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Buck was never going to tell Hen this, but he’d half-assed trimming her boxwoods. He was well aware that it was bad form to do a sloppy job on any of his Sorry-I-Forgot-About-Your-Birthday Chore List tasks, but he’d just get here tomorrow before 7 to finish the job and she’d be none the wiser. He had a pressing appointment to keep.
“My Diaz boys!” Buck exclaims when the Facetime call connects. Their matching, grinning faces fill Buck’s insufficient phone screen and he finds himself wishing, not for the first time since Eddie left, that he’d invested in one of the larger models.
“Hi, Buck,” Chris says, almost shy. Buck’s heart twinges. He can’t remember Christopher ever being shy around him, not even the first time they’d met after the earthquake when Buck drove Eddie to pick him up. He’d been animated and full of questions about firefighting and what kind of stuff Buck liked to do in his free time and whether he liked the same shows as Chris (at the time, no. In the coming months, though, Buck would become much more well-versed in what kind of TV was popular with second graders).
“Hey, buddy!” Buck responds enthusiastically, refusing to let Christopher think for even a moment that the distance between them — physical or not — had changed things between them. On one level, of course, it had. When Christopher was home, Buck was important, useful; he could bring Christopher to school and pick him up when Eddie couldn’t, cook breakfasts at the Diaz house after late movie nights and dinners at his loft on Eddie’s date nights. When Christopher was home, it was easy to be his Buck. They all knew without words what that meant. When Christopher left for Texas, though, Buck had no idea where he stood. What the boundaries were. He’d followed Eddie’s lead and given Christopher space, no matter how much it hurt them both.
Now, observing the way Christopher’s ducking his chin and not quite looking at Buck, he wonders whether he shouldn’t have tried harder to reach out to Chris over the last few months. Eddie had finally “dadded” up — it was about time he Buck up, too.
“It’s really good to see you, Chris. I’ve missed you like crazy.”
Chris gives him another smile. “I miss you, too.”
There’s a beat of silence while Buck flounders for a safe conversational topic. How was chess? Bad, obviously. How’s Eddie’s house? Potentially also bad. How’s El Paso?
Well, El Paso was obviously the fucking worst, in Buck’s opinion. He’s not sure even Christopher’s enthusiasm would be able to change his mind on that point.
“What are you guys eating?” he says instead, peering at his screen as if that would magically change the angle of Eddie’s phone where it’s propped up on his dining room table.
Eddie lifts his plate into Buck’s view. “Barbacoa. There was plenty left over,” he says, sardonically.
“It’s actually pretty good, Buck,” Christopher interjects, mouth full. Eddie gives Buck a triumphant look.
“Oh yeah?” Buck says, grinning at Eddie. “Even reheated?” He whistles. “Your dad must be getting pretty good in the kitchen.”
Eddie raises a brow at him. Right. Play it cool.
“Well, I’ve got leftovers too tonight. Cap cooked for Hen’s birthday, he sent me home with some stuff. Looks amazing; it’s still warm.”
Eddie’s brow doesn’t retract. “Still warm? What, did they just eat? They didn’t ask you to stay?”
Buck shrugs. “Couldn’t stay anyway. I had a hot date.”
Chris groans. Eddie, Buck observes with fascination, blushes.
From there, the conversation flows a little easier. Before long Chris is confiding in Buck about the disaster at the chess tournament and his relief at being allowed to quit. Together they rib Eddie about driving a Prius and Buck is even treated to a quick tour of Christopher’s room, although he’s already seen it plenty of times on Facetime while Eddie painstakingly assembled, arranged and rearranged furniture during his first few nights in the house.
Too soon, Christopher returns to the kitchen and passes him back to Eddie, who’s moved to a stool at his kitchen counter, claiming he has plans to hop on Minecraft with his friends.
“You’re logging off at ten o’clock, kiddo,” Eddie calls after him.
“But it’s a Saturday!”
