”

Eddie narrows his eyes. Buck drops a hand on his thigh before he can say anything else, squeezes in what he hopes is a comforting gesture, even as the word partner, with no qualifier, echoes loud in his brain.

“The uh- the logistics,” Buck says, stumbling over his words when Eddie’s hand lands on top of his. “Like where and- h-how.”

“Right,” Connor says, looking to Kameron. Buck can see the easy trust between them, stretched through the small distance that separates their chairs. He wonders inanely if he and Eddie look anything like that, their trust grown in fire and shaking earth. “Well, our house has a nice backyard. Soft dirt.”

Buck nods, a little dazed by how real it feels. They’ve looked out their windows and planned where Kameron will be buried, if only temporarily.

“You don’t have to stay after your part is done,” Kameron adds. “We would prefer if it was just you.” She tacks a slightly awkward smile on, making a point not to look at Eddie.

“Fair,” Buck says with an awkward grin of his own. Eddie squeezes his hand.

“And we wanted, if it’s okay with you, of course, to have it done before our anniversary in two weeks,” Connor says. “Not on the date, that would be too much, hah.”

“You probably want my answer now, then.” He lets out a breath, sits back from the table. Eddie’s silence feels pointed, but he has to ignore him—this is his decision.

Buck knows he’s going to do it, but he can’t get the words out of his mouth. Eddie pushes his glass of lemonade closer, Buck’s water cup long empty with all his nervous sipping, and Buck takes it gratefully, gulping down the sweet drink.

“Yeah, I’ll do it,” he says before he can lose his nerve, punctuated by the click of plastic on wood when he sets the cup down.

They both cheer, and then he’s being swept up into a hug. Connor says, “Thank you so much man, really,” and Kameron repeats the thanks, kissing her husband on the cheek. Strangely, even with the touch, he feels numb. Nothing close to regret—yet?—but something closer to resignation. He can see Kameron’s neck, the flash of the bracelets around her wrists, and yet he can’t even come close to imagining what it will feel like to bite her.

Their little part dissipates quickly after that, with a date set. Buck feels it settle over his shoulders, but he tries not to let it show, even when Eddie doesn’t let him drive back to the house.

“They were… Nice,” Eddie says eventually. Buck snorts. Eddie is a bad liar when he’s not trying very hard. “And that’s all I have to say.”

Buck turns in his seat, looks Eddie over. His jaw is set and he’s grabbing the wheel like he thinks it might try to get away from him, but it’s not the worst Buck’s ever seen him. And he believes that Eddie really won’t get on his ass about it. So, for both of their sakes, he puts it to the back of his mind with only a reminder in his phone calendar to keep him from forgetting entirely.

Eddie keeps giving him gifts.

At work, in the house, on the street. There’s a shiny KitchenAid on the counter, which Buck had thought was a hallucination for a good few minutes. He’s forgotten how to work the coffee machine at work, since Eddie always beats him to it. With the team back to full capacity, there’s merciless teasing to go along with it—Chimney’s new favorite refrain is calling them work husbands.

Calls are always worse during hot months, so Buck doesn’t even really mind when Eddie insists on taking the more physical roles for their outdoor ones.

Which is how he finds himself a few feer away from the scene of a more far-fetched call—the sort they always expect, when the renaissance fair is in town. Something always goes absurdly wrong, and this time it’s a knight on the wrong end of a lance.

Eddie swoops in right away, looks over the pointy bit of wood sticking out of the ladies side—armor doing very little to stop it—and then looks to Buck with a clear stay back warning, like he thinks the wood is going to grow a mind of its own and stab Buck through the heart.

“It’s not his fault,” she’s saying as Eddie looks her over, trying to gesture at the man hovering near them in a similar getup to hers. “An accident. Happens, with these things.”

Buck bites his tongue from the questions that rise up in his throat. How did she get the job? What’s the training like? He couldn’t do it, clearly, but there’s so much he wants to know.

The arena is dusty, kicked up by hooves and feet passing nearby, and that’ll be what Buck blames for how long it takes him to notice that their injured night is a werewolf. Eddie keeps trying to meet his eyes with a significant look, but Buck is too busy trying to remember if he knows how to ride a horse to tap into their usual telepathy.

