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It’s getting harder. It didn’t used to be hard at all, and that’s the worst part. Eddie knows what it was like to sit across the table from Ana, their legs brushing, and think that maybe, maybe this was it. Maybe they could take this all the way. She was a good influence on Chris, a sweet and kind person, someone his parents would approve of, and someone he found attractive. Still does.
Except that nearly dying has a way of putting things into perspective. When he was overseas, he expected it. They were walking into active war zones, and the sound of gunfire was the background of his life then. Getting shot down was terrifying, yeah, but seeing Buck covered in blood, feeling numb, the worry taking over, the way his stomach dropped, sudden and painful — that was another thing entirely. Even waking up was difficult. He wasn’t sure if Buck had also been shot, if she was in the hospital with him, if she was alive.
That’s not when the problems began, though.
They started a lot earlier. There was a point, sometime a few dates in, when the itch of wrong wrong wrong hit him. It was small at first. Small and so easy to ignore. He pushed it to the back of his mind with years of experience in ignoring problems.
Then Carla said what was on her mind, and it crept back into the forefront. It had festered back there, grown into something he could no longer shove aside.
He likes Ana.
He’s not sure he could ever love her.
With a sigh, Eddie changes back to the shirt he first picked out. It’s more casual. Less something he would wear to impress but not bad by any means. He doesn’t want to give off the wrong impression either way tonight. He just can’t do this anymore.
Everything came to a point as he and Buck sat on his hospital bed. It pains him to think about how little she still thinks of herself, how willing she is to throw herself away. He knows she doesn’t think of him the same way he thinks of her but also that Christopher sees her as a second mom regardless of the nature of their relationship. She’s worth so much to the both of them, and he’s a hundred percent sure the rest of the team would say the same, because she’s Buck. She’s her, and that means so much.
She’s a part of the family. The 118.
His family. Theirs.
The doorbell rings. It’s time to face the music. Eddie walks out and opens the door, revealing a smiling Ana on the other side.
Her smile slips when she catches sight of his expression. “This isn’t a normal date, is it?”
He owes her this much. “No, it isn’t.” Standing aside, he waves her on in. “I figured we could talk inside.”
The worst part is how well Ana takes it. She’s understanding, admits she’s noticed how he looks at his best friend. She wishes him luck even as she declines the offer to stay for dinner or a drink with a sad little smile.
He watches her go and knows anyone would be lucky to have her.
Unfortunately, she’s just not the one he wants.
The one he wants is watching his son right now. Probably filling him up with pizza and ice cream and video game violence, and Eddie doesn’t even have to think about it to know he’d rather be there than standing in the doorway watching his girlfriend — ex-girlfriend — walk away. So he grabs his keys and gets into his truck. Instinct takes him down familiar roads. Muscle memory gets him to Buck’s front door. He can hear the two of them cheering through the wood.
Somehow, they hear him knocking over the noise. Buck comes to the door with a few dollar bills folded in her hand, blinking with the realization that he isn’t their dinner. The shock lasts only a fraction of a second before her parted lips are slipping into a grin, her teeth almost as bright as her eyes. Her hair is loose tonight, her short curls free of gel. It’s never been long in the time he’s known her.
(He now knows it was an act of rebellion, a cry for some kind of attention, something that ended up defining Buck as opposed to Evelyn.)
“Buuuuuck,” Christopher groans from further in the loft, “is that the pizza?”
She turns her head, everything about her softening with fondness. “Nah, but it’s something even better.” She steps aside much as he had for Ana earlier. “We’ve got pizza on the way, and there are beers in the fridge, if you want.” She doesn’t even question if he’s going to stay for a while.
He always does. Eddie ducks his head and follows her in, his heart swelling at the happy Dad! Christopher lets out from the couch. This is where he wants to be.
Buck gives him a good, friendly slap on the back and holds out a fresh beer. “I wanna see if you’ve been practicing without me,” she says teasingly. “Christopher is suspiciously good at this game now.”
Eddie takes a long sip to give himself a moment. Buck has always been a good dresser. Always been put together in a way Eddie’s never put that much thought into. Tonight is no exception, but there’s something beautifully casual about her right now. No gel, no slacks. Just a pair of soft sweats and a shirt that clings to her in all the best ways, showing off her toned arms as well as her softer curves. “Maybe he’s been practicing on his own,” he suggests innocently.
Her laugh is loud. She takes her own beer and drops down onto the couch beside his son, who immediately leans into her.
Eddie suspects they were sitting that close even before he came over. He joins them, taking the controller she offers, and ruffling Christopher’s hair. “Ready, mijo?”
