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The first time it happens, Lucas is three days old.
In the settled, blanketed darkness of a summer night in June, Buck blinks his eyes open and feels instantly alert. He’s never been a heavy sleeper, exactly— he’s used to a firefighting schedule involving the blare of the alarm pulling him from sleep and directly into action. But he was unprepared for the way that becoming the parent of a newborn baby would change things— from the moment Lucas was born, he was immediately unable to sleep through anything, even the lightest shuffle or shift waking him. He glances instinctively at the red glow of the clock next to the bed and takes in the time— 2:13 in the morning, and the sharp sound of the baby’s cries break harshly through the room. It’s almost exactly two hours since he knows Eddie was up with him, so when he casts a glance over at his husband and finds him also stirring, he puts a hand to Eddie’s shoulder and pushes him back down gently.
“Don’t get up,” he murmurs, soft with sleep. “I got him.”
Eddie reaches up, half-awake at best, and squeezes Buck’s fingers before his lashes flutter shut and he drifts off again. Buck slips out of bed and crosses the room to the bassinet by the window, where Lucas is pink-faced and fussing in the barely-there light from the streetlamp that sits quietly outside.
“Hey, hey,” Buck murmurs lowly, reaching in to lift the baby into his hands. “You’re okay. I got you, sunshine. Let’s go to the kitchen and let Dad sleep, okay? Come on.” He cradles Lucas close against his chest and makes his way quickly out of the room, easing the door shut behind him so that Eddie can sleep.
He doesn’t exactly have this down yet— it’s all still brand new to all of them— but he manages, rocking the baby gently against his chest as he works through the steps of making a bottle for him in the dim glow of the kitchen lights. Maybe there’ll be a day when it’s second nature, but for the time being he checks and double checks the measurements obsessively, then does the same thing for the temperature even though Maddie swears on her life that the bottle warmer she gifted to them works like a charm every time. In her defense, and that of the little machine that sits on the countertop now, it has been perfect every time so far.
Buck tilts the warmed bottle sideways and drips formula against the inside of his wrist anyway, though. Just in case. He imagines accidentally doing anything that might hurt him— the milk being too hot, the cry of pain, the knowledge that it was his fault, and even the thought of it makes his stomach clench with panic.
It’s perfect again, though, and Buck wanders through to the nursery to settle in the rocking chair by the window. The nursery, drenched in soft blues and yellows, will be Lucas’ bedroom when he’s a little older, and sleeping longer. For now, they just do this— storing his things and using the changing table and the chair, so they have somewhere to take him in the middle of the night that won’t bother the inhabitants of the house who are still asleep. Buck flicks on the soft light of the lamp on the dresser as he goes; it’s so dim and gold that it doesn’t make the baby’s squint— Buck knows, because he’s watching for it as he eases into the chair and readjusts Lucas in his arms, settling him into the crook of his elbow as he fusses softly, working himself up to really crying but still not quite there.
“Here you go,” Buck whispers, gently easing the bottle into the baby’s mouth and submerging them into new quiet. “See? All ready for you.”
Lucas sucks contentedly on the bottle in Buck’s hand and Buck gazes down at him. He feels hungry too, in a way— every time he opens his eyes, even in the dead of night, he becomes insatiable with the desire to be awake, wanting to do nothing but stare at Lucas’ tiny face. He’d take every turn if Eddie would let him, has to fight to go back to sleep when Eddie climbs out of bed and takes the baby out of the room as Buck is doing now.
He reaches out, brushing his fingertips with a featherlight touch over the splash of bright pink under Lucas’ right eye. The birthmark he was born with by a stroke of pure chance is standout and visible even in the dim light, and something stirs in Buck’s chest at the sight of it, now and every time he’s stared at it since the moment Lucas was born. It seems impossible that this perfect baby is his, theirs, but something about looking at the patch of soft pink feels like a tether.
He smooths his hand over the faint wisps of baby soft hair on Lucas’ head and tilts his gaze, looking at his son’s face. Something in his throat closes up, then, watching the flutter of pale lashes as Lucas soothes himself closer to sleep. It’s just—
Buck had known love. He’d even known a form of parental love, because before Lucas there was Christopher and even now the thought of that kid who’s currently out like a light down the hall fills him with a certain kind of feeling that belongs to no one else. Buck wouldn’t trade their relationship for anything in the world, is honored every day of his life to know and love such a spectacular child who isn’t quite a child anymore. And there’s no universe in which he could ever quantify his love for either of them, nor for Eddie or the rest of their family, all the people Buck holds close.
But this— this is different. Not more or less, but its own new kind of wonder, a feeling he’d never experienced until he looked down at a helpless brand new baby who needed them for everything and known that he belonged, wholly, to him and to Eddie.
It’s hard to put into words. Buck sort of feels like there just aren’t any, no existing combination of letters that has managed to touch the way it feels in a moment like this.
And so, when Lucas is fed and changed and the whole process is done, Buck hesitates. The baby in his arms is already well on his way to being asleep and he knows he should take him back into the bedroom, tuck him back into his bassinet and crawl back into his own bed next to Eddie. But he looks down at Lucas’ face, his soft pink cheeks and the pout of his little lips and the slope of his tiny nose.
And he just can’t.
The thought of leaving the baby, of the emptiness in his hands, the loss of the weight of his small body against Buck— has his chest feeling tight and his stomach turning and maybe he’s just exhausted, but he can’t stand the idea of doing it. Of closing his eyes, letting him out of his sight. In the quiet darkness, it feels impossible.
So, just this once, Buck doesn’t. He eases himself back into the chair and leans back, Lucas cradled securely in his arms, already half-asleep. His little body jolts lightly with the movement and Buck brushes his fingertips over his cheek, settling him even closer.
“You’re okay,” he murmurs. “Daddy’s got you.”
His own heart flutters, butterfly-soft, at the words on his lips as Lucas quiets before his eyes. And then the baby is asleep, and Buck just watches.
The thing is— it keeps happening. He brushes it off the first few times, making up excuses to Eddie when he inevitably finds them in the nursery in the morning. And it’s not like he’s lying, exactly— he means it when he tells his husband that it just wasn’t worth it to get up again so close together, or that the baby was a little extra fussy at one particular hour of the night, or that he just wasn’t tired.