His ears perk up when he hears her whisper, too quiet to be appropriately talking to a paramedic, “You got any advice for passing this off? I’m pretty sure close to a thousand people saw it happen. Kind of hard to explain away the healing.”

Eddie laughs under his breath, and finally Buck gets why he’s being called on. The other knight is too close—he’ll see the healing happen when Eddie yanks the lance out, to let her healing—her werewolf healing—kick in.

“Hey,” he says, letting some excitement bleed into his voice. He gets a bit of a baffled look from the knight, but pushes on. “How’d you end up in this job?”

“Oh,” he says, meeting Buck’s gaze full-on with interest now, sufficiently distracted from Eddie bracing his hand against the victim’s side and slowly drawing the weapon out. “Well, I was a theater major-”

Buck nods along to his story, only half listening. The lady knight’s got her hand on Eddie’s bicep. She’s going to smell like him. And Eddie will smell like her. Something twists in Buck’s guts, a knife he wants to beg Eddie to pull out.

If pressed, he’d maybe admit that it’s kind of weird how neither he nor Eddie has had a serious partner since they met. It’s not like they spend all their time together, but there is a burden of secrecy shared between them, making it hard to let someone new in, especially a human. But if a wolf they meet on call, asks Eddie out, what reason would he have to say no? Like most werewolves, she’s got an almost ethereal beauty about her, though it’s nothing compared to Eddie’s. They’d make beautiful werewolf children, Buck thinks bitterly.

“-I swear I’ve done so many safety courses,” the guy is saying. “I know how to do CPR. Well, I mostly remember what they said about babies.”

“Maybe try not to stab anyone,” Buck says, dropping his hand briefly on the guy's shoulder, a facsimile of the usual comfort he tries to give.

Eddie is helping his victim up, putting on a surprised face. “Looked way worse than it really was,” he says loudly. “Mostly caught in her clothes.”

She takes a bow, like everything is a game, and Buck barely fixes his face in time before Eddie is beckoning him over to help collect his supplies. “Why’re you being weird?” Eddie asks with a bump of their shoulders.

“Did you get her number?” Buck asks. He’s staring at Eddie’s arm where her hand had been, resisting the urge to reach out and touch. He can’t leave his scent on Eddie, not the way she so easily could.

“What?” Eddie blinks. “No?”

“Missed out,” Buck says with forced casualness. “She was totally into you.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “You have never seen werewolf courting if you thought that was fliriting.

Buck splutters. “She touched you.”

“I pulled a spear out of her!”

“Lance,” Buck says pedantically. They’re moving now, back toward the engine. “Touch is definitely part of werewolf rituals, or whatever.”

“True.” Eddie swings open the back of the ambulance, sets the supplies down. “But it’s way more than that.”

“You expect her to start, I don’t know, chasing your tail in the middle of a crowd?”

“Chasing my- You are so ridiculous.”

“Well, what would be the signs then?” Buck asks, crossing his arms. “Enlighten me.”

Eddie gives him a look that, clear as day, says he’s being ridiculous. “It would be more than a single touch, for one,” he says. “Wolves aren’t as particular about it as humans. And we’re straightforward. Declarations, the like. Hey, good job with the distraction. Don’t think he suspected anything.”

“It was easy,” Buck says dismissively. “These types always love talking about themselves. But, okay, keep going. I’m curious now.”

“Well,” Eddie says slowly. “You’d be careful about getting your scent all over someone, on the first meeting, but if it was, you know, mutual after that,” he shrugs. “More touching. Gifts—prove you can provide. Goes both ways.”

Buck feels a little like he’s missing something. There’s a twinkle in Eddie’s eyes that calls out to Buck, daring.

“Huh,” he settles on. “Sounds like a lot of work.”

“Usually,” Eddie says, with another of those significant looks, “It doesn’t take very long.”

“Less flirting and more please sell your daughter to me for three cows,” Buck surmises. “Barbaric. You sure you don’t want to go back there and shoot your shot?”

“Did you listen to anything I said?” Eddie laughs.

“No,” Buck lies.

“I don’t know why I like you so much.” Eddie swings the door closed, gestures for Buck to head to the front. “Did I mention the declarations? You heard me say that?”

“Are you practicing on me?” he jokes.

