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Howard Han has seen a lot of things in his life, some of them he wishes he hadn’t.
In that moment, he is tempted to go get some bleach and wash his eyes with it. The urge lasts for all of a second before he can’t contain it anymore, and he burst out laughing uncontrollably at his friend’s dejected face.
“Stop making fun of me, dude,” Buck protests. “Just, help me.”
“Why the hell are you naked in my house?”
Fun fact that Chim could have lived his whole life without knowing, but Buck’s blush goes all the way down to his chest.
“I can explain – ”
“I swear you and Eddie better not be doing it here because, gross.”
“No,” Buck cries out. He looks even redder, which couldn’t have been humanly possible. “Why would you think that? Eddie and I aren’t dating or anything, what are you trying to imply? There is nothing between us, it’s nothing like that – ”
Truly, Chim can’t help bursting into laughter once more.
“Please, please, continue,” he says through his chuckles. “This is very entertaining.”
“Anyway,” Buck huffs, trying and failing to look dignified. “Belle stole my clothes while I was taking a shower. Also my towel. Why don’t you have more towels in your bathroom? Really this is all your fault.”
Oh, Belle. Chim and Maddie’s new puppy – the cutest big ball of energy Chim has ever seen, and that has, indeed, the habit of stealing clothes whenever the opportunity arises.
“That doesn’t explain why you were taking a shower in the first place. I thought there was a burglar in the house, warn a guy next time.”
Buck, who is still hiding as much of his body as he can with the lamp he’s grabbed when Chim arrived, sighs with all the exasperation he can muster.
“The boiler broke in my apartment complex. I told you yesterday.”
“Again, why my house? Go to Eddie’s! I’m sure he wouldn’t mind seeing you without your clothes on, but I very much do.”
Buck’s blush is back with a vengeance. He chooses to ignore the comment – wisely, Chim has to admit.
“Please,” he says. “I’m a snack. Now, can you stop being difficult and bring me my clothes, please, Howard?”
Chim rolls his eyes, but he’s amused. Buck is the only person he knows who can manage to find himself in situations like these.
Belle is hiding under the couch, a mouthful of t-shirt. She wiggles her tail excitedly when she sees her owner, and Chim struggles to keep a straight face.
“Bad puppy,” he scolds her. She barks at him, a joyful sound, an invitation to come play with her. “No, give me that.”
She sets off running, shirt still in her mouth, tail wiggling.
It takes way too long to catch Belle and if a vase gets broken in the process, no one has to know.
(Except, of course, Buck who uses it to make fun of him.)
“So anyway, that’s how Chimney saw me full-on naked.”
Eddie chokes on his beer.
“He must have been really surprised, huh,” Eddie manages to say after coughing.
“You should have seen his face. I’m pretty sure he stopped computing for a full minute there.”
“I can, huh, imagine, yeah.”
In Chim’s situation, Eddie would have too stopped computing, though not for the same reason.
Not that he’s going to tell Buck either.
“You know,” Buck says suddenly. He pauses and Eddie can see that he is nervous, by the way he keeps staring at his beer bottle.
They are at Eddie’s place, relaxing after a long shift. Christopher is at a sleepover and, truly, Eddie is happy that his kid has so many friends, but it’s still hard to see him growing up so fast.
“I know?” Eddie presses after a beat.
“Oh. Yeah. Hm, it’s just. Chim said a weird thing.”
He stops again, clearly searching for his words. Eddie watches as Buck drinks a big gulp of beer, avoiding his gaze, before taking a deep breath.
“Why do people always assure we’re a couple?”
And, oh. Eddie was not expecting this.
He does not know what to say.
It’s true that the two of them are close, and that they spend so much of their time off-shift together, and that they know each other’s deepest secrets and fears and hopes, and that they are basically co-parenting Christopher at this point.
But that doesn’t mean they are dating.
Does it?
“Are we dating?” Eddie blurts out.
Buck blinks, then bites his bottom lip, a pensive expression on his face. Eddie is not focused on the movement that Buck’s mouth makes, he is not.
“I think we might be,” Buck says, slowly. Then, he frowns. “Does that bother you?”
Does it bother him? He looks at Buck, his bright blue eyes, his pink lips, his lovely smile, his soft blond hair, and thinks – how could it bother him?
“No,” he admits. “You?”
“No.” Buck smiles, soft and sweet. “Guess we’re dating, then.”
“Guess we are.”
Well, since they are dating, Eddie has no reason to hold back anymore. He gets closer to his friend – boyfriend – and presses their lips together in a tender kiss.
They come apart minutes or hours later, both wearing the same love-struck expression.
“Oh no,” Buck says out of the blue, and he sighs, a long, dramatic exhale. “We can never tell Chimney we got together because he saw me naked and made a comment that you’d want to see me naked.”
Eddie blushes, “He did?”
Buck only nods. He is blushing too. It’s cute.
“Well. To be fair, we can’t exactly tell anyone about it. We’d never hear the end of it – dating without knowing it? I can already hear Hen laughing at us.”
“They’d be insufferable.”
Eddie laughs. Soon, Buck is joining him.
“We’ve been dumb.”
“Yeah,” Buck agrees. He takes Eddie’s hand. “But we got there in the end, didn’t we?”
“We did.” Pause. “Though Chim can never see you naked ever again.”
“Jealous, Diaz?”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t worry, you’re the only one I want to see me naked.”
And oh, what an interesting concept. Something they should study further, for sure.