“Yeah, that’s why I said ten and not nine-thirty,” Eddie says firmly. Buck can’t quite catch Chris’s response, but he must have acquiesced because Eddie turns back to his phone with a triumphant look.
“Look at you,” Buck says. “You dadded up.”
“Yeah, I did.” Eddie blows out a breath. “It feels really good. Thanks, Buck. You were right.”
“I’m always right,” Buck says automatically. “Don’t make that face. How did your parents take it?”
“Well,” Eddie says, stretching the word out. “My mom wasn’t happy but I didn’t give her much of a choice. I’m sure that fight’s not over yet, but I don’t care. She can make as many passive-aggressive comments as she wants. Chris is my kid. I make the decisions.”
Buck nods encouragingly. “What about your dad? He was the big chess enthusiast. How’d he take you pulling Chris out?”
“Oh, my dad?” Eddie says. “I’m not sure if he’s made it back to El Paso yet. I’m sure I’ll find out how he feels about the matter once he does.”
Buck sputters out a laugh. “You left him to take the bus home?”
“Sure did,” Eddie says. “Since he wanted to be on it so bad. I have no clue what time they were going to head back, chess tournaments take forever. I mean, I would’ve sat through a straight week of them if Chris actually did like it, but. I think we’ve dodged a bullet, honestly.”
Buck pointedly doesn’t let himself think too hard about Eddie’s pronoun usage.
“I’m so happy for you, Eddie,” he says. “For you both. I can’t believe your parents made him do an extracurricular he doesn’t even like for months. I seem to remember he never had any problems letting you know when he didn’t like something you were making him do.”
Eddie’s expression darkens. “I know. It makes me wonder what else he’s been going along with just because he doesn’t want to upset them.” His lips shift into an unhappy pout, expression distant. “My parents have that sort of effect.”
“He’s where he belongs now, Eddie,” Buck says lowly. “He’ll keep opening up to you. Look at how much he already trusts you again. There’s no way even your parents managed to do permanent damage to him in just a few months.”
Eddie gives a humorless laugh. “No, they get better results when they get the first full eighteen years. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever…I don’t know.”
Buck presses him, curious. “What?”
He lets out a loud breath. “I don’t know. Something I thought about when I was packing up Chris’s stuff. You know I used to do ballroom dance? I loved it. I couldn’t believe it when they let me take lessons, but before long it was all about what competitions I was entering and what kind of prize money was involved. She threw it in my face today that I could’ve gotten a scholarship if I’d stuck with it. But that’s what they do. Suck the joy out of things.” Buck puts down his fork.
“Eddie…”
“It’s fine,” Eddie says, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Being back here just has me in my head a little. Thinking about growing up here, and things I…” He trails off again.
“Things you…?” Buck prompts. Eddie sighs.
“I honestly don’t know what I’m saying, Buck. I’m tired, I think.”
Come home, Buck very bravely does not say.
“Well, I can let you go,” he starts reluctantly, but Eddie waves him off.
“No, no, I wanna hear about whether or not you made it up to Hen. What’d she make you do?”
When Buck is finished walking Eddie through his afternoon-into-evening of yardwork for Hen and Karen with probably more detail than Eddie necessarily cared about, he lets out a low whistle.
“When’d you get so handy? I could really use you around here.”
“Well, I’m a homeowner now,” Buck says breezily instead of don’t tempt me, Diaz, I’ll look up flight times right now.
“Oh, are you? I don’t know how your landlord would feel about you saying that.”
“I dunno. He’d have to ask his landlord how they feel about it, first.”
Eddie laughs. “You taking good care of my house while I’m gone, then? Cleaning the gutters, mowing the lawn?”
Buck knows Eddie probably expects him to tease right back, make some quip about landscaping or remembering to take the trash out.
“You know I am,” he says instead. “Taking care of it.”
Eddie swallows. “Yeah, I know, Buck. The best care.”
They’re quiet for a minute. Buck looks away first and pushes around what’s left of his chicken breast around his plate. When he looks back up, Eddie’s gaze is fixed on him.
