Chapter Text
When Ana says it’s his mess to clean up, that includes explaining to his son why yet another person is walking out of his life, this time for good. Christopher does not take that well, sacrificing yet another salad bowl to the tantrum gods, and Eddie can’t even blame him. His heart breaks a little—a lot—when Chris blames him for Ana leaving, blames him for not loving her enough, blames him for letting her go.
At that moment, Eddie decides he’s never going to get close enough to another woman to bring her home to Christopher. A very, very small price to pay for his son’s happiness. In fact, he’s not even that upset by the thought. It even eases the panic that’s been growing in his chest for weeks.
Eddie’s just finished clearing up the broken shards of ceramic when he realizes he should probably cancel the reservation he’d booked for date night, the one Ana had practically had to beg him for. He winces at the memory, more than aware that the way he was treating her hadn’t been fair to her. She deserved better than someone who couldn’t give her even a quarter of his heart. Or an eighth. Honestly, he’s not even sure where he keeps that damn thing, because he’s been looking for it.
When he pats his back pocket looking for his phone, he realizes that’s not the only thing he can’t find. Dread shooting down his spine, Eddie calls out his son’s name in a panic and rushes to Chris’s room, tripping over his own feet. Not again, please. His pulse is still beating in his ears when he finds Christopher thankfully still in the house, angrily fiddling with the buttons on Eddie’s phone. He’s got the uber app pulled up again. To Buck’s address.
Eddie snatches the phone out of his hands, frustration forming an intense knot in his throat. “Christopher. We talked about this. You cannot run away whenever you feel upset. It’s not safe.”
“Take away my video games again. I don’t care,” Chris grumbles aggressively, flopping onto his bed. “I want to see Buck.”
“Chris,” Eddie says gently, placing a hand on his son’s back. The kid simply huffs again and buries his face in his pillow. “Can we talk about this, please? I know you’re upset about Ana leaving—”
“It’s not that,” Chris whines in a muffled tone. “I’m worried about Buck leaving.”
Those five words are enough to pierce him right through his lost heart, wherever it may be. Eddie’s hands freeze where they were rubbing comforting circles on his son’s back. He feels like his whole body has calcified. “You’re worried about Buck leaving?”
Chris nods into the pillow. “Buck promised me that when people go away, they come back. But Ana left again, so maybe Buck was wrong. Maybe Buck will go away, too, even though he promised he wouldn’t.”
“Buddy,” Eddie manages to get out, voice cracking like thin pottery in a kiln, “You know how firefighters never make promises they can’t keep?”
“Yeah,” Chris replies, sniffling miserably.
“Well, I promise you—I swear to you—that Buck will never ever leave us.”
Eddie doesn’t hesitate to make that promise. He knows it to be true in his very soul. Even if one or both of them ends up in the ground, they’ll claw their way out to make it home to that kid—and Eddie knows firsthand how difficult that is.
“Never ever?” Christopher asks, finally turning around to sit up, looking so achingly hopeful with tears in his eyes.
“Never ever,” Eddie confirms, wiping them off his cheek when they inevitably fall.
A moment of silence falls upon the pair, and it’s only broken when Christopher whispers, “Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you drive me to Buck’s, please?”
The knife carefully eases out of Eddie’s chest, and slowly but surely the wound begins stitching itself up. “Yeah, I sure can.”
Not five minutes later, they’re on the road, and Christopher’s pulled up the soundtrack to The Lion King and cued it up to play from the car speakers, and Eddie smiles fondly at the memory of the three of them—him, Chris, and Buck—listening to it on the way back from the zoo last Sunday. It was supposed to be four of them—Ana included—-but she’d cancelled at the last minute to, ironically, finish planning a school trip to the zoo.
Funnily enough, her message informing him that she couldn’t make it anymore had come right after Eddie sent her a text about Buck picking them up. He’s not sure if he ever told Ana that Buck was coming with them, but that should have been a given, right? Why would they go to the zoo without Buck? He knows all the fun facts about the animals. It’s no fun without him.
When they arrive at Buck’s loft, parking in their designated spot that Buck pays extra for every month, Christopher practically runs into the building. Eddie rolls his eyes, but if he’s being honest, the Diaz boys always share the same enthusiasm when it comes to Evan Buckley—one of them simply carries less baggage to slow him down. They stop outside the front door, and Eddie lets Christopher knock, hoping it’s loud enough for the firefighter to hear. It must be, because he can hear shuffling on the other end, and a few seconds later, the front door opens.
Buck is in a pair of grey sweatpants and a long sleeved shirt that stretches around his biceps. He clearly was not expecting company—Eddie can tell, not because of his attire, but because of the glittery, ocean blue eyeshadow look delicately painted onto his eyelids. The rest of his face is relatively bare, with some light blush dusted onto his cheeks and his lips a bit darker than usual, matching the shade of his birthmark. He looks like the sky and beyond. He looks like heaven.
The look in his eyes, however, is anything but heavenly.
