Work Text:
Eddie has always had a complicated relationship with touch.
(When he’s grown up — after a failed marriage, after a war zone, after settling into a new career in a new city, after being shot in the street — he’ll come to understand the reasons why. He’ll understand the altered tactile senses that can come with an autism diagnosis and the way his parents never knew how to show him affection. He’ll understand how to manage it and how to work through it.)
(But that takes time.)
Christopher is so, so small.
Eddie stares at him, settled sweetly in the bassinet beside Shannon’s hospital bed. Both his wife and his child were spending more time in the hospital than they’d anticipated, but Christopher has been moved out of the NICU and is finally allowed to stay in the room with them. All the newly-minted grandparents and tias have come and gone and they’re alone again, the three of them, their perfect little family.
“You can touch him, you know,” Shannon whispers drowsily. She’s been in and out for about an hour now, her long, dark eyelashes fluttering. “You won’t break him.”
He reaches out, drags a calloused fingertip down Christopher’s tiny little nose.
“Shan,” he says, “he’s perfect.”
“You should hold him.” She pauses to yawn, rolls her head away from him to face away from the window. “He’ll — he’ll need you to hold him.”
“I know,” he lifts Christopher out of the cradle, tucks his safely into his arms. “I’m holding him.” He laughs. Christopher’s whole body can fit in the span of both of Eddie’s hands. He’s so, so small, with beautiful wispy curls on the top of his head. Eddie doesn’t know where the color comes from, but it’s precious, makes his son seem even more delicate. He has the teeny-tiniest nails. Eddie can’t get over it. “I’m going to have trouble putting him down.”
“Good,” she mumbles. “Not like your dad.”
“No,” he promises as she finally falls off into a deep and well-earned sleep, snoring softly. “I won’t be like my dad.”
In Afghanistan, Eddie touches more people than he’s touched in his whole life.
In Afghanistan, Eddie finds himself holding the hands of dying men and women. He finds himself brushing someone’s hair back to get a better look at their eyes as they flutter in and out of consciousness. He finds himself gripping their wrists and holding them down while they convulse. He finds himself wrist-deep in intestines.
Sometimes, he finds himself knocking shoulders with his team. Sometimes, he finds himself accepting food from Mills’ fingers because his are too covered in blood. Sometimes, he talks to Shannon and Christopher over FaceTime and he wishes he could reach through the screen to feel them under his fingertips, but he doesn’t know if he would feel anything at all.
In Afghanistan, Eddie touches more people than he’s touched in his whole life — but he feels more numb and alone than ever.
Being a single parent requires a lot of time and energy, in a way Eddie never expected.
Eddie wakes every morning exhausted. He bundles Chris off to daycare or to his parents’ house and heads to his morning shift. He eats in his truck while he drives to his mid-day shift at his second part-time gig. He’s home in time to pick his son up and make him a simple, sorry excuse for dinner. He has the time to rub Christopher’s back and sing him to sleep before he heads to his late-night shift. And then, most nights, he sleeps on the floor in Christopher’s room; his bed is too soft, the room is too quiet.
(He feels, suddenly and very strongly, sorry for making Shannon live the past four years as a single parent — but at least, he reminds himself, she wasn’t completely alone. A long-distance partner is still a partner, even through a screen, and can still be a source of comfort and income and the knowledge that you’re not totally alone.)
(Eddie is totally alone.)
He needs more time in the day. He needs to wash his hair. He needs to stop jumping at every shout on the street and backfiring car. He needs his parents to stop hounding him — about not working enough, about working too much, about not spending enough time with Chris, about spending too much time with him. He needs to go grocery shopping.
And four-year-olds, they need things, too. Especially four-year-olds like Christopher. He needs cuddles and attention, needs to be hugged and played with and read to. He needs doctors and therapists and accommodations. He needs to be tucked in and needs his questions answered.
Eddie’s trying his best to give him what he needs.
“Daddy?”
Eddie stops in the doorway, turns back to his kid.
Chris is so small, so sweet. He takes up so little of his new big-boy bed, the one with the guardrail Eddie saved up for months to afford. With his covers pulled up to his chin and his teeny tiny glasses on the nightstand, he squints blearily at Eddie.
“Yeah, mijo?”
“Are we having a sleepover?”
He drums his fingers against the light switch. “What do you mean?”