A thought occurs to him. “Wait! Why did I never know you used to ballroom dance?” he demands.
Eddie shrugs. “Never came up.”
“When would it have just come up, Eddie? This is the kind of stuff you’re required to share with me, as my best friend.”
Eddie rolls his eyes. “Well, I guess I would’ve mentioned it if the opportunity ever arose to show off my skills, but we don’t exactly attend a lot of fancy functions, do we? I guess there’s never been the right occasion.”
“I guess if Maddie and Chimney hadn’t gotten married in a hospital that would’ve been the time. Well, if you weren’t too hungover,” Buck muses.
“Well,” Eddie says shiftily. “Plus there was…” He cuts himself off.
“What?” Buck asks curiously. Eddie clears his throat.
“Well, I mean — you invited Tommy. He would’ve been there.” Buck stares.
“Why would Tommy being there have stopped you from ballroom dancing?” he asks, fork paused halfway to his mouth. He’s genuinely lost. Did Tommy have some bias against dancing that he’d divulged to Eddie but not Buck?
Eddie gives him a look. “I think he would’ve objected to me dancing with his date, Buck.”
Well. That was—
Holy shit, did Eddie have hidden cameras in his kitchen? He hadn’t breathed a word to Eddie about his ill-advised hookup with Tommy and especially not about the conversation they’d had the next morning. How on Earth did he know —
Then it catches up to him. His dinner lodges in his throat. Apparently Eddie had taken Buck asking him why he’d never told Buck about how he used to do ballroom dancing to mean why have you never ballroom danced with me?
With me. He meant ballroom dancing at my sister’s wedding with—
“Me?” Buck splutters.
“Careful, Buck. You’re going to choke on that artichoke.”
Buck turns away from the camera and spits the offending vegetable out into a napkin, ignoring Eddie’s noises of disgust. He is not ready to let this point go.
“Well, why didn’t you dance with me at Hen and Karen’s vow renewal, then?” he demands. “That was a slow-dancing occasion. I was single.”
Eddie considers this and shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t know you were so eager to dance with me, Buckley.”
Buck wipes his hands on his cargo pants. They’re suddenly very sweaty.
“Next time,” Eddie offers.
“Well, when’s next time?” Buck does not whine. He doesn’t.
Eddie hums thoughtfully. “We are running low on unmarried friends, aren’t we?”
“Well,” Buck considers, “there’s Ravi. I have…no idea if he’s seeing anybody, actually.” He blanches, thinking of the hours he’d kept Ravi hostage in that bar with him, playing quarters. Had he asked Ravi a single thing about himself? “I think I might be a bad friend.”
“Hey,” Eddie protests, leaning forward on his kitchen counter. Buck can’t look away from his forearms. “That’s my best friend you’re talking about there.”
“Yeah, well, that might be part of the problem,” Buck mutters. “Sooo, Ravi. That’s a maybe. Hen and Karen are probably good for a while. Maddie and Chim have a baby on the way, a makeup reception is not the priority. Bobby and Athena are busy with their house…Shit. Why don’t we have more friends? At this rate we won’t have any more weddings to go to until Chris gets married.”
Eddie fixes him with a piercing look, pointing a finger at him. “Don’t even joke about that, Buck. He’s not getting married until he’s at least 35.”
And — Okay. Buck is not going to say it.
He’s a grown man in his thirties and he has impulse control. There’s a reason Eddie hasn’t pointed out the obvious — that there are in fact two people in their extended 118 family who are very single and very much of marriageable age, but he’s not going to make it weird, he’s not—
“Well, I mean, I guess that leaves us, right?” he blurts. Goddammit. Eddie raises an eyebrow but says nothing.
Buck continues, hating himself, “But I guess it’d weird for either of us to dance with each other on our wedding days.”