“Ah,” Buck says, blinking down at the two of them in surprise. The man swallows harshly, Adam’s apple bobbing, and shifts his weight uncomfortably. “Uh… hey guys.” Buck’s expression softens slightly as he takes in Christopher’s excitement to see him, and he crouches down to give him a fist bump. “Hey Superman. I thought you were my Amazon delivery guy.”
Christopher, to his credit, is entirely unbothered and lets out a happy giggle. “Wow, you look pretty,” the kid compliments as he hugs his friend around the waist, as far as he can reach. Eddie’s heart—oh, there it is, has it always been here?—skips a few beats as he drinks in the image before him, wanting to freeze it and live inside of it forever. It would be a perfect moment, really, if not for the blood rapidly draining from Buck’s face.
“We can hug him later, Chris,” Eddie interrupts, peeling his son away from Buck, who grows paler with every passing moment. “Why don’t you go set up the game you wanted to play? Buck and I will come join you in a minute.”
The kid agrees, making his way to the living room while muttering something about ‘adult conversations.’ Eddie wonders once again how much Chris actually understands. He thinks it’s probably more than he expects.
When Christopher is safely out of ear shot, Eddie turns back to Buck. The man has progressed to wringing his fingers anxiously. Eddie places a hand on his shoulder. “Sorry for just showing up. Chris was upset, and he wanted to see you, but I should’ve called first and made sure it was okay.”
Buck turns an apologetic frown onto him. “I’m sorry. I should’ve checked who it was before opening the door. I just thought it was my delivery and the mailman would have just dropped it off and left and I wasn’t expecting to see anyone or for anyone to see me…”
Eddie tilts his head, watching him carefully. “And that’s a bad thing because…?”
“Y’know,” Buck replies, gesturing to his eyes.
Huh? It takes a few moments for the meaning of Buck’s words to register in Eddie’s mind, and when it does, he feels a physical ache in his chest. Please let him have misunderstood. “You don’t mean because you’re wearing makeup right now, do you?”
“What else would I mean, Eddie?” Buck replies, tone a mixture of confusion and guilt. “I didn’t want to confuse Chris or weird him out or…”
“Buck,” Eddie interrupts sharply, no-nonsense. Buck stops talking immediately. If Eddie’s being honest with himself, on one hand he’s offended that Buck would think of him as someone who would be upset with him for the simple fact of being a man while wearing makeup in front of his kid—on the other hand, Eddie grew up with a father who had one idea of what a man is, and he still struggles with how to not be that sometimes. But he’s never given Buck any reason to believe that he would react badly to this, not after pulling his dead wife’s old makeup out of the back of his closet for him.
Even so, he understands Buck so deeply that he knows it's not about him, really, but rather it’s about Buck always worrying about how people see him, worrying that he’s not good enough the way he is, worrying that he has to keep the parts of himself hidden that others could use as a reason to leave. “Christopher adores you. He’s not going to be confused or weirded out by a little eyeshadow. I like to think I raised him better than that.” We raised him better than that.
The tension leaves Buck’s shoulders at his reassurances, and a small smile even makes its way onto his face. “I know you did. I just… I wanted to talk to you about it first. Sorry for freaking out.”
Eddie folds his lips together, trying to decide if he wants to leave it at this nice moment or dig deeper and risk Buck closing off for the rest of the night. He decides it's worth the risk. “Why did you freak out?”
As if he’s been expecting this question, Buck sighs. “Honestly, man? I guess I just… I’ve always felt…” Buck swallows harshly, and Eddie can tell it’s eating him up alive, whatever he’s struggling to say. “I’ve always felt like too much, even without all this. I’ve always felt… exhausting.”
Oh.
Eddie remembers that day in the grocery store. Of course, he remembers. The look in Buck’s eyes when he’d said those words in anger still haunts him to this day. He was just hoping, praying, that Buck had forgotten. He should have known better.
“Buck,” he whispers, the name falling from his lips like another prayer.
“It wasn’t any one thing,” Buck protests, putting his hands up in the air like he’s being arrested for having emotions. “You know how my parents were. The only way I could get their attention was by being exhausting, by hurting myself, by putting myself in danger. And what did that get me? Not their love. Just their exasperation.”
“So you tried to be less exhausting,” Eddie says, completing the story, boxing up his own pain to burrow into later. “You tried to be palatable, so people would love you.”
“Fat lot of good that was,” Buck laughs. There’s a bit of pain in his voice, yes, but it’s mostly amusement now. Eddie can tell he’s still hurt over the past loves in his life, the ones who never deserved him in the first place, but he’s moved on enough to laugh about it.
Eddie meets his eyes and, because it’s Buck, he softens like butter on a hot day. “Well, I think it suits you.”
At that, Buck’s small smile becomes a huge grin. “Yeah?”
“My kid called you pretty,” Eddie says with a smirk. “The last person he called pretty was Ana.”
As quickly as it arrived, the grin fades. Eddie tries pointedly not to think too hard about why mentioning his girlfriend—ex-girlfriend—would elicit that reaction from his best friend. Buck leans casually against the countertop. His gaze shifts towards the living room under the guise of checking on the kid, but it’s really so he doesn’t have to look Eddie in the eyes. “How is she, by the way? Ana, I mean.”
