Chapter Text
Eddie adjusts the sleeve of his light blue button-up for the third time in less than five minutes. Maybe he should’ve gone with the green long-sleeve instead. It was Abuela that convinced him that he looked more handsome in light blue. Then again, she might’ve just said that to get Eddie to stop fussing over his outfit and actually leave the house on time.
“Good evening, sir. Can I take your order?”
“I’m actually going to wait for my date to arrive before ordering anything.”
The older gentleman nods in understanding. “Of course.”
When he leaves, Eddie checks his phone. Even after all that time he spent obsessing over what to wear, he still managed to arrive at the restaurant early. He left his name and Buck’s at the front so that whenever Buck arrives, he would be led right to their table. It was a conscious decision on Eddie’s part to sit so that he’s facing the front door, that way he can see the moment Buck steps foot inside.
In the meantime, Eddie focuses on keeping his heart from beating right out of his chest. This is the first date that he’s been on in years and it’s safe to say that his nerves are getting the best of him. It’s just that, he likes Buck. Really likes him, which feels almost stupid to say considering the fact that they’ve never officially met.
It is what it is though, a side-effect of living in a world where online dating has become a norm.
When Eddie checks his phone again, he sees that it’s a couple of minutes past the time that him and Buck agreed to meet at the restaurant. Eddie goes into their text conversation to make sure he sent the right address. When he sees that he has, he locks his phone and waits. The restaurant is located in downtown LA and traffic is bound to be a nightmare, especially on a Friday night.
Twenty minutes later, the waiter comes back to the table to ask if Eddie wants to place his drink order. He asks for water.
Five minutes after that, the waiter is back at the table refilling the glass of water Eddie all but chugged in an attempt to distract himself from his date’s absence. He texted Buck to see where he was but has yet to receive a response.
Another twenty minutes pass before the waiter is back at Eddie’s table.
“I’m so sorry, sir. But if you’re not planning on ordering anything-”
“It’s fine.” Eddie is already out of his seat and tugging his jacket off of the back of his seat. He’s sure that his cheeks are stained red by the shame he feels about being stood up like this, but it’s nothing in comparison to the disappointment coursing through him. “I’m leaving. Thank you for your kindness.”
He leaves a $20 bill on the table and walks out of the restaurant without looking back.
Buck doesn’t get back to him that night or the night afterwards.
“It’s my own fault,” he tells Hen as they work together to clean the fire truck. It’s been four days since his failed date with Buck and just as long since he’s heard from him. “I was stupid for thinking I could actually trust someone I met through an app.”
“You’re not stupid,” Hen counters. “ He is for missing out on the chance of being with someone as amazing as you.”
He knows Hen’s trying to make him feel better, but the words fall flat. If he’s so amazing, how come Buck didn’t show up? Why did he ghost him? Is it something he said during one of their conversations? Did he scare Buck away without even realizing it?
The worst part is, Eddie misses him. Him, this person Eddie never even had a chance to meet. But it’s true. There’s a Buck-shaped void in Eddie’s life, one that he’s struggling to fill. He got used to their daily phone calls and texts and losing both so suddenly has left Eddie feeling like an addict being forced to quit his habit cold turkey.
Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie catches Chim making his way over to them. The last thing he wants is someone else weighing in on this whole situation. “Can we drop this?”
Hen looks less than pleased by the request but does as she’s asked. “Hey, Chim.”
“Did you guys hear about that big accident that happened Friday night?” Chim asks, in lieu of a greeting.
Eddie visibly winces at the mention of Friday and Hen places a reassuring hand on his shoulder, never once taking her eye off of Chim. “No, what happened?”
“Apparently there was some kind of explosion and a guy ended up trapped under his Jeep. It took-”
Eddie tunes out of the conversation and steps out from under Hen’s hand so he can move on to a different spot of the truck to clean.