Slowly, day three of Lucas’ life becomes day six; day eight; day ten. The dark circles underneath Buck’s eyes begin to turn violet and Eddie’s cautious looks grow increasingly concerned. They’re consumed by life with a newborn, and most of it is so completely beautiful that during the day they both manage to forget about it entirely. The days pass so quickly, but the golden hours in the glow of their new baby’s life are gloriously long and slow: Buck is tired, but he can’t think about that when he’s watching Eddie stand in a pool of warm afternoon light next to the kitchen window, swaying with Lucas against his chest as he gestures to the orange tree outside, explaining to the half-awake baby how oranges grow from seeds and how Buck and Chris make them into juice every summer. Or when Christopher— who has taken to being a big brother with all the enthusiasm he ever has anything else— asks to hold Lucas and sits on the couch peering at him through his glasses like he’s the most interesting thing in the world. Or when their family is dropping off casseroles they don’t have space for, just to get a look at the baby and Buck can’t fault them in the slightest because he’s beautiful and shining and perfect and who wouldn’t want to get another glimpse at him, when Buck himself can hardly believe he’s real at any given moment of the day?
But then, there’s night.
Something about the vulnerability of that middle of the night shift coils Buck into tight knots, and when it comes time for him to leave the nursery and put Lucas back to sleep— it’s only gotten harder to do, night over night.
It’s Friday, technically— four in the morning after they went to sleep on Thursday night, though the days have gotten blurry recently. Buck is sitting in the rocking chair with Lucas on his chest, and exhaustion tugs at him relentlessly. The first few times he did this, it was sweet and soft and golden. It felt— nice, beautiful, like he was bonding with his baby over these stolen moments in the dark just the two of them.
Tonight— the last few nights, actually— it’s started to feel… well. Not like that. It’s started to make him uneasy and uncertain, a kind of uncomfortable feeling climbing into his throat and settling there, not clearing even when he swallows hard. Not even when he looks down at Lucas’ sweet face and tries to focus. This part only makes him feel worse, like he’s not only doing something wrong by staying in the nursery half the night, but also like he’s failing at doing it, too. Still— it’s only getting increasingly more difficult to put the baby down when the night creeps toward morning, and Buck is beginning to think that he’s not supposed to feel this way.
There’s also Eddie. He knows Buck inside and out, and the exhaustion and unease that have taken root in Buck have not gone unnoticed by his husband. He feels guilty about that, too— he’s running out of excuses to tell Eddie and reasons to feed himself for lying or at the very least omitting something he knows is getting to be a thing. He just can’t seem to stop. He hadn’t realized he was spiraling, until it was pretty much too late to do anything about it.
But tonight— this morning— it seems like Buck’s luck has run out. Because halfway through a muffled, half-stifled yawn, he glances up at the doorway and there in the shadows, Eddie leans against the door frame with his arms crossed over his chest. He’s backlit by the dim hallway light they keep between the bedrooms and the bathrooms so that Christopher can see, and he’s just watching.
Buck feels— caught out, like he’s doing something wrong. It flashes through his chest, a warning. He knows that looking up and seeing his husband in the doorway of their baby’s room shouldn't feel like this.
“Hey,” he whispers over Lucas’ head as he sleeps, warm and solid against Buck. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
Eddie doesn’t answer right away. He pushes off the doorway with his shoulder and steps further into the room, out of the shadow and into the little circle of light put off by the lamp that’s casting a warm glow on Buck and Lucas. Tilting his head, he looks at them both for a moment; he looks soft, tender, but still calculating. Buck knows this look, like all of the ways Eddie looks at him; that he’s deciding how much to say, weighing his options before he nods a little bit, and then crouches down in front of the rocking chair.
“When?” he asks softly. “Just now, or when you came in here two hours ago?”
He doesn’t sound accusatory or harsh. He never does. It manages to make Buck burn with something like shame anyway.
“Y-you knew about that?” he hears himself ask.
Eddie sighs, reaching up and gently— so gently and easily that it makes Buck’s heart skip a beat— laying his hand over Lucas’ back and overlapping his fingers with Buck’s, touching both of them at once.
“Yeah.” He searches his husband’s face with soft, discerning brown eyes. “I’m worried,” Eddie admits.
Buck shakes his head. “The baby is fine,” he starts, voice threaded and weak even to his own ears.
“No,” Eddie interrupts. “I’m not worried about Lucas, Buck. I’m worried about you.”
Buck blinks.
It’s not that he doesn’t anticipate Eddie to worry about him— they’ve been down that road with each other plenty of times. It’s just that with a brand-new, defenseless baby they’re both enraptured by— maybe it hadn’t occurred to Buck just how much Eddie would be paying attention to him, too. Normally, the glow of Eddie’s attention on him makes Buck feel like he’s basking in sunshine— warm, stretched out, seen in the best way. At the moment, in the darkness of their baby’s nursery, it makes him feel watched, exposed. He hates it, with sudden and intense fervor, a thing that crawls itchily beneath his skin and settles alongside the persistent hum of exhaustion.
But Eddie just keeps looking, for the longest time, as Lucas’ soft breaths stretch out between them while he sleeps on Buck’s chest.
“Why are you worried about me?” Buck ventures eventually.
Eddie doesn’t falter. “I think you know why,” he murmurs gently.
Buck does, admittedly. It’s not often that he wishes Eddie knew him a little less thoroughly, but this is one of those moments. He closes his eyes briefly, and immediately feels tugged under. The words come from nowhere, and Buck is powerless to stop them from spilling over.
“I’m so tired,” he whispers, and watches as Eddie’s features soften impossibly.
“Oh, baby,” he breathes, smoothing his thumb over Buck’s hand and Lucas’ warm back. “I know. Let’s put the baby down and we can talk about it, okay?”
Because that’s another thing that Eddie knows about Buck. That, now that it’s out in the open, he won’t be able to drop it or wait. That they’re going to have to talk about it, no matter how exhausted either of them is. Buck can’t help himself— his mind won’t quiet if they don’t, and he’d spin himself into a spiral of anxiety in no time.
Except— maybe they’re already there, because at Eddie’s suggestion his heart starts to race and panic starts to climb up into his mouth. He knows that it shouldn’t be— this is Eddie, his husband, Lucas and Christopher’s dad. There’s nobody in the world he trusts more, and yet— the thought of handing the baby over to him to be put down in his bassinet makes Buck’s chest clench painfully and he tightens his hold on Lucas like a reflex.
“Buck?” Eddie prompts softly, looking up into his husband’s face. “Talk to me.”
Buck swallows hard against cresting panic. “I can’t,” he whispers into the dark. “I don’t wanna put him down.”
Eddie surveys him for a moment. “Why?”
