Chapter Text
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In retrospect, Eddie shouldn't be surprised. He was always shit at relationships, so not understanding this one thing (one, big, cosmical thing) about one of them wasn't something unexpected. What he couldn't wrap his head around was—what would happen if Buck didn't dig into that specific topic? When, how would Eddie know then? Would he ever know? Surely, he must, he really, really tried to believe that, but would it have been one year from now, five years, or when he was old and grey and couldn't do anything about it? What if it happened too late? That thought stole the breath from his lungs and almost caused his heart to stop with dread.
But he was getting ahead of himself.
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Saying Eddie's last months were crazy was like saying nothing. Saying his last weeks were intense was insufficient. Really, saying anything about this particular, bizarre situation he created for himself half a year ago was basically pointless. If you weren't living it, you wouldn't believe it. Even if you believed, you wouldn't get it. Hell, Eddie himself didn't get it, not fully. Everything surrounding the... Kim's time was a little bit foggy, a little bit unclear. Kinda like memories from a childhood, halfway forgotten and sometimes seemingly made up three-quarters of the way. And then a moment of clarity, a clash—his boy leaving. And Eddie tried to deal with it. Eddie mourned, Eddie spiraled, Eddie panicked. Eddie grew a mustache, listened to a priest telling him to accept joy, and had a weird heart-to-heart with TV star Brad Torrence. And then he almost made the same mistakes all over again.
When he decided to move to El Paso, he thought he was finally doing the right thing. He caused all of this by being a selfish son of a bitch, and what better way to fix that than to choose a life with his son above his own? Because if he knew one thing, he knew that he was never happy in El Paso. He had happy memories from his hometown—he had the best memories—but he wasn't happy there. He wasn't himself there, too haunted by a script laid down before he even came to exist in this world, too overwhelmed by his family’s expectations that sat heavily on his shoulders. Here, in LA, he was finally finding himself—he still had a long way to go, he knew, but with his job, with 118, with Buck, he was taking two steps forward and stumbling back only once in a while.
However, if it were the only way to have his son back in his life, he would do it. He would leave his life in LA and follow Christopher to Texas.
One thing?
He once again made a decision by himself, so sure that he had found the one and only solution. He didn't even plan on telling Christopher beforehand, wanting to do it right away. But well, moving a whole life into another state wasn't a flick of a finger thing. And it took some time, and he had the support in the form of his best friend, and Buck looking at houses in El Paso with him filled him with an itchiness that he didn't have the mind power to understand. But then Buck told him to breathe, told him, "Eddie, you have to talk with Chris about it, it's a big thing". And then he said, "I'm not telling you to not do it—you know what's best for you two—but I don't think that should be a surprise".
So Eddie went to Texas for Christmas, just three days between shifts, not forever, not yet. His biggest gift was supposed to be the news; well, he did know that may not be the best one for Christopher, that it didn't automatically give them the happily ever after, that his kid could still, should still be mad at him. He didn't expect much enthusiasm.
He also didn't expect the emotional carnage.
Chris... was not happy with the idea of moving. He called Eddie selfish, he called Eddie stupid. He said he wished he had never come back from Afghanistan. He screamed, he cried, he whimpered that Eddie was months late. He locked himself in his room. Helena and Ramon tried to make Eddie leave, to go to Sophia's, but their voices couldn't make it through Eddie's head for the first time in his life. He just sat outside his old bedroom door, tears on his face. Father and son, both crying on the other sides of a wall. But the thing about water—it was insistent, it was unrelenting. It was supposed to purify you from the sins, and it definitely did cleanse you.
So in the morning, when Chris opened the door, and Eddie raised his head immediately from the shallow slumber he had been in, with a crick in his neck and puffy eyes, and looked at his boy, all blotchy face—there were cracks in the wall between them caused by all these tears.
"I never wanted to stay here forever," Chris said. "But I don't know how to stop being mad at you."
Eddie nodded, tears filling his eyes once again.
"That's okay. It's okay, Chris." He swallowed and then took a deep breath. "But can we talk about it?"
So after all, it turned out Eddie wasn't moving. Chris wasn't staying in El Paso; he was coming home. Not right away—it was too late to enroll him before the second term at school started, so they decided to give it a little bit more time. To talk some more. Eddie was frantic once again, but this time with hope.
