Work Text:
Buck knows he has a few annoying character traits. He’s fully aware that he talks nonstop, but that’s part of his charm. And he knows that his affinity for ranch dressing on everything annoys some people, and that his habit of letting the refrigerator door slam shut on its own rather than closing it gently gives Bobby a conniption every single time. Everyone has their thing, and Buck just thinks that he has this small assortment of things and that’s it.
But it’s not until Eddie joins the 118 that Buck starts noticing everyone else’s things.
Because Eddie? Has bad posture. Like, horrible posture. He’ll walk into a room a whole six inches shorter than he actually is without even realizing it. He’ll be completely slumped while talking to Christopher, trying to look him in the eye by craning his neck down. He slumps in a chair with his head drooped low, and Buck can feel the headache that'll develop if Eddie stays in that position for too long. When they’re playing video games, he hunches so low and close to the controller that Buck almost gets concerned he’ll get stuck like that. When he stands, he overemphasizes the curve of his low back in a way that Buck knows means he’s not contracting his abs, and he knows those fuckers exist because they taunt him day in and day out.
The man is going to end up in physical therapy for life if he keeps it up. All Buck ever wants to do is poke him in the middle of the back until he stands upright, and at first he refrains because he just met the guy, and then later he refrains because he’s in love with the guy and all his flaws.
So it’s not until Bobby groans one day, a month or so after Eddie’s return following the shooting, and gently pokes Eddie in the middle of the back while he’s slouching on the couch. Eddie frowns but immediately shoots upright, and Buck looks over at Eddie with a raised eyebrow.
“Sit up straight, son,” Bobby says with a sigh. “Especially with your arm still recovering.”
“Sorry,” Eddie shrugs, turning back to the television, immediately slouching back down. “I’m tired.”
Hen raises an eyebrow at them before looking directly at Eddie. “You’re always slouching, though. Ever since I met you.”
Eddie frowns at her before looking over at Buck and Bobby. Buck absolutely thinks he does a good job schooling his face, because Eddie just glances at him for a second before fully turning to Bobby again.
Bobby shrugs. “She’s right.”
“I don’t slouch,” he grumbles, but he looks at Buck again as he says it and Buck freezes. He glances at Bobby for help, but Bobby just shrugs at him again.
“Uh,” Buck stammers, looking at the ceiling, the floor, his feet, anywhere but at Eddie. “I mean, man, you have like, no core contraction when you stand.”
Eddie blinks at him. “I have no idea what that means.”
“Like,” Buck sighs and stands up, and he tips his hips forward until the curve in his low back is emphasized. “You stand like this,” he says, and then he flattens his back and stands up straight, shoulders back, “When you need to be standing like this.”
Eddie looks at him again with a frown. “You just stuck your ass out.”
“That’s literally what you do,” Buck sighs and flops back onto the couch. He wants to add that it’s super distracting, but he doesn’t think saying that to a guy with a girlfriend would be appreciated. “And your neck needs to be on top of your spine, not on your chest.”
Hen snorts a laugh from behind him and Bobby rolls his eyes.
“He’s right, though,” Bobby moves into the kitchen to start preparing their lunch. “You’re going to end up with neck pain and low back pain and upper back pain and just, so much pain if you keep that up.”
“I’m fine,” Eddie grumbles as he, ironically, slouches further into the couch.
“You’re not getting any younger,” Buck says sagely, and Hen starts cackling from her spot at the table, studying completely abandoned in favor of the conversation.
“Okay, who made you the posture expert?” Eddie grumps at him.
Buck shrugs. “Wikipedia. And Wikihow. And Physiopedia.”
Hen’s forehead is now pressed against the table as she continues to wheeze in laugher. Buck is grinning at Eddie now, and he is just so happy to have Eddie back that he almost forgets about Chimney and Maddie’s absence. This is the lightest he’s felt since Maddie left, Chimney soon to follow, and he really hopes that the feeling doesn’t fade anytime soon even though Eddie is grumping on the couch next to him.