It’s a good question— one that Eddie deserves an answer to. Buck kind of feels like shit about the fact that he doesn’t know how to give him one, because he doesn’t really have one. At least, not one that he knows how to put into words. He doesn’t know what it is that makes him so on edge about leaving Lucas alone, just that it makes him feel wrong.
Eddie watches his face carefully for a moment, and then tilts his head.
“You know that nobody is taking him from you, right?” he asks softly. Buck shakes his head, vehement.
“No,” he huffs. “It’s— it’s not that, I just can’t leave him alone.”
“He’s not alone, Buck,” Eddie murmurs. “We’re right there.”
Frustration builds in Buck’s chest. It’s not Eddie’s fault— what he’s saying is perfectly true and reasonable, and Buck already knows it. He’s not rationally worried about their baby, knows that he and Eddie would both be instantly alert if anything were even remotely wrong. It’s something else, something deeper. A lot deeper, so deep that Buck isn’t sure he can access it.
“It’s not that,” he repeats.
“Okay,” Eddie says patiently. “So what is it? Talk through it, Buck. I’m listening.”
Buck takes a breath. The weight of the baby on his chest holds him steady while Eddie’s hand over them both tethers him to reality. It’s enough, he thinks, enough safety to make him feel like he can pick at that thread a little bit.
“I don’t know,” he whispers, and means it. “It’s just— every time I think about putting him down and going back to bed, I get this feeling. Like— like panic, you know, all tight and everything. It’s not that I think anybody’s going to take him, or- or even that something bad is going to happen.”
He searches for understanding in Eddie’s eyes, and finds it like always. He braces himself in its stability and tugs a little more at the thread.
“I know he’s safe,” he explains. “It’s more like— I keep thinking about him opening his eyes and not seeing us. I think about him— reaching out his little hand and-and touching nothing, and it makes me feel like I’m dying, Eds, I know that sounds dramatic but—”
“No,” Eddie interrupts softly. Buck looks at him. The understanding is washed over his features now, like maybe he gets it even more than Buck does.
“No?” Buck asks, the single syllable breaking into two around the lump in his throat as his husband shakes his head.
“No,” Eddie repeats. Sure. “I get it.”
Buck looks away— it’s either that or bursting into tears. He busies his fingers by brushing them gently over the soft hair on the crown of Lucas’ head over the still-soft, shifting plates beneath his tender skin. He’s so new— Buck marvels at it every time he looks at him, every second of the day and every breath of the night like this. Even when he’s worked himself up into a frenzy of anxiety, there’s a layer of soft and gentle wonder that settles in between his ribs when he gets a good look at the baby.
“I’m not sure I do,” Buck admits eventually.
Eddie is quiet for a long time, and Buck touches their son and breathes with him as he sleeps and feels torn open, again and again with every beat of the baby’s heart in time with his own.
“Have you thought that this might be about your parents?” Eddie asks, when the quiet has ticked up into the minutes.
Buck looks up, startled and wide-eyed. “What?”
Eddie looks vaguely reluctant, the look he gets when he kind of regrets opening a particular can of worms.
“Well,” he says, shrugging and half-apologetic. “With them coming up tomorrow…”
And— okay, there is that.
Buck had sort of managed to forget in his exhaustion, if he’s honest. Or maybe he just shoved it to the side so he wouldn’t have to remember amidst everything else. He’s too exhausted to psychoanalyze himself to that degree, so he just shrugs the shoulder Lucas is not resting against and looks away from Eddie’s soft brown eyes.
“Buck,” Eddie whispers.
Buck looks back: he just can’t help it. Eddie is softer than ever now, his gaze pouring love and care into Buck in a way that makes the backs of his eyes sting in spite of himself.
“You’re tired,” Eddie whispers, and Buck nods along with him. “You gotta put the baby down, okay? We’re gonna figure this out, but right now you’re tired and you need to sleep.”
Buck lets out a little sound that doesn’t have a name, something pulled from the back of his throat as he looks down at Lucas.
“I can’t,” he breathes.
“Okay,” Eddie says. “Then let me.”
It still hurts to have the weight of the baby pulled away from his chest, but it hurts less because it’s Eddie. It hurts less when he’s watching his husband cradle their son in his hands, impossibly tender and sure. It hurts less when Eddie is cradling the still-sleeping baby to his own chest with one hand like it’s nothing, and offering the other to Buck.
It hurts less when he’s letting himself take it.
Eddie leads them back to their bedroom, and Buck trails helplessly behind. His mind is still spinning, and there’s a spiral of anxiety that feels like it’s sucking a dark bruise into the inner wall of his chest. But he breathes in, and watches Eddie brush his lips to the top of Lucas’ head before he settles him easily into the bassinet with a smooth, skilled, attentive touch. Buck hovers over the sleeping baby in the silver-gold mix of moonlight and streetlamp glow, and reaches out to lay his palm on Lucas’ tummy. He’s so small that Buck’s hand covers the whole of his body, hip to shoulders. Something simultaneously tightens and unwinds inside him.
Eddie draws close and warm. Both of his hands find Buck— one on his waist, the other on his shoulder as he hovers behind him. He brushes his thumb rhythmically over Buck’s shoulder, pressing in lightly to ground him.
“Tell him,” he whispers, feather light and warm where his breath ghosts against Buck’s neck.
“Tell him what?” Buck croaks.
Eddie smooths his hand over Buck’s hip, back and forth. “That we’re not going anywhere,” he answers easily. “That we love him and we’re right here.”
“He’s asleep,” Buck murmurs, suddenly and inexplicably shy.
“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Used to be the only time I could talk to Christopher. Trust me on this one.”
Truthfully, Buck would trust him with anything, everything. He nods and swallows hard, scrunching his nose up and trying not to cry from sheer exhaustion.
“Okay,” he breathes out. He moves his fingers up onto Lucas’ soft cheek, and focuses in on his perfect little features.
“We’re right here, sweetheart,” he whispers, his heart cracking in ways he didn’t know were possible. “We’ve got you. We’re not going anywhere, ever. I promise.”
He glances back at Eddie, whose gaze is soft, encouraging. Draws from it and looks back at the baby, feeling the increasingly familiar crash of love into the shore of his existence.
“We love you,” he whispers. It comes out broken, but fierce.
Eddie nods, close enough that Buck feels the soft scrape of his stubble against his neck.
“We love you,” he echoes, a soft and sure reminder that it’s not just Buck in this. That he has a partner. And then, even softer— “C’mon, baby. Let’s get you to sleep.”
