Work Text:
It’s Saturday and Buck is spending the day with his favourite almost one-year-old in the entire world — his favourite person period, for that matter (Eddie also holds that position, don’t worry) — Christopher Diaz.
Eddie is on shift at the firehouse, his ride-along should be finishing up soon. He left early, early, early in the morning while Buck and Chris were both asleep, Buck vaguely remembers Eddie kissing him goodbye and telling him there’s a to-do list on the fridge. Buck had woken up about an hour later to the sounds of Chris wailing in his crib. Never a pleasant sound, but especially not when it’s practically still dark outside.
Buck had gotten up, changed Chris, fed Chris, put Chris in the stroller and taken him for an early morning outing. There was almost no one at all around campus. It was the weekend and barely dawn, so the only people walking around at this time were students coming home from pulling all-nighters at the library. There was still dew on the plants, the morning air was cold and smelled like fresh-cut grass. Buck was dressed in short shorts and Eddie’s high school graduation hoodie, ‘DIAZ’ in big letters across the back. It was maybe a little bit short on him, the sleeves barely reached his wrists and it was riding up a little, but it was soft. The kind of soft that can only be achieved by being well-worn and stretched and washed a million times. Buck wears it far more than Eddie does, even if it could fit him a smidge better. He likes wearing Eddie’s clothes, especially when Eddie’s on shift. They smell like him and they keep him warm and safe until he can trade being wrapped in the garment for being wrapped in his boyfriend’s arms. He loves how much Eddie is devoted to helping people. He loves that Eddie can run into an emergency head-on when everyone else is running away. He loves that Eddie is selfless and gives everything to his job. Still, Buck hates that his job is so dangerous. Every shift he just counts down the minutes until he can confirm that Eddie made it home safe.
Even if they don’t discuss it, Buck knows Eddie is more comfortable now going to work at the fire station than he was before he met Buck. Because if anything were to happen to him, Chris would be safe with Buck for the rest of his life. Buck hates to think about that, and he hates it when Eddie even hints at the idea of a reality where Chris exists without both of them. But he knows Eddie’s job comes with risks. He knows that Eddie doesn’t take them lightly. He knows that Eddie is always as safe as possible. He knows all of this and yet it doesn’t make Buck any less terrified. He doesn’t want Eddie to change careers. He really truly doesn’t. Eddie saves lives out there, it’s what he’s meant to be doing. Buck just has to tell himself that his big, strong, selfless, brave, passionate, tough boyfriend is going to be okay. It’s not like his career is the safest thing either — football players are not exactly known for amazing health records. Eddie is absolutely terrified every time Buck makes a tackle or is tackled himself. He cringes and covers Chris’ eyes every single time Buck crashes over on the field during a game, and the few seconds before he stands up again always feel like they’re stretched into years of waiting. Buck is concussion and major injury free so far, and he aims to keep it that way. Mostly so that he can have a long and successful football career, but also definitely so he doesn’t give Eddie a heart attack.
The moral of the story is that Buck likes wearing Eddie’s clothes. He especially likes it if they have Eddie’s name on them. Call it possessive or kinky or whatever you want, but being publicly “branded” as Eddie’s makes Buck’s heart skip a beat. He also loves it when Eddie wears ‘BUCKLEY’ on his back, he knows Eddie loves it too, but that’s a whole other can of worms.
“Eddie!” a girl calls out from behind Buck.
Confused, Buck turns around, meeting the equally confused face of this girl as she realizes that the man wearing the DIAZ sweater with the hood up while pushing a baby stroller was, surprisingly, not Eddie.
Buck recognizes quickly that this is Charlotte, one of Eddie’s cheerleader friends.
“Oh! Sorry, I thought you were—”
“No worries, Char, what’s up?” Buck asks, coming to a stop in the path and rocking the stroller back and forth to keep Chris happy.
“On my way to practice,” Charlotte smiles. She’s a flyer on the team, one of the best, “how about you?”
“Just takin’ Chris for a little walk. Eddie’s at work.”
Charlotte walks around to crouch down in front of the stroller.
“Awe, aren’t you just the cutest wittle boy ever? Yes, you are! Having fun with Dada aren’t you?” Charlotte lets Chris hold onto her finger.
“So, Eddie talks about us, I see?”
