Work Text:
Eddie throttles up the stairs to the station’s loft like any normal work day. He is greeted with a choir of good mornings and Bobby offering him coffee, to which he kindly says, “No, thanks, Cap. I already went out for some before work,” but still settles down at the dining table and snatches a breakfast bun from a bowl. None of the buns at the coffee place looked very appealing.
Buck marches up the stairs a few moments later, still buttoning up his uniform, ever so impatient to get on with the work day. He settles in a chair opposite from Eddie and, too, rejects the coffee.
“Morning briefing,” announces Bobby, turning up at the table with a clipboard and immediately catching everyone’s attention. “Santa Anas have been a bit of a headache for us lately, but it’s nothing we can’t handle. What could be more concerning is the wildfires from down South, blowing a few clouds of smoke over LA. Make sure that you and anyone you encounter today stays well hydrated and do not dismiss any dizziness. Got it?”
“Got it, Cap,” chime in several voices.
“Chandler’s the man behind today, on kitchen duty,” carries on Bobby. “Hen, Chimney — restock. Ravi — polish the trucks, please.”
“What about me?” asks Buck.
Bobby looks down at his clipboard before meeting his eyes. “You just— Stay alive today.”
“And me?” asks Eddie.
“Make sure Buck stays alive?” Bobby adds, grinning.
“Hey, I can actually take care of my own life, thanks,” says Buck, rolling his eyes.
“Oh, but you like it so much better when I look out for you,” teases Eddie, giving him a wink. Buck slams his foot into his leg under the table.
Bobby sighs. “It’s only a ten-hour shift, guys. Let’s make it a good one.” And with that, he strides down the stairs to his office. Immediately, conversation ensues.
“What’d y’all do over the two-off?” asks Hen.
Buck immediately perks up, straightening up in his chair. “Me, Eddie and Christopher went to a video game con. Chris is obsessed with Fallout recently, and he got to meet the actors of the new show based on the game. He talked their ears off. I don’t really get it, but I love his enthusiasm.”
“Denny’s been trying to get Mara into Fallout,” muses Hen. “Her sassy self just humbles him by telling him that she’s too grown for video games.”
“Honestly, I don’t see the appeal of all these post-apocalyptic universes,” adds Eddie. “Isn’t it just depressing?”
“It’s interesting to see the way humanity still pushes through, even when things are tough,” says Chim, then hums. “Who do you think, out of all of us, would be the first to die in an apocalypse?”
“You,” say Buck, Hen, and Eddie simultaneously. Chimney throws daggers with his eyes at all of them.
“That’s not fair,” he complains. “I’m a paramedic. You’d need me.”
“We’d have Hen,” says Buck. “But, to be honest, you wouldn’t die that quickly if we were in a movie. You’re the comedic relief, Chim. You’d last nearly until the end.”
“If it were a movie, you’d be the jock. They die first,” points out Chim.
“Hey, I’m well past my jock behavior. I’ve grown,” presses Buck, making Eddie snicker. He turns to him, frowning. “What?”
“You said you’ve grown,” he echoes. “Were you grown last night, when you cried over Finding Nemo?”
Buck looks ready to punch him. “It’s a sad movie! Doesn’t it just hit you when Dory chants, just keep swimming? It’s a lovely metaphor about how we should always keep going, even when life throws hard, sometimes impossible stuff our way. Keep going. Keep swimming. And you’ll find a way out.”
Eddie softens at that. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.” He’s experienced it on his own skin. Had he not kept pushing through his troubles, his insecurities about the man he is, the father is, the partner he could be, he wouldn’t be as happy and carefree as he is now.
Buck’s grin meets his own and Eddie melts into it before glancing away.
“So, how did your weekend go, Chim?” he asks.
The man lets out a groan and rambles about Jee throwing up over her new Lego collection until he is finally interrupted by the first alarm of the day going off. Everyone whose appetite had been spoiled looks seriously relieved.
“Well, this is—” starts Buck.
“—unexpected?” finishes Eddie in his place.
“No,” he disagrees. “This is exactly the kind of bizarre shit our station is cursed to deal with all the time.”
Eddie admits that’s kind of true. Still, it’s not often you find yourself on a farm site, watching a man who’s covered in something sticky, bird seeds, chicken feathers, and a couple of severe cuts, somehow having trapped himself behind the bars of a hen coop, with onlooker hens screeching at him, trying to find their way in as they circle the coop.