He lets Eddie pull him away, even though it isn’t easy. His chest tightens like every other night. But this is different, too, because Eddie is here in this with him. Even through the haze of exhaustion, he feels kind of regretful and a little stupid for not pulling Eddie into this place with him sooner.
Eddie nudges into his space beneath the covers, and Buck exhales. He’s here now. They’re in this space together now. That’s the important thing, like always. Eddie noses lightly against Buck’s shoulder as he wraps himself around him— one leg slotted between Buck’s, the other bracketing his hip with his knee; one arm pinned between them so he can get his hand in Buck’s curls and the other thrown securely across his chest, fingers wrapped around the curve of Buck’s shoulder as he tugs him in closer, pressing his body thoroughly against his. Buck settles back into it instinctively, lets himself be held and steadied as the familiar scent of Eddie’s body wash and the faint summer edge of sweat blankets him with Eddie’s warmth and a familiar kiss finds the bare skin of his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Buck whispers.
“Mm,” Eddie hums, shaking his head so that Buck feels it. “Don’t be sorry. You’re good. We’re good.”
Buck swallows hard. “Okay,” he breathes out, shaky.
Eddie rubs his chest lightly, like he knows exactly where the tightness is. He probably does. He knows everything else about Buck, better than Buck knows himself somehow.
“Close your eyes,” Eddie murmurs. “I got you. Promise.”
Buck nods. He’s already half-asleep, really, because the complete heft of the exhaustion outweighs the persistent knot of uncertain anxiety after so many nights not sleeping.
“I know,” he mumbles. He reaches up, then, and wraps his fingers around Eddie’s wrist, trapping his arm against him. Eddie lets out a soft, warm chuckle that comes from his chest at the movement, endeared and gentle and not at all derisive.
“I got you,” he murmurs again, low and soothing, just because he knows Buck will want to hear it.
It’s the last thing Buck is conscious of, before it’s morning and bright and he’s rising back to wakefulness after a surprisingly deep and dreamless sleep. The first thing he notices when he opens his eyes, his body oriented on his side toward the window, is that the baby’s bassinet is empty. It’s the first place he looks, and he tamps down a rush of misplaced panic at the sight. It’s there and then gone again in his first seconds of consciousness, because the second thing he notices is Eddie’s hand on his hip, smoothing mindless circles into Buck’s skin through the barrier of the thin sheet over him. And when he turns instinctively to look at Eddie’s side of the bed, he finds his husband— leaned back against the headboard, Lucas on his chest, blue eyes wide and unfocused on Eddie’s face.
Buck’s heart stumbles in its steady rhythm as Eddie looks up and something soft and warm flickers in his dark eyes.
“Oh, hey,” he coos to Lucas. “Look who’s awake! Say good morning, Daddy.”
And— if Buck’s heart was stumbling before, it’s thrashing wildly now, desperate to be set free from whatever binds it into place in Buck’s chest. He grins, bright and wide and easy, and reaches out until he can touch the baby’s tiny hand. Lucas responds reflexively, gripping all of his little fingers around one of Buck’s.
“Hello,” he murmurs. “Good morning, sunshine, how are my boys?”
“Hungry,” Eddie answers. “Especially the one you’re missing. I told him you’d do pancakes before he goes with the Wilsons, but if you’re not up for it after last night, I can—”
“No,” Buck interjects, shaking his head and glancing at the clock on his bedside table. “No, I got it. I’m good.”
Eddie regards him only a little bit cautiously, but the thing is that Buck really isn’t lying. There’s an underlying persistent tug of anxiety that comes from the looming arrival of his parents— but he’s used to that part. And everything that had felt so big and impossible the night before has once again melted in the sun of morning. He supposes that’s part of why he hasn’t brought it up with Eddie— he feels dragged down by it in the darkness, but by the next morning he always feels better. Looking back at it, it starts to feel a little bit ridiculous, and he brushes it aside easily.
“Are you sure?” Eddie presses, not nagging but checking. Buck avoids looking directly at him— he’s pretty sure that while he’s willing to brush it all aside like that, Eddie will be considerably less so. Still— he can buy himself some time.
“Yeah,” he answers, meaning it. “I’m good for pancakes.”
“Okay,” Eddie relents. But he reaches out anyway, catches Buck by the hip and holds him back until he looks up and meets his gaze. Eddie has that look on his face— that one that’s knowing and sure, a little questioning. “You need me to push?” he asks simply.
It’s a mark of how far they’ve come, Buck would say. Eddie has always been the person who pushes Buck when he needs it— but now, married with a family, they can talk about it openly. Eddie trusts him to answer the question honestly, to let him know if he needs the version of Eddie who is his best friend, a hat he still wears in addition to being Buck’s husband.
Buck lets out a breath, smiles a little, and shakes his head. Then tilts it, considering. “Maybe,” he admits. “But— after my parents are here? You know? One thing at a time.”
Eddie seems settled by this answer, a little. He nods, sending a lock of hair flopping softly over his forehead in a way that makes Buck want to kiss him.
“Yeah,” he says. “Alright. Let’s go do pancakes, then.”
And for a little while, on a bright Saturday in June, it’s easy again. Buck moves into the kitchen and Eddie follows with Lucas in his arms; Christopher is already there waiting and while Eddie masters the coffee pot with one hand Buck halves several oranges and then drops them on the table in front of Chris alongside the electric juicer, who takes them without complaint and gets to work.
They chatter easily. Buck and Eddie trade off tasks and when the pancakes are done and the kitchen smells like a luxurious combination of coffee, citrus, and buttery batter they also trade off the baby. Buck relaxes back into one of the kitchen chairs and smiles easily down into Lucas’ face.
“You’re hungry too, huh?” he asks softly, leaning back to reach out and take the bottle that Eddie is holding out to him.
“How do you know?” Christopher asks, tilting his head and speaking around a half-mouthful of pancake and syrup.
“Hm?” Buck asks, adjusting Lucas in his arms and offering the bottle to him. “Know what?”
“That he’s hungry,” Chris clarifies. “Before he starts crying.”
“He has a schedule,” Eddie answers, settling into his own seat as he speaks and reaching across Chris to plate pancakes for himself and for Buck. “Right now, he eats every two hours.”
Christopher looks down at his plate of pancakes. “I wish I could eat every two hours,” he answers wistfully, and Eddie laughs with his whole chest while Buck basks in the sound and the sun spilling into the kitchen.
It’s bright and warm and summery. His husband is laughing, soft and open and unburdened. There’s a perfect new baby in his arms and a perfect kid making jokes on the other side of the table and the zing of oranges in the air.
And it’s so, so good that it’s hard to imagine that anything isn’t.