But when Eddie sits up straighter throughout the rest of their game, Buck chooses not to say anything, because he knows that the key to learning good posture is that it must come from internal cueing.
After that, things are kind of a shitshow – Eddie has a breakdown, Chim and Maddie come back and breakup, there’s the Lucy and Taylor of it all, then Jonah happens and everyone is promptly distracted by everything that comes with that. Buck is fine to let Eddie’s bad posture slide while he works on recovering and going to therapy. He doesn’t think that the guy really needs one more thing to worry about on top of everything else.
Once Eddie is back at the 118, though, all bets are off. Because Eddie is now therapized and happy and he has a bit of an attitude again, and Buck is really all about it. He’s fully aware that he’s in love with the guy, now that Taylor’s out of the picture, and it’s the first time they’ve both been single in over a year. So it’s not his fault that he finds himself staring at Eddie more than usual, which means that he’s also noticed Eddie’s bad posture, back with a vengeance.
“Oh my god,” Buck groans at him, seated next to him in the truck on their way to a call. “Sit the fuck up, man.”
Eddie is slouched so far over, looking at his phone and reading a text from Carla, head bent forward and chin jutted out as he reads. He looks up at Buck and raises an eyebrow, and Buck raises one back right, glancing down at Eddie’s neck and rounded shoulders before looking back at his face.
“He’s right,” Ravi adds. Buck points a finger at him in gratitude.
Eddie huffs but straightens up, glaring at both of them and folding his arms over his chest. “I was just looking at my phone,” he says, gesturing to the phone still held in his hand.
“Hold it up here,” Buck mimes, holding the phone in front of his face.
“Tech neck is a real thing,” Ravi supplies. “After a while, it can actually affect your spinal curvature, and –”
Eddie groans and slouches down again, dropping his face into his hands. “I didn’t know there were two of you now,” he says, directed at Buck but gesturing at Ravi. “Did you teach him Wikipedia?”
“Everyone knows Wikipedia except for you,” Buck sighs. He flicks Eddie in the arm. “Sit up.”
“No.”
“Sit up.”
“Make me.” Eddie glances at Buck out of the corner of his eye as he says it. His voice is lower in the headset now, and Buck swears he sees a flash of something dart across Eddie’s face, almost like it’s a challenge.
And oh, does Buck wish that was a challenge.
Instead of taking Eddie’s face in his hands and kissing him like he really wants to, Buck pokes him squarely between the shoulders. Eddie yelps but shoots upright again, turning to glare at Buck as Bobby swivels to look at them.
“Hey, that hurt –” Eddie starts as Ravi cackles next to him.
“You really should sit up, Eddie,” Bobby says helpfully. Buck nods along but keeps his hand firmly pressed between Eddie’s shoulder blades. He’s being helpful, obviously. “And you should practice engaging your core more in life, because eventually you’ll lose structural ability to maintain spinal alignment, and –”
“Oh my god,” Eddie groans, covering his face with his hands but he, delightedly, still stays sitting upright with Buck’s hand pressed against his upper back. “All of you need to get off of Wikipedia, for real.”
“I’m actually almost a doctor,” Hen says helpfully. “I’m qualified.”
“And yet you are the one who hasn’t said anything,” Eddie tells her, but he instantly shuts his mouth when he realizes what he just walked into. Buck starts cackling next to him as Hen launches into a speech about the effects of bad posture on overall health and wellness.
By the time they arrive at their call, Hen is still talking, Ravi is still giggling, and Eddie has fully buried his face in Buck’s shoulder, much to Buck’s delight.
“Okay,” Eddie groans into Buck’s shirt. “So I can’t slouch, but Ravi can crack his neck every five seconds?”
Buck frowns and turns to look at Ravi who is, in fact, mid neck-crack. His head is tipped to the side and his hand is on his chin, clearly about to apply pressure to pop his neck.