And it sucked to undo all the arrangements already made; it was another shit show in its own way. Eddie still did it gladly, and Buck still helped him through it all, this time with a smile much more genuine.
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So you see, that's how December went for Eddie, and it's how January was going. Good, hard, hopeful, overwhelming. After three weeks of that, the most difficult conversations with Christopher were maybe, probably, behind them—at least until they could have more in person. Everything was way less hectic, emotionally and otherwise. So if you asked Eddie, it was around that time when he really registered a new recurring aspect of Buck's stories, but being honest, the man probably mentioned it before.
When Eddie was dealing with the hell of his personal making, Buck also had stuff on his plate. Eddie knew that, and he also knew that Buckley didn't want to share them, didn't want to add more problems onto Eddie's shoulders. But the break-up with Tommy hit him rather hard, harder than Eddie expected. They weren't that serious, were they? Eddie honestly wasn't keeping track; all the stuff with Christopher was keeping him occupied. Besides… it got a little bit weird after Buck and Tommy got together. Eddie couldn't really explain it. He liked Tommy—well, he liked him fine until it turned out that he was a shitty boyfriend to Evan. Buck deserved better. When Eddie thought about helicopter rides to Vegas and then showing up at a stupid bachelor party in a fucking Henley, the anger he felt was similar to the one from his street fighting days. And then he went to think about the helicopter ride and Thursday’s basketball, and "Tommy's gay?", and felt chafed in a different way. But to be honest, he wasn't really thinking about it. He worked it out. He was feeling anxious when he heard about their relationship, because his own was already in shambles at that point. And he was happy for Buck for finding this new piece of himself, he truly was, but it wasn't easy to also not feel a little bit bugged while you yourself were repeating the same motions with a hope for a different ending; while you were stuck performing a relationship with a woman that was perfect, but just not perfect for him. So sometimes Eddie felt weird while thinking about Buck's newfound queerness, but he still loved to listen to him rambling about it.
Because, as it turns out, while Eddie was busy being yelled at by his kid in Texas, Buck finished his after-break-up-baking phase and transferred into exploring-his-sexuality one. He hadn't reversed to Buck 1.0, he claimed; he did bars, specifically gay bars, but he didn't do bar hook-ups. And gay bars were good enough to have flyers lying around about other queer places. Buck, the curious creature that he was, decided to check them out one by one, so Eddie got used to him mentioning some new places every other conversation, especially when Hen was nearby. But then...:
"Wait, I know what I wanted to ask you, what did you like more? My snickerdoodles or lemon cookies?"
"Snickerdoodles," Eddie declared instantly. Then he glanced at Buck; they were walking to their cars, side by side. "Don't say you're gonna go crazy with baking again?"
"Like I heard you complaining," Buck rebuffed. "But nope, I'm... way over it. You know it, Eddie. I'm just going to Lemoyne this afternoon 'cause I promised Janice I'm gonna teach her how to bake."
Eddie unlocked his car and leaned on it. The sun was shining strongly, especially for that early in the day. He played with sunglasses hanging from his T-shirt, ready to put them on. Buck's eyes were squinted, but his pair was nowhere to be seen. Pointing that out to him was a fruitless endeavor though, he couldn't be caught dead wearing them, so Eddie just chuckled in his mind at the scrunched face.
"Where are you going?" He remembered to ask after a second.
"Lemoyne? The place near Echo Park, just off Sunset?"
"And what's there?" This time, Eddie was the one scrunching his forehead, raking through memories.
"Oh, the LGBT+ community center? The one I went to finally see Brokeback Mountain. They host these queer movie marathons..."
And:
"Do you think there is a dress code for a board games night? I'm already one of the oldest at Lemoyne, I don't want to stick out even more."
And:
"Eddie, the teenagers from Lemoyne call me baby gay. They're closer in age to Christopher, Eddie, and they call me baby."
And, memorably:
It was just the two of them, cleaning the engine in the bay. Buck already managed to get his gray T-shirt covered in wet splotches, the material darker and sticking to his body in those places even more than the usual amount. He was holding the sponge in both hands, putting way too much strength into scrubbing the shining exterior while not even looking at it.
"Cody from Lemoyne said that I was a twink back in the day and like, wasted my twink days being straight. I didn't know if I should be offended or pleased 'cause dude, what the hell?"
"What's a twink?" Eddie hummed, mostly pretending to keep busy and listening to his friend's chatter.
