The Deployment Notice

2.

When he woke up he had a moment of bliss, where he didn't remember the events of the night before. Sure, he had a bit of a headache and he could hear Eddie snoring on the couch downstairs, but that wasn't abnormal, they had nights where they drank sometimes when Chris was under someone else's care for a while.

Then he remembered.

He remembered coming home and checking through the mail, the only thing out of place being the thick white envelope. He remembered opening it and the subsequent mental breakdown that had followed. Including trying to get Eddie to fight him, and then sobbing into his arms.

Definitely not my finest moment. He cringed thinking about it, but now he needed to deal with the consequences of last night.

First: shower. Which took him about five minutes. He'd need to start shaving down his shower time further, he noted.

Second: evidence. He dug around in his closet until he found the old trunk that was padlocked shut, quickly opening it and glancing through the old files, photos, and other mementos he'd been allowed to keep since none of it was classified. He set the unlocked trunk down on the dining table.

Third: breakfast. As in, hopefully Eddie could be persuaded into forgiving and forgetting last night if Buck woke him up with the smell of every single breakfast food he had the ingredients to make.

Normally he might've considered that he was overdoing it. However, after having called his friend at 2 AM, trying to fight him, informing him of things that would shatter his entire perception of Buck, sobbing onto him, and then having to be put to bed by him, he was actually fairly certain that he was underdoing it.

After about twenty minutes of Buck cooking and plating the eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, fried pizza dough, hash-browns, pancakes, and fruit, Eddie padded into the kitchen rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

"Dios mío, Buck, are you trying to feed every firefighter in LA?" Eddie said as he stood in the kitchen looking around at all the different dishes.

"Nope, just you!" He said with a nervous smile, handing Eddie a plate so he could serve himself from the veritable buffet he'd made.

"Buck," Eddie said imploringly, ducking his head to try and meet Buck's eyes, which he was studiously avoiding. "You know I can't possibly eat all this, right?"

"Just figured you might want options!" Buck replied quickly, trying to keep up the false cheer, "speaking of options, what would you like to drink? I have water, milk, orange juice, grapefruit juice, or coffee."

"Water is fine," Eddie said offhandedly, and Buck quickly busied himself with the task, "Buck stop! What has gotten into you? Is this about last night?"

Buck stopped and turned around, he'd been caught, unsurprisingly considering it didn't take much to put two and two together about what was going through his head. Plus it was Eddie, who could've figured it out even if Buck had actually made it hard for him.

"I'm really sorry, Eddie." He was staring at his feet, rubbing the back of his neck, "it was really shitty of me to call you like that and to try and take it out on you. And then you had to deal with me afterwards too. I'm just really sorry, I shouldn't have called you, or made you deal with any of that."

"Buck look at me." Eddie said, voice leaving no room for arguments, and Buck wasn't in a position to deny him anything anyways right now. "It was messed up to try and start a fight, but I forgive you, ok? I know what it's like, and I know you didn't really mean to do it anyways. You're allowed to mess up or have a bad reaction every once in a while as long as you learn from it and do better in the future."