After a week of radio silence from Buck, Eddie deletes every single one of the dating apps he has on his phone. He tried using a few and reached out to a couple of people, but none of them ever felt right. And, with the sting of Buck’s rejection still weighing heavily on his mind, Eddie didn’t feel like he could fully trust any of the people he was messaging anyways.
He contemplates deleting Buck’s number, but he can’t bring himself to do it.
Eddie compromises by putting Buck’s messages on Do Not Disturb.
That same weekend, May catches Eddie alone at a family barbecue being held at the Nash-Grant household.
“What ever happened with that cute guy you were talking to? Buck, right?”
Eddie stills and his breath gets lodged in his throat. He hates that he reacts so viscerally to the name. “It didn’t work out.”
Two weeks later, Chris is playing with his dad’s phone as the two of them make the drive to Abuela's house for Sunday dinner.
“Daddy, your phone says you have eight new messages.”
Eddie’s gaze briefly meets his son’s through the rearview mirror before focusing on the road again. He doesn’t remember seeing any new messages when he was on his phone a few minutes ago. “Just ignore them, Chris.”
Eddie has no way of knowing that his son doesn’t heed his advice, choosing instead to go to his dad’s messages app to see who’s sent him that many messages.
“Daddy, can I use your phone?”
Chris has made it a habit as of late to ask Eddie for his phone and his father doesn’t know what to make of that. The last thing he wants is for his son to become reliant on the device to keep him entertained. He knows how slippery that slope can be.
“How about we use those legos that Uncle Bobby bought you instead?”
Eddie expects Chris to be excited about the prospect of using his legos, but all Eddie gets is a pout. “Please? I’ll be quick, I promise.”
As his father, Eddie should be better at denying Chris’s requests even when a pout is involved. But there are days when Eddie will think back to how much of Chris’s life he missed out on while overseas and it makes it impossible for him to say no.
“Fine,” he relents. Chris cheers as Eddie passes his phone over to his son. “But you can only be on it for ten minutes.”
“Okay!”
Eddie makes it a point to check the time on his watch so he can cut Chris off exactly at ten minutes, before getting up to grab the lego set from Chris’s room. By the time he comes back, his son is smiling and laughing at his phone. Eddie assumes he’s either watching a video or playing one of the games he has downloaded on the phone. Since Eddie doesn't hear any voices or music, he assumes it’s the latter.
Two minutes before his time is up, Chris gets up off the couch and hands his father’s phone back to him. “I’m ready to play with my legos now.”
Eddie slides his phone into his back pocket and settles his son on the floor beside him so they can work on their building project together.
“Daddy, my friend is having a bad day.”
Eddie, who’s in the middle of doing the dishes, doesn’t look up. He’s too concentrated on getting the charred remains of his attempt at making pasta off of the pan before it’s too late. If Abuela finds out that he ruined yet another pan with his cooking attempts, he’s almost certain that she’ll disown him. “I’m sorry to hear that, bud.”
“You have to talk to him.”
“Why me?” Eddie turns on the hot water in the hopes that that’ll make this whole process easier.
Christopher huffs, a habit that he’s recently picked up. Eddie doesn’t know where his son learned it from, but he can’t say that he’s a fan of it. It acts as a reminder that his son is growing up and, as much as Eddie wishes he could stop time, it’s not possible. “Because he’s your friend too.”
And that is enough to turn Eddie away from the task at hand. “ My friend?”
Christopher puts the phone back to his ear. “I think my daddy forgot about you. I’m going to put him on so he can help you feel better.”
Eddie watches in stunned silence as his son walks over to his side and holds the phone out to him. Chris has that determined look on his face that Eddie is sure he’s seen staring back at him in the mirror. The shock of seeing that expression on anyone other than himself is what prompts Eddie to answer the phone without glancing at the screen to see who it is he’s talking to. “Hello?”
“Eddie?”
Eddie’s still looking at his son, but he’s not really seeing him. His mind is too busy producing images of a man with golden hair, unfairly blue eyes, and a bruise-like birthmark. “Buck?”