This, of course, is an illusion that nobody is more proficient in shattering than Philip and Margaret Buckley. A lesson that Buck learned a long time ago comes back to him in full as soon as Christopher is shepherded out of the house to join the Wilsons on Denny’s insistent request and Eddie is finished tidying up the strewn-about baby supplies in the living room— which more or less amounts to shoving it all into their bedroom and shutting the door on the whole thing.
That’s when Buck finds himself biting back a criticism. It rises to his tongue sounding like his mother, and he smothers it just as quickly, but it was there. He thought it. And he hates himself a little for that, because he really, truly has no issue whatsoever with Eddie’s method of cleaning up. It’s probably how Buck would have done it himself, if he weren’t the one standing over the changing table putting Lucas in a little green onesie with dinosaurs all over it.
Still— that pretty much sets the tone, dragging Buck back from the soft haze he’d settled into over breakfast and back to the clear, stark reality of what the day is going to bring.
“You good?” Eddie asks lightly, appearing in the doorway.
“Yeah,” Buck answers, lifting Lucas off of the changing table and turning around so that Eddie can see his outfit. “We went with dinosaurs.”
“A solid choice,” Eddie affirms, looking tender and soft as his gaze lands on the baby. “You’re gonna have to pick a favorite one sooner rather than later, though. Gotta lock in early. You understand.”
Lucas coos senselessly, and it pulls the breath of a laugh out of Buck as he hands the baby off to Eddie and tries to convince himself that this will all be better than he thinks. His parents don’t have the best track record with that score, admittedly, but he has seen them show up for their grandchildren over the last few years. They’ve been fine with Maddie’s kids. They seem to care, always bring gifts and spend time with the children and don’t criticize the way that Chim and Maddie raise them— at least, for the most part. And he wants that for Lucas— wants him to have grandparents, even if they’re grandparents who weren’t great at the parent stage.
Also— looking at the baby in Eddie’s arms— he can’t imagine how anyone could look at him and want anything but to know him; to love him.
And maybe that’s where Buck was naive.
His parents arrive fifteen minutes late, complaining about Los Angeles traffic as they traipse through the front door.
“Sorry,” Buck says, glancing behind him as he holds out one arm to side-hug his mother. “Maybe we can curse LA traffic a little quieter. The baby’s asleep.”
He’d been keeping his voice deliberately light, but Margaret still gets a look on her face that inexplicably ties Buck in knots. He’s seen it plenty of times— on the heels of any of a long list of ways in which he’s displeased her over the course of his life— and he feels like it probably shouldn’t affect him anymore. But even here, in his own home surrounded by the comfort of Eddie and the lingering presence of their sons in every corner despite neither of them being in the room— it still does manage to make him feel small.
“He’s sleeping?” she repeats, looking around him as if she might somehow catch a glimpse of the baby anyway.
“Yeah,” Buck replies uncertainly, and she twists her mouth slightly, lips pinching at the corner. It’s funny— Buck recognizes the expression from Maddie’s features, but it looks so different on his sister, somehow.
“Well, we were hoping to see him,” she says, senselessly. Buck glances at Eddie, who’s shutting the door quietly behind them.
“Don’t worry,” Eddie says— more firmly than Buck can manage— offering a smile that would look genuine to anybody who knew him a little less than Buck does. “He’ll be up soon. You know how it is with a baby that small.”
“Yes,” Margaret says. “Of course.”
Buck’s father nods his head and adds nothing— predictably. Buck is trying not to be bitter, but they’re already making it difficult. He looks at the carpet and flashes back to the night before— Eddie on one knee in front of the rocking chair asking him if this was about his parents.
Now that they’re in front of him, Buck’s thinking that maybe he was onto something there.
“Coffee?” Eddie offers, a forcibly airy note in his voice.
“Oh, sure,” Philip answers for both of them. Eddie ushers them into the dining room, and takes the opportunity to let Buck go in front of him just so that he can put a hand on the back of his neck between the two rooms. It’s grounding, steady. Like Eddie always is. Buck takes a breath and tries to tell himself that he can get through it.
They muddle through for a few minutes— the coffee providing a distraction as Buck works quietly through the motions and Eddie lingers in the kitchen doorway making small talk. He tunes in between scooping grounds and pouring water, just in time to hear his mother ask about Christopher.
“Where’s your older son, Eddie?”
Buck tenses. Maybe he’s just particularly sensitive today, but something about the wording bothers him. They didn’t even say his name. Your son. It’s probably nothing, but it burrows beneath Buck’s skin like a splinter he can’t reach.
“Christopher,” Eddie answers. “He’s with the Wilsons today.”
“The…” Philip starts, sounding confused. Buck shakes his head a little bit, bites back a retort, and lets Eddie speak over it.
“The Wilsons,” he repeats. “Hen and Karen. You guys have met.”
“Oh,” Margaret replies just as the coffee pot sputters and Buck reaches for the milk in the refrigerator door. “Yes. Your coworker.”
Still safely ensconced in the kitchen, Buck rolls his eyes into the back of his head.
“We’re close friends,” Eddie answers. Buck wonders how obvious that icy undertone to his voice is— if his parents are catching it too, or if it’s just that he knows Eddie inside and out. He’s been so intertwined with Eddie for so long now that he genuinely can’t tell. It doesn’t matter. He kind of hopes they catch it.
“Coffee,” he says, emerging from the kitchen with two cups in hand. One black, which he sets in front of his dad; one with milk, which he sets in front of his mother.
She frowns. “Do you have a coaster, Evan?”
“Uh, no?” Buck replies. “We don’t really—”
“Kids,” Eddie shrugs airily from the doorway with his own coffee and Buck’s in his hands. “We don’t bother.”
“Ah,” Margaret says, gingerly picking up her cup and peering into it. “Alright.”
Buck takes a seat and Eddie hands over the cup of coffee with the brush of his fingers to Buck’s before he returns to his own chair.
“Well,” Philip starts, sounding a little bit reluctant. “How are you finding fatherhood, Evan?”
There’s a tense beat of quiet.
“Um,” Buck says. “Yeah. You know, I love it, but it’s— it’s pretty similar with Lucas as it is with Chris.”
It’s quiet again. Buck can feel Eddie’s eyes on him, but doesn’t look up. There’s something like shame that’s simmering beneath his skin and he’s starting to think that this was a really terrible idea, after all. There’s something that already feels different than the atmosphere in Chim and Maddie’s house when his parents are there to visit the kids, a lightness that’s missing. Buck kind of wishes Jee-Yun was here, actually; she’s a total social butterfly, only more so as she gets older, and she makes a hell of a buffer.
