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Summer comes light and easy these days.
With it, this year, it brings Lucas Diaz’s very first birthday on the fifth of June. Eddie stays up late the night before while the baby sleeps, standing shoulder to shoulder with Buck at their kitchen counter while they muddle their way through making a birthday cake. Buck knows what he’s doing and Eddie is good at piping frosting. In the end, it’s a little lopsided and messy but it’s perfect anyway— vanilla and creamy, decorated with a yellow sun for their perfect little sunshine boy.
The next day, Lucas sits in his high-chair at the house crammed full of their extended family and when they put a piece of cake in front of him he promptly smashes into it with grabby little hands and squeals happily. Christopher stands next to him, laughing, and their shared joy spreads like sunlight into every space between Eddie’s ribs.
In that moment, watching his children together while Buck beams from his place next to them, it’s hard for Eddie to imagine what he ever did to deserve the life he has. How it came to be his, this beautiful bright thing that exists beyond anything any of his wildest dreams might have conjured.
But here it is— in Buck; in Chris; in Lucas; in the balloons and the people and in the cake and in the frosting.
Later that evening when everyone has filed out of the house in trails of wrapping paper and kisses, and Christopher has closed himself in his room to ride out the food and sugar coma he undoubtedly gave himself over the duration of the party, Eddie carries a freshly bathed, half-asleep one-year-old to his bedroom. In the soft light of the familiar room, he and Buck kiss their baby and put him down in his crib together— Eddie shifting his weight against the mattress, Buck tucking his favorite stuffed duck into his arms like a practiced dance, then sweeping familiar fingers over soft blonde curls.
Eddie lets out a breath, leaning casually over the crib railing. “He’s a year old,” he says, more wonder than words.
“Don’t,” Buck groans softly next to him. When Eddie looks, his eyes are still on the baby— blue and familiar and so, so soft.
Eddie chuckles a little and reaches for his husband, gets a hand on Buck’s waist and pulls him closer until they’re pressed together, watching Lucas’ pale eyelashes flutter softly in the dim light.
He doesn’t say anything else— neither of them do. It’s enough, Eddie thinks. Just to be here.
Six days after his birthday, Lucas takes his first steps.
It happens, by a stroke of good luck, when the whole family is home on a bright Wednesday evening. Even Christopher is present— though his social calendar is busy enough these days to make Eddie’s head spin, he also adores his baby brother and they’re lucky to have him close at least a handful of evenings each week.
On this one in particular, Chris is sprawled over one end of the sofa with his phone in his hand while Buck occupies the other side. There’s an old Pixar movie playing mindlessly on the TV at a low volume— one of the ones Chris had liked as a kid, because Eddie is insistent that Lucas not be exposed to any of the new stuff. Christopher objects to his childhood favorites being old enough to be considered classics, but Eddie stands by the statement and the banter is familiar and light every time they rehash it.
They’ve known that Lucas’ first steps were coming soon— he’s been pulling up onto the edge of everything he can reach, wobbly but determined. Buck had taken, a few weeks back, to the task of babyproofing the house with his usual abandon and as a result there are locks on all the cabinets and protective covers on the corners of absolutely everything. Eddie can’t help but find it endearing, even if he did have to spend an actually obscene amount of time trying to open the cabinet beneath the sink yesterday.
Now, he’s sitting on the rug in the living room as late in the day sunlight filters into the room and splashes pools of gold onto the floors and the furniture, watching Lucas pull himself easily up against the coffee table and reach across it for the scattering of colorful blocks that had been left there.
“Big reach!” Eddie says, and Lucas glances back at him, all blue eyes and curiosity. “What?” Eddie asks, holding his gaze. “You got it!”
Lucas has grasped a red block in his small fingers, but with the dawning of a new expression over his features, he seems to change his mind about grabbing it and it clatters noisily back to the table.
“Or not,” Buck chimes in, grinning as Lucas turns his head to look at him. “Hi, sunshine!”
Lucas shrieks, bouncing on his feet with enthusiasm as he brings one little hand up in an approximation of a wave, then slams it palm open on the coffee table.
Buck reaches out, scooping him up effortlessly into his lap with one hand as he giggles. Eddie watches them from the floor for a moment as Buck leans his face into Lucas’ nearly identical one, smushing their noses together. Something tugs in his chest a little at the sight— Buck’s dimples deep in his cheeks, Lucas beaming, the light on them both.
It’s been over a year now since their family was completed, and Eddie has been watching Buck with Chris for much longer than that, but there’s still just something about watching the love for the boys bloom over his features. It reaches down and pulls at something in him every day without fail, the knowledge that it’s his sitting sure and dreamlike in his chest.