“What?” Ravi asks, pausing mid-neck crack to frown at all of them.
“Exhibit A,” Eddie deadpans. “That can’t be good for you.”
And here’s the thing – Buck has noticed Eddie’s bad posture because he’s always looking at the guy. It’s hard not to notice the slouching or the forward head when you spend 75% of your day looking at someone. And he’s noticed Ravi, sure, he’s his friend and he does seem to follow Buck around like a puppy, but Buck can honestly say that he’s never clocked Ravi cracking his neck a single time.
“Does he do that?” Buck asks, quirking his eyebrow.
“Yeah,” Ravi and Eddie say at the same time. Eddie huffs and unbuckles his seatbelt to get out of the truck.
Hen launches into why Ravi shouldn’t do that, but now Buck is wondering how he never noticed that Ravi, apparently, cracks his neck regularly. It’s fairly obvious, because he just did it and shit, it’s loud and kind of disgusting and Buck wishes that he never had to hear it again.
For the rest of their shift, Buck counts that Ravi cracked his neck seventeen more times. He doesn’t even seem to be aware of it, subconsciously popping his neck even in the moments of silence when it is so obvious. And now that he’s noticed, Buck doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to unhear it.
Eddie, however, seems pleased with himself. Now that the spotlight is on Ravi instead of him, he seems happy as a clam waiting for Buck to come out of the locker room so they can head back to the Diaz house for the night. He’s leaning back against the wall and looking down at his phone, neck almost parallel with the floor.
“Oh my god,” Buck groans, grabbing onto the hem of Eddie’s shirt and tugging him along. “Do not come whining to me when you start to get headaches.”
Eddie squawks but follows Buck towards his Jeep, and Buck groans as he hears one last crack from Ravi’s neck as they make their way out of the station.
After that, Buck starts to notice everything. He notices that Eddie only has bad posture about 75% of the time, which is still not super fabulous. And then when Buck finally cracks and kisses him against the ladder truck after a particularly rough call, he decides that Eddie’s bad posture is perfect because Eddie is perfect, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not noticeable anymore.
Ravi, however, cracks his neck literally every other minute sometimes, but especially if he’s been sitting still for too long. Buck really is starting to worry about the integrity of his neck and thinks that Ravi should maybe figure out why it pops so much.
He’s starting to think that maybe it’s just Eddie and Ravi that have a thing, and it’s not until Chimney skips up into the loft a few weeks later that he has a new trait to add to the 118 annoying-character-traits inventory.
Buck’s been enjoying the peace in the loft at the start of his shift with Eddie casually leaning up against him, hand pressed gently into Buck’s thigh as he breathes softly into the side of Buck’s neck. They haven’t exclusively told anyone that they’re together yet, but he’s pretty sure that Hen clocked it as soon as they walked into the station the day after the kiss, and he’s 99% sure that Bobby actually saw the kiss, because Buck and Eddie arrived to work the next day with two stacks of HR forms in their shared locker.
So he’s enjoying the warmth of Eddie next to him when he hears Chimney skip up the stairs, followed by a second of silence, and then the distinct sound of someone chewing from the kitchen counter.
Buck cranes his head to look back over his shoulder at Chimney. He’s standing at the counter and popping grapes into his mouth, chewing them and swallowing before popping another one in. Buck's frown deepens with each bite that Chim takes.
“Dude,” he says slowly. “I’m pretty sure Jee even chews with her mouth closed.”
Chimney freezes, grape held in his hand and ready to be tossed into his mouth as he looks over at Buck. Eddie has perked up from his seat next to him, hand still distracting on Buck’s thigh as he levers himself to look back at Chim, too.
“Huh?” Chim asks, biting the grape and chewing it with his mouth open. Buck raises an eyebrow at him as Eddie lets out a snort.
“You’ve never noticed that?” Eddie says after a few moments. “He chews his gum like that literally all the time.”
Buck shrugs. Chimney squawks around his grape. “I do not.”