Eddie mouths the word practicing like it’s personally offended him.

“No, wait, I think I’ve figured it out.” Buck snaps his fingers. Eddie cocks his head, a strange little burst of excitement brightening his eyes. “You’re bad at courting. Or you think you are. I can give you pointers, if you want. Peer review.”

“Yeah?” Eddie says, and suddenly he’s close. They’re still standing by the ambulance, in the shaded side, hidden from the crowds. “What would you suggest?”

“Uhm,” Buck says, mouth suddenly dry. “It just all seems so- distant. Not in a bad way, but it’s like,” he’d be bright red if he had the blood for it. “Where’s the passion?”

Eddie nods. Sways closer. Someone is playing a very strange-sounding instrument somewhere nearby, and it’s rattling around in Buck’s head, eating up all his normal thoughts, the ones that would normally drown out the litany of Eddie’s name.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Eddie says, voice low. And then he steps back, shoots Buck an unmistakable wink.

He cannot get it out of his head.

The word turns over and over in his head, as fanciful as the renaissance fair—courting. All those specific ideas Eddie has about it. The ways they line up with the orbit he and Buck have been in since Eddie got back from Texas—or earlier.

He circles the idea of it carefully, in bite-sized pieces. If he’s not just- losing his mind, then Eddie is consciously exhibiting behaviors to show that he wants to pursue Buck romantically.

And the more he thinks about it, the less crazy it seems.

They get off shift, and though Buck can feel something building between them, things are normal. He doubts himself as the hours drag on, with nothing out of the ordinary save for Eddie’s hands never straying far from him.

“You ready?” Eddie asks, in the hourly hours of the evening.

Buck’s heart races, but Eddie isn’t even looking at him. “For what?”

“You’re vampiric duty,” Eddie says dryly. “Did you forget it was tonight?”

Buck blinks, and then reaches for his phone. The notification is buried under a few others, easily missed but very real; Connor and Kameron’s @ 7.

“Shit,” he breathes.

“Not too late to back out,” Eddie says, and then winces.

Buck doesn’t hold it against him. He considers it for a moment, but then shakes his head. It would haunt him if he ducked out now, too close to the actual event. And it’s not like he’s found a new reason to back out.

“I think I’ll leave now,” he says, reaching for his keys. Eddie frowns, but doesn’t protest. “Going to drive to clear my head for a little.”

“Hey,” Eddie says softly. “C’mere.”

Buck goes gladly into his arms, returns the strength of Eddie’s grip on him. They’re evenly matched in this, too, made to hold each other tight.

He feels none of that as he nervously steps closer to Kameron. The plan is for him to drink from her wrist, the most distant option. It’s nothing like drinking from Eddie, the two of them pressed close—Kameron sits on a chair out on the back porch, with Buck next to her and Connor holding her other hand.

There’s far more nervous energy coming off of Buck than either of them. Just the sight of the pre-dug grave is giving him the creeps, but he tries to ignore it all and put on a brave face.

“My last minutes of mortality,” Kameron says. She sounds wistful, looking up at the stars like she’s not sure they’ll be the same, after. Buck isn’t sure he can tell her they won’t be. “Anything I should do?”

Connor laughs, says something about hwo they should have lit a candle. Buck doesn’t really hear them—the question spins and spins and spins in his head.

What would he do? With a few minutes to feel, to be, alive? Absurdly, his first thought is to run until he can feel the lactic acid build up in his legs, to push until he tastes iron in the back of his throat and flinches from it.

“You ready Evan?” Connor asks. He’s still on the other side of Kameron, shifting excitedly on the balls of his feet. “I’d offer you a drink, but-”

“Don’t talk about your wife that way,” Kameron jokes, swatting at him.

Buck lets out a startled laugh. Kameron offers up her wrist with a little flourish, and this part Buck has thought about.

He takes hold of her carefully. The angle is awkward, her arm twisted strangely, but it works. She can look up at her husband while Buck drains her blood. He needs to stay in the moment. Remember exactly where he is, what he’s doing.

The absurdity of it makes things easier. He’s sitting in a suburban backyard, about to commit an ancient evil. About to take a life.

“Ready Kam?” Connor asks, voice steady.

She settles back in her chair. “Ready.”

“Buck?”