“Ready to win,” Chris says with a giggle.
It’s music to his ears. He starts the round, all of the tension he knew and didn’t know he was carrying melting away just by being here with them.
A few hours later, he and Buck are sitting at the kitchen island, Christopher sound asleep on the couch. Eddie opens up one of the pizza boxes and pulls out a slice of cold pepperoni to pick at. He’s got maybe half a beer left before he switches to water for the night, and maybe it’s the alcohol or maybe the atmosphere, but he offers up the information before Buck can even ask.
(And she was close to. He could tell.)
“I broke up with Ana.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “I thought you two were getting serious?”
It’s telling, he thinks, that she doesn’t look too shocked. “I thought we were, too.” He sets his bottle down. “But Carla asked if she was what I really wanted, and I…” He can feel the way his brow creases.
“Realized she wasn’t,” Buck finishes for him.
“Was it that obvious?” Is he so obvious? Does she know how he feels about her? He doesn’t bother wondering about the rest of the 118. They’ve known before he did, he’s sure of that without asking. It’d be surprising if there isn’t a bet going on in the background.
Buck shrugs. “Eh, you weren’t bad together, but she’s safe, ya know? She never really struck me as the kind of girl you’d go for.” She says it plainly.
“She was good for Christopher,” he admits. “Good for me, too, just not what I wanted.” Not like Buck. He can be himself with her, nothing held back. Everything’s easy with her in a way that not much was with Ana, and if he’s honest, it’s been that way almost as long as he’s worked at the 118.
“So, what do you want?” There’s nothing searching about the way she says it. Nothing that would point to her wanting to know for any reason other than the fact that she’s his best friend.
He really, really wishes there was something he could read into it. “Ah, I don’t know,” he says, brushing it off best he can.
But, of course, Buck sees right through him. “You know,” she says teasingly. “C’mon, Eddie, you’ve listened to my relationship issues. You got nothing to be ashamed of.”
He had. First, there was Ali, and Eddie was there for the very beginning of that, watching the respect blossom between the women as they worked their way through the tilted building. That ended spectacularly, through no fault of Buck’s.
Then there was Taylor. At that point, he’d known Buck was bi. He’d heard all about Abby, seen Ali, sat around while Hen and Chim ribbed Buck for the time Bobby caught her on the roof with a guy’s hand down her uniform pants. Taylor was the first guy he’d ever seen her with, though, and it was doomed from the start. That story on Bobby? Eddie doesn’t care he wasn’t allowed to air it. The very thought that it almost existed is enough to raise his hackles.
Buck wasn’t impressed, either. But apparently not unimpressed enough to stay away, so Eddie got used to hearing the occasional I was out with Taylor slip from her lips. While Buck never told him everything, he knows the basics.
He told her the basics, too, when he started to date Ana. He hesitates.
“You don’t have to share,” she says softly, catching his eyes. “It just seems like it’s weighing heavy on that handsome head of yours.” Her smile is a bit mischievous. Mostly, it’s achingly bright even in its muted form.
His shoulders sag. This is his chance. He can brush her off again now, and she’ll get the hint. But he doesn’t. “Ana was perfect.” Perfect for Chris, perfect for his parents. “Too perfect, maybe? There wasn’t a spark.”
Buck purposefully brushes her shoulder against his. “What a romantic. But seriously, that’s a good reason to break up. You’re looking for someone you fit with.”
Someone like her. Sitting here at the kitchen island, their bodies close enough that he can feel the heat of her, he feels a bone deep surety — they fit together better than he has with anyone else, Shannon and Ana included. “Have you ever had that?”
Her lips part just barely as she thinks. Her brow creases enough that he notices but not enough that most people would.
And he can barely breathe. Has he given himself away? Or will Buck see it as an innocent question?
She gives him a considering look. “Yeah. I think I have.”
They don’t talk about it that night.
It’s months down the line when it happens. The fire’s burning its way through an apartment building, and Eddie isn’t going out of his way to take risks, but the moment he starts to feel the floor give, he’s stepping into it, reaching for the terrified woman they were there to save, darting in before Buck can even think about doing it herself.
His glove grazes the woman’s arm.
She shifts to grip his hand.
The floor collapses.
He smacks his head on the way down.
The hospital lets him go home with the catch that he needs someone to stay with him for the next few days.
No one questions it when Buck steps up to the task. Hell, Cap even tells her not to worry about coming in either, that he’ll arrange for her to use a few vacation days.