“No, you do,” Bobby chimes in as he joins them in the loft. “It’s even more annoying through the headset.”
Buck blinks, because he really has never realized it before. He thinks he probably would have noticed if Chimney was literally chewing in his ear in the truck. “How do I not know this?”
“Too distracted,” Eddie supplies easily.
Bobby huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, he’s distracted by you,” he says with a nod at Eddie. “Literally doesn’t stop talking to you when we’re in the truck.”
Buck feels himself blush a little at that because, well, it is true. Eddie leans further into his side in an attempt to hide, which is difficult since Eddie isn’t actually a small man. Buck wraps his arm around him and tucks him into his side anyway.
Bobby’s phone goes off a few seconds later, his face lighting up when he sees whoever is calling. “It’s May,” he says fondly before answering. Buck startles when May’s voice sounds through the phone, because he wasn’t expecting Bobby to put her on speakerphone in the middle of the station, but here they are.
“At least it’s May this time and not Athena,” Hen sighs, seemingly appearing at the table out of nowhere, because Buck knows she definitely wasn’t there a few minutes ago. “Hearing them on the phone is nauseating.”
Buck frowns at Hen. “Huh?”
“Cap’s affinity for speakerphone,” Hen replies, nodding in Bobby’s direction. “He literally only talks on the phone when it’s on speaker.”
Buck frowns and tries to think of all the calls Bobby has taken in the station, and he suddenly can’t think of a single time that Bobby was on the phone in front of him. “Bobby never talks on the phone,” Buck says after a few moments. Eddie snorts into his shoulder and Buck pinches his side in retaliation.
“He literally calls Athena at least twice a shift,” Eddie says.
“When?!” Buck drops his head into his hands, because this is getting ridiculous.
Hen wads up a piece of paper and tosses it at Buck’s head. It bounces off and he grumbles in protest. “It’s okay, Buckaroo,” she says softly. “We all know that everything not Eddie-related is always just background noise.”
“He wasn’t even here for months,” Buck grumbles, because it’s true.
Hen shrugs. “You were even more distracted by everything going on, then,” she says. In the past few minutes, Eddie’s hand has started softly stroking the hair on the back of Buck’s head, and it gently tightens with Hen’s words. “You were worried about Eddie and Chim and Maddie, and then Lucy –”
“Don’t bring me into this,” Lucy says, materializing by the refrigerator. Buck blinks, and – okay, maybe they all do have a point that he doesn’t notice anything but Eddie. It’s not his fault though, especially when Eddie’s hand is still gently playing with his hair.
“My point is,” Hen says pointedly, “You were distracted. It’s fine, Buck, really.”
Bobby is still talking on the phone, voice loud, and the volume is clearly turned all the way up because he can hear everything May is saying clearly. “That’s annoying,” Buck says after a few moments of just listening to them talk. Eddie laughs into his shoulder again, and Buck is content to acknowledge that okay, maybe everyone does have a thing but Hen.
For the next few hours of their shift, Buck does try to be conscious of things other than Eddie. Bobby gets approximately two more calls, both of which he answers on speakerphone. Chimney goes through five pieces of gum, all of which he aggressively chews the flavor out of in five minutes. And Hen –
Hen has her phone keyboard clicks on. And she has them on loud.
He can hear every single letter that she types, the send sound loud with each text that she finishes. For a solid five minutes, all he hears is the click-click-clicking of her texting, followed by the send sound, and then more clicking as she types another text.
He stares at her from across the table, hands steepled on the tabletop, chin resting on top of them. Eddie is somewhere down below cleaning up with Chimney, and for the first time in forever, all Buck can focus on is Hen’s clicking.
He counts a total of seven send-sounds before he sighs loudly. Hen glances up at him with a perfectly raised eyebrow.
“Yes?” She asks slowly, looking Buck up and down.
“You know you can turn the keyboard sounds off, right?” Buck asks. “Like, it’s really easy –”
“I know,” Hen says. “I like them.”