“Ready,” he says, fangs dropping. It’s been a long while since he last fed, but his hunger isn’t awfully pressing. He’s been living off the euphoria of having his family back together, so different from the heavy and fleeting weight of blood.

He lifts her wrist to his lips, careful to keep his touch minimal, perfunctory. They’d chosen him for his control, and he’ll prove them right.

She shivers when his teeth sink in, no preamble to it. Blood rushes easily into his mouth, settles into his body, but he hardly pays it any mind. He feels more like he’s on a call than anything—keeping careful track of the beat of her heart, the flicker of her pulse. He could be Hen or- or Eddie, hands careful and sure, giving life instead of bringing death.

Time drags on, and Buck lives between each of her heartbeats. They echo through him, reform him as any blood taken directly from the living does. He feels her excitement for the coming days, scored through by a small edge of nervousness. Her love for Connor is an immense well, and he takes comfort in it, draws from it.

It’s more blood than he’s ever taken, but it has to be.

He and Connor are holding her up, and something tells Buck that it’s done. Carefully, slowly, he draws his fangs out. It’s a neat affair, no blood left to wipe from his lips or her skin. Clinical, almost, and he does his final part with the same precision—drags a still extended fang over his palm, and holds it to her mouth. She’s weak, nearly dead, Connor’s encouragement laid over them.

The moment she tastes it, Buck feels something. It stretches between them, cold as a yawning void, wrong. Connection through desolation. He flinches away, but it doesn’t matter—his part is done.

He leaves in a blood soaked haze, shying away from even glancing back as he slips out the side gate, just as they’d said he could. Somewhere behind him, Kameron is being lowered into the earth. Connor will cover her until it’s all she can feel, and then she’ll be reborn. Buck killed a part of her. The knowledge of it thrums through him like a death knell, and he has to sit and breathe in his car for a long, long moment.

It’s not regret that cleaves through him. Acceptance, more like, for the creature that he is. He’s settled deeper into his own skin, chases off the remnants of her that cling to the blood in his veins. It can be his alone, now.

He tries to slip in questly through Eddie’s front door, but he’d been waiting for Buck, perched on the back of the couch and looking at him with warmth and something else—something headier that fills the space between them, shrinking as Buck is drawn into Eddie’s orbit.

“Hey,” Eddie says. He’s looking at Buck’s lips. Buck knows there’s no blood staining them, only the spit his tongue leaves behind when he wets them nervously, humming with the tension of it. “You always look good, when you’ve fed.”

“It’s different,” Buck admits. He’s directly in front of Eddie now, close enough to touch. “I can feel that- that this is how it’s always meant to be,” he shivers, and finally Eddie touches him, hand to his elbow, grip steady.

“It’s yours, Buck,” Eddie says. “Always has been.”

They’re not talking about the same thing, and yet- Buck lets himself look. Eddie has always been burning passion, always kept his love tucked somewhere between his teeth, spilling out in his words but kept safe.

Buck sways toward him. He wants to taste it. Wants to chase the last of the blood from his mouth. Wants Eddie.

With a gasp, like he’s out of control of his own body, he tips over the line and presses his lips to Eddie’s, pliant and waiting and warm.

Buck can hardly move. He’s kissing Eddie, and he never wants to stop. Like the moment of his death, it sinks into him, redefines him through a close-mouthed kiss. And he thinks he’s fully out of his mind, until Eddie’s hand on him moves to his back. Presses him closer, bodies flush, Eddie anchored by the couch and Buck held up by him and then he’s moving, lips parting like he’s going to drink Buck in, to take and to take and to take.

It’s so terribly selfish, the way Buck gives himself over. Crashes through everything they’ve built together, leaving a wake of rubble in their path.

Eddie’s tongue is hot where it presses at the seam of Buck’s lips, and Buck can do nothing but whine and open for him. His teeth are overgrown and sharp, dangerous, and Eddie licks over them without care—with care, with reverence, though it’s all for Buck and none for himself.

There’s no time to talk about it, when morning comes.

They wake tangled together, and Buck has never felt so warm, even before his death. Eddie is soft coming out of sleep, hungry when his eyes meet Buck’s—but already they’re going to be late, neither of their alarms set and a shift hanging heavy over them.