It’s been almost a month since Eddie last heard from the other man. He had assumed that the time apart had been enough to erase his presence from Eddie’s mind and dull the effect he felt upon hearing Buck’s voice, but he was wrong. His heart is beating out a rapid cadence and the hand he’s using to hold his phone is shaking slightly. And how, how can he still be reacting like this to someone he’s never met?
“Eddie.”
“I don’t- I-” Words are failing him spectacularly and it annoys Eddie to no end. After the first few days of not hearing back from Buck, Eddie had worked up this whole monologue of things he would say to him. But weeks have passed and everything he thought he’d say when given the chance has all but flown out the window. Then he sees his son, the same person who definitely shouldn’t know who Buck is, sitting at the kitchen table and Eddie knows exactly what he wants to say. “Why the hell were you on the phone with my kid?”
“I can explain-”
“No,” Eddie interjects, feeling all of his anger towards Buck come bubbling back to the surface. He never found an outlet for his emotions after everything fell apart and now it’s coming back full force. Eddie is mindful of the fact that his son is only a few feet away. If not for that, this conversation would be a lot less child-friendly. “ No. You stood me up and now, what? You’re using my kid to get back in my good graces?”
Buck has the good sense to not say anything, apparently already prepared for the verbal lashing he was set to receive from Eddie. His silence only works against him as something else occurs to Eddie. “How did you even get in contact with him? Through my phone?”
“I found his messages on your phone,” Chris answers, too young and innocent to identify his father’s tense and poised to lash out demeanor. “There was a little moon next to Buck’s name that was hiding his messages from you. But I saw them, so I responded.”
A lesson about privacy is not something Eddie thought he’d have to have with his son this early on in his life, but apparently it is. Eddie lowers the phone to address his son. “Remember when I told you in the past that you can’t take things that don’t belong to you? The same goes for whatever things you see on my phone, including messages I get from people.”
Chris’s lower lip juts outs and he lowers his head. “I’m sorry, daddy. But I liked talking to Buck. He’s nice.”
It’s the mention of what sounds like an ongoing conversation between Buck and Chris that leads Eddie to open his messages. Right there at the top of the screen with a half-moon next to it is Buck’s name.
Eddie likes to believe he’s an observant person, that the time he spent as a medic on the battlefield made it so that he was equipped to take notice of minor details that others might not. For him, having that ability could mean the difference between life and death for those he was treating. It’s an ability he thought he brought home with him, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe it’s something he’s only good at when out in the field and not while at home with his own son. It’s the only way he can think to explain how he missed the fact that Chris was texting someone he didn’t know with his dad’s phone.
Eddie scrolls through the texts between his son and Buck then. There aren’t too many messages, only a handful of them sent every couple of days, but enough to prove that the two of them have been talking for at least two weeks now. Buck regularly tells Chris that, although he’s happy to talk to him, he’s not sure how Eddie would feel about it. Every time, Chris says that his father won’t mind.
Then, before any outgoing messages from Chris show up, there are a string of messages from Buck that were obviously meant to be read by Eddie.
The first three came through the day after Eddie muted their text conversation.
Buck (12:24pm): I know I’m probably the last person you want to hear from right now but I promise I can explain everything.
Buck (12:25pm): call me if you can?
Buck (8:59pm): okay so you haven’t responded which I understand. I didn’t show up for our date and it’s been over a week since you heard from me but please call me whenever you see this? You deserve better than me explaining myself over text
The next two messages come a day later.
Buck (4:05pm): i deserve the cold shoulder but I promise I can explain
Buck (8:42pm): please let me explain
There’s another message almost a week later.
Buck (6:45am): I really messed this up, didn’t I?
Another message comes a couple days after that.
Buck (3:26pm): I’m so sorry eddie
Then there is one final message from him right before Chris started responding on Eddie’s behalf.
Buck (1:42am): I’ll stop texting you now.
“Eddie?” His name is spoken timidly and it takes Eddie back to the nights he once spent on the phone with Buck. “Are you still there?”