Buck blinks at her, mouth opening and closing, unsure of what to say. He kind of wishes he was back in his old mindset of noticing nobody but Eddie, because his world was really decidedly quieter.
Eddie comes into the loft then, shoulders forward and head dropped as he looks down at his phone.
“Oh my god,” Buck wheezes into his hands. “Everyone just –”
Eddie freezes in his steps, looking between Buck and Hen with wide eyes.
“Babe,” Eddie says slowly, taking a few cautious steps towards him. “What . . . ?”
“He’s finally realized that we’re all annoying,” Hen says, and Buck can tell that there’s a grin in her voice.
He feels Eddie run a hand through his hair, followed by the soft press of lips onto the back of his head. “I hate to break it to you, baby,” he says quietly into Buck’s hair. “But we’ve always been annoying.”
“You’re my family,” he grumbles into his hands.
“Yeah,” Chimney’s voice now, loud and with hints of laughter underneath it. Buck really thinks that everyone is probably up in the loft now, wanting to see what all the commotion is. “And families annoy the shit out of each other.”
“You all just – you all have a thing,” he says, voice muffled by his hands. “And I know my thing is that I talk too much, but –”
Several sets of laughter interrupt him, the closest being Eddie’s gentle laugh pressed into the side of his head.
“What?” Buck lifts his head up with a frown, feeling the small butterflies in his gut when he realizes that Eddie really is just pressed right against him. His nose must have just been buried in Buck’s hair for how close his face currently is to Buck’s.
“You do talk a lot,” Eddie says slowly. Hen nods. “But that’s not your thing?”
Buck frown grows as he looks between everyone. Hen and Chim are looking at each other, and Eddie glances at Bobby and Lucy before looking back at Buck. Ravi cracks his neck to break the silence.
“Sorry,” Ravi says, a sheepish look on his face. “I’m nervous.”
Eddie huffs out a laugh. “Buck. Sweetheart,” he says slowly. “Close your mouth.”
Buck feels his eyebrows furrow, and he opens his mouth to tell Eddie that his mouth isn’t open, thank you very much, but –
He pauses, because his mouth is open. He quickly shuts his mouth, teeth clacking with the force.
“Congratulations,” Chimney says with a grin, clapping Buck on the shoulder as he walks past him and into the kitchen. “You’re a mouth-breather, Buck.”
Buck, again, goes to say something, only to find that his mouth has dropped open again. He lets out a squeak before closing it, looking over at Eddie with wide eyes.
“It’s okay,” he says softly, before pausing and leaning in closer to Buck’s side. “It’s not really annoying, it’s just something you do.”
“I have a deviated septum,” Buck says slowly, as if that’s a defense for something he wasn’t aware of until approximately thirty seconds ago. “That’s why I snore, too.”
“Okay, Buckaroo,” Hen placates.
“I do!” Buck turns and buries his face in Eddie’s chest. “Eddie,” he whines.
Eddie hums into his hair. “Everyone stop being mean to Buck,” he says to the others with his dad-voice.
“He’s been pointing out our flaws for months,” Ravi says, gesturing between Eddie and himself.
“Yeah, and neither of you have improved at all,” Buck says. Ravi throws a roll at him that lands directly on the side of his head before falling to the ground. Buck whines and fully wraps himself into Eddie in response.
Silence falls upon them, and Buck is just about to say something when Ravi cracks his neck again while Hen starts typing out another text. Chimney snaps his gum as a small laugh escapes him, and Bobby’s phone rings.
There’s only one thing left. Buck lifts his head up as Bobby answers the phone, Athena’s voice loudly playing through the speaker, and he looks at Eddie who is slouched forward, chin jutted out as he looks at Buck.
“Oh my god,” Buck groans, poking at Eddie’s back between his shoulder blades. “Sit the fuck up.”