“Alex at school,” daycare, he means, but he and Eddie call it school, “said that if someone sleeps in your room or you sleep in someone else’s room, that’s a sleepover.”
Eddie nods, because that makes sense. He makes his way across the room — floor clean and clear of any and all obstacles, because Chris doesn’t need anything making walking any harder for him than it already is — and sits at the end of the bed, where there’s a gap in the guardrail. He settles his hand on his son’s skinny little ankle and squeezes gently. “Yeah, we’re having a sleepover.”
“We have lots of sleepovers.”
“We do.”
“And I have sleepovers with Abuelo and Grandma a lot, too.”
“Mmhm.”
“Daddy, we can have sleepovers in your room, if you want.”
Eddie tilts his head with a grin. “Oh, can we?”
Chris nods eagerly. “Yeah. Then we can both fit in the big bed and you don’t have to sleep on the floor.”
He’s quiet for a long moment and then: “That’s very kind of you, Christopher. Can I have a hug?”
It’s something he’s made a point of. He wants Christopher to know that he can seek out and ask for affection when he wants it. He wants Christopher to know that he can refuse touch when he doesn’t want it. He wants Christopher to develop healthy boundaries and a good relationship with his own autonomy.
Chris holds out his little arms.
Eddie bundles him up against his chest, squeezing tight and letting Chris settle his full weight on him. “Oh,” he breathes, “I love you, kid.”
“I love you, too, Daddy.”
Chimney is in the hospital.
Eddie is in the visitor’s waiting room with Hen and some of their other coworkers. He’d been the last to get here, other than Buck and Bobby. Buck, who had found Chim bleeding out on the sidewalk. Buck, who had bypassed all of them to hoof it towards the bathroom as soon as he’d arrived. Bobby has his head in his hands, eyes closed in prayer across the room from them. Hen is fidgeting with her empty coffee cup, picking at the styrofoam with her nails.
It only takes one glance around the room to notice that Buck is still missing.
“Did Buck come back from the bathroom?”
Hen and Bobby both look up at the sound of his voice. They take a short look around the room and find no Buck in sight. “I guess not,” Hen sighs.
Eddie makes to stand up. “I’m going to go check on him.”
Bobby beats him to it, holds up a hand like a traffic conductor. His voice is even, soothing, commanding. He is every inch the holy trinity: captain, mentor, father. “Eddie, he just needs a minute. His friend is hurt, his sister is missing. Let’s give him a moment alone to process.”
That makes Eddie blink. “When has Buck ever been shown to do well with a moment alone? He doesn’t process. He spirals.”
At that moment, Athena comes through the doors with another officer — the doors the doctors and nurses have been coming in and out of. She’s in plainclothes, with her badge strapped to her hip. Her lips are pursed, her expression pinched. Eddie feels, suddenly and inexplicably, like he’s about to be grounded for two weeks.
“Bobby,” her voice is sharp, clear, commanding, but never mean. “Can I borrow you? I have a mess for you to help clean up.”
With a sigh, he follows her out through a separate door.
Not long after, Eddie’s phone lights up with a text message. Then another, in quick succession.
Bobby Nash: 8:54 PM:
You can come back.
Bobby Nash: 8:54 PM:
Just you.
Eddie frowns at the screen, shows it to Hen. She shares in his bewilderment, taking out her own phone to check, when another message comes through.
Bobby Nash: 8:55 PM:
He needs you.
And he realizes abruptly that it’s not about Chimney at all.
“Go get your boy,” Hen shakes her head. “God knows what he’s done now.”
Eddie leaves the way Bobby left, tucking his phone into his back pocket. He finds Buck almost immediately, sitting alone in a chair against the wall, watched over very intently by a rather annoyed-seeming police officer. In the corner, Athena and Bobby are huddled together, talking into one cell phone, occasionally tossing looks in Buck’s direction.
He doesn’t know what Buck’s done, but even so, Eddie sits beside Buck and says, “So….that was a bold move.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. What were you thinking, Buck?” Buck slumps down in his seat, eyes rimmed red. “I already got an earful from Athena.”
Eddie’s putting two and two together, even if he doesn’t have the whole story. What was it Bobby said? His friend is hurt, his sister is missing. He tilts his head just a little more in Buck’s direction.