“What happened here?” Bobby asks a guilty looking thirty-something man who’d introduced himself as Clifford. He stands beside them, looking so similar to the victim that he could be his twin. Bobby’s tone is patient, despite the sigh he looks like he’s trying to bite back from.
“It was supposed to be a joke!” he exclaims. “Me and Jeremy loved Home Alone growing up and we thought it’d be funny to reenact a scene and see how it would play out in real life. You know, the one with the pigeon lady—”
“Oh!” exhales Chimney. “Wait. So, what? You covered your brother in goo and bird seeds to have the hens attack him?” Clifford nods. “Why?”
“It gets boring out here sometimes,” he shrugs, like that explains the insanity. “Can you get him out without the hens going crazy on him?”
In that moment, a hen jumps on top of the coop, sniffing Jeremy through the cage with its beak. The man yelps, crouching down to the ground to protect his head.
Bobby turns to face them. “Buck, Eddie, get the hose.”
“On it,” they answer, skipping away to the engine.
“I’ve never seen Home Alone,” Buck says as they’re unwrapping the hose. “Now I'm kind of intrigued.”
Eddie blinks at him. “I swear, Buck, you haven't seen any movie. Next Christmas, we’re going to make you watch the whole series.”
“Wait, series? There's more than one?”
Eddie doesn't warrant an answer to that. In moments, the hose is prepared, so he angles it at the hen coop, right where Jeremy is crouched to the bottom of it, threads of hay sticking to him, and gives Buck the greenlight to turn the switch on and pressure all the way up.
Jeremy yelps as the stream of water strikes him, nearly toppling over himself. Eddie hoses him up and down with a bit of glee, watching the bird seeds, grime and blood drip down from his skin and clothes until the man is entirely soaked in just water. Buck turns the hose off and for one daunting second, everyone takes a deep breath. The hens, who’d been at the frenzy from the hosing down, do not make their return to the coop. Clifford sprints up to the cage and unlocks it, letting his brother out and, despite water dripping from him, enveloping him in an embrace.
“Please back away so that we can take a look at those cuts,” says Hen, after waiting a moment for their hug to end. Clifford does as he’s told and watches from afar as Hen and Chimney assess the patient.
“Do you think if Chris ever has a sibling, they’d get up to trouble like this?” Buck asks Eddie, standing shoulder to shoulder with him and watching the scene unfold.
“God, I hope not,” answers Eddie. “I wouldn't have the patience for this.”
“I’d probably help them scheme together,” admits Buck.
Eddie raises a brow. “Against me?”
Buck simply smirks and winks in response, patting his shoulder softly before skipping away to see if Bobby needs him for anything else, ever the overachiever.
Eddie looks after him, something warm and fuzzy blooming in his stomach. Kind of like excitement.
“I’m just saying, Chim, there are better movies.”
“The cast alone makes it the best ever made, Hen.”
“I’m sure many film critics would argue with you.”
“Then they don't know what they’re talking about!” he fires back. “Barbie was the best movie of 2023. Change my mind.”
“The Oscars don’t agree with you,” says Eddie. Everyone glances his way. “What? I watch The Oscars. Didn’t Oppenheimer win Best Picture?”
“Buck,” calls out Chim, turning to where the man has splayed out his legs for miles on the couch and is scrolling through his phone. “Barbie or Oppenheimer?”
Buck looks up, confused for a second. “Uh, I don't want to get in the middle of this. Chim, you’re my brother-in-law and Hen… Well, she’s like a sister to me.”
“What about your bestest buddy in the whole world, Eddie? He voted Oppenheimer.”
“I didn’t necessarily say it’s better, just that it won the category,” points out Eddie.
“Just say it, damnit!” exclaims Chim.
Buck and Eddie share a glance before announcing, “Barbie. Sorry, Hen.”
Chimney cheers. Hen lets out a sigh. “I work with a bunch of princesses.”
“Thanks!” says Buck.
“Yeah, not a compliment.”
“Okay,” drawls out Chim. “But we all agree that Everything, Everywhere, All At Once deserved Best Picture, right?”
“Obviously,” say Hen, Buck, and Eddie.
“Great, so we don't have to hate each other!”
“I couldn’t hate any of you even if I tried,” Hen says softly. She puts the article about the 2024 Oscars she’d been reading down. “By the way, Eddie, earlier you said something about an anniversary coming up soon and you needing someone to watch Chris. Do you think we could—?”
At that same moment, Buck looks directly at Eddie and asks, “Mexican or Thai?”
“Thai,” he answers, before turning back to Hen. “What was that, Hen?”
