Work Text:
“Did you drive here in that?”
Buck glances down (the best he can, anyway) at his inflatable green dinosaur costume. “Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. I took an Uber.” Without waiting for an invitation, he steps inside the Diaz home. After surveying the living room and hallway, he turns back around to face the elder Diaz, who nearly loses his hat (it does not go unnoticed that he looks incredibly sexy in a full-blown crocodile dundee costume) to the big green nose of Buck’s costume in the process. “Where’s Chris?”
Eddie chooses that moment to sigh.
“What?” Buck asks. “Why the sigh?”
“Chris doesn’t want to go trick-or-treating.”
“ What?” Buck practically bawks. “Why? He loves trick-or-treating!”
“Tell that to him. He’s inconsolable.”
It takes a little longer than he’d like to admit to make it down the hallway to Christopher’s room, but once he does, he’s greeted by the sight of Christopher, dressed down in his pajamas, playing a game on his computer. When Buck gets closer (he’s not exactly inconspicuous in an inflatable Rex costume, but Christopher still doesn’t turn around), he can see he’s playing a first-person shooter game. And he’s very aggressively hitting his controller.
“Christopher?” Buck says. “What’s going on?”
Without turning around, Christopher mumbles, “I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Is it something your dad did?”
“I said I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Did something happen today at school?”
Christopher jerks his controller.
“Look, Chris, I know kids can be mean, but—”
“Buck, just stop!” he yells, throwing his controller down on his bed and finally swiveling to face him. “They’re right, okay? They’re right, I’m too old to be trick-or-treating.”
“If that’s the case, I must be way too old to dress in an inflatable Rex costume.”
“No comment.”
Christopher cracks the smallest of smiles, so Buck will take the win, despite the insult.
“Tell you what, instead of trick-or-treating, why don’t we do something more, I don’t know, lowkey?” Buck offers. “I’ll even convince your dad to let you watch The Mandalorian.”
“But we don’t have any candy here,” Chris says. “Except those gross watermelon candies Abuela always gives me and Dad.”
“Hey I happen to like those watermelon candies.”
“Of course you do, you’re old.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, but you’re absolutely right. I guess the only way to get candy is to—”
“Go trick-or-treating,” Chris says with a heavy sigh. “Right.”
A knock on Christopher’s door interrupts them. “Is everything okay in here?”
Buck turns to Christopher, who nods with a small smile. “Yeah, everything’s okay.”
“Does this mean—?”
“Yes, Buck, we can go trick-or-treating,” Christopher says.
Buck can’t help it, he actually lets out a howl and fist bumps the air.
“Need a moment?” Eddie laughs.
“Or three,” Buck admits. “You know, I can’t actually breathe in this thing.”
Trick-or-treating goes well. Halfway in, Buck decides to peel back the head of his costume because he feels like he’s losing circulation to his brain. Mr. and Mrs. Graham are giving out full-size Hershey’s bars, which Christopher starts devouring before Eddie plucks it out of his eager little hands, reminding him he has school the next day. Buck convinces Eddie to let Chris have at least half of it, saying he’ll take the brunt of Christopher’s sugar high when he crashes that theirs for the night.
(“ Oh, so you’re just inviting yourself over now, is that it?” Eddie asks around a grin.
“It’s your house, I’m hardly a guest.”
“Talk to me when you’re splitting the rent.”)
It’s easy. It’s always easy with Eddie.
“So you never told me,” Eddie says as they move onto the next house, “why do you like Halloween so much?”
“What do you mean, Dundee?” Buck laughs, nudging him as they walk. Eddie scoffs.
“Hey I’m a father to a twelve-year-old kid, the excitement is contagious,” Eddie says. “Plus, what kind of father would I be if I didn’t go all out for Halloween?”
“Fair point,” Buck says. Then he tells him. He tells him how his parents didn’t let him have Halloween as a kid unless Maddie was by his side the entire time—which was only for six years of his life, since she moved out at eighteen. And how being forced to hand out candy as he watched other kids living out his dream was torture.
So trick-or-treating with the Diaz boys is, well, a treat.
He’s getting the chance to actually be a kid again.
“What’s wrong?” Buck asks when Eddie stops in the middle of walking. (Christopher, of course, is already halfway up the driveway of the next house because contrary to Eddie’s belief, he actually is pretty fast.)
“You never told me that.”
“I haven’t told you a lot of things.”
“But that—that feels like a huge thing, you know?” Eddie says, and if it weren’t for the lamp they’re standing underneath that’s bathing them in light, Buck would’ve missed the tears welling in his eyes.
Huh. Guess Buck never considered it that way. That’s just been his reality. His life.
“Speaking of huge things…” Buck says.
“Buck, I swear to God if you say what I think you’re going to say—”
Buck laughs. “No, no, um… I…”
Eddie looks at him, without expectancy or judgment or anything else his last partners have guilted him with. He’s just Eddie.
“I love you,” he says, and it's easy.
Eddie’s tears fall, streaking his face as he says, “Yeah. Yeah, I love you too, compañero .”
Buck’s about to close the distance between them when—“Did you just call me ‘partner’?!”
“How do you know Spanish for ‘partner’? You barely know English!”
“Excuse you, I did live in South America at one point.”
“When am I gonna hear that story?”
“Right after this.” Grabbing Eddie’s hat, Buck holds it in front of their faces and kisses him.
“ GROSS! ”
Buck and Eddie pull back laughing. Eddie snatches his hat back from Buck and places it on top of Christopher’s space helmet. “Let’s go, cowboy.”
“But Daaaaad, one more house?”
Eddie glances over at Buck, who nods with a small smile. “One more house,” he agrees.
“And then we go home,” Buck adds.
When Eddie catches onto the small nuance in that statement, he smiles something so big and beautiful, Buck can’t help kissing him again.