“Oh no, I know what you were thinking. I’ve got sisters, too.” He sighs. “Still not sure how you thought you were getting away with it, though.”
“I wasn’t worried about that.”
“Mm.”
Suddenly, Buck is overcome with an almost frantic energy, one Eddie has seen before in distressed patients and dying soldiers. He leans in close to Eddie, knocking their knees together, desperate, eyebrows pulled in tight. “It’s like, police have all these rules, you know? Rules that are going to get Maddie killed. But I’m a civilian! Those rules, they don’t apply to me, right?”
Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Then why are you in hospital jail?”
Buck looks away. Eddie sighs. He doesn’t know how to make this better.
Their knees knock together again.
“I told Maddie…” Buck says, voice scraped raw from tears. “I said that she didn’t need to keep on running. That she could start over here. That she would be safe. That I would keep her safe.”
He seems so small and pathetic, in a way Eddie has never seen before. He’s hunched in on himself, in the way Christopher does when he’s tired and brokenhearted. It makes Eddie want to reach out. It makes him want to tuck Buck’s curls under his chin, to hold him close and soothe the pain he’s in.
It’s a dangerous feeling.
“This isn’t your fault.”
Buck sways away, closing his eyes like he doesn’t believe Eddie.
“What if she had kept running? You think he wouldn’t have found her? Only then, she would’ve been alone.”
“She’s alone now,” Buck insists. “With him.”
Athena interrupts. Some other detective is not very happy with Buck. Buck, who holds up his hands and immediately starts stuttering, trying to explain himself. Eddie pushes their knees together again, a silent measure of support.
“Yeah, you broke chain of custody. You unlocked Chimney’s phone with his permission. Marks can’t use any of it.” In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t seem that bad. Eddie would do worse for his sisters. But Eddie’s opinion doesn’t change anything.
“I’m sorry,” Buck is starting to cry again. “Okay! I was trying to help.”
Athena gestures for Buck to follow her out of the room. He glances at Eddie, at Bobby, and chases after her. Leftover and superfluous, he and Bobby make brief, exasperated eye contact. Bobby heads through the doors to follow his fiancé.
Eddie goes back to the waiting room, sits beside Hen. His knee burns where Buck’s brushed his.
Chimney pulls through.
His wife dies. He holds her hand in the ambulance.
His wife dies. Bobby hugs him in the hospital.
His wife dies. He holds his son close, stroking his hair through tears and nightmares.
His wife dies. Mom kisses his cheek and scolds him for not keeping up with the housecleaning, for letting Chris stay home and for letting Chris go to school, for choosing the wrong type of flowers for the funeral, for every fucking thing in the world.
His wife dies. At no point does his father offer him any real sign of affection or comfort. Maybe a pat on the back, at most.
His wife dies. He goes back to work and tries to act normal.
The team, they try to act normal, too. But Bobby is suspended and Captain Chimney is getting on everyone’s nerves. Hen and Buck are struggling to get back to the status quo, when everything is off and just days ago they were at his wife’s funeral and their captain i sunder investigation.
He’s struggling, too.
Since Shannon died, he has slept every night in Christopher’s room. His insomnia has never been kind to him, but it’s been easier to sleep when he’s able to listen to Christopher’s gentle breathing and watch the play of his rotating nightlight on the ceiling. Trying to sleep in the bunk room, alone and yet surrounded by others on all sides, after that is difficult.
His breathing keeps shaking, no matter how many times he tries to calm himself down. He spoke to Chris before bedtime, knows he’s okay, knows he’s with people who love him. There’s no reason for him to be panicking the way he is. He didn’t even panic like this in the middle of a war zone.
“Eddie?” Buck whispers across the dark gap between their bunks. “Are you okay?”
“No,” he answers — and throws the lightweight blanket off his body.
Buck sits up in his bunk, obviously expecting him to storm out. But Eddie? Well, in a fit of frustration and desperation, he crosses the foot or so between the beds and climbs in right beside Buck, shoving him over.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Buck attempts to soothe him, reaching for him even as Eddie rolls him onto his side and slides into place behind him, wrapping his arms tight around Buck’s soft stomach. When Eddie presses his face hard into the dip between Buck’s neck and shoulder, Buck lets his whole body relax backward into Eddie’s hold. He puts his hands over Eddie’s, big and warm. “Okay. Okay, Eds. I’ve got you. Whatever you need.”