Buck, inexplicably, got red in the face. "Never mind," he muttered, facing the engine again. And then he continued in the previous, babbling tone: "My fat percentage was way too low to be called a twink anyway. But I guess, me from then compared to Tommy, for example..."
Later, Eddie googled "twink gay" and took a shortcut to Google pictures, and well... curiosity killed the innocent cat. Or however that saying went, right?
Sufficient to say, Eddie heard his fair share about Lemoyne. Some of it was just random remarks, but Buck's love for research seemed to connect well with the place. For some time, Wikipedia rabbit holes turned into recalls of whatever discussion they had at Lemoyne that week; Chim laughed that Buck should dutifully take notes since he had become their student, Hen looked at Buck with a new type of fondness in her eyes, and Eddie... Eddie just smiled and asked questions, and learned about this new aspect of his best friend and his newly founded community. After the whirlwind of last months' events, he came to appreciate those everyday moments with Buck even more than before—and it wasn't an easy task, as he had been immensely grateful for Buck almost since he knew him. But times like today—Evan Buckley chopping veggies in his kitchen, in an apron that was a gag gift from Christopher, with the radio playing softly in the background and mellow sunrays illuminating the kitchen—were filling Eddie with the feeling of serenity that seemed to expand his chest and fill all of his scars, all of his cracks, with all-encompassing warmth.
Buck was already finishing prepping the dinner and he had managed to cover Maddie's latest ultrasound appointment (the baby was the size of an avocado now) and plans for them to visit a special exhibition at the Natural History Museum when Chris came back; it was sweet, how much he was stressing about whether Christopher would still enjoy learning about L.A.'s prehistoric ocean, and how mopey he got about the teenager being too old now to get excited about some seal fossil discovered in a garden wall and named after the family that found it.
"He would eat that shit up like— a–a year ago, Eddie! We would have to stop him from digging through the entire backyard just to have some species named Atopotarus Diazi after him."
"Atopotarus," Eddie mouthed to himself. "Isn't it something from Harry Potter?" He wondered, but then shook his head, getting rid of the thought and looking at Buckley with an amused smile. "He was already thirteen last year. You're at least two years off, Buck."
"Am not!" He objected just for the pleasure of objecting, it seemed. "And get with a program, Diaz, I wouldn't refer to something J. K. Rowling wrote, we don't support her transphobic ass."
Eddie opened his mouth but didn't manage to get anything out by the time Buck was speaking again.
"Oh my god, Janice has this list of queer authors and another one of the ones outwardly supporting LGBTQ rights. I haven't had time to really go through them yet, but I already love it. She said that she created it with her friends. How cool is that? I kinda expected to find community and, like, people who share my experiences, but to find people that make lists together as an after-school activity? I pity teenage Buck so much for not having it." Then a small, slightly self-deprecating smile appeared on Buck's face. "Not that I would be interested at that time, I was... rather a dickhead, but, you know, if I had these people then? Life changing." He banged his knuckles on the cupboard behind him. "And I know it's not really exclusive to queerness, but man, these people are so much more open and less restricted by all the society stuff—like, the— societal expectations. They just let themselves be, and they don't care about what others will think. Well, I mean, of course they do, like, everybody does. But they don't let it dictate their lives and the big things. I guess they were already... alienated in some ways from most of the society, so why follow all the stupid rules made up by it?"
The cheese on the countertop forgotten, Buck ended his small rant with a flourish—that is, almost hitting himself in the head with a grater. Eddie snickered; Eddie also noticed that even though Buck was getting better about including himself while talking about queerness, it still didn't always happen. And well, if he lived more than 30 years believing he was straight, it was probably to be expected that he didn't integrate all the things about queer experiences yet? Especially as, from what Eddie understood, it came way easier to be unconsciously swept by the bad stuff. The good? Not particularly.
"Sounds cool, but also... sad in a way?" He tried to articulate it somehow.
Buck turned back to the countertop and grabbed the cheese. "Well, in a way, maybe? But we mostly focused on the amazing stuff—at least this time, you know? And you won't believe it, Eddie, you gotta hear it!"
Eddie smiled—like he had any other plans and, to be honest, choices? But Buck couldn't see him, so he just kept this easy smile on his face and slid down a little bit on the chair that he was sitting on, body relaxed and muscles all loose.