Eddie seems to consider this, pushing off the counter and sitting back in his chair. His t-shirt rides up a little beneath his open shirt. Buck never knew two inches of torso could be so tantalizing. “Well, I don’t know. I can think of a certain set of circumstances where it’d be appropriate. Expected, even.”
What. What the fuck? Buck was beginning to worry he’d accidentally used some kind of hallucinogenic mulch at Hen’s. Maybe he inhaled too much driveway sealant? He had no idea what this coy, flirtatious…imp had done with his best friend Eddie or why he was set on torturing Buck.
“What circumstances?” Buck demands. Eddie just shrugs and stands up, collecting the serving dishes from dinner. “Eddie. What do you mean? Eddie! Like what kind of circumst—”
“Gotta go, Buck, call you tomorrow, bye bye bye—”
The FaceTime call ends and Buck is left staring at his own bewildered expression.
“What the fuck?” he says aloud.
He thinks about Maddie’s words from weeks ago.
It wouldn’t be so crazy.
He calls Eddie back.
Buck is in the middle of rearranging the dessert table — again — when he feels arms wrap around his waist, a familiar form pressing up close behind him. Eddie hooks his chin over Buck’s shoulder and watches.
“Hmm. Good idea, yeah, put the blue cupcakes on the left and the gold on the right. Look at that! Gorgeous. Just like how you had it the first time, four arrangements ago.”
Buck huffs. “I just want it to look perfect.” The chocolate-covered pretzel sticks — appropriately decorated, like everything else on the table, in UC Berkley blue and gold — were throwing off the visual balance. They were too long. Why didn’t he get another long dessert?!
“Buck,” Eddie says insistently. “It looks amazing. Everything does. Look,” he says, using his grip on Buck to turn him away from the table and toward a table in the far corner of the yard where Chris was sitting and laughing uproariously with his friends. “He’s having a blast. That’s all that matters, right?”
“Your mother has already told me her thoughts on the amount of sugar we have at this party,” Buck mutters darkly. “The least I can do is make it look perfect.”
Eddie sighs. “No offense, babe, there’s nothing you could pull off so perfectly even Helena Diaz wouldn’t have something to say about it. Look, Pepa and my abuela have fallen on that particular sword. They’ve trapped her at their table, she can’t bother us that much more tonight.”
Buck turns in Eddie’s arms, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“That much more, I said,” Eddie defends. “You know if she’s really upsetting you, I’ll—”
“I know,” Buck sighs, leaning in and resting his head in the crook of his neck. “Sexy as I find it, no fighting with your parents at Chris’s graduation party.” Eddie presses a kiss to his head. Buck allows himself to relax for the first time all day.
“Everything looks nice?” he asks, muffled.
“Everything looks amazing, baby.”
“Food was good?”
“Are you kidding? Between you, Bobby, and Abuela?”
“Are people having fun?”
“More fun than you, apparently. You’re starting to offend me, Buck. I helped plan this party too, you know.”
Buck leans back, fixing Eddie with a abashed look. “Sorry. You’re right. You know how I get.”
“I do,” Eddie agrees. “But it’s okay. Your obsession with this party has been helping to distract me from the fact that in a couple months our kid is moving five hours away from us.”
Buck rubs a soothing hand across Eddie’s back. “There are worse distances.”
Eddie squeezes Buck’s waist a little tighter.
They stand there for another minute, Buck’s arms coming up around Eddie’s neck. He smiles when he feels Eddie start to sway them back and forth a little, the motions becoming less subtle the longer Buck allows it.
“Eddie. We cannot embarrass Christopher by dancing at his graduation party.”
“C’mon!” Eddie insists. “It’s a party. When’s the next time we’re going to have the chance? Ravi already said we wouldn’t be invited to his wedding.”
“He was kidding. I think.”
“Besides, we totally shot ourselves in the foot with the whole wedding thing. Two of the last remaining single people at the 118 and we had to go and marry each other? That’s an entire other wedding we deprived everyone of.”