They fall asleep like that, with Buck whispering quiet assurances to him.
They wake up like that, too, when the bell goes off and Hen’s feet hit the ground beside them.
“You guys good?” she asks.
“Don’t be jealous,” Buck snarks, taking the attention off of Eddie. “I’m an equal-opportunity cuddler. Just say the word, Henrietta.”
(It’s that snark — and the Henrietta of it all — that sparks the newly posted rule of only one firefighter per bunk. Eddie’s embarrassed, but he’s mostly grateful. At least they’re not walking on eggshells where they would normally be teasing him.)
He puts his hand on Buck’s shoulder, thumb resting in the dip between his collarbones, and rubs gently. The suprasternal notch, his medic training reminds him. There are cuts and bruises all over Buck’s sweet, sad face, but Christopher is largely unharmed.
Buck did that. Buck never stopped trying. Buck will never stop trying.
“There is nobody in the world,” he says, “I trust with my son more than you.”
There’s something thick in the air. He’s got the rim of a beer bottle against his lips, his son in the next room, and pizza crust on the plate he just put in the sink. They’re not quite arguing, but maybe something like it. The way Buck is looking at him, it’s like something might happen.
Something Eddie doesn’t think he’s ready for. Doesn’t know if he’ll ever be ready for.
“Oh, I’d still take you.” He’s smug, overconfident. It’s like meeting the fabled, mythic Buck 1.0.
Eddie can’t help himself: “You think so?”
“I know.” Buck’s hand on his belt, drawing attention to his thick waist and think thighs and thick — whatever. He takes one step towards Eddie, another, until they’re almost touching but not quite. “You wanna go for the title?”
Nothing happens.
Not in the kitchen, not in the living room, not with Chris between them on the couch. The tension dissipates and video games give away to a Marvel movie. Chris falls asleep, head in Buck’s lap and legs in Eddie’s.
Nothing happens. Which is good, because Eddie’s not ready.
(No matter what the disappointment settled in his stomach says that night.)
(It could just be indigestion.)
“Give me,” he says, hands out and ready as he comes through the door, “that baby.”
Buck brightens when he sees him and Chris, already cradling Jee-Yun close against his chest like the baby-hog of an uncle Eddie knew he would be. “You’ll have to pry her from my cold, dead hands.”
“Please,” Chim says from the couch, “do not fight over my child.”
Maddie and Chim have been cautious with Jee-Yun, only allowing one or two visitors to their home at a time. It’s totally and completely understandable, what with the pandemic and all, and so they’ve all been very patiently waiting their turns to meet the newest addition to the family.
“Evan,” Maddie scolds, “share.”
“Yeah, Evan,” Eddie teases, taking Jee-Yun into his own arms, “share.” He beams down at the beautiful baby in his hands and crouches down to let Chris get a look at her. Holding her lights something warm in his chest. “God, Chim, she’s gorgeous.”
“Takes after her mom,” Chim says.
Chris is looking down at Jee-Yun like — well, he looks kind of amazed. He glances up at Eddie and then even further up at Buck. “She’s so little.” Buck nods in response. “Was I that little?”
Eddie’s almost a little choked up, remembering. “You were even littler.”
“No way.”
“Yes way.”
Buck crouches down, too, to get on Chris’s level. “You know, Chris, even I was that little, once.” Chris looks him up and down and casts an incredulous look at Eddie, like he doesn’t believe it.
“Okay, sure, Buck,” he says, full of attitude.
They all laugh, which puts a proud look on Chris’s face and makes baby Jee-Yun wiggle in his arms. Chim makes a wounded sizzling sound. “Burned by your own kid, Buckley.”
Buck freezes where he’s squatting down, makes surprised eye contact with Eddie. He’s reminded, very suddenly, of the choice he’d made, of the way Buck had reacted to it. He doesn’t think anyone else knows about it, doesn’t think Buck has told anyone, but the way Buck’s eyebrows are pulled together is an expression Eddie’s overly familiar with: he’s feeling guilty.
“Just you wait, Chim,” he says, breaking eye contact to look at Jee-Yun once more. He holds her a little tighter, watches as she blinks sleepily up at him. With her black hair and chubby cheeks, she’s a sight to behold. “She’ll be razzing you soon enough — and then you’ll have nowhere to hide.”