"So, you know how queer families come in all the different shapes and colors? And it's amazing, really, but we still kinda think of it the traditional way, right? Like, there are parents, romantically involved with each other, and they raise their kids together. And if the parents are not together, they can co-parent, and, obviously, it doesn't change the fact that they all are still a family, but they usually don't live together anymore. Or—or even with straight people, sometimes you have a kid with somebody just because you had sex, so then you're co-parenting, and that's kinda how your family looks, but... you're not this one unit, yeah?"
"Yeah, Buck, I know a thing or two about families. I even know how complicated they can get, with the..." Eddie waved his arm in a gesture that he hoped encompassed the ’estranged wife, dead mother’ of it all, because he couldn't get why the hell he was the one being submitted to a lecture about ‘shapes of families’. Was Buck... once again spiraling about his singleness and transferring it to being destined to stay alone and unlovable for the rest of his life? Because, let Eddie tell you, that was total bullsh...
"Obviously! You know a lot, you—you have one and—you've been in one—" Eddie raised his eyebrow. Buck spluttered, "—and that's one and the same. But! Eddie! Have you ever heard of a queerplatonic family?"
Well, Eddie's wrinkles were about to get much worse if Buck continued like that, because now his eyebrows were furrowed. The term might have rung a distant bell, but if he were to guess, he would say that chances were it was just a concoction of known words. "I'm sure I'm about to learn all about it now."
The shades of ruddiness appeared high on Buck's cheeks, and Eddie smirked. Honestly, it was so easy to make him flustered—just a little bit, just with the innocent stuff. Sometimes Eddie wondered—
"Ye-yeah. It's like... Okay, well, basically, some people just thought—there is so much more that goes into the family than romance, right? And of course we have the—the chosen family, which is like so important, to—to me also, but it's still not the same. It's not somebody that you come back home to, and it's not somebody who... who's gonna be another parent for your kid. But who says that you can only live with your friends when you're young and childless and, and who decided that you have to be sexually or romantically involved with each other, even if it was just a blip in the past, to raise a kid together? Like, what about aro-ace people?" Buck went on a tangent about the asexuality spectrum around two weeks ago, so now Eddie knew all of the abbreviations (to be honest, he didn't totally get demisexuality yet—it seemed like a norm, to only want to sleep with somebody you knew well. But he guessed that's where his old-fashioned approach to sex came in, and he knew that not everybody was the same. Also, Buck stressed that it was about feeling attraction towards somebody and not just wanting to have sex with them, which, once again, seemed the same for Eddie). "They can also want a family! But not only them. So, that's where a queerplatonic family comes in. It's basically... when you make a traditional family unit in every sense of the word—white picket fence, two point-five kids, adopting a dog together, and combining your income—just... without anything romantic. Completely platonic."
"Mhmm." Eddie hummed. Buck was still turned with his back to him and—how much fucking cheese was he using? "So you just... play house with your friend, forever?"
In a blink, Buck shifted to look at him, his apron waving behind him like a superhero cape. Eddie noticed the crease in the middle of his forehead, saw him opening his mouth with traces of unhappiness around it, and managed to straighten himself and raise his hands placatingly before the other man said anything.
"I know, I know, bad wording." He conceded. "I didn't mean anything bad by it though. It's just... the easiest analogy?"
Eddie tried to choose his words more carefully lately, at least since Buck had started paying a lot of attention to it and would get this specific look about something slipping—kinda like being woken up too soon from a nap on Eddie's shoulder because Chim decided to throw something at them for no reason—although with an extra layer of uneasiness added to it. Eddie didn't like being the cause of it.
"Well, okay, just..." Buck gruntled, patting his pockets for something. "Playing can just seem downgrading, you know?"
Eddie nodded solemnly and was about to apologize once again when Buck spun around rather... abruptly and took the casserole in his hands. One of his feet was tapping on the tiles, orange socks softening the sound. His shoulder muscles weren't tense per se, but they were shifting under his lil-bit-too-tight T-shirt in a definitely not-relaxed way.
Eddie knew his friend well, and that's why he was sure that Buck was still holding something back. He would push if it came to that, but for now, he just averted his gaze when Buckley bent to put the dish in the oven, and asked him if he should set a timer on the phone—as in the thing that Buck didn't find in the apron, because it was lying on the table in front of Eddie.
"Yeah, make it thirty minutes."