Lucas leans back, squirming restlessly. He’s all movement lately, so it’s no surprise that he only makes it a couple of minutes on Buck’s lap. His face lights up as he reaches out toward Eddie, sending warmth barrelling through Eddie’s chest.
“Oh, I get it,” Buck chuckles. “You want Dad, huh? That’s fair.”
The warmth blooms further, opening up like roses after rain, the kind Eddie used to sneak over the fence to smell every time they visited his Abuela’s house when he was a kid. He watches as Buck sets their baby carefully on his feet; they’ve been doing as much for a while now, letting him get a feel for it and encouraging him to learn to balance.
But this time, with their whole family nestled into the living room, Lucas doesn’t wobble quite as much. Buck lets go of his hands gently, and he stands, arms outstretched and beaming toward Eddie. Then, he shrieks brightly and just—
Takes a step.
Keeps his eyes on Eddie.
Takes another.
The room goes hushed as Buck gasps and Chris looks up with interest from his phone and Eddie—
Eddie holds his hands out like an instinct, palms open for his baby as Lucas takes another step and another before launching himself happily in Eddie’s direction with total trust.
The room erupts as Eddie scoops the baby into his arms and lifts him up, his pulse fluttering in his chest as tears prick the backs of his eyes.
“Look at you!” he coos, cuddling Lucas close to him as he giggles at the attention.
“Oh my god,” Buck says, overlapping with Christopher’s laugh— still Eddie’s favorite sound in the world, the only thing he would want to soundtrack this moment. “He just—”
Eddie beams. “He’s walking,” he says, wonder in his voice that he couldn’t mask even if he wanted to. He looks up at Buck and says, without thinking, “He walked to me.”
Buck smiles back at him, his usual brightness turned up to a hundred.
“Of course he did,” he says, like it’s obvious. Then he lowers his voice to a softer coo, turning his attention to Lucas and says, “Look at you go, bud, you did so good! We’re so proud of you!”
Lucas is already squirming in Eddie’s arms, and Eddie gives in— just for a moment— to a selfish desire to pull him in closer, pressing a litany of breathless kisses all over his little face: the soft nose; the pink baby cheeks; the birthmark splashed across his warm skin; his fair eyebrows and pale lashes.
He only tolerates it for a moment, and then he’s off again. On his feet, walking back towards the blocks on the coffee table like it’s something he’s been doing all his life. Eddie’s throat goes tight, and Buck beams, and the moment stretches beautifully as Chris shifts to the edge of the couch cushion and reaches his hand out to Lucas.
Buck looks over at Eddie, and Eddie looks back, and feels like they've both been changed.
It’s in this way— humanly, understandably— that they both manage to miss something else that has shifted in the room on that warm summer evening.
Christopher holds his hand out to Lucas, and Lucas— preoccupied with a green block this time— doesn’t move in his brother’s direction. And on Christopher’s features, something caves in a little bit. A flash of something young and vulnerable and faintly spearmint bitter in the crease of his brows behind familiar glasses.
And Buck and Eddie— just kind of miss it. Just this once.
Once, as it turns out over the unfolding following week, is enough.
Eddie notices that something isn’t right with Chris two days after Lucas takes his first steps. A Friday. School is out for the summer, but Friday night traditions in the Diaz house prevail, and that means the approach of movie night.
Eddie checks his watch between shaking out Cheerios for Lucas’ snack onto the tray of his high chair and finds it nearing four o’clock. In the corner, Christopher is halfway through a snack of his own— toddlers and teenage boys, Eddie has realized, have voracious appetites in common. Or maybe it’s just the ones in his house, but he’s not complaining.
“So,” he says, catching the teenager’s attention. “Buck will be back in an hour or so. What’s your movie pick tonight?”
Christopher hesitates.
That’s red flag number one for Eddie.
And then he says, “Actually, I was thinking I might go to Theo’s?”
Theo— Christopher’s close friend from school— has a pool at his house that Eddie knows Chris loves. It’s not altogether surprising that he’d want to hang out there on a hot evening like this one. But—
“Tonight?” Eddie asks, trying to bury the concern in his voice as he watches his son a little more closely.
Chris nods. “Yeah,” he answers, volunteering nothing more.
Eddie hesitates too, then. “Well,” he says. “I mean— yeah, sure. If that’s what you want to do, it’s fine, but—”
“Okay,” Chris interrupts, uncharacteristically. Red flag number whatever for Eddie— they’ve piled up quickly in the last thirty seconds or so. “He can pick me up at four-thirty, so—”
Because Christopher’s friends drive now, and have cars, and Eddie spends a lot of time trying not to think about the number of accidents he and Buck have responded to over the years involving reckless, injured teenagers.
Eddie frowns. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” Chris says. He gets up from his chair, leans over to drop his yogurt cup into the garbage, and then doubles back for his crutches. Eddie catches a flicker of something on his face, then, a look that he can’t parse or identify. But it’s something. Eddie’s past red flags now and onto blaring alarms that go off in his head as Chris hurries out of the room.
