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He rushes into Buck's apartment, barely greeting the man before talking a mile a minute about the 'B' that Christopher's teacher gave him on the project that Eddie watched Buck help with. He's nervously pacing when a cold beer is handed to him.
"-devastated! He thinks he did something wrong! That he somehow fucked up what you did to help him – thanks, babe – because he's sure that no teacher would give you a B! Which is true, granted, but-" Eddie is pulled from his rant when he looks up to see Buck smugly sipping on his bottle. "What?"
Buck shrugs. "You're welcome, honey."
That's how it starts.
Days later, when Buck asks for the remote and Eddie silently hands it over, he's not expecting to hear the "thanks, sweetheart," that accompanies.
He thinks for a moment that Buck is teasing him, but when he looks over, his friend is facing forward, no glint of mischief in his eyes.
Huh. So that's something we do now, I guess.
Eddie tries to wait it out, he really does, for Buck to drop the next pet name. But a week passes and he doesn't. So, when Buck is standing at Eddie's kitchen sink, doing the dishes when he specifically said, "if you're cooking, Buck, I'm doing the dishes," Eddie simply hip checks him out of the way with a smile and a "thanks, guapo, but I've got it from here." Buck's eyes light up, and to Eddie's delight, he doesn't argue.
After that, it becomes a near daily occurrence. Little pet names thrown here and there, eliciting a cascade of tiny sparks down Eddie's back every time.
Until it doesn't. Eddie hadn't realized that he's gotten so used to it, he's stopped having the physiological reactions, until it happens in the firehouse.
They haven't consciously kept it away from work, but Eddie wishes otherwise as soon as he realizes that he now has to explain to Hen why Buck just said, "be right back, baby," before heading for the stairs.
"Wanna explain what that was, Eddie?"
Eddie feigns ignorance, leaning back on the couch and draping his elbow over the back. "What?"
"Uhm? The 'baby' thing?" Hen looks at him, incredulous.
Eddie shrugs. "Just something we do, I guess."
Hen's mouth opens and stays that way, like she hasn't yet decided what she's going to say. "Something… you do… you guess?"
Eddie is about to defend his lie when he realizes that is actually the truth, and it's all he knows about the subject matter (other than his unprofessed feelings for Buck). "Yeah, we just started doing it one day. Friends call each other pet names."
Hen goes far too long without blinking, Eddie's eyes only snapping away from hers when he hears Buck's footsteps on the stairs.
"Whatcha guys talkin' 'bout up here?" Buck's fingertips trace Eddie's arm as he rounds the couch, plopping down unnecessarily close to Eddie. Hen closes her mouth, shakes her head, and walks away. "That was weird. Do you wanna play something?"
"Sure, cariño. Pick something."
For several minutes, Eddie has been staring at the contents of his refrigerator like it'll magically make him a sandwich if he looks hard enough. So he's fairly grateful to get pulled out of that trance with a phone call.
"Buck? What's up?"
Buck releases a long, insufferable groan.
"You're gonna have to give me more than," Eddie copies the groan, "if you want me to be any help."
Buck releases two groans in succession, the latter one slightly higher pitched.
"Buck, if you're gonna complain about something, at least complain."
Buck sighs. "Apparently Hen heard me call you baby and she told Chim and Chim told Madds and I just sat for 90 minutes and two bottles of wine explaining to my older sister that I am not keeping secrets from her."
Eddie doesn't mean to snort.
To chuckle or laugh? Sure. The snort kinda surprised him though.
"Don't laugh! That was grueling."
"I bet it was," he deadpans.
"Edds! She hit me! Like seven times!"
"I'm sure your five-foot-two sister really did a number on your rock hard body."
Eddie can practically hear Buck's pout over the phone.
"Whatever," Buck mumbles. "You take a gentle beating from a loved one with pure betrayal in their eyes."
In Eddie's defense, it's a scoff this time. Not a snort.
"Eddie!"
"Sorry, sorry. Wanna do movie day tomorrow?"
"Yes, please."
"Okay, get some sleep. I expect you here to cook me three full meals tomorrow."
"You know I will, sugar."
"Hey," Eddie starts when he sees Buck walk in the house. "Christopher may or may not have begged to have an all day hang out and sleepover with Denny today."