Eddie unlocked the phone and smiled at Buck's background—a picture of him holding Jee-Yun on his hip, Christopher nearby, one of his crutches pushing the soccer ball towards the other two. He thinks Maddie was the one to take this photo, probably during the last grill in the old Grant-Nash backyard, and she managed to capture everybody's carefree, beaming expressions perfectly. Eddie remembered the pang of hurt in his chest whenever he saw it in the weeks after Christopher had left; he remembered how he thought he was hiding it well until he looked up and saw Buck's sheepish face every time. Most of all, he remembered Buck's resolute, slightly teasing words: "Not changing it until I get a new one of us all together, right?" that he repeated over and over again. Buck never doubted that Chris was coming back, and sometimes this unwavering faith of his caused a new wave of remorse to hit Eddie; other times, it gave him enough reprieve to get through another day, another week of missing his son and hating himself.
And after all was said and done, Christopher coming back in three weeks, Eddie had another reason to be grateful for his best friend. And if he got a little bit fond, a little bit sappy looking at his friend's phone from time to time, still with the same background, who could blame him? He was just a man, and this picture was happiness encapsulated.
He finally put the device aside and cast his gaze up. Buck was wiping the counter, half consumed by the shadows; the sun had already mostly set. The radio turned up Pink Floyd. Eddie breathed, just like the song told him to. He looked around. He was happy, he was content.
After the cursory clean-up, Buck faced him once again. Eddie smiled at him, but Buck was looking down, at his own hands, still fiddling with the dishcloth.
"But, yeah, funny thing, actually?" Buckley said, raising his gaze. He was smiling, but it was his nervous smile. And well, the fidgeting itself would be an indicator enough, so Eddie leaned towards him, listening closely. "You wouldn't guess what brought up the topic, man."
"The topic?"
"Yeah, the queerplatonic family thing?"
Eddie hummed.
"So, you know how excited I am about Chris coming back."
"Understatement." Eddie chimed in, and Buck sprang the dishcloth at him, not really being close enough to make it touch him.
"Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up. Like it hasn't singlehandedly cured your self-loathing bullshit, Eddie." He snarked. "But, you know, I'm a yapper. I yap."
"Yeah."
"Thank you for the acknowledgment. As I was saying, talking about stuff that I'm excited about is the thing I do. So, when I was at Lemoyne last, I might have let it slip. That Chris is coming home." He took a breath in and let it out at once: "And by letting it slip, I mean talked about it for an insufferable amount of time, probably."
Eddie shifted on the chair. "Okay? You know I don't mind, as long as you didn't like, get into the details of me driving my kid away, right?"
"No, no, Eddie, of course. But just... okay, I was talking, and then somebody said... they said that they didn't know I was married and had a kid? And I said I'm not, that's just Eddie and Chris, and then Cody jumped in and asked how I managed to score a dilf and a whole kid that fast since being out."
"A dilf?" Eddie squawked; if he were drinking, he would have choked.
(Married? his mind repeated somewhere in the background.)
"Yeah." Buck blushed. "Dad-I-would-like-to..."
"Jesus Christ, I know what it means!" Eddie definitely didn't cut-in-in-panic. "How old is this Cody guy, anyway?" he grumped; if he remembered correctly, it was the same one who had made Eddie close up a twink-related tab in a hurry.
"Seventeen, I think?"
"Jesus Christ," Eddie repeated, hand massaging his forehead.
"But either way, it got me into explaining the situation more clearly. Like, we're best friends, we work together, I help out with Chris. But, they had follow-up questions? Honestly, it felt like I got the third degree. And our story is pretty crazy too. So then, at the end... Tanya—she wasn't there when it started, I don't know when she joined—but she said that... IshouldhavejustsaidIhadaqueerplatonicfamilythat'ssocoolBuck."
Okay, should Eddie worry about another potentially crazy teenager from freaking Lemoyne? It was to be decided since he didn't understand shit from what Buck just said there.
"Buck, I beg you, slow down."
Buck let out a long-suffering sigh and threw the dishcloth at the counter.
"After I described everything, they all decided that we are—you, me, and Chris—a queerplatonic family? And I didn't even know what it was, right, so I just repeated that we're not together, told them you're straight. And then they started explaining, and hear me out, I know it sounds crazy at first, but it's kinda true? I-I know I'm not Chris's other parent, but... I pick him up from school, and we drive him to other outings together almost as often as you do it on your own. We do projects together without you, 'cause you suck ass at science. I go to the PTA things with you. I'm... I'm in the will."