Predictably, none of their habits get better. The months go on – Buck proposes to Eddie, Maddie and Chim get back together, Bobby and Athena go on an extended vacation. Life goes on, and once the wedding planning begins, Buck has very little time to think about any of the 118s annoying little things. He still has a deviated septum so he knows he’s still snoring and mouth breathing, but that’s a medical condition, okay, he can’t just fix it himself.
So it’s interesting when Buck starts to notice that Eddie’s added some new exercises to his morning routine. He still does his push-ups with Christopher, but now he’s also added a stretch for his pectorals where he stands in the doorway for a few minutes with his arms up. He also rolls up a towel and lays on it, Buck wincing as his back cracks initially every single time. He’s added some new exercises for his shoulder blades, filled with resistance bands and scapular retraction.
And look, Buck is a fitness guy. He knows exercises and stretches and how to target specific muscle groups. So he knows for a fact that Eddie is doing postural exercises.
He’s not sure what’s changed to bring this on, truthfully. Eddie hasn’t been complaining of any pain, so he knows he hasn’t been to see a physical therapist about anything. And it doesn’t seem like his posture’s gotten worse, so Buck really has no idea why Eddie is suddenly working on standing upright.
He shrugs it off and decides not to look a gift horse in the mouth, because he really doesn’t mind his future husband trying to correct his posture and saving himself from future aches and pains. Buck knows that he’d be the one to hear about it, anyway, so this at least saves him an earful.
What is really interesting, though, is that everyone seems to have started to gently poke Eddie in the back when he’s slouching. Bobby will walk by while Eddie’s at the table and just gently tap between his shoulder blades, and Eddie will carefully sit upright and tuck his chin. Chim will poke his belly if he’s arching his back too much while standing, and Hen will gently tap his chin if he’s jutting his chin out too much while looking at his phone. Buck frowns when even Lucy and Ravi seem to be in on it, Ravi miming upright posture at him while Lucy just gives him a look that causes him to stand upright.
Buck has no idea what’s going on or why everyone suddenly seems to be part of Eddie’s journey to good posture, but he shrugs it off and just accepts it.
He starts to learn to tune out Hen’s keyboard clacking, and he only shoots Ravi the occasional glare when he has a particularly aggressive crack. Chim absolutely does not care if his chewing bothers anyone, and Bobby, much like the middle-aged man that he is, really just likes speakerphone. It’s all fine, really.
And then it’s their wedding day, and Buck has noticed that everyone is literally losing their shit. He hasn’t seen Eddie since they left the house this morning, and that in itself makes him a little stressed and anxious. But Bobby has been on the phone – speakerphone, of course – with the florist for the past 45 minutes, pacing up and down the hallway as the florist assures them they’ll be here as soon as they can. There’s apparently an accident on the freeway holding them up, and Bobby is probably about ten seconds away from stealing the fire engine and going to clear the accident himself.
Once the florist arrives and everything is finally set up, Buck takes a deep breath as he steps to the front of the outdoor seating area. Bobby stands behind him, Ravi and Chim and Maddie next to him, and Eddie stands in front of him with Christopher and Hen by his side. He looks gorgeous in his tuxedo, of course. He’s standing upright and the waist is cut perfectly for him and, god, he really does look like a dream.
Buck takes both of Eddie’s hands in his own as Bobby clears his throat. Eddie gives him a soft smile, and –
And Ravi cracks his neck.
Buck turns to look at him with a raised eyebrow, and he turns just in time because he sees Chimney quickly snap his gum once before aggressively closing his mouth. He glances back at Eddie who has an eyebrow raised, his shoulders more relaxed than they were before, and Buck is just about to gently nudge him to stand upright again when he hears the sharp shutter of Hen’s phone camera.
Ravi giggles and Chim looks positively gleeful. Eddie looks at him with a single eyebrow raised, and Buck opens his mouth to say something, only to be completely surprised that his mouth is already open.
God damn deviated septum.
Bobby urges them back into their spots, the small crowd’s laughter dying down, and the rest of the brief ceremony passes quickly as they say their vows and exchange their rings.