“I was just wondering if Chris wanted to go to the planetarium with my family,” says Hen. “There’s a new show coming up that weekend you said you were busy.”
“Oh,” exhales Eddie. “Yeah. Sure. Sounds good.”
“What anniversary is it?” asks Chimney, ever so curious. Eddie can practically hear Buck cocking his ears as he starts paying attention to their conversation rather than his phone. He resists the urge to roll his eyes.
“Oh, it’s nothing major,” answers Eddie, the little shit he is. “Just been three months since a revelation I had.”
“What revelation?” Hen’s interest is also piqued.
“That you guys are way too nosy,” says Eddie. He brushes some lint off his uniform’s pants and gets up. “I’ll be at the gym if anyone—”
It’s at that moment the alarm rings above their heads.
“I swear to God, this exact situation happened in New Girl,” announces Chimney, whistling as he takes the scene in.
“Except, thankfully, there’s no dead body on the bench in this scenario,” agrees Hen.
An engaged couple, Dora and Francis, have been found stuck in an outdoor children’s playhouse, half-naked and pressed together. A poor seven-year-old had tried to climb into the playhouse, just to sprint away yelling something about predators to his mother, who’d immediately dialed 911.
Buck, Eddie, and Ravi extract the unlucky couple, unfortunately for the kids, needing to cut off some parts of the structure to get to them. How they fit in the playhouse in the first place remains a mystery to them.
It’s on their way back to the station that Buck brings it up.
“What’s the weirdest place you’ve all had sex?”
Bobby yelps through the headset. “Buck!”
“Come on, Bobby, we’ve discussed more inappropriate things than this.”
“You mean you have,” points out Hen. “We’ve just been forced to listen to all the gritty details of your sex life for years and no amount of complaining can ever get you to stop.”
“Come on, Hen, just shoot away,” says Buck. “I know you want to.”
She thinks about it for a moment. “I guess the balcony of a skyscraper in Malibu.”
“Woah, fancy!”
She shrugs. “I nearly froze my ass off, but it was fun.”
“Mine was the bathroom of a bowling alley when I was nineteen,” chimes in Ravi. “Also the grossest experience, if I may add. There’s nothing sexy about the smell of those shoes they give you for bowling. They stink up the whole place.”
“You guys are weird,” says Chim, popping his gum. “I’d say my weirdest was like, the kitchen?”
“Maddie not into exhibitionism?” asks Hen.
Buck lets out a groan. “Ew, ew, I don't want to hear that!”
Everyone snickers.
“What about yourself, Buck?” asks Hen.
“It’s a tie between a helicopter up in the air and, uh…” He hesitates, rubbing at the back of his neck. “A Chemistry classroom while a PTA meeting was happening in the next room.”
“Excuse me?” exhales Hen, her eyes growing wide. “What made you sleep with someone at a school?”
“The tensions were just running high and I needed to take the edge off.”
Hen shakes her head in disbelief. “You appall me, Evan Buckley. Anyone could've caught you.”
“Hey, there were no kids nearby!”
“Still, that's—”
“I’ve also had sex at a school,” says Eddie, not being able to take it any longer.
Hen gapes.
“You? You, Eddie?! I can kinda expect this from Buck but not you!”
“The idea of getting caught was actually exciting,” he says with a shrug. “No harm, no foul.”
“Ana picked a wild one, it seems,” heaves out Hen. “Damn, girl.”
But then, it seems, Buck can’t hold himself back either. “Who said it was Ana?”
Jesus fucking Christ, Buck.
“Oh?” says Hen. “What do you know that we don’t, Buckaroo?”
Buck shrugs as innocently as one can muster. Eddie is seriously going to have to do something about that… Later.
“What about you, Cap?” asks Chimney.
Bobby lets out a sigh. “I am not participating in this conversation.”
“I bet it’s wilder than a school,” Chimney whispers to them at the back.
“I can hear you through the headsets!”
“You all did well today. Enjoy some rest before we’re back here bright and early tomorrow.”
Eddie feels himself let out a breath of relief. He makes his way down to the locker room with the A-shift, greeting his coworkers from the next shift on the way. He changes into his civilian clothes as quickly as one can manage, especially with experience in the army. Buck and Hen linger, conversating about some new Netflix romcom they’re planning to watch together on their next day off, so Eddie makes his way out of the station to his car.
He sits in the driver’s seat, playing with the radio until it lands on some overplayed Taylor Swift song, but he keeps it on, knowing that Buck enjoys the hell out of her music, and for him, Eddie will sit through even the songs that seriously get on his nerves.