So Eddie lets the nurse wheel him out to the jeep with a light amount of complaining and only grumbles at the way Buck practically manhandles him into the passenger side. “I have a concussion,” he reminds her. “I’m not paralyzed, you know.”
Usually, Buck would laugh. Roll her eyes. Make some sort of joke. Now, her knuckles go white at the steering wheel.
His smile drops. “Buck?”
“You could be,” she says, sharp and sudden and hurt. “You could be paralyzed or — or dead, Eddie! I was closer to her. I might have been able to get her without falling.” She glances at him, and her eyes are puffy, red, and shining. There are streaks of soot along her cheeks, interrupted by leftover trails of the tears she’s already shed. Her uniform is rumpled. There was no time to change.
“So what? I was supposed to let you jump in? I meant it when I said you weren’t expendable.” In contrast, his tone is low. Calm. He’s tired, and it wasn’t all that long ago that he felt exactly what she’s feeling right now.
She grits her teeth. “Neither are you! I’m trying, Eddie. I haven’t thrown myself in without thinking in months, but now it’s like you’re picking up my slack. I don’t know what was going on through your head —”
Popping his seat buckle, Eddie shifts over and kisses her, stopping her right in her tracks. There’s a part of him that’s screaming for him to not, that he’s fucked this up by crossing the line here. He doesn’t care, not right now. The impulse to kiss her was too strong. His head is swimming a bit from the quick movement. He anchors himself in the way she tastes, the way her body leans into his, desperate, like she can’t hold herself up any longer.
Like she’s finding stability in him, too.
When he pulls away, wincing at the ache in his body, he leaves on hand cupping her jaw. “If you didn’t want that, I need you to let me know,” he says, and his heart drops at the thought that she might say she didn’t. No matter what her answer is, things are going to change. He tries to brace himself for it.
Buck’s chest heaves with each breath, and her eyes are impossibly wide and trained right on him. “If I didn’t want it?” Her voice is ragged. She reaches up and puts her hand over his. “Eddie, I’ve wanted this for a long time.” It looks like it pains her to say it.
And yet it’s quite possibly the best thing he’s ever heard. “Good, because I’ve been dying to do that for ages.” He kisses her again, and this time, it’s just as desperate, just as all-consuming.
It takes Buck elbowing the horn to break them apart. She shakes her head, pulls away with a reluctance he feels deep in his chest. “I can’t do this right now.” The words seem to catch up with her as she’s saying them, and she scrambles to clarify. “Not while you have a concussion.”
He swallows the protest on the tip of his tongue, because he is sore, tired, and not in the right place for an important conversation. “I’ll hold you to that.” Really, he just wants to hold her.
She nods and turns the jeep on.
The first day is a flurry of Carla and Christopher fussing over him, Buck a steady presence in the background just like she always is. They’re never alone, but that’s okay. Buck fits here. She’s good with Christopher, so natural with him in a way Ana hadn’t achieved while they were dating, and Eddie never once wishes it could be just the two of them. He has his immediate family here. Even curled up in bed, Christopher in the middle, Buck’s bright eyes on him, he has no regrets.
On the second day, Christopher insists on doing his schoolwork by his side. Buck settles on his son’s other side, offering help whenever he gets frustrated all while keeping an eye on Eddie.
They finally get a moment later that night. Christopher agrees to sleep in his own bed in exchange for an extra story, and Buck is all too willing to read him one.
After Eddie helps tuck him in, he’s guiding her into the living room and detouring off to the kitchen to grab two beers.
She takes one with a small smile and nod. “So.”
“So.” He takes a sip. “How do you feel about a date?”
She nearly chokes on her beer. A few light coughs and a pat to the chest, and she’s fine. “Right to the point. Okay.” Wiping at her mouth, she shakes her head. “You don’t think it’ll be weird?”
“I think we’ve been dancing around it for years,” he says, and it’s a relief to admit.
“Twenty bucks says Hen’s been taking bets,” Buck returns like it’s nothing.
It makes Eddie snort. “I didn’t scramble my brain that bad. No deal.” He settles on the couch next to her, their legs and arms brushing.
“What do we tell Christopher?” she says quietly.
“The truth.” It doesn’t take him long to think about it. “I think… I think he’ll be happy. You’re his Bucky.”
That brings a smile to her face, and it’s so beautiful the way she glows. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
She puts her beer down on the table and tugs him into a kiss, slow and deliberate and with so much meaning.
Wrapping his hand around the back of her neck, feeling the shorter curls at the nape, he gives as good as he’s got.
It’s all he wished for and more.