And Buck kisses his husband, lips curving into a smile as he cups the back of Eddie’s head, Eddie gently fists his hands in Buck’s jacket to pull him closer. He thinks he hears Chimney’s whooping and a whistle from Ravi, but all the matters right now is Eddie and Eddie’s mouth and the weight of the ring on his finger.
They gather for pictures after, and Buck is fully expecting to poke Eddie repeatedly in the back to get him to stand upright, because he knows that Eddie won’t want proof of his bad posture forever.
So, he is pleasantly surprised when he finds Eddie setting his shoulders and standing perfectly upright with every single pose. His hand settles gently on Eddie’s waist as the photographer tells them to get close but be natural, and he looks at the bright smile on Eddie’s face and his relaxed but upright shoulders. One hand trails up to rest gently between his shoulder blades, and Eddie grins at him.
“I didn’t want bad posture in the wedding pictures,” he says quietly, his breath blowing against Buck’s lips with every word. “They’re going to be all over the house and you would never let me live it down.”
Buck hums and leans in closer, lips now brushing against Eddie’s but not close enough to actually kiss. “And you say I’m the one obsessed with my appearance.”
“You are,” Eddie replies quietly. “But we’re only doing this once and I wanted it to be perfect.”
And Buck kisses him for real, Eddie gently groaning into his mouth as Buck tugs him closer. He opens for Buck easily, and Buck knows that this isn’t quite the shot the photographer was going for, but he can’t help but get a light makeout in with his husband because they just got married and Eddie has been working for months to make their wedding pictures perfect.
“I love you so fucking much,” he says into Eddie’s mouth, gently nipping at his bottom lip as Eddie lets out a small gasp in response.
“I love you, too,” he replies, and Buck is just about to kiss him again when they hear the tell-tale sound of Ravi snapping his neck in the near distance.
“Probie!” Buck groans, voice projecting so that Ravi can hear him. “Your wedding gift to me is that you will stop fucking doing that!”
“Not a probie!” Ravi replies before cracking his neck in the opposite direction.
Buck groans and buries his face in Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie’s arms wrap tighter around him and hold him close. He knows the photographer is still taking pictures, but he smiles against Eddie’s shoulder and feels like he’s just surrounded by the best kind of chaos.
“Buck,” the photographer says after a few moments. “You can stay in that pose, but close your mouth.”
Eddie huffs out a laugh into his hair and he hears Ravi and Chimney burst into fits of laughter. He closes his mouth and grumbles as Eddie presses a kiss into his hair.
“He has a deviated septum,” Eddie tells the photographer, pressing another kiss to his hair. She smiles at him gently.
“That’s great and all,” she deadpans, “But I want at least a few pictures without his mouth breathing.”
But when they get the prints back a few weeks later, his favorite picture is one where he’s looking at Eddie with his mouth slightly open, eyes wide and bright with a slight flush on his cheeks and a grin on his face. Eddie’s head is thrown back into a laugh, shoulders hunched forward. He touches the picture gently and feels the tears welling in his eyes.
Eddie’s hand gently runs across his back as he crosses the kitchen behind him. “We have to frame that one,” he says quietly, glancing over Buck’s shoulder at the picture.
Buck nods, because it’s true, because it is so them that it makes his chest ache. It’s nice to see Eddie so relaxed and happy, and it makes Buck happy that he’s the one who’s able to make Eddie laugh like that. He's perfect just as he is.
He tilts his head up to kiss Eddie, Eddie meeting him halfway, bending down and cupping Buck’s face with his hand to hold him there. He gasps gently and opens his mouth for Eddie as he settles in Buck’s lap, and he thinks that he hasn’t noticed any of the neck cracking, gum chewing, speakerphone talking, or keyboard clicking since they got married. He’s pretty sure that’s because he’s back to his default setting of only having enough attention for Eddie. And he's really okay with that, because he never wants to hear Ravi pop his neck again.