“Oh? Only all the time, Buck,” she laughs. Charlotte goes on to explain how Eddie is constantly telling the cheer team stories about Chris and the adorable things he does, including calling him ‘Papa’ and Buck ‘Dada,’ “Chris seriously has the best dads ever, I’m a little jealous, you two should adopt me some time.”
“Yeah, okay,” Buck chuckles back, “I’m afraid we’ve got our hands full with this little guy already.”
Buck and Charlotte chat for a short while until Charlotte really has to get on her way to practice. Chris loves meeting all of their friends on campus, and it’s incredibly hard for Buck to stop talking about Chris and Eddie once he starts, so it’s expected that every walk might be interrupted by a visitor.
When Buck stops to take a break, Chris is playing with a bunch of little stuffed toys and plastic rings attached to his stroller. Buck smiles at him while Chris grabs them and giggles. Chris’ laugh sounds like pure joy to Buck. If he could bottle up how he feels when he hears Chris laugh he would because there is almost no better feeling in the world.
Buck pulls his phone out and takes a picture to send to Eddie. Chris is absolutely not looking at the camera and there’s motion blur on his little baby shoes where he’s kicking his feet, but it’s perfect. Chris is wearing a shirt that says “All-Star” with a football on it and a blue jacket covered with dinosaurs, along with soft grey pants that have little socks attached. He’s smiling from ear to ear and Buck immediately saves the photo to his album of Chris pictures which he swears must grow by at least 50 photos each day.
Buck captions it “we miss u papa” and sends it off to his boyfriend.
By the time Buck is back at Eddie’s place and Chris is on the floor pressing all the sound effect buttons on his book about trucks, there is still no response from Eddie.
Buck frowns. But he supposes if Eddie is busy saving someone’s life or whatever he can let it go.
After another minute of truck sounds, Buck can’t take it anymore and he sits cross-legged on the floor, putting Chris in his lap.
“Alright, buddy, let’s do this the right way,” Buck smiles, starting to read to Chris and letting him press the buttons when the appropriate truck is talked about.
Buck has been better recently about letting Chris figure out how to eat by himself. Buck loves feeding Chris and doing the whole “here comes the airplane” thing, but Eddie has been encouraging Buck to let Chris do it on his own. So when Buck makes Chris brunch, all he does is sit back and let Chris do his thing, only stepping in to occasionally wipe the mess from around Chris’ mouth with the bib he’s wearing. Chris has been going through an avocado phase recently and Back decides he doesn’t have enough footage of Chris eating avocado apparently, so he takes a video.
As soon as the camera turns on, Chris decides the best place for the avocado to go is anywhere but his mouth.
“Mijo! Look at the mess you’re making!” the camera shakes as Buck laughs. He flips his phone around and leans over so he and Chris are both in the shot. Buck gives Chris a kiss on the cheek, which Chris sees as a perfect opportunity to smash some avocado into Dada’s hair. “Christopher!” Buck exclaims, pouting at Chris and then smiling at the camera before shutting the video off.
Buck cleans up Chris’ high chair and gives the little man a bath, gently rinsing any avocado out of his hair as well. He gives Chris a clean diaper and wraps him up in his warmest onesie before cuddling into bed with him.
Chris has been crawling recently... ish. Chris loves to move around but crawling, at least anything that would be characteristically recognized as crawling, is a little more difficult. As far as milestones for a baby with CP go, Chris is doing great. So though crawling and walking are going to take a lot longer for him, rolling and pushing and pulling himself around on Eddie’s bed is one of his favourite things to do.
Buck lies down on the outside of the bed, boxing off a space for Chris to move around between where he is lying and the wall bordering the other side of the mattress. As Chris wiggles around and occasionally grabs handfuls of Buck’s shirt to stuff in his mouth, Buck sends the avocado video off to Eddie.
“Attachment: 1 Video”
“avocado + chris = making a mess with dada 🥑😘”
Buck snuggles up with Chris as he goes over the next chapter of his econ textbook on his phone. After another hour of review, in which Chris has fallen asleep against Buck’s chest, Eddie still hasn’t texted back. His shift is supposed to be about over by now. Buck’s a little worried. It’s not like Eddie had to always check his phone, but he usually at least reads Buck’s messages on days he’s alone with Chris, or sends him a text when he’s leaving the firehouse and on his way home.