A minute or so later, Buck climbs in through the passenger seat. Eddie’s heart stutters in his chest and he’s leaning over the stick shift to—
“Bye-e, have a nice night!” Buck practically shouts. Eddie withdraws, throwing his head to where Buck’s looking through the windshield and waving an erratic goodbye to Hen parked beside them. She spares him a strange look but waves back anyway.
The ride to Eddie’s house is mostly spent in easy silence, bar Buck humming along to the radio and Eddie complaining about every red light and not having an automatic anymore, which makes getting through the Los Angeles traffic unbearable.
Eddie parks the car and they trod up to the door. Christopher’s away on a science field trip and won’t be back until Thursday morning, and while Eddie worries, Buck is there to hold his hand through it and join him on his nightly FaceTime calls with him.
“So, I was thinking—” starts Eddie, once they’ve made it past the door and he’s dumped his keys on top of the shoe cabinet. Except, he doesn’t quite get to finish his proposal.
Because a pair of strong arms are pinning him to the door, holding him capture before hot, greedy lips land on Eddie’s own, twisting and tugging and pulling, and taking him apart at the seams he’d hardly rearranged since those lips were on him last, ten or so hours ago at the coffee shop between his house and the station that he and Buck frequent nearly every morning at this point.
Buck kisses him and kisses him and Eddie’s a pile of goo, even after nearly three months of getting to have Evan Buckley to himself like this. He’s pretty certain he’ll be eighty and still melt at every one of his touches, both the gentler and the rougher kind.
With a slick sound, Buck separates his mouth from Eddie’s, grinning at him like the idiot he is.
“What was that for?” asks Eddie, a little breathless and dizzied.
Buck shrugs, raising his hand to boop his nose.
“I missed you today.”
“I was with you all day,” Eddie reminds him.
“Yeah, but I couldn't kiss you, couldn't touch you. It was torture. Especially since you looked so pretty today.”
Eddie reels with the compliment. “Now you can.”
“Now I can. And, mm,” he hums, landing a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth where Eddie loves it. “Not planning on stopping.”
“Bed?” suggests Eddie.
Buck nods, backing away from the door but not really increasing the distance between them, immediately taking Eddie’s hand in his. “Yeah, I scheduled the Thai food to be delivered for eight. We still have, like, a half hour. Think we can manage.”
“Manage?” asks Eddie, smirking at his boyfriend. “When have you ever lasted longer than five minutes with me?”
Buck swats at his hand, but takes it back in his right after. They reach the door to their bedroom, giggling at each other before making their way in. Eddie gently lies Buck down on the pillows, gazing at his soft, relaxing expression as he gazes right back. When they’re here like this, nothing wrong and hard in the world can touch them. They get to be themselves, who they’ve finally allowed to be with each other lately, and even all these months later, it still feels like a goddamn miracle that this can exist. Eddie figured it was a thing of the movies before getting to claim Evan Buckley as his own.
It’s minutes later, with Eddie’s mouth on the length of Buck, that he remembers the events of the day and eases off before Buck can reach his peak. Much to Buck’s confusion, he climbs back up his boyfriend and gives him a filthy kiss.
“Hey, what the hell was that for? Why’d you stop?”
Eddie smirks down at him.
“Retaliation for bringing up the sex at the school thing earlier.”
“No one suspected I was talking about you!” Buck looks outraged. “In fact, I think you made it obvious!”
Eddie ignores him. “You just had to say, who said it was Ana?”
“I couldn’t handle them thinking Ana of all people would’ve done it,” he grumbles back.
Eddie rests his head in the crook of his neck, toying with the hair on Buck’s bare chest.
“You think we should tell the team soon?”
Buck tilts his head to meet his eyes. “No. Let’s fuck with them a little longer. Besides.” The corners of his mouth quirk up into an evil grin. “I sneaked a peek at their bet and if we tell them this week, Chim’s winning. We absolutely can't let him win.”
“Absolutely,” agrees Eddie.
All of a sudden, the doorbell rings. Both of them groan.
“I’m more dressed than you,” offers Eddie. “Be right back.”
It’s only when he makes it to the door of their bedroom, feeling Buck’s gaze on the back of his head, that he stops and swings back around.
“Love you,” he murmurs in the quiet of the room.
Buck beams at him. He’s never quite looked as happy as he does with him.
“And I love you,” he echoes. “Now, go get the food because I’m starving.”
So, Eddie does.