Buck steals a kiss anyway, filmed over with the taste of sleep that makes both of them laugh, soft and easy, before falling into the whirlwind of getting out the door.

It’s almost like any other shift, in most ways. Eddie’s hand sits heavy on Buck’s thigh while he drives, and it’s a familiar weight. Buck knows he’s drowning in Eddie’s scent, and he preens when Eddie pulls him close just to sniff at the collar of his shirt in the parking lot, where anyone can see.

But it’s fun, keeping secrets. They make no attempt to change how they act around each other, and yet no one seems to suspect a thing. It makes Buck feel constantly flushed—the awareness of the change, the joy of having something so wonderful to hide away. He keeps catching Eddie’s eye and needing to duck away, a game that leaves both of them pink in the cheeks and a little breathless.

“Looks like a lightning storm is rolling in,” Bobby tells them during the morning debrief. “Expect a busy day.”

The team nods as one beast, and it’s like they can feel the electricity settling in over them, in the crackling energy that suffuses the fire house. And it’s not just Buck and Eddie’s fault.

“You did that on purpose,” Chim says to him, when Buck hands over the supplies they’re restocking and shocks him good, static electricity sparking off his fingers. “I’ll get you back, Buckley.”

“How was that my fault?” Buck squawks. How he ended up doing chores with Chimney is a mystery to both of them—they’re usually good about keeping to their partners. And it’s not that Buck minds, but—he and Eddie could have had this done ten minutes ago, and Hen and Chim probably could have done it in fifteen.

“It’s your gift,” Chim says dryly. Buck grumbles at him, tries to emulate one of the growls Eddie’ll let out when he’s frustrated, and it does soothe some of the tension by making Chim laugh at him.

Their first call is, predictably, a fire. Someone’s overgrown backyard and the sparks from a neighbor's rusted lightning rod. They—Buck included!—manage to put it out before it can reach any of the houses, and they leave with the buzzing feeling of a job well done.

Buck, with his knees pressed to Eddie’s in the truck, can’t help but study the faces that he can see, trying to determine if they know. He can feel Eddie watching him in turn, that same warm and hungry gaze that’s been going on a lot longer than the moment of their first kiss, and it only doubles Buck’s efforts to puzzle out what everyone else is thinking.

During lunch, his phone pings with a text. Kam is doing great, it says. Buck sends a smile back, echoing it on his face.

“You feel weird about that?” Eddie asks in a whisper, reading the text quickly when Buck tilts it toward him.

“Haven’t thought about it much, honestly,” he admits with a blush. “Kind of been distracted.”

Eddie’s careful smile turns into a sharp grin, and heat pools in Buck’s stomach, quickly pushed down. They need to talk—and Buck is mostly sure that Eddie isn’t going to be down for mid-shift makeouts.

He also does not want to get fired, again, even though the idea of getting a hand on Eddie in the engine drives him a little wild.

“Do you think they’ve noticed anything?” he asks, when it’s just the two of them on the couch after a long string of calls, everyone else turned in for bed. The storm is really starting to pick up, and it’s a guarantee that they’ll be called out soon.

Eddie hums, and it rumbles through Buck’s body with the way they’re pressed together from shoulder to ankle, the bright colors of a silly Hallmark movie playing across their faces. “I don’t think we’re acting different enough for them to.”

Buck huffs out a laugh. He feels like they’re on the brink of it—the conversation, the words to fit what they are into something tangible—but he shies away, finds that the height makes his head spin.

“You tired?” he asks. He feels when Eddie drops his head on his shoulder, curls closer. “Don’t want to go to the bunks?”

“That’ll just make the alarm go off,” Eddie sighs.

“Like a jinx.”

Eddie huffs out a hot breath against his skin, and then—lightly, so lightly—bites down on it. Buck bites back on a squeak, suddenly wide awake and unsure of his earlier convictions about Eddie not wanting to mess around at work.

“Like a what?” Eddie teases.

“Superstition,” Buck tries. Another press of Eddie’s teeth, and Buck has to dig his fingers into the couch cushions to ground himself. “Bad luck?” he barely breathes the words, ears straining for approaching footsteps or any sign of life, but they seem to be entirely alone. Buck’s blood, hot in his veins, feels like it belongs entirely to Eddie, with how easily he reacts to him.