Eddie scrubs a hand over his face, not sure what to make of all of the messages he’s read. Buck says he has a reason for not showing up, but he never actually said what it was. Eddie hates that, even though all of this time has passed, he still wants to know why he was stood up.
It shouldn’t matter, but it does.
“Yeah.”
“I’m really sorry,” he pauses and then adds, “for everything.”
The apology tugs at the part of Eddie’s heart that wasn’t ready, or willing, to accept that Buck stood him up and then ghosted him for no reason.
Eddie is tempted to say, ‘it’s fine’. It’s what he would usually do, brush aside his feelings and absolve someone else of their wrongdoing. It would be annoyingly easy to do, but he stops himself before he says anything because it’s not fine. Not really. “Okay.”
Neither of them says anything and it’s a strange feeling, being on the phone with Buck and not having a single thing to say. Eddie can’t remember that ever being the case in the past during their phone calls. There hadn’t been a month of silence between them back then though. The weight of that hangs heavily over the both of them.
“Well I should-” Eddie begins just as Buck says, “Is there anything I can do?”
“Anything you can do?”
“To make it up to you,” Buck explains, the words rushing out of him as if he’s scared that Eddie will hang up on him before hearing him out. “If not that, at least let me give you a proper explanation of why I disappeared like I did.”
Eddie doesn’t owe Buck anything, but he does owe it to himself to properly turn the page on this chapter of his life.
“Fine.” Eddie hears something that sounds vaguely like a person choking, but he chooses not to comment on it. “ But I choose where we’re going, and I plan to bring someone with me.”
“Deal.”
“ And , if you stand me up again, you have to leave me alone. For good this time.”
“Understood, but that won’t happen again. I swear. Thanks for giving me a second chance, Eddie.”
“Thanks for coming with us, May.”
May shrugs and takes a sip of the caramel frappuccino Eddie bought her. “It doesn’t take much to convince me to come to Starbucks.”
He appreciates her nonchalance about this whole situation. Initially, Eddie only planned to have Chris tag along with him. The more he thought about it though, the better he thought it’d be better to have an extra person tag along with the both of them. What if there was a conversation that needed to be had between Buck and Eddie alone? Eddie couldn’t, wouldn’t, just abandon his son to accomplish that.
His first thought was to invite Hen along with him, but then he remembered the conversation he had with May about Buck and knew that she was the perfect choice.
“Mmm!” To Eddie’s left, Chris is smiling happily after taking a sip of his strawberry smoothie. “This is really good.”
“I told you you’d like it.” May ruffles Chris’s hair, much to his son’s amusement.
Eddie wants to be strong enough to not glance at the coffee shop’s entrance every few seconds, but he’s not. This is only too reminiscent of the night Buck stood him up and he’s not ready for things to play out like that again.
“Eddie, you alright?”
It’s May that asks the question, but it’s both her and Chris who are carefully watching Eddie.
“I’m fine.” May pointedly stares at him, putting him on the defensive “What? I am .”
She doesn’t say anything, her gaze catching on something that leads her to push her chair back and walk towards the front of the coffee shop. He tracks her movements, unsure of what motivated the sudden need to get it up. It’s not until she pulls the door open and holds it that he understands. The person who’s walking inside is on crutches and had no way of opening the door himself.
It’s not just anyone that she’s holding the door open for though, it’s Buck.
Eddie learned early on in life that it’s rude to stare, but he can’t help himself. How is it possible that Buck looks even better in person? Aren’t pictures supposed to be more flattering than real-life?
May must also recognize him because she’s the one who leads Buck to the table where Eddie and Chris are sitting. She grabs a chair for him so he can join them before taking her seat beside Eddie again. Eddie is sure they’re quite the sight - him in the middle being flanked by a teenager and a child sitting across from a man who easily towers over all three of them and looks like he’s made up entirely of muscle.
“Hi,” Buck greets, resting his crutches against the table. They’re almost twice as tall as Chris’s crutches.