“They get ruthless once they turn ten,” Buck agrees, nudging Chris with his elbow. His voice gentles. “Do you want to hold her, buddy?”
And Chris, of course, lights up. “Yes, please.”
Touching is kind of an expectation of dating.
Eddie had almost forgotten that.
Eddie hypes himself up to hold her hand. His fingers shake when they brush over hers. It takes him more than a month to kiss her for the first time. He doesn’t invite her home after their dates and doesn’t follow her to her bedroom when she invites him in at hers.
Ana seems to take his aversion in stride, gentle and understanding through it all. I know this is your first relationship since your wife passed, she says, like that explains everything. We can go slow, she promises, as slow as you need.
He appreciates it, but he knows there is an expectation.
Of course, he agrees. And I want to know what you need, too.
He knows there will be a point where she’s going to need more from him — and he’ll try to give it to her.
Taking on the role of paramedic while Chimney is out searching the continental United States for Maddie is a strange transition. Being Hen’s partner — instead of Buck’s — is a change that makes Eddie’s stomach hurt and his fingers itch.
But he’s damn good at it.
He looks for recognizable patterns, he anticipates patient needs. He remembers his training. He hands off tools and administers treatments. He saves lives.
And he annoys the hell out of Hen.
He knows he’s no Chimney. He walks a step or two behind Hen, following her lead. He doesn’t so much work along side her as he assists her. He doesn’t want to step on her toes, doesn’t want her to feel like he’s trying to replace her partner.
She just — she works in a way he doesn’t understand well enough. She has a routine, a connection with Chimney that is so different from his partnership with Buck. He and Buck, they move as one entity, attached at the hip and the shoulder, like two fingers on one hand. But Hen and Chim, they work as two parts of one body. They’re independent arms on either side of a torso that don’t need to move together, but instead choose to.
He moves to help her, slides in beside her, and gets crushed slightly against the wall.
“What are you doing?” she asks, eyebrows furrowed, as they squish together beside a man on a toilet.
“Getting into position to lift the patient?”
“On my side?”
He holds his hands up and moves away.
He didn’t know she had a side. He and Buck, they usually do everything shoulder-to-shoulder. But now that he thinks about it, Hen and Chim have always instinctively moved to opposite but complimentary sides of their patients.
“Sorry,” he says as they ride back to the station in the ambulance. “I don’t mean to step on your toes. I’m just adjusting.”
“I know,” Hen is kind. “I’m sorry, too. I should’n’t have snapped at you. I just—”
“Miss Chimney.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.” He sighs. “I miss Buck.”
That makes Hen snort. The sound makes him smile.
He teases, “What?”
“He’s two feet away from you at all times — and you still miss him.”
Eddie shrugs. “It’s different, not being his partner.”
“Yeah,” she agrees. “I get that.”
Buck is — for lack of a better word — clingy.
He tries not to be, Eddie can tell. He can see the way Buck holds himself back from seeking out affection, the way he reaches out but never touches. He can see the way something as small as a pat on the back from Bobby, a shake from Chim, or the brush of their shoulders has Buck’s whole body relaxing, like releasing a held breath. Anyone with eyes can see that he craves that connection the way a child does. Eddie knows that it’s a symptom of childhood neglect, right alongside the people pleasing and the chronically low self esteem.
It’s not something Eddie minds about him, far from it. Even when they were just friends, Eddie reveled in the causal, welcome affection. It’s just — Eddie has spent so much of his life avoiding touch for a variety of reasons: because it was painful to experience, because it wasn’t manly to ask for, because he thought maybe he was better off without it. He’s always been a little iffy about it, a little uncomfortable with both his desire for and aversion to it.
Buck likes to touch and be touched. And, yeah, it’s made him a little clingy.
“Affectionate,” Frank suggests, when Eddie brings it up.
“Cuddly”, Eddie offers with an awkward chuckle.
"Is that something you struggle with?” Frank asks. “Accepting affection?”
Eddie shrugs. “I’m just not used to it.”
“Is it a sensory issue,” Frank questions, “or a social one?”
“How do I know the difference?”
“You might not,” Frank says — well, frankly. “But, if it’s a social thing, we may be able to talk you through it. If it’s a part of your somatosensation deficit and sensory processing disorder, I may have to do some more research. We’ve already established you respond well to deep pressure therapy.”