“Of course,” Philip says eventually, diplomatically. Insincerely, Buck thinks in the back of his mind. Fortunately, they’re saved from further conversing by the staticky awakening of the baby monitor in the corner of the room and the sound of Lucas whining over its speaker filtering into the room.
“Do you want me to—” Eddie starts, but Buck is already pushing back from the table. He feels bad leaving Eddie with his mom and dad, but Eddie can handle it. Will handle it, and with probably a lot more grace than Buck would be capable of managing at the moment.
“I’ve got him,” he answers with a forced smile. “Just be a minute.”
Eddie briefly catches his fingers on Buck’s as he passes by his chair, and it’s nothing— the barest brush of skin— but it says a lot. Buck is grateful, even if he can’t express as much beyond the mounting tension that’s creeping over every muscle in his body right now.
“Well, there you go!” he hears Eddie saying as he makes his way down the hall. “He’s not the best sleeper yet.”
There’s a response, but Buck can’t make it out. In their bedroom, Lucas is squirming in his bassinet and Buck’s heart squeezes tight like every other time he sees him— it reaches over all his discomfort and uncertainty, overrides anything until he’s feeling nothing but joy as he lifts Lucas out of place and onto the attached changing table and making quick work of changing his diaper.
“Alright,” he says quietly when he’s finished, leaning in close enough for Lucas to see him. He recalls passionately explaining newborn vision to Eddie just a couple of days ago, how Lucas’ retinas are slowly developing and that soon he’ll be able to focus on an object if it’s right in front of him. He watches now as Lucas’ blue eyes track his movement and the light around him, the visible attempt to focus. “Look at you go!” he whispers, feeling genuinely proud and joyful as he leans in further still and nudges his nose gently against Lucas’. He lets out a happy coo and Buck feels as if his heart has grown three sizes.
He’s seized with a sudden urge to take the baby and run. And that’s— well, he’s aware that it’s not exactly normal to want to take your newborn as far away from your parents as you can get, particularly when you invited them to meet him in the first place. It’s just that—
He has a bad feeling about the whole thing. And he knows that if he did want to make his escape, Eddie would let him without question. But he picks up the baby anyway and looks down at his face, at the blue eyes like his own and the miraculously mirrored birthmark that’s lingering fiercely pink two weeks after his birth. And he wants his parents to know him. Wants them to see this perfect child, feels like it would be a disservice to anyone to deny them the chance.
“Listen,” he says, adjusting Lucas in his arms and re-situating the sleeve of his little onesie as Lucas looks up at him through soft pale lashes, searching for his voice. “If you don’t wanna go out there, just scream really loud, okay?”
On his shoulder, Lucas turns his head lightly into Buck’s collar and coos again, soft and warm.
“Okay,” Buck says, and smooths his hand over the back of his downy-soft head. “Your call, kid. But scream if you change your mind.”
There’s some comfort in imagining that Lucas understands when he opens and closes his fingers reflexively against Buck’s neck, so Buck turns his head to kiss the baby’s temple and then makes his way back into the living room, where he finds that in his absence his parents and Eddie have relocated to the living room. His mom is on one end of the couch— where Buck normally sits, while his dad has taken the corner armchair and Eddie remains standing, one hip braced against the opposite side of the sofa with his arms crossed over his chest, looking both deliberately casual and very much not. His eyes still go soft when Buck and Lucas enter the room, though, and his mom twists in her seat to look and she gasps just like she’s supposed to, and Buck manages a genuine smile.
Because— maybe there’s hope there. Maybe it was just awkward without the baby in the room, and now the tension will drain away and they’ll see what Buck sees when he looks at their new baby boy.
“Oh,” Margaret coos. “Goodness, he’s tiny.”
“You should have seen him when he was born,” Buck beams in spite of himself. “He’s already growing so much.”
He takes a seat on what is, effectively, Eddie’s side of the couch and eases Lucas off of his shoulder to cradle him in his hands.
“Well, I remember those days,” Margaret says, sounding strangely fond. It’s more than Buck was expecting from her, to be honest, and he feels himself relax just a little bit. “They do grow so fast, don’t they, Philip?”
Buck’s dad is leaning in toward the baby, looking at least mildly interested. “They do,” he nods. “You just blink. Well—” he glances at Eddie and adds, “you know how it is.”
Buck looks up in time to catch that his father was nodding toward Eddie when he said it, and he tries not to read too much into that.
“Of course,” Margaret adds, looking up at Eddie herself. “Maddie was telling us that Christopher is going to graduate with honors. You must be very proud.”
“Oh,” Eddie says, nodding as he reaches out and puts his hand on Buck’s shoulder. “We are. Yeah. He’s grown up before we knew it. This one’s not even far behind.”
Margaret looks back at the baby in Buck’s hands, smiling softly— admittedly, looking very much like she had when she first met either of Maddie’s kids. It’s a bare minimum, really, and Buck knows that— but it still feels good, somehow. That goodness is twisted up with something else, but it’s out of reach for the moment behind a haze of frayed nerves and the exhaustion of the last couple of weeks. Buck is content, really, to leave it there.
“Do you want to hold him?” Buck offers, watching his mom look at her new grandson. There’s a hesitance rooted in a protective instinct, but he’s felt it with anyone who isn’t Eddie or Christopher. He’d had a hard time handing him off even to Maddie the first time. It’s not like it’s her, specifically.
“Oh!” Margaret says, sounding— surprised, maybe? Buck doesn’t know why she would be, but ultimately she nods and she looks eager when she adds, “Yes, of course.”
“There you go, sweet boy,” Buck murmurs under his breath. “You’re going to meet Grandma!”
“Evan,” Philip chuckles. “You think he can understand you?”
Buck feels, rather than sees it when Eddie turns toward his father while he bites back a slew of facts he knows about the prefrontal cortex of a two-week old.
“You know,” Eddie says, light through his teeth. “We’re hoping he’ll turn out as smart as Christopher. Starting good and early.”
Buck feels incredibly tired, suddenly. He flickers back again to the night before and yearns to be back in the nursery. The baby is out of his hands and nestled into his mother’s arms, but he finds— too late— that it doesn’t feel like handing him over to Maddie, or to any of the rest of their family. They’ve all taken turns squabbling over who gets to hold him over the last two weeks— even Denny and Mara, who are generally moody teenagers, had argued impressively for their right to a turn. This feels—
Different. Wrong. It sends a sparkle of anxiety skittering over the nerves beneath Buck’s skin, from his chest out to his fingertips where they ache to reach out and take the baby back.