It’s jarring to hear his voice in person when Eddie’s only ever heard him speak over the phone. “Hi.”
“You didn’t tell me you have crutches too!” Chris exclaims a little too loudly. A couple of heads turn in their direction, but Chris pays them no mind.
Buck’s smile is soft as he looks over at Chris and oh , that’s really not fair. Eddie became familiar with Buck’s smile through the photos he used for his dating profile, but this is different. Not only is Eddie seeing it in person for the first time, it’s being directed at the most important person in Eddie’s life - his son. “And you must be Christopher, it’s nice to finally meet you.”
“What happened to your leg?”
“Chris,” Eddie warns, even though it’s the same question on his mind. As far as he knew, there had never been anything wrong with Buck’s leg.
“I’m May,” May cuts in, saving them from what could’ve been an awkward conversation and holding out her hand for Buck to shake. He does, seemingly unphased by the people Eddie decided to bring along with him.
“Buck. Thanks for holding the door open for me back there.”
“Sure.” She stands up again and Eddie wonders if there’s someone else she’s about to hold the door open for. Instead, she grabs her drink and Chris’s. “Chris and I are gonna go sit at that empty table over there so you guys can talk.”
Chris goes willingly, allowing May to help him get his crutches on so they can walk over to the opposite end of the coffee shop. She lets Chris take the lead but turns back around momentarily to address Buck, “don’t you dare hurt him again.”
“Did she just threaten me?” Buck asks once May is out of earshot.
Eddie’s really glad he chose to bring her along. “I think so.”
“I’m pretty sure she’s only a teenager, but I’m still feeling intimidated.”
“You probably should. Her mom’s a cop.”
Eddie shouldn’t take joy in the way that Buck’s eyes widen at that piece of information, but he does. Good, let him squirm. It might put them back on equal footing because right now Eddie is disarmed by just how attractive Buck is, especially this close-up. How and why is someone allowed to have eyes that are that blue?
“Thanks for agreeing to meet me.”
“Mhm.”
Buck rubs the back of his neck. Is that a nervous tick that he’s done before while on the phone with Eddie? “Can I get you anything? A drink? Scone? Cookie?”
“I’m fine.” Then, because they’re here for a reason, he says, “so, that explanation I was offered?”
“Right.” Buck tries to adjust his position, but in doing so, he accidentally knocks his cast against the pole below the table. He winces and Eddie almost does the same. “I was on my way to meet you at the restaurant when I got into an accident.”
Eddie doesn’t know what to make of that statement. He was ready for some sort of pathetic excuse - Buck’s phone died, he confused the day or time of their date, an unforeseen but conveniently timed emergency kept him from showing up - which is why this reason has left him reeling.
“What?”
“I know it sounds fake or like a lie or whatever, but I swear I’m telling the truth.”
Eddie really has no explanation for knowing that Buck is telling the truth. It’s not like he’s had the chance to learn the nuances of Buck’s expression to parse out the truth in a sea of potential lies, but Eddie still believes him. It doesn’t make sense but sometimes the most important things in life just don’t.
All the righteous anger Eddie was holding onto for weeks seeps out of him in seconds. It leaves behind a void that is slowly filling up with a messy combination of concern, regret and sympathy. “I had no idea.”
“How could you?” Buck asks, smiling ruefully. He shifts in his seat again, searching for a comfortable position that Eddie’s sure he won’t find. Not with a cast as bulky as the one wrapped around his leg. He should probably be keeping it elevated, but Eddie refrains from saying so. “The details are pretty fuzzy. All I remember is one second, I was driving to the restaurant to meet up with you and then, out of nowhere, there was a loud boom and I was pinned under my Jeep.”
Something about this story is familiar, which doesn’t make any sense. Where could Eddie have heard it from if not from Buck himself?