Buck laughs, loudly. “I don’t think anyone would agree that we deprived them of anything, Eddie. I think the entire station was relieved when we left for our honeymoon and I couldn’t terrorize them with my wedding planning anymore.”
Eddie hums, his hands drifting down past Buck’s waist and rapidly pushing the limit of appropriate territory to be touching Buck in front of all of Christopher’s friends and, even worse, Eddie’s parents. “They just don’t appreciate you with a clipboard the way I do.”
Music filtered from a speaker Buck had set up in the far corner of the backyard, the volume carefully adjusted to provide adequate background noise but not so loud that it disrupted conversation. Eddie tugged Buck toward it by his belt loops, fixing him with a pleading look. Buck groaned and screwed his own eyes shut. If Eddie kept gazing at him with those big, brown, beseeching eyes, there was nothing he wouldn’t agree to.
“C’mon, baby. One dance.”
Fuck. He’d forgotten about Eddie’s second line of attack after his big brown eyes: his sexy voice.
“Christopher is going to be mortified,” Buck warns him, but he opens his eyes and assumes the familiar position that Eddie had drilled into him in the months of dance lessons leading up to their wedding last spring.
“He’ll live,” Eddie says, and promptly dips Buck so low he feels his hair brush the grass beneath them. When Buck straightens up, indignant, Eddie consoles him with a quick kiss.
“The dip is the finale, Eddie, you can’t start the dance that way!”
“Ugh, such a stickler for choreography. We’re not competing for a trophy here, Buck.”
Buck beamed at him as Eddie expertly turned them around the small free patch of grass beyond the tables of food and partygoers. “I know. Besides, I’ve already won the greatest prize of all.”
Eddie gives him a coy look as if to say, who, me?
“I’d say I’m the one who won the prize,” he argues. “After all, I’m the one who seduced you through the power of dance.”
“That’s a stretch,” Buck says. “You seduced me by implying that we were going to get gay married one day and dance at our wedding before hanging up on me.”
“So I’m an excellent dancer and good with words, is what you’re saying,” Eddie says, and he dips Buck again before he can come up with a retort.
When he rights him, all Buck can manage is breathless agreement. Eddie rewards him with a quick kiss and pulls Buck in, looping Buck’s arms around his neck and dropping their formal ballroom dancing posture, opting for more of a lazy slow dance. Buck can’t blame him; ballroom dancing in time to the Top 40 they had playing was no easy feat.
“I love you,” Eddie murmurs, leaning in for another kiss. “We should get married.”
“We are married,” Buck reminds him. “We were, like, literally just talking about it.”
Eddie gives him an unimpressed look. “I was just talking about how we deprived everyone of two 118 weddings. We should get married again.”
“Oh, baby,” Buck sighs, dragging Eddie impossibly closer. “You’re so romantic you forgot we have to start paying tuition in a few weeks. Get married with what money?”
“Fuck, you’re right,” Eddie groans. “We should’ve made Chris stick with chess for the scholarships.”
Buck gives an admonishing tug of Eddie’s hair. “Hey, wait, look. Ravi’s here with his date. Should we go meddle?”
“In a minute,” Eddie says, resting his cheek against Buck’s. “Let me hold you just a little bit longer.”
The dubiously age-appropriate pop song playing faded out and Buck was surprised to hear the start of a familiar song, slow and romantic. He looked past Eddie’s shoulder and met Christopher’s gaze. Chris held up his phone in explanation — of course. One of his stipulations for this party had been that he have strict control over the music. He was controlling the playlist from his phone.
Buck must have given him an unbearably mushy look because he rolled his eyes and mouthed one song before turning back to his friends.
“We have the best kid,” Buck whispers.
Eddie, whose back is turned to Christopher and missed the interaction altogether, hums in agreement.
“I’m a lucky man. Brace,” he warns and Buck has barely a second to prepare before Eddie is dipping him for a third time. The song Christopher chose for them — their wedding song — is momentarily drowned out by the sound of their laughter.