Buck's eyes drop for just a moment before questioning, "and Hen and Karen were cool with that?"
"They're cool with anything if it means we're indebted for the same."
"Good point. We need to schedule something good for Denny and Chris our next weekend off so they can have a day to themselves and a proper date night." Buck shoots a wink towards Eddie, who tries his best to ignore the parallel.
"Yes we do. Anyway, what are you making me for breakfast?" Eddie flashes his most toothy grin.
"Well I was going to make waffles, and then convince you to let me give Chris sugary toppings if I promised to put him to bed myself, but I'm sure I can whip up something special for my stud-muffin." Buck heads into the kitchen and Eddie takes a moment to unpack all of the emotions he felt from that sentence. The way he knows Christopher so well, the way he can predict the conversation he and Eddie most certainly would have had, and the outcome of said conversation, the way Eddie knows that Buck secretly loves putting Chris to bed – and Chris not so secretly loves it too – topped off with that word. My.
They've been doing the pet names for a while, but they have never claimed one another like that.
It's going to be a long day. "Hey, Buck," Eddie calls out, "how do you feel about mimosas?"
Eddie wakes up with Buck attached to him like some sort of koala. "Babe," he whispers.
He doesn't move and Eddie tries to gently shove at him. "Babe."
Buck still doesn't move, so Eddie forcefully moves Buck onto his back. Buck promptly whimpers and sticks out grabby hands without opening his eyes.
Eddie chuckles, "relax, I just need to pee."
Mimosas at breakfast turned into beer at lunch, wine at dinner, and a whiskey nightcap. (Which turned into three nightcaps… over the course of a few hours. But who's counting?)
As Eddie is crawling back into bed, resigned to let his friend smother him, his phone pings. Eddie rolls over, to Buck's audible dismay. "Buck, we slept in. Gotta go pick up Chris."
Eddie has spent enough nights with Buck in his bed to read his friend's emotions in his movements, even with his back to him. Buck is resigned at first, probably wanting to cuddle more, then he's excited, probably to see Chris, then he's reluctant, probably because he wants to sleep some more, and then he rolls out of bed.
Eddie jumps into first responder mode when he hears a thump, but immediately breaks down into laughter when he sees Buck on the floor like a cockroach on its back.
"Come on," Eddie chuckles, "let's go."
They ride to Hen's house in comfortable silence for the first ten minutes; crucial time needed for Buck to fully wake up.
"He probably watched movies yesterday, what do you think he'll want to do today," Buck asks.
"Probably go to the zoo or something." Buck groans. They're not hungover, but they're definitely too old to be doing something that extraneous after a day of drinking. "We can talk him down to board games and the park, though."
"We better." Buck mumbles.
Karen opens the door with an almost perfectly concealed smirk on her face and lets them in.
Walking into the house, they find Hen wearing a smug smile. Too smug.
Eddie's not sure what secret joke they're sharing, but he really doesn’t want to find out. They gather Christopher and make their exit.
After he turns the car on and straps on his seatbelt, Eddie peaks in the mirror to see Buck putting on Christopher's seatbelt before tickling him.
"Cut it out, rascals. Let's go home."
They manage to coerce Chris into a board game day with a waffle breakfast.
Eddie watches from the doorway as Chris, after getting out the whipped cream and syrup, asks if he can have chocolate chips too.
"Only if you put some fruit on top, bud. I'll get your dad to slice some up for us."
"Yeah, yeah. That's the only thing I can't mess up." Buck and Chris startle for a moment, not realizing Eddie was in the room, but recover enough to share a look. "Okay, except for the one avocado incident." Buck and Chris both turn to give him the exact same expression, and wow, they look alike. He takes a mental picture of the moment before relenting. "Okay, and the pineapple." Neither of them turn around. "The tomato wasn't my fault! The knife wasn't sharp. You cannot hold me to that."
"The sharpener is in the top drawer, Edds. You could have checked."
"Yeah, yeah," Eddie grumbles.
Early evening, in the middle of a game of scrabble, when Buck goes to the bathroom, Chris crawls into Eddie's lap. "Dad?"
"Yeah, mijo?"
"Denny said that friends don't call friends babe."
Eddie's brain faults for a second before he can answer. That is why Hen and Karen were snickering.