“Considering the explosion itself, everyone keeps telling me that I’m lucky to be alive,” he continues, and Eddie can hear the ‘but’ in his voice. It’s as familiar to Eddie as the haunted look in Buck’s eyes, one that Eddie used to see reflected back at him when he first came home from his last deployment. It’s a look he still sometimes sees after rushing to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face after a particularly bad nightmare. Before Eddie can say anything about it, Buck blinks and whatever other emotion was attempting to bubble to the surface is efficiently cut off. “My phone wasn’t as lucky though.”
“Buck,” Eddie murmurs, hand itching to reach out and cover Buck’s. He knows trauma and the last thing he wants is to put Buck in a position where he’s forced to relive his own.
“My sister was able to replace it for me and I had it backed up to my computer so restoring it was easy, but I wasn’t in a talking mood,” Buck presses on, acting as if he hadn’t heard Eddie say his name. “I did think about you though. It was one of my first thoughts when I woke up in the hospital, but I don’t know. How do you tell someone you’ve never met but have very real feelings for that you’re in for a long road to recovery? That’s a lot to put on anyone - I couldn’t do that to you.”
Buck’s last statement is punctuated by a laugh that sounds like it physically pains him. Eddie wants to say something, anything, but he’s never been any good with words. He can’t even figure out if there is a right thing to say. Him and Buck are stuck in an awkward middle ground that exists as a result of online dating.
It’s something Eddie had read about before what was supposed to be his and Buck’s first time meeting. There were countless testimonials about people who had been in virtual contact struggling to find that same spark when meeting in person. It was enough to scare Eddie at the time, but not enough to keep him from showing up at the restaurant that night.
In all the articles he read though, there was never any mention about what to do when the man you’re supposed to meet up with ends up in an accident, doesn’t speak to you for a month, and then suddenly makes a reappearance.
“Anyways,” Buck says, eyes darting down to the table. “I get it. To you, it seemed like I stood you up and then ghosted you and that’s pretty unforgivable. I just wanted to apologize for that and I’m really glad you gave me the chance to do so.”
Buck keeps his eyes downcast and that’s when Eddie realizes this is it, this is everything that Buck showed up today to tell him. There’s nothing else to be said and it leaves Eddie with a steadily growing pit in his stomach.
This isn’t the way things were supposed to work out. They shouldn’t be meeting up for the first time a month after what should’ve been their first date. Buck shouldn’t be sitting across from Eddie, unable to look at him. Eddie shouldn’t already be missing Buck even though he’s not gone.
In a perfect world, or at least a better one, Buck wouldn’t have ended up in that car accident that night. He would’ve made it to the restaurant like he intended to and whatever was growing between him and Eddie could’ve had a chance to continue blooming. But they don’t live in a perfect world and Buck did get into an accident on his way to see Eddie and how is it fair for Eddie to condemn Buck for something that was out of his control?
These thoughts all come at Eddie faster than he can fully reconcile them, all because it sounds like Buck is gearing up to say goodbye and Eddie’s not ready to hear it.
It makes zero sense that he feels this way. Then again, online dating didn’t make sense to him until he tried it out. Maybe this, holding onto Buck instead of letting him go again, is something else that won’t make sense until Eddie tries it.
And that’s the truth of the matter here, isn’t it? Eddie lost his chance with Buck once thanks to a freak accident and now that a second chance has appeared seemingly out of thin air, Eddie’s not ready to let go again.
He doesn’t know what to say, so he decides to repeat some of the words Buck had spoken earlier, the same ones that Eddie’s brain had latched onto the moment they were said. “Very real feelings, huh?”
Eddie sure as hell has never been one to vocalize the way he feels and it’s refreshing to come across someone that does. Then again, haven’t conversations with Buck always been this way? Him speaking exactly what’s on his mind while Edde sat back and wondered what it would take for him to do the same?
“That’s what you took away from everything I just told you?” Buck’s cheeks are a light shade of pink when he says this and Eddie decides he likes that much more than the sad eyes and the goodbye in Buck’s voice from earlier.
“Is there anything else about that statement that I should’ve focused on?”