The next bite sinks in a little deeper, lingers a moment longer. It’s so different from Buck’s fangs sinking deep through skin, driving through to pull out what lies beneath. Eddie bites just to bite, just to feel Buck against him and leave a mark, and it’s the sort of delicious contrast that makes Buck hot all over.

“You all out?” Eddie teases. He lifts his head to look Buck in the eye, daring him to come up with something else.

Buck truly might be—his brain is a pleasant wave of emptiness, content to just stare into Eddie’s eyes, limbs going heavy.

“Probably shouldn’t be starting things I can’t finish,” Eddie says. “Have I told you that you make a good pillow?”

“Liar,” Buck snorts. He’d almost believe it, with how often Eddie does seem to lie his head on Buck, but he knows it can’t be true. It’s something more, to know that Eddie is so- so bewitched that he’ll take Buck’s bony shoulders over the couch cushions.

He’s always quick to fall asleep, though it’s a surface-level version of it, breaths shallow against Buck’s arm, and body held like he’s ready to jump into action should he be called. Buck, now, has seen Eddie when he truly slumbers, limbs unsorted and unruly, and he almost misses it.

Time. He’s got too much of it. Eddie is going to age beautifully, and Buck will be as he currently is, forever.

It’s the paradox of the vampire, the thing that truly keeps them from living. Buck’s had an ironic luck for avoiding it, up to this point; his parents with the same curse as him, his sister mortal but similarly afflicted. Wolves have longer lifespans than humans, but it’ll never be enough.

Eddie shifts against him, catching Buck’s arm against his chest, and Buck tries to put all the thoughts aside. They haven’t talked. There might not be a forever—Buck knows fleeting, passionate love well. Thinks no less of it, but it doesn’t fit him, not anymore.

The alarm sounds.

Five-alarm fire. An apartment complex, the blaze not even started by the lightning as far as they can tell, untempered by the pouring rain. Buck sobers when he sees it, shakes off the warmth of the night and sets his mind to helping.

He remembers his earlier conversation with Chimney when he sees him readying to climb up the ladder. “I got this,” he says. Chim gives him a skeptical look, and Buck throws him a crooked smile. “My repayment for the shock.”

Chim steps aside. The ladder stretches up, up, up, slippery with rain.

“Alright, cowboy, go get ‘em,” Eddie says with a light smack to the back of his turnouts, right over the Buckley. Buck shivers, and not because of the rain.

He starts up the ladder. And he’s not scared of heights, can’t be in this job, but sometimes he remembers holding out a hand and begging for them to just grab on, let him do the saving. It’s failure, that he’s truly and deeply scared of, and it dances under his feet as he climbs and climbs.

He doesn’t think to worry about what’s above him.

The fire draws his eyes, like it always does. The danger it promises is a more straightforward thing: destruction, hunger. He knows it well enough, thinks that maybe he’s set himself in its path in the way that like calls to like. Only so much room for hunger in a greedy world.

Rain pours down around him. It reminds him of a very different night, the ground just beneath his feet and how he’d hated it. How he’d cursed it, and cursed himself, for all his thoughts of the manner by which Eddie was dying.

And it was nothing like that, when Eddie was shot, but it was the nightmare conceived under that sky. Eddie, bleeding out within his read. Buck, able to save him, agonized. He’d shared his curse, now, with another, and still he could not say if he would do the same for Eddie. He wants to share everything with him, all the years he’s got left, but still he would rather die at the cold end of the universe than condemn Eddie to his fate.

The air shivers.

Buck frowns, and draws himself back into his body. The fire has hardly subsided, and his radio cracks with instructions of where to aim the hose. He does so dutifully, ignores the voice in the back of his head that whispers of danger, innane in the face of the fire and the fall. He’d be worried if there was nothing to fear.

It makes no sense at all, but after, Buck will swear he heard the crack of thunder. Maybe it was truly the thud of his body, the rush of the wind. But for all that it matters, he dies when the lightning strikes his heart.

He claws his way out of the earth, and above him stretches an endless expanse of stars.

Around him lies cracked pavement. The skeletons of buildings stretch up to meet the stars, faltering where their topmost points become weak and worn. He sits up frantically, pulls his body free of the earth with a heave of his arms. For a moment he thinks that he feels the strain of it, that he’s going to falter, but then he’s standing.