“Probably not great. We broke up this morning,” Eddie replies casually. He reaches into the fridge to grab two beers and twists the cap off of one, taking a long sip as he waits for Buck’s reaction.
The man in question turns back slowly, leveling him with a heavy stare. “You broke up?”
“Yep. This morning.”
Buck’s eye twitches, but he doesn’t let on how he feels. “I’m sorry, man.”
“I’m not,” Eddie shoots back, paired with a toothy grin. “I’m really not.”
Buck’s mouth falls open in surprise. “Oh.”
A moment passes where neither of them says a word. Eddie takes another sip of his beer, and because Buck makes no move to grab the other one, he discards it onto the kitchen island—that’s when Buck reaches for it, and his hand brushes Eddie’s, and Eddie starts to wonder if the feeling he gets when Buck touches him, like lightning in his veins, is really something all guys feel for their best friends. He certainly never felt it with Ana.
Buck sucks in a little gasp when their hands touch, and Eddie thinks that maybe he feels it, too.
He knows Buck feels it when he meets the other man’s eyes and sees the longing in them—just a moment, just a glimpse of desperation, and then it’s gone, sheltered behind his tenderly cultivated defenses. But it’s too late, and Eddie’s world is tilting on its axis, and Buck is just so…
“Chris was right,” Eddie says matter-of-factly, the words spilling out without a second thought.
“About Ana leaving?” Buck hazards a guess, wincing sympathetically. Surely he can guess what that particular meltdown entailed from Eddie’s detailed description of the prior ordeal.
Eddie shakes his head. “No, about you being really pretty.” And if Eddie adds an extra really in there, then that’s no one’s business but his own.
A surprised chuckle escapes Buck’s prettily painted mouth, and Eddie can’t help but stare, and he’s pretty sure he shouldn’t be looking at his best friend like this and imagining his mouth doing other things. “Jesus, Eddie, give a guy a warning,” Buck half-whispers, his cheeks burning red.
Something stirs in Eddie’s gut at the sight. Buck’s flustered, and Eddie wants to push it, wants to say more and more until Buck can’t hold himself upright, until his eyes flutter shut and Eddie can see the shimmer on his lids glisten in the soft yellow glow of the kitchen lights.
Oh.
Well, then.
The refrigerator hums in the background. Eddie’s heart is throbbing in his ears. He can hear his lungs expanding and deflating like they’re playing the drums. He swallows, and that’s loud, too. Everything’s loud, until he looks at Buck, and then everything fades away.
Eddie holds his breath. “Buck?”
“Yeah?”
“Warning.”
With that, Eddie takes a step forward, glances at those plump, pink lips once more, and kisses Buck as deeply as he can possibly muster.
And Buck?
Buck fucking melts into him. His body goes practically pliant into Eddie’s arms, except his lips, which kiss back ferociously. Eddie wants to let out a string of expletives, but to do that, he would have to stop kissing Buck, and that’s simply not an option. He’s warm, and he kisses like he’s starved for it, because he probably is, because no one’s ever kissed him like Eddie plans on kissing him forever. Fuck all the others who never deserved to lay their eyes on him, much less touch him, much less think they had any part of him.
Buck is Eddie’s. Always has been.
When they break apart, a string of saliva connecting them still, it’s to the sound of a kid calling out for them from the living room. Christopher is fiddling with some buttons on his controller—adjusting his car’s controls, most likely. “Dad? Buck? I’m waiting for us to play Mario Kart.”
Buck lets out a laugh, and Eddie tries not to lose his mind at how wrecked Buck sounds. He clears his throat before calling back, “I’ll be there in one second, Chris. Did you pick your character already?”
Christopher snorts like it’s a stupid question. “I’m always Toad, Buck, and you’re always Princess Peach.”
Eddie rubs his thumb affectionately across Buck’s cheekbone. “You’re my princess,” Eddie teases with a little too much truth in it, and Buck swats his arm and pushes him away, but not before stealing one last kiss.
“Go make some popcorn,” Buck instructs, not having to tell him where the popcorn is. “I’m gonna go drive off the ledge on Rainbow Road a hundred times.”
“You don’t have to go easy on him, you know,” Eddie says softly as he pulls out a large bowl from under the sink.
Buck’s the one who snorts this time, and it sounds eerily similar to the kid’s. Eddie wonders just how much Buck has rubbed off on Christopher in the years they’ve spent together. “I don’t go easy on him, Eddie. That map is hard.”
Eddie gestures towards the living room with his chin. “Go, have fun. I’ll join in a second.”
And Buck listens, scurrying off to play video games with Eddie’s kid—their kid. Eddie’s pretty sure he hears Christopher call Buck pretty as a peach, and Eddie’s about to intervene, maybe a little afraid of how Buck will react, when he hears Buck’s soft thank you and looks over and sees him hiding his smile in the boy’s hair.
When it’s finally Eddie’s turn to play, he realizes how right Buck was about Rainbow Road. It’s hard to stay upright, and he’s tumbling over the edge more times than he can count, his world turning upside down in a haze of rainbows. And isn’t that a bit on the nose?
Ah, well. The game is pretty fun, and so is the falling.
***