Eddie takes a moment to think about it. He thinks long and hard, while Frank waiting patiently, sipping from his reusable water bottle.
He thinks about Buck’s knee against his, the squeeze of their shoulders in the truck. He thinks of the stroke of Buck’s fingers against his after the well, when he rubbed their hands together furiously to warm him. He thinks of Buck’s nose tucked up under the edge of his jaw, long arms over his chest, long legs tangled with Eddie’s, back during lockdown when every moment was bliss and torture all at once. He thinks of kicking at Buck’s ankles under the table in the station loft, hooking their feet together. He thinks of Buck’s hands on his bare chest, Buck’s thick thighs straddling his bare waist, the weight of him as they move together in bed.
And he remembers every time he’s been the one to reach out for Buck first, every time he’s sought touch and affection. How he made the first move, made his feelings known. How, if Buck doesn’t cuddle close first, he’ll drag him until they’re tangled together in bed. How he’s been reaching for Buck, only to find him reaching right back, ever since they first met.
“I—,” he stops.
He thinks of holding Christopher, the way his son slides under his arm and burrows in against his side, and how it makes something inside him settle and calm. He remembers picking Shannon up and swinging her around when he returned form basic training, the joy of it. He thinks of Abuela running her fingers through his hair to comfort him. He thinks of Bobby’s reassuring hand on his shoulder. He thinks of a group hug, him sandwiched in the middle of Hen and Chim. He thinks of the way his sisters playfully push and shove at him.
He thinks of being young, of watching Papi smother Adriana in hugs and kisses, of Mama holding Sophia through nightmares and heartbreaks — of knowing that those kindnesses were not to be extended to him. He thinks of reaching out for something, anything, and being denied. How he knew, long before he figured out his sexuality, that something about the way he wanted touch and affection was somehow wrong.
“I think it’s neither,” he says. “Yeah. There’s the whole sensory thing but — I think I’ve just been getting in my own way.”
When therapy is over for the day, he doesn’t head home.
(He doesn’t need to. Chris will be at school for another few hours. The grocery shopping is already done. He has a whole afternoon free.)
Instead, he heads to Buck’s loft.
The door opens quietly, easily, under the twist of his key and the pressure of his hand. He kicks off his shoes in the doorway, lines them up against Buck’s overly large sneakers.
“Buck?” he calls out, turning the corner around the stairs.
And there he is, in all his early-afternoon glory, curls tousled from his workout. A wide grin stretches his face when he spots Eddie, eyes lighting up like he’s the best thing Buck has seen all day. There’s a half-empty bowl of cereal and a half-drunk protein shake on the table, a documentary playing on the TV.
It’s only a few steps to the couch. It’s only a little stretch to put his hands on Buck’s big, broad shoulders and sling his leg over Buck’s lap. Their noses brush. He cups Buck’s stubbly jaw in his hands.
“Hi, baby,” he whispers.
Buck’s hands land on his hips, big and gentle. “Hi, Eddie.” There’s a smile in his voice. “What’s up?”
“I think I had a breakthrough in therapy today.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” He leans in, presses a quick kiss to Buck’s soft pink mouth. “I want to touch you and that’s okay. You want to touch me, too, and it won’t hurt either of us.”
Buck nods, enthusiastic. “It’s definitely okay. Totally okay. You have permission to touch me whenever, wherever.” He squeezes Eddie’s hips in his big, strong hands. “Do you want to talk about what prompted this, or—?” He tilts his chin up, wordlessly begging for a kiss.
Gifting Buck one last kiss, he swings himself out of Buck’s lap. “We can talk.” He gets settled on the couch, gets comfortable. Buck turns his body to face him. “Frank and I have been trying to figure out if some of my hang-ups are because of my autism or, you know, the way I was raised.”
“And you were talking about touch,” Buck puts it together without him having to say much. “A lot of people with ASD experience heightened pain-touch sensitivity. It’s a sensory processing problem,” he pauses, looks at Eddie from under his pretty blonde eyelashes, “which you already knew.”
“I did.”
“I’m not,” Buck stresses, “trying to make this about me, but — did I do something that started the conversation? I know I can be a lot and I don’t want to do anything to hurt you.”