Later, he’ll look back on that moment and think that he should have.
In response to Eddie’s light remark, Margaret chuckles and glances up at them both, a question in her eyes. “Well—” she intones. “He can’t exactly take after Christopher, of course.”
Buck hesitates, tearing his eyes away from Lucas to look back at Eddie— but his husband looks equally puzzled.
“What?” he asks.
“Oh, I just meant—” Margaret says, tilting her head and looking at Lucas’ face. “You know. He’s not biologically related to Eddie’s son.”
Something cold drips over Buck, then. He opens his mouth, maybe to respond even though he feels like he’s slipping and doesn’t know exactly what he’s going to say, but she continues before he can.
“Which I had wondered about,” she adds properly, her eyes on Eddie. “Is Christopher bothered?”
Eddie frowns, no longer bothering to conceal his feelings. “Bothered?” he repeats. “By— having a brother?”
It’s clear in his voice that he doesn’t appreciate the implication, and the tension in the air has slowly shifted.
“Oh, no,” Margaret replies. She isn’t looking at Lucas, Buck realizes suddenly. “Just— by the fact that he’s not his biological brother.”
Eddie stares at her as Buck feels himself shrink.
“No,” he answers; his fingers are digging lightly into Buck’s skin around the collar of his shirt with a grounding pressure. “We don’t think like that.”
Margaret hums, and Buck’s dad is quiet, and Buck wishes he could take it all back— wishes he never moved from the kitchen table this morning and that he was still in that moment feeding the baby and watching Chris and Eddie eat pancakes and only getting to his own when they were already cold and he didn’t care.
“Well,” she continues, pressing on. “You’ll certainly have your hands full.”
Buck tenses, and Eddie smooths his thumb into the muscle beneath his collarbone.
“Kids, right?” Eddie says, flatter than before.
“This one, at least,” Philip chuckles from his place in the chair. It’s not lost on either Buck or Eddie that he hasn’t moved to get a closer look at Lucas. “Evan was a lot to handle.”
Buck bites back several things at once, not least of which is the desire to point out that his dad never handled him in the first place. He’s too tired— worn too thin by all the nights spent sitting up with the baby way longer than he should have. And yet—
It occurs to him suddenly, in this moment, that even now he wouldn’t take it back. That he’d sit up like that with Lucas every night, just to look at him. And maybe that’s what Eddie had meant, when he knelt in front of Buck and asked if this was about his parents.
Because his mom is holding the baby and not looking at him. And his dad is sitting across the room like there’s nothing worth getting up for. And all Buck can think about, ever, is getting more of this perfect, precious little life: all he wants is to look at him; be close to him; protect him; know him.
And suddenly, he gets the feeling that his parents don’t. He doesn’t know what to do with that except for swallow hard against the pressure and lean back into Eddie’s hand on him.
Eddie responds to his dad, but truthfully Buck isn’t listening. He’s watching as his mother adjusts her hold on Lucas and still doesn’t look down at him.
“Mom,” Buck says, cutting in before he can pause to think or stop himself.
She looks up at him like she’s surprised— is it his tone, sharper than he’d realized? Or is she just— used to not hearing him?
“You’re not looking at the baby,” he says, hearing the way frustration slips into the syllables, that exasperated edge of anxiety. “He’s— you know he-he can see light and shape now. His pupils are growing every day. If-if you get close to him, he can see your face.”
Maybe there’s something desperate in his voice, too, if the way Eddie puts his other hand on his opposite shoulder and rubs gently is anything to go by.
“Right,” Margaret says slowly, like he’s the one doing something unusual here. He knows he isn’t— everyone else, even the kids, had been captivated by Lucas, their eyes on his little face. “Well. It’s— you understand, Evan, it’s a little hard for me.”
The air around them all stills.
Buck blinks back at her as Eddie’s hand stops moving against his shoulder.
“I— sorry?” he stammers. “No, Mom, I-I don’t understand what would be hard for you about looking at your new grandson.”
Margaret casts a glance over at her husband, and then eventually she looks down at Lucas.
She looks at Lucas— the light of Buck’s entire life, one of two pieces of his heart existing outside his body; Lucas who is new and soft and sweet and so perfect that it’s hard to wrap his head around— and then she looks away again, and when she does there are tears in her eyes.
And then—
“He looks so much like Daniel,” she whispers.
All the air goes out of the room so fast that it makes Buck feel dizzy.
“What?” Eddie says, but Buck doesn’t really hear him.
His head spins, tilting him dangerously into a place of exhaustion and nausea and a sick, creeping sense of something very familiar. It beats to the tune of not enough, a whisper that Buck has known longer than he’s known his own name. A knowledge that’s written into the fabric of who he is, something that echoes against his ribs even know that he knows it’s not really true, even now that there’s proof every day in this house that there are two— now, three— people for whom he’s exactly enough.
But it barrels into him all at once suddenly— with his mother in front of him ignoring her perfect new grandson. That Eddie was right. That it was all about his parents. That he’d been sitting up in the nursery with Lucas night after night because something deep in the useless marrow of his bones remembers what it had felt like to be brand-new and all alone somewhere with parents who didn’t want him.
In the wake of two weeks worth of exhaustion, Buck bursts into tears.
It seems to startle everyone in the room— Buck included— when the sound wrenches out of his chest and shatters the tension. Margaret jumps lightly, wide-eyed, and Lucas starts crying immediately and the sound only serves to heighten the frantic feeling of total anxiety that has washed over Buck like long-forgotten ocean water.
And then there’s Eddie. Eddie, who squeezes Buck’s shoulders and then jumps into action: wordlessly, he walks around the couch and takes the baby out of Margaret’s hands without so much as looking at her face.
“I know, mi sol,” he whispers to Lucas in the space between Buck’s heaving breaths and Lucas’ sharp cry. “You want Daddy, I know. You’re okay.”
He moves close to Buck, who reaches out for Lucas on the heels of a shuddering breath.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, more to Lucas even than Eddie as he takes the baby and cradles him against his chest. It doesn’t ease off the pain entirely, but it does help. It occurs to him through a fierce ache in his chest that neither of the parents who are looking at him now like they don’t know what to do with him have ever felt that way about him. Not now, and not when he was little and helpless like Lucas.
Not ever.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers against the top of Lucas’ head, his breath rustling the fine, soft blonde hair there as he rocks him gently. He raises his wet eyes to look at Eddie, saying nothing but communicating everything.