But then he’s gone, and the moment passes.
He discusses it with Buck that evening, when his husband is fresh from the shower and Lucas is falling asleep on his chest and Chris is nowhere to be found.
“I know he’s not always going to want to spend every Friday night with us,” Eddie is saying reasonably. “But there was just something that felt off about it.”
Buck adjusts the baby slightly and Lucas lets out a sleepy little noise. In response, Buck smoothes his hand gently over his back and his lashes flutter closed. But while his hands are on the baby, Buck’s attention is on Eddie.
He tilts his head, considering. “You don’t know what it was about?” he asks, keeping his voice low and soft as he lulls Lucas to sleep.
Eddie has been playing it over in his head, but— “I really don’t,” he admits. Pauses, his face twisting slightly. “Have we been paying enough attention to him?”
Buck starts shaking his head before Eddie even gets the words out. “It’s not that, Eds,” he says— sounding a lot more sure than Eddie feels. “He’s seventeen. He’s gotta figure this stuff out for himself, and if he needs us he knows he can come to us.”
What Buck’s saying sounds true, and right, and Eddie trusts him. But still—
That look on Christopher’s face follows him long after he’s home safe and a little sunburned; long after they’ve tucked Lucas into bed and Buck is falling asleep next to him. Well into the next day, and the one after.
And the one after that, when the whole thing sort of comes to a head.
Lucas has been walking sporadically— sometimes, he seems to prefer his tried and true method of almost alarmingly fast crawling, and Eddie kind of dreads the day he works up to being that fast on two legs.
In the 118 group chat, there has been a deluge of requests for video evidence. So today, Eddie is trying his best to get some. He’s kneeling on the floor while Chris is flopped back on the couch and Buck is hovering in the doorway, watching the scene with his arms crossed over his chest and an amused look on his face.
“C’mon, mi sol,” Eddie coaxes in a sweet voice, his phone in his hand. “Come on, come and see Dad! You can do it!”
Lucas stays firmly where he is, smiling and placid, but standing by the coffee table with no signs of wanting to walk anywhere.
“Lucas,” Eddie tries again, his voice sing-song and gentle. “Come on, sweet boy. You wanna walk to Dad? Use those little feet? You can show everybody how strong you are!”
On the couch, Christopher sighs audibly.
Eddie glances up, away from the baby at his teenager, a questioning look on his face. He doesn’t have to look to know that Buck is doing the same thing behind him.
“Chris?” he questions. “You good?”
An inexplicably annoyed look crosses Christopher’s face then.
“Fine,” he says.
Eddie slowly lowers his phone, cutting the video off. The same feeling that’s been following him for days rises up again as he watches Christopher cross his arms defensively.
“Something bothering you?” he asks, forcibly light.
To his surprise, Christopher rolls his eyes, gesturing at the baby vaguely.
“Why do you want him to walk so much?” he asks, rhetoric but firmly bitter.
Eddie recalibrates, playing the whole thing over in his head for the hundredth time this week. Something has been off and he wasn’t sure what it was, but now he thinks— maybe— he might be getting the idea.
“What do you mean?” he asks, cautious.
Chris huffs, volunteering nothing further. At that, Buck steps forward and scoops Lucas up from the floor, pausing only to press his hand to the space between Eddie’s shoulder blades where he’s still crouched on the floor.
“We’re gonna go play outside for a little bit,” Buck says. Eddie knows him well enough to know that the softness in his voice is all support, the same thing channeled through the touch of his fingertips to his back. Eddie is grateful, but he’ll tell him later.
For now, he’s focused on Christopher and the way he’s avoiding looking anywhere but at Eddie.
He waits for the click of the back door, a familiar sound as Buck takes the baby outside to give them space, and then he picks himself up off the floor and moves carefully closer, situating himself to perch on the coffee table in front of Christopher’s seat on the couch.
It’s funny— the echo of all the other times he’s sat like this. From the time Chris was still so little, all the way to now. Now, when a nearly grown man sits in front of him, stubbornly avoiding his waiting gaze and looking just a little bit younger than usual.
“Okay,” Eddie says: soft, open. “You want to talk?”
Christopher sighs, but he uncrosses his arms and puts his hands into his lap. “Not that much,” he admits, and Eddie can’t help a tiny smile at that.
“You know,” he says lightly. “You used to tell me talking about it makes it less scary.”
Chris rolls his eyes. “You told me that first.”
Eddie nods, conceding. “Sure,” he agrees. “But—” he reaches out, puts his palm to Christopher’s knee— “I don’t think I really believed it until you were the one saying it to me.”