“You didn’t. I mean,” Eddie puts his hand on Buck’s knee, “I’ve been thinking about it more because of you, but nothing bad started the conversation. I just needed to talk it through with Frank to realize I’d been getting in my own way, telling myself there was something wrong when there wasn’t.” He sighs, heavy but relieved. “I think — I think that sometimes I can’t separate the reason for my hang-ups. Touch is weird for me because of my autism and because of how I was raised. The reason isn’t always what matters.”
Buck nods, understanding. “I get that. The why isn’t the most important part.”
Eddie squeezes his knee. “What matters is how I feel about it. And I — I tried not to want it, because I knew it could hurt me. Because it might actually, physically hurt me, or because the rejection might hurt me, or because I thought that wanting it the way I wanted it meant something about me I didn’t want to face.”
Buck’s hand lands on top of his, a comforting weight.
It just strengthens his resolve. “I was worried I might hurt you, like I hurt Ana, because I didn’t trust myself to want or experience it the right way. But I’m not afraid to want it anymore. I’m not afraid it might hurt me. And I’m not afraid to hurt you. We’re stronger than that. We work through it together.”
“Hell, yeah, we do.” With teary eyes and a smile, Buck leans close and presses another kiss to his mouth. “You don’t have to worry about me, Eds. You’re the first person to ever touch me without hurting me.”
“Same.”
“Wow,” Buck teases. “So romantic.”
He laughs, shoves at Buck’s shoulder. “Shut up. I love you.”
“I love you more.”
“I love you most.”
They set a date. They book a venue.
It’s really happening.
It’s an affordable place — it has to be, on two civil servant salaries — that specializes in LGBTQ+ interfaith ceremonies. Buck loves the clean outdoor ceremony space. Chris loves the spacious reception area and the dance floor that doesn’t make his crutches slip. Eddie loves the look on their faces when they walk in for the first time.
(He also loves that they’ve never had to respond to an emergency there.)
(In fact, their tour guide informs them that the only time they’ve ever had emergency personnel on site is for their yearly drills and fire-code checks.)
Chris is busy opening every single door he can find, poking his head into the big bathroom and spending long minutes mugging in the mirror. “I’ll leave you three to explore for a moment,” she says, holding up her ringing cell phone as explanation. “I’ll be just outside.”
Buck pulls him by both hands to the center of the dance floor. “Dance with me,” he asks, slipping his arms around Eddie’s shoulders and tugging him in close.
He wraps his own arms around Buck’s waist, settling his hands at the dip above his ass. With a grin, he tugs until Buck’s body is pressed tight against his, chest to chest, and starts to sway them side to side. “You like it here, huh?”
“I could get married to you here.”
“You could get married to me behind a dumpster in an alleyway.”
“Very true,” Buck admits, “but this place would look way better in wedding photos than a dirty dumpster.”
“It would,” Eddie agrees.
“And,” Buck leans in close, until they’re cheek to cheek, to whisper, “I think you’d probably be a little more comfortable sneaking away to fuck me during the reception in that nice, private bathroom than in an alleyway.”
Eddie raises an eyebrow. “You don’t think we’ll be able to make it to our wedding night honeymoon suite?”
“No way.” Buck’s tone is definitive. “I’ve seen you in your wedding suit. I won’t be able to keep my hands off you.”
“How is that different from any other day?”
Buck laughs, throws his head back. The honeyed sound of it echoes in the empty space. Eddie can imagine it cluttered and filled with the joyous sounds of the people he loves. “Because you’ll be my husband.”
It takes Eddie’s breath away. His voice comes out a little dreamy. “You’ll be my husband.” He presses a kiss to Buck’s shoulder, to the thin fabric of his button-up. “I’ve always wanted one of those.”
“Funny enough,” Buck says, “I’ve always wanted to be one of those.”
“Lucky for us.”
“Lucky us,” Buck agrees. He leans in for a kiss, their noses brushing —
“Dad! Buck!” Chris call, shouted from one of the rooms off the reception space, interrupts the moment and pulls them apart. The sound of his crutches on the floor, rapidly approaching, echoes. “You have to get married here! I’m not taking no for an answer!”
Eddie and Buck share a silent look. Buck raises his eyebrows and shrugs, like what can you do?
“Okay, Chris,” Eddie gives in, “you’re the boss.”