When Eddie looks back at him, Buck realizes that he didn’t really need to communicate anything. Eddie’s brown eyes are warm, soft and steady. He already knows.
“You’re okay,” he murmurs under his breath, that graveled warmth in his voice that only belongs to Buck. “Just focus on Lucas. I got this.”
He turns, then, and Buck can tell that he’s furious by the set of his shoulders when he looks between Buck’s mom and his dad.
“You know,” he says, “I’ve put up with a lot of shit from you two. But you’re done.”
“I—” Margaret starts.
“Mm,” Eddie says, shaking his head. “No. You’re done. You’re not going to sit in my house and look at your grandson— at your son, too— and get away with implying something like that. They are both their own people. They are not replacements or placeholders, and I’m done letting you make either of them into that.”
“Now, that’s not—” Philip starts, but Eddie rounds on him too.
Against Buck’s chest, Lucas’ cries have quieted to soft whimpers. Inside his chest, Buck is aching but he’s not outright sobbing anymore. It’s something, anyway.
Running a hand through his hair, Eddie says— “It is.”
He’s so sure about it. It leaves no room for Buck to doubt it, and in spite of himself that ignites a spark in him. It’s not just him. This isn’t something he’s imagining. He’s not being dramatic. Eddie sees it— sees him, his pain. It’s enough, more than enough. He feels raw and torn open, but he drops his nose to the baby’s head and breathes in, and there’s a stitch forming in that wound, too.
For so long, Buck was fighting his own battles. More often than not, he fought them against himself because he didn’t know how to fight them against anyone else.
But Eddie—
“It is like that,” he says. “That’s what you’re doing now and it’s what you’ve always done. But you’re done. I’d like you both to leave now.”
Eddie fights for him. And for once— Buck wants to let him.
He wants to sit here and hold their baby and let Eddie put his hands on his shoulders, which he does— sure and steady. He’s not yelling, he’s just sure. Buck wants to kiss him, and will. For now, he just takes a breath and allows himself the luxury of not looking up.
“Evan—” his mother says, mouth gaping.
“Buck,” Eddie answers. Still so very sure. “His name is Buck. And by the way— Lucas looks like Buck. He doesn’t look like Daniel. He looks like his dad.” He lets out a breath and shakes his head, repeating— “We’d like you to leave now.”
And then— through a flurry of something that Buck doesn’t entirely hear over the roaring of his heartbeat in his ears which sets a different rhythm entirely these days— just like that, it’s over.
Buck takes a breath.
The air is fragrant with freshly turned earth and the hot, familiar sear of California sun drenching everything it touches, redolent with soil and the lighter notes of citrus and faint coconut sunscreen on the baby’s skin where he’s nestled into Buck’s chest.
Lucas is one month old today, and summer is in full swing. Buck is sitting in the shade of the porch while Eddie stands, squinting, in the bright glow of the full midday sun. There’s dappled light coming through the leaves of the orange tree, and Christopher is lounging back on the steps next to Buck while Lucas coos contentedly against him.
Hand on his hip, Eddie looks over at the three of them.
“Am I the only one who’s going to do any of the work around here?” he asks.
“Aren’t you usually?” Christopher asks back, and Buck laughs— wholly, fully, from his chest. Like he means it.
In the aftermath of the admittedly overdue fight with his parents, Buck had been less than okay. But there was a freedom in it too, one that unexpectedly took root right away and weighed surprisingly more than whatever guilt or fear had lingered alongside it.
The truth was, Buck should have done it a long time ago. It was never going to be easy— cutting contact with your parents was a hard thing to do, no matter how much they deserved it. But what Buck had been unable to do for himself was ultimately easy to do for Lucas. It was the first lesson of parenthood Buck had ever learned, really— one that he learned with Christopher, long years before Lucas was ever a thought.
And there were other things about it that scared him— mostly, he never wanted to do anything that would negatively affect Maddie. She’d come over that same night to talk through it with him and with Eddie, and made it indubitably clear that she was— in her own words— on his side, every time. As far as she was concerned, a slight to that degree against her nephew was as good as against her own children. She’d wrapped her pinkie finger around his and looked into his face with teary eyes and told him that they were the ones who were a family.
And now, two weeks after the fact— Buck feels good.
He and Eddie have worked through the rest of it together— like they do everything else. He’s sleeping better. Feeling less alone. Waking up light and joyful.
And there’s also this— something that he and Eddie had decided to do one night last week when Buck expressed a desire to do something for Lucas that might symbolize the lasting, meaningful devotion that they both feel for him. Something, he admitted from the safety of Eddie’s arms around him, that his parents wouldn’t have thought to do. And maybe it’s more for him than it is for Lucas, but he likes to believe that it’s both. That it’ll take its own shape as their baby grows up.
It was Eddie’s idea to plant a lemon tree. And now, it’s Eddie who’s leaning on a shovel shining with sweat and smiling big enough to make his cheeks round and pink beneath the sun.
Buck loves him so much.
“Alright,” he says, hauling himself up from his spot. “It’s Lucas’ tree, so I think he should be over there for this part. Right, sunshine?”
Lucas makes a soft sound in his arms— a perpetually happy, relaxed baby who is starting to really wake up to his surroundings, he’s quick to seek out the voices of his dad and his brother, and he’s always content to be held.
Buck cannot believe, every second of the day, that he’s theirs. In the light of day, it feels more and more like a gift.
Eddie bends down to nose against Lucas’ cheek where he’s resting in Buck’s arms beneath the soft flap of a little yellow sunhat, because his hands are dirty, as Christopher makes his way over to join them.
“You know he can’t really—” Chris starts, and Buck laughs.
“Yeah, bud,” he admits. “We know. It’s not really for him right now.”
Chris shrugs, but all of them can tell he wants to be there. He’s an attentive, proud brother, and another thing Buck can never believe belongs, in any part, to him.
He and Eddie are working on that, too, actually. And lately, everything has felt attainable.
“Alright!” Eddie says, clapping his hands. “Tree going in.”
And so, in that way, a lemon sapling joins the old orange tree. And when Buck steps back to look at it, it’s not hard to imagine their family existing in its shade— a sure, reliable, certainty.
He looks down at Lucas in his arms and thinks, actually, that his life is full of those these days.
“That’s just for you,” he murmurs, pointing to the tree with his free hand and watching Lucas try to follow the movement of his hand with his eyes.
“Look at that,” Eddie coos, leaning in again. “You are getting so good at seeing!”
And— yeah, Buck thinks. Some things are certain, after all.