There’s not a hint of hesitation in Buck's voice only seconds later when he responds. “No, I guess not.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
They stare at each other in companionable silence then and something warm settles in Eddie’s chest. He can’t give it a name, not yet. All he knows is that it’s been too long since he last felt it and what are the odds that it would come back to him in a coffee shop of all places? It’s annoyingly cliché and, if anyone were to question Eddie about it, he’d deny it until his dying breath.
“Does this mean you forgive me?”
Buck sounds hopeful and it tugs at a chord deep within Eddie’s heart, as if the younger man believes that forgiveness is something he must earn and that’s not readily deserved. It’s something Eddie knows all too well. It’s also something he's willing to give Buck. no additional questions asked.
“It means there’s nothing to forgive.”
This time Eddie does reach for Buck’s hand. Buck’s fingers slide within the gaps of Eddie’s with the kind of familiarity that should only exist between couples who have known each other much longer than Buck and Eddie have. Then again, the two have known each other, albeit virtually, for a fair amount of time. There’s more merit to that than Eddie realized.
It might be too soon to think this, but Eddie believes this - holding Buck’s hand - is something he can get used to.
“Thank you for giving me a second chance.”
“Thank you for striking up a conversation with my son.”
The statement is ridiculous if Buck’s laughter is anything to go off of, but it’s also the truth. Without Christopher, none of this would be possible. Eddie wouldn’t be seated here, across from the man who’s stupid dating profile bio and indescribable good looks were, and still are, almost too good to be true.
“Do you think we should invite Chris and the cop’s daughter back to the table? They’re very openly staring at us.”
When Eddie follows Buck’s gaze, he sees that the younger man is correct. Both Chris and May are scrutinizing them. May much more so than Chris, but it’s obvious that they’re both staring. “I think you’re right.”
With a subtle nod on Eddie’s part, May jumps out of her seat and helps Chris do the same. Her patience with his son is something Eddie refuses to ever overlook. She makes sure to carry Chris’s unfinished drink for him as the two of them make their way back to the table. May helps Chris get comfortable in the seat beside his father before reclaiming her seat on the other side of Eddie.
“Looks like you two worked things out.” May says, her brown eyes focused on Eddie and Buck’s intertwined hands.
Buck tugs loosely on Eddie’s hand, maybe to let go of his hand to make things a little less obvious, but Eddie doesn’t let him. Now that he has committed to giving things another shot, he refuses to let anything deter him. That includes an over-invested teenager and her too-observant eyes. He can trust May to keep this from her mother and stepfather for now, even if it means bribing her with more trips to Starbucks in the future.
“It looks like we did.”
Then, because his son is too smart for his own good, Chris also notices that Eddie and Buck’s hands are clasped over the table between them. “Does this mean you like him too, daddy?”
Buck looks far more amused than he has any right to. It’s not fair but, at the same time, it’s such a welcome contrast from the way Buck had looked earlier that Eddie has no desire to voice his objections. “I do, buddy.”
“You see. I told you he was your friend.” Eddie would be exasperated by his son’s know-it-all tone if not for the fact that it’s entirely warranted. “Can we keep him?”
Eddie should probably correct Chris, explain that Buck is a person and not an object that can be kept. He doesn’t only because, as his mind has a tendency to do, Eddie immediately starts thinking about worst case scenarios. In this case, it’s one Eddie already experienced. It consisted of a long month full of casting frequent glances at a silent phone and nights where he wished a soothing voice might fill his ears and help lull him to sleep.
Buck squeezes Eddie’s hand, bringing him back to the present and to his son who’s still expectantly waiting for his father’s answer.
Before saying anything, Eddie takes a moment to take in his surroundings. His son’s curious stare, May’s knowing smile and, finally, Buck’s encouraging grin. It’s not logical for Eddie to already be imagining a ‘Forever’ in his future with this man who he still has so much to learn about, but that’s not stopping him from doing so anyways.
“I really hope so, Chris.”