He tries to get his bearings, understand what’s happened to him—he’s meant to be doing something, helping someone. But all he sees is an empty street.

Is this where he’s meant to be? He feels out of place in this world. It’s unfamiliar to him, in all it’s weathered edges and overgrown streets, but beyond that—he doesn’t think he is meant to be alone. Built for it, maybe, but not any good at it.

He shrugs off the heavy thing that weighs on his arms. It’s black and yellow, emblazoned across the back with letters. Buckley. Him, then. His. There can’t be much use for names here, at the end of the world, but he shrugs it back on anyway, his own little rebellion.

And he walks. There’s nothing else to do, when one has nothing to their person but a name and great hunger.

The city is sprawling, though it is a city no longer. Those are defined by the people who call them home, not just he amount of buildings that crowd the web of streets, and he does not see another soul.

Overhead, the stars turn and turn. He thinks they’re meant to give way to something else, but it’s as if they’ve forgotten how to share. The entire world is hungry.

He walks forever. All the time that has passed, since the sky went dark and the city went quiet, doubled once, twice, again. And still he does not reach the edge. He might not even leave the street, where he died and, later, was reborn.

Buckley. It doesn’t fit him very well. He could be a Ley, maybe, though the thought makes his skin crawl. He chases it, chases any sensation that isn’t the ceaseless hunger, puts his feet to the shattered remains of the world and draws his fangs out. But there’s nothing to feed upon. He has bested death, survived through to the end of the world.

He doesn’t know what he’s lost, but it must be immense, because he cannot even bare to look at it. It lives in the spaces between the stars, the cold expanses of darkness. Everyone has fled, and he is left behind.

Buck, something new whispers. He finds it immediately, and he knows that it is speaking to him. He’d chopped off the wrong end of his name, twisted himself into something wrong. Finally, he can see the edge of the city. It disappears, as if on the edge of something, and he approaches without fear.

The sky opens, and Buck sees the moon.

It’s such a proud thing, alone in the sky, left only to watch as the earth below it withers to nothing.

It’s Buck’s fate, too.

He sits, his legs dangling over the edge of the world. It doesn’t fall into an ocean or an open plane, rather, forges it’s own kind of nothingness, unique in its makeup.

He’s alone at the end of the world, and he doesn’t want to be.

The memories come as one, falling into place like a blanket of thick snow, the kind they never get out in California.

“I died that night,” he says, to nothing. “The lightning.”

His voice is swallowed by the uncaring world.

“And just before,” he laughs, because there’s no one around to hear it. “And just before I was so worried that I’d have to watch them all die. I thought that was the worst fate could offer me.

“But I lived.”

“Why?’

The world shifts around him. Gone are the skeletal buildings, and in their place rise full trees, untouched by anything but wild nature. He’s still sitting just at the edge of it, but he looks into the treeline and he- he wants.

It’s a roaring hunger, more alive than the dull ache that he’s grown used to, that’s always hung over him. It wants to live.

And not as he has, for so many years. He wants to tire, he wants to hurt, he wants to burn his palms and scrape his knees and strain his muscles, wants to wake up from a nightmare covered in sweat.

Please. He says, and the world agrees. He grasps for it, for the last living thing in the world. It pulls at him, calls for him. Says his name again and again and again and again and again and

Somewhere in time, Eddie Diaz kneels over a hospital bed. He’s leading with everything he knows for Buck to come back. Under his hands, Buck’s skin burns, and he doesn’t smell like a vampire.

“Come back,” Eddie whispers. It echoes, expands, compounds. A pull. A compulsion, founded on trust, founded on love. They only got a single night, to show each other everything they wanted to be. “Any way you can,” Eddie pleads.

Buck looks down into the nothingness. And he looks up at the moon.

When he closes his eyes, he knows he’s in a hospital bed. Hooked up to the kind of tubes that mean bad news, his time ticking down, down. He has to fight.

He bares his teeth. His fangs are long and sharp and greedy. He clenches his fists, until even his blunt nails dig into his skin. I don’t want it, he thinks, says, believes.

He can hear the beep of the machines. He’s getting worse, they say. We’re losing him.

