Lately, I've Tried Other Things || Buddie

I Don't Believe in God

"So now am I allowed to ask how you are?"

Buck leans forward, resting his elbow on the table. He shakes his head, trying to form some semblance of an answer. As he rubs the back of his neck, the best he can come up with is, "Uhh... Honestly, Eddie, I... I don't know." He looks up at him, his eyes still tired. Eddie swears he can feel his heart skip a beat.

It takes him a moment to form his own response. He goes back to making his sandwich. Looking at him is just a little too hard... a little too much at the moment. "You died, Buck. I feel a lot of different ways about that. Sometimes all at the same time." Their eyes finally meet again. No matter how hard Eddie tries to look away, it's like their eyes are magnets, always drawn in each other's direction. "I found the best way to process it is to... allow yourself to feel it." He doesn't even realize he had looked away again until he's pulled back into his gaze.

Now Buck is the one trying to force himself to look away, but it doesn't work for him either. He's quickly pulled back to looking at him. "Yeah, but you do eventually. Y-you process it." He attempted a smile, but it's not enough to hide the tears welling up in his eyes.

"Every day you open your eyes in the morning, you feel a little less surprised the world's still there."

Buck looks back down as Eddie goes back to his sandwich. Wracking his brain for something. "Maybe... maybe you could tell me how you feel about it?"

"Hmh?" Eddie picks up his things and brings them back to the fridge. It's the only way he can guarantee that there will be a moment without eye contact with Buck.

"You said... you said you felt a lot of different ways about it. Maybe if you told me some of them, it could help me figure out how I'm feeling..."

"Buck, I'm sure I don't feel the same way about you dying as you do." Now that everything is away, he has to go back. Well... he could stand with the refrigerator door open and continue to stare into it, but he feels as though Buck might catch on to what he's doing after a while.

"No but... it could still help me untangle some of it. Even if it didn't help, I still wanna know how you felt about it. I mean... couldn't have been easy for you."

"It wasn't but... you dying isn't about me."

"Well, I don't know how to make it about me at the moment, so let it be about you... just until I can figure this out. I think it'll really help me."

This isn't what Eddie wanted. Not because he didn't want it to be about him, which isn't something he is a fan of either, but simply because he did not plan on ever telling Buck how he truly felt about it. He wanted to keep it to himself forever because saying it out loud will make it real and that is terrifying. "I don't know if it will."

"I'm telling you it will, Eddie. If it doesn't, then I'm the only one to blame."

"Fine... I- I uhh..." He furrows his eyebrows. He tries to think of how to put it lightly. How to sugar coat it. How to make it sound just a little better, but he's got nothing, and he's already started talking. He could lie, but that's not something he does to Buck. Keep some secrets, sure, but only for both of their sanity, but he never lies. "I stopped being religious a long time ago. You know that..."

"I do." He tries to hold back his questions, of which right now he has many, and just let him continue.

"But... I mean there are some parts of it that have stuck with me. I always believed in something more out there. Something that created us, or just simply watched us... point is, I believed in something resembling God."

"Believed?"

"Buck, seeing you like that, having to watch Christopher see you like that... and that wasn't even the bad part. I mean... it was. It was so fucking hard for me to see you like that. The tube and the machines... but what was really hard for me was... You were gone, Buck. Like... really gone. I just... I don't think that if God existed, he would be cruel enough to take you away from me. Even for three minutes and seventeen seconds."