There’s quiet for a moment, but Eddie can feel the shift. He waits, giving Chris the space.
And eventually, like Eddie had thought he might, Christopher relents. He still doesn’t look up at Eddie, but he says, venturing—
“I’m glad Lucas is walking.”
It sounds like a preface, so Eddie nods his head slowly and says, simply— “Okay.”
“But,” Christopher adds, breathing in and then biting down on his lip a little. “I kind of hate it, too.”
There’s something tight in Eddie’s throat.
“Do you want to tell me why?” he asks.
Chris shrugs a little, picking absently at a thread on the seam of his shorts. “It’s a big deal for you,” he says eventually, and his voice has gone soft again now. Eddie knows where this is going and hates it more and more by the second.
Still, he’s careful.
“Sure,” he agrees. “Any milestone is a big deal for a parent.”
Christopher nods his head. “I get it,” he says softly. “He’s my brother. I love him and— and I want to see him do stuff, too.”
Eddie smoothes his thumb over the inside of Christopher’s knee. “We know you love him, Chris,” he offers. “He knows you love him. Whatever other things you feel don’t undermine that.”
It seems to be the right thing to have said, because Chris finally does look up at Eddie then— blue eyes inscrutable through his glasses.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
Eddie nods immediately.
“I’m sure, mijo,” he answers.
There’s silence for a few seconds as flickers of dust float through the beam of sunlight that catches the room in its grasp.
“You were so happy when he started walking,” Christopher says, breaking the quiet again. “And I started thinking about— about—”
Eddie gives it a second, two, three, four. And then he leans in a little, just a fraction. “About?” he prods gently.
Christopher swallows. “About all the stuff Lucas can do with you,” he admits, sounding young and tender. “Stuff that I can’t do.”
Beneath the wall of his chest, Eddie’s heart stutters to a brief, awful stop at the words.
“Christopher—” he starts.
“I know you love me,” Chris interrupts. “That you— you love us the same amount and that you like being my dad. And— and Buck, too.”
It doesn’t do much to ease the horrible feeling behind Eddie’s ribs.
“It’s just—” Chris presses on. “I don’t know if you’ll be happier being his dad.”
Eddie feels, honestly, a little sick.
“Chris,” he tries again. “How could I be happier with your brother? I love being your dad.”
He’s aware that he sounds a little desperate, but he doesn’t care. He is desperate— the thought of Chris missing this, not understanding anything about the scope of the joy that he’s derived from raising his firstborn, is enough to make him feel on the verge of tears.
“I know,” Chris says. “But— you know, there’s a lot of stuff that you get to experience with him. He can do stuff that I can’t.”
Eddie is reminded, painfully, of one of those other times he sat with Christopher like this. Explaining to him that he was wrong to have told Chris he could do anything, when it wasn’t true. Parenthood, Eddie has found, is a long slow list of failures and heartbreaks sliced through with moments of joy so brutal that it cracks him open just the same way. A beautiful, endless spectrum of all the biggest feelings the world has to offer.
He reaches out, until his fingers graze Christopher’s cheek, and swallows hard when their eyes meet.
“Chris,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry if Buck or I have said or done anything to make you feel that way. But— can I tell you the real reason I was so excited for Lucas to walk to me?”
Hesitantly, Christopher nods.
“When you were born,” Eddie starts, half-praying he gets through this without crying. “I was with you for a week before I had to go back to Afghanistan. It was the shortest week of my life, and by the time I saw you in person again there was so much I had missed already.”
He swallows, forcing himself to maintain eye contact.
“You were smiling and your mom had told me that you were starting to recognize everyone around you. Her, your grandparents. But when I got there, you didn’t know me. We were strangers.”
Christopher blinks, his face softening.
Eddie reaches up and cradles his cheeks in his hands, the same way he’d done on that first day and so many other times since. Chris is too old for it now, mostly. But he lets Eddie do it now.
Brushing his thumb over his baby’s cheek, Eddie shakes his head.
“I promise you, Christopher,” he says, “it’s not about which things Lucas can do. I don’t care if he can walk any more than I care what he grows up to be, or any more than I care if either of you goes to college or-or learns coding or more than I cared when you wanted to learn to surf. What I care about is—”
He pauses, shakes his head and scrunches his nose before meeting Christopher’s eyes again.
“I missed so much with you,” Eddie whispers, hearing the way his voice wears thin. “And I’m not using your brother to replace you, not— not in the slightest. And if you ever feel like I am, I want you to tell me so we can fix it. But—”
Christopher’s expression goes, impossibly, even softer. “You care that you’re not missing it.”
Eddie nods. “I care that I did miss it the first time,” he amends. “I care that I wasn’t there when you got diagnosed, or when you tried peas for the first time and hated them, or for your first surgery or when you got glasses and you could see the whole world