But he needs it. He chases the weakness, throws the last of his waning strength at it, falls from the edge of the cliff into the weak body of a man.

And Eddie says, “Come back to me, Buck.”

He sees, but his eyes stay closed. Eddie’s wolf, washed out by the lights of the hospital into a ghost of itself where it stands by Buck’s bedside. Eddie himself can hardly bare to watch, but Buck looks the wolf in the eyes—and sees burning blue.

Forest under him, spongy with years of detritus built up into an ecosystem more complex than any human system. A web of connections that Buck can sense where he can’t see, sprawling endlessly around him. He’s-

“Breathing!” Someone yells. Everything hurts, and Buck can do nothing but smile.

--

“You with us?” Eddie again. Buck can open his eyes, now. “Careful-” he says, when Buck tries to move.

Buck breathes the room in. It’s a whirling mixture of fear and boredom and stress and focus, stinking in his nose and on his tongue. Eddie is a bastion of steady relief, his hand on Buck’s shoulder, his scent newly familiar.

“What happened?” Buck asks, because he doesn’t- nothing makes sense.

“You were struck by lightning,” Eddie says. His voice hitches, and sadness tinges his scent. Buck wants to soothe it away, but he still can’t move more than his eyes. “We couldn’t restart your heart.”

“But it couldn’t have killed me,” Buck protests. Lightning isn’t fire, and it isn’t a stake through the heart.

And now he’s- he’s something new. Written into the rules of the living again, welcomed back into the fold. All his memories of the long line of years leading up to the ones he’s lived now feel hazy, nondistinct, separate from him.

He looks at Eddie. Turns his head to do it, and like a cascade, he realizes that he can move the rest of his body—but it’s all new, lighter.

“Did you turn me?” he asks, because he doesn’t know what else to think. He’d been so sure, in his dream of the end of the world, that he was going to be nothing more than human.

But Eddie shakes his head.

“I didn’t know what was happening,” he says quietly, and Buck can smell his lingering fear. “You smelled human, and then—when they took you off the breathing machine—you changed.”

And then, the rest of his family is there. And none of them know, none of them can sense the change in the same way Eddie can, save for Chris.

He looks at Buck with wide eyes, and then he smiles the brightest smile Buck has ever seen.

No lasting damage—a miracle, the doctors say. He’s lucky, they repeat again and again. Don’t waste it.

He goes right from the hospital to Eddie’s. Stepping over the threshold, he can smell himself intertwined into the bones of the house just as strongly as the Diaz’s. It’s that metallic scent that still gets stuck in the back of his throat, but soon it’ll be the new him—the wolf.

Eddie guides him gently to the couch. Chris is in school, with the promise that he could have all the Buck time in the world at the end of the day. Buck knows Eddie is overcautious about Buck’s physical state but he thinks there’s a hint of selfishness to it, too. He wants Buck to himself for a few hours, and Buck could hardly begrudge him of it.

They just- look at each other. Not close enough to touch, though Buck feels the urge to do so humming under his skin. He needs to mark Eddie as his, mix their scent until they’re indistinguishable from a single-minded beast.

“You wanted me when I was a vampire,” Buck says, a little wondrous.

Eddie grabs for his hands. They make Buck’s look small, and he’s still warmer than Buck.

“I did,” Eddie says easily. “Of course I did. You’re still the same you.”

Buck wrinkles his nose at the rawness of it, but his heart bleeds to hear it.

“So you want to do-” he gestures between them, smiles at the ridiculousness of it, “-this?”

“More than anything,” Eddie says. “I’ll court you all over again, if you want.”

“I think it’s my turn, actually.”

Edde huffs. “What,” he leans closer, the reverent distance between them shattered, everything sharper, more real. “Think you could do better?”

Buck takes to being a wolf like a duck to water.

He gets absolutely addicted to the gym. Builds his muscles to be functional, loves the ache that comes after a good workout, and the press of Eddie’s hands even more.

And in return, he gets his scent on Eddie like it’s his job—tucks himself up under his arm when they’re standing close, holds his hand in the grocery store, and kisses him in the bunkroom when no one is around to yell at them for it.

Wears Eddie’s bite with all the smugness of a diamond-encrusted ring.