Eddie's heart beat beat beat so loud when Buck's voice got a tinge quieter with the last sentence. He didn't even know why, but they just weren't talking about the will, ever, so having it brought up... It made sense that some intense feelings accompanied it, right?
"And it's not only that! Not only Chris's stuff. I spend half my nights here, we do grocery shopping together, and I'm almost sure that you don't know where to pour the fabric softener in your own laundry machine! I always do it, otherwise you complain that the clothes are too stiff. Everybody shakes their head when they learn that we come back home together after shifts, because—don't we need breaks from each other? And—and when I told people at Lemoyne that, they said we could call it either a codependency or—or a family. And of course it's not a perfect match, you're not queer, but they kinda just shrugged at it? And said that if we're not really romantically involved and don't plan on being, which, obviously, they're gonna call you my queerplatonic family. And that I should probably stop paying extra for the loft and just contribute to the bills here? Which, wow, Eddie, am I being a parasite? Basically living here but not paying for anything?"
"You paid the last electricity bill," Eddie responded weakly. "When I was a mess and got a dunning letter. I told you I would Venmo it back to you, but I forgot."
"Oh. Yeah. That's good. Don't Venmo it back, man, I probably have a lot of overdue payments to make."
Eddie's mind was reeling.
"Buck."
"Hey, we're a queerplatonic family after all, I gotta contribute."
Buck was smiling, maybe with an edge of anxiety still. Eddie couldn't focus on it; some stone had set in his stomach, and even though he hadn't eaten for a while, something was churning around it.
Queerplatonic family.
"Yeah, well," he said and didn't continue for a dozen seconds. Buck's grin faltered. "Isn't it like... cultural appropriation?" Eddie's jumbled mind provided, and yes, it was good; it was a logical question, it could explain this feeling of unease that spread from Eddie's right shoulder to his neck, numbing the skin and making him want to crick it or massage it out, away.
"Oh. I don't think so? I mean, folks from Lemoyne started it, so they didn't mind. But I can ask about it? And at least one of us is queer, so there's that."
Eddie imagined Buck inquiring about this, taking it—every part of their... of them, them that they managed to forge in some secluded pocket of the universe, building against the destruction, shaping with gentle, strong hands; in this house that nothing from the outside could enter, that nothing could invade and probe and question their doings and undoings—taking it under magnifying glass in front of some strangers, and then declaring: this is my queerplatonic family. Getting their... approval and saying it to other people, people in their life that they both knew, that were their other family.
Eddie suppressed a frown. It wouldn't be right.
"Okay, well." Buck clapped his hands, but it was so... contained, more like a small smack. "I see you don't like it. And it's fine, Eddie! Totally fine. It was just an idea. Or, actually, just a funny story. Like I said. But maybe I shouldn't have said it? Yikes."
And yeah, Eddie didn't like it. Something about this particular term didn't sit right with him. But it was Buck, and if Buck wanted to call them Queerplatonic Family or Three Musketeers, or—or freaking Wiggly Sausage People as he did once after making that weird-ass breakfast with them as sausages—Eddie would roll his eyes but agree.
"It's fine, Buck." He got up. "Nothing you said is wrong, you know? Maybe apart from—" He stopped on his way to the fridge and looked at his friend from close up; Buck, being everything they needed time after time and still, forever scared of overstepping. "You are a parent to Chris, man. Better parent than me at this point," Eddie chuckled and, seeing Buck bearing to object—like a clockwork—raised his hand to stop him. He looked cute, all puffed out in nothing flat. "If you like it, you can call us that, okay?"
"Oh, I can, can't I? But you can't even say it?"
"We can be a queerplatonic family. Here ya are. Happy?" Eddie raised an unimpressed eyebrow and decided to fully ignore the way those words felt in his throat. He just needed to get used to it, probably. Or ignore it until it goes away.
He went to grab beers and saw his thoroughly stocked refrigerator. "Oh, and I will strangle you with these leeks if you ever mention paying bills again. If we were to calculate everything, I would still owe you for all the food you buy and cook for us."
"But I like cooking for you." Buck accepted the bottle with a pout.
"And I like having you here. Cheers."
The glass clinked, Buck pouted harder but went pink around the edges, and Eddie smiled.