"Well, social rules aren't black and white like that. Me and Buck have a certain friendship that some people might consider strange, but I promise that you would be the first to know if anything ever changed between me and your Buck. Okay?"
"Okay, dad. Do you think it ever will?"
Eddie glances up, making sure that Buck isn't out of the bathroom yet, before whispering to his son, "between me and you, I hope so."
"Good. Denny was saying it would be cool if he had two moms, and I had two dads."
"Mijo, you do have two dads." Eddie hears Buck's breath hitch from where he's just stepped into the room. Eddie sends him a smile before looking back down at the child in his arms. "You know that, right?"
"I thought so. But I didn't know."
"Now you know." He places a kiss on Christopher's curls and checks his watch. "Looks like it's bedtime, bud."
"Can Buck take me?"
Buck takes another step into the room and lays a gentle hand on Chris's back. "Yeah, let's go, bud."
Eddie resigns himself to clean up duty while Buck is taking Chris through his routine, and undoubtedly telling him two stories.
Denny isn't wrong, friends don't call each other 'babe.' They also don't co-parent children together, and they don't spend at least three nights a week in the same bed together. Especially when they spend another couple of nights at work together too.
"Out like a light." Speak of the devil.
"That was quick."
"Yeah, he must've stayed up for a while with Denny last night. He didn't even make it through one story."
"Wow, that's impressive, actually."
Buck helps with the rest of the cleanup. "We should call it a night. Carla is going to be here at four tomorrow." Right, their shift starts at five a.m.
"Oh, yeah. What would I do without you?"
"Die, probably." He's right.
Once they go to bed, Eddie snuggles into Buck's bare chest. "You are his dad too, you know," he whispers.
He can feel Buck take a deeper breath as his heart picks up. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me, I'm just bein' honest. You came into my life – our lives – and you turned it right side up. Thank you for that, mi cielo."
As Eddie is falling asleep, he feels Buck press a kiss to his forehead. He places one on Buck's chest in return.
"It's okay Edds, I'll take the jeep."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, only one of us needs to be late. Just let Cap know, okay?"
Eddie studies him for a minute.
Carla got stuck in traffic, she's almost there, but they have to leave for their shift now.
"You can go, I can stay and wait for Car-"
"Eddie, go."
Buck urges him to the door with a soft shove.
"Okay, okay. Thanks honey." Eddie places his hand on the side of Buck's neck and leans up for a quick kiss before heading out the door.
Eddie is at the station changing after explaining the situation to Bobby. He can't shake the weird feeling he has. He's hyper aware of his lips. His hand. He doesn't know why.
Until Buck shows up in the doorway of the locker room, staring at Eddie.
Those lips, that's the feeling lingering on his own.
His hand was on Buck's neck.
Fuck.
"Shit, I'm sorry, Buck. I didn't mean to, I-"
"What do you mean you didn't mean to?"
"I don't know. I… it just happened."
"Just happened, like you made a weird mistake," Buck's face twinges slightly. "Or just happened, like you were running on autopilot?" Buck seems nervous.
You know what? Fuck it. Friends don't call each other babe. Friends don't share a bed 50% of the time. Friends don't give you forehead kisses when you're falling asleep.
Eddie braces himself. "Neither. More like instinct. I was stressed, rushed for time, and you were being so good to me. My love overcame everything else and for a moment, I forgot to keep my guard up. I let my instincts take over."
"You… keep a guard up?"
"I have to, Buck. Don't wanna cross boundaries that we haven't discussed, that you may not wanna cross."
"Edds." Buck walks towards Eddie and lightly cups his elbow. "I don't want boundaries with you. You said your love took over?"
"Yeah, I did."
"You love me?"
"Yes, I do."
"Fuck, Eddie. I love you too. So much, so fucking much."
And they're kissing, intentionally this time.
"I will do anything with you, Edds." A soft kiss. "I trust you with my life." Another. "Wanna spend the rest of it with you." Eddie smiles into the next kiss.
"Did you just propose to me while I'm half dressed?"
Buck shoves him, immediately reaches for his arms, and pulls him back in. "Shut up," he whispers against Eddie's lips with a smile.
Eddie is certain that this is his future, and he can’t wait.