Roaming hands and large swells.

6.

Just a nightmare. He told himself, letting his breathing slow naturally and grabbing his phone from the charger. His finger hovered over the call button on Eddie's contact before he remembered everything that'd happened. He couldn't call. He couldn't talk to Christopher and make sure he was ok.

He quickly exited out of the contact and instead opened the app with his photos. He found the album he wanted right near the top, and clicked on it. It was a collection of photos of Chris after the tsunami, always smiling and happy. It was proof that he was really alive, that he was alive and ok and happy.

He scrolled through the album again and again until he could manage to draw in breaths evenly and it no longer felt like his heart was beating out of his chest. Then, he sighed and got out of his bed and went down stairs to start on dinner. He'd gotten off a twenty four hour at noon and decided to take a nap before having dinner.

After he'd finished making and eating a rather pitiful sandwich, he figured he'd get ahead on some of his chores. The monotony of folding clothes with a nature documentary on was at least working to further settle his leftover nerves from the nightmare.

His relative peace did not last long though. Just as he was folding the last pair of pants and the documentary was reaching its halfway point, there was a knock on the door.

He hadn't been expecting anyone, and the list of people who he thought might be willing to just show up at his apartment was still at an almost all time low. So he really had no idea who it could be, other than maybe Karen because Hen and Chim were back on their bullshit again? Or maybe it was Hen and Chim themselves here to tell him that they'd figured it out? But they would've called first, right?

He had no idea who it was, and the longer he spent wondering who it could be and why, the more he wound himself up. For all he knew it was a girl scout selling cookies. So he squared his shoulders, and before he could think twice about it, opened the door.

It was not the Girl Scouts, nor was it Hen and Chim, it wasn't even Karen or Maddie. It wasn't any of the people he'd even remotely been expecting it to be.

It was Eddie.

"Can I come in?" The other man asked after Buck had just stared at him for an inordinate stretch of time.

Buck cleared his throat and shook himself out of his shock, quickly moving to the side allowing the other man to step into the apartment.

"Did you, uh, did you leave something here?" Buck asked, because he wasn't really sure why else he would be here.

"No, well, I'm sure if we looked we'd find some of my stuff here, but no, that's not why I'm here." Eddie said, shifting a bit nervously from foot to foot, "I wanted to talk."

"Oh." Buck said, a bit surprised, "Ok, yeah, sure. What about exactly?"

Eddie blew an amused breath out of his nose and shook his head a bit, "Everything, I guess. Just, I wanted to hear your side of everything, I think I need to actually."

"Oh, um, well my side is mostly just that I'm really fucking sorry." He shrugged, "I don't really have a good excuse."

"Yeah, but there's an explanation." Eddie shot back. "I want to hear it."

Buck was a bit taken aback at that, he hadn't really expected Eddie would want that, or that he would do any of this.

"Um, ok sure, you wanna sit down for this?" He offered pointing to the sofa.

"Sure." Eddie nodded, moving to take a seat, noticing the folded laundry in the basket but not commenting. "Let's hear it."

"Um, I don't really know, I was just really upset. It was like you guys were replacing me and I guess after everything I just couldn't handle it anymore. I- I got cleared by my doctors but then the department still said no, which sucked, but I could play the long game with them. Then Bobby was telling me that it was actually him who said no, that he didn't think that I was better or good enough to do the job anymore, and I just flipped out. It's- I couldn't handle the idea that my family didn't think I was good enough to be with them anymore. So I guess I thought I had to fight you guys to get back to you guys, which honestly doesn't make nearly as much sense now in hindsight, but yeah. It was stupid, I was stupid. It's like you said, I couldn't stick it out and I let my emotions get the better of me and I hurt you guys. I hurt you. I'm sorry."