Just as Buck starts wondering if he should give his boyfriend a call, he hears keys turning in the lock.
Eddie drops all his gear and beelines for the bed without even taking off his shoes. He dives next to Buck and wraps Chris up in his arms, before Buck can even ask what happened at work, Eddie is crying.
“Baby,” Buck says, at a loss for words, “Eddie, sweetie, what is it?” he rubs Eddie’s back, letting him and a now awake Chris huddle closer
“I can’t—” Eddie starts, but his sobs take over. Buck pulls him close and mumbles “shh, shh, shh, I’ve got you, Eds. I love you.”
Chris is crying a little too and Buck tries to figure out how a moment ago the room was silent and now suddenly his precious boys are both crying against his chest. It breaks his heart.
Buck sits Eddie up so he can properly hug his boyfriend even while he’s holding his son. Chris is now nestled in between them as they all embrace each other tightly.
“Eddie, baby, what’s going on?” Buck whispers into Eddie’s hair.
“At work— I— we—” he still can’t get any words out.
Buck sits with Eddie and comforts him until he and Chris both stop crying. Eddie gets up to put Chris in his crib, feeling guilty for pulling him out of his nap. Buck drags Eddie into the washroom and dries his face, undressing him and giving Eddie some fresh clothes to wear. After a couple reassuring kisses, Buck leads Eddie back to the bed and cuddles up against him, letting Eddie bury his head in his boyfriend’s neck.
Buck plays with Eddie’s hair and lets Eddie’s tears soak into his own hoodie that’s still stretched tight around Buck’s pecs. He whispers sweet nothings to Eddie and tells him to take his time and focus on listening to Chris’ little breaths coming from his crib.
Eddie still isn’t ready to speak yet and that’s okay. Instead, Buck tells him all about their day, showing him the photos from their walk and the video from brunch. He talks about running into Charlotte and how much Chris loves his new book about trucks.
Eddie smiles. Finally.
“Eds, you gonna tell me what’s going on, baby?”
Eddie snuggles even closer to Buck and finally explains what happened.
They lost a kid on a call today. Not someone quite as young as Chris but it hit Eddie like a ton of bricks regardless. He had to sit on the sidelines while he watched his crew try to treat the boy for what they thought was just a bad case of smoke inhalation before getting him to the hospital. But before they even got the ambulance loaded, his breathing had stopped and they couldn’t get him back. He watched a father lose his son right in front of him and while he did his very best to hold in his emotions while on scene, it was one of the hardest things he’s ever done. As soon as they got back to the firehouse Eddie shut down and bottled everything up and then sobbed in the car home after his shift was done. He needed to hold Chris and know that he was okay.
Buck reminds him that if the job hurts this much, he doesn’t need to be a firefighter. Eddie shuts that idea down immediately.
“No, Ev, that’s not it,” he starts “people die every day. I know that. It’s hard to watch it and yeah maybe in other careers you don’t have to see it up close but we’re the ones who can help. I’m the one who can help. This man lost his son today but maybe next week someone else will keep theirs because of something I do. That’s all I want, Evan, I want to help. I just can’t stand the idea of being without you or Chris… It— it— I just—” the tears come back tenfold.
“Oh, honey,” Buck kisses Eddie all over and wipes his thumb under each of Eddie’s eyes, trying to dry the constant wetness. “We love you so much, Eddie. Chris and I love you more than anything. We’re always gonna be here for you. You know that, baby.”
“I know,” Eddie whispers, “you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Eds,” Buck’s voice breaks, and now he’s crying too.
They cry together and kiss each other until it feels useless to keep being sad about it. Both of them are tired and achy and have sore eyes and headaches. Eddie swaps positions with his boyfriend so Buck has a turn to be swaddled. Buck, the 6’2 football frat boy, turns into an absolute baby when he’s cuddled like this. When Eddie runs his fingers through his hair, Buck practically starts purring.
Just as they’re about to fall asleep in each other’s arms, Buck tips his head up to get a kiss from Eddie. His lips still taste a little salty from his tears but it’s a perfect kiss. It’s perfect because it’s an Eddie kiss, and all Eddie kisses are always perfect.
“Ev?” Eddie asks, slowing the movement of his hand in Buck’s curls.
“Hm?”
“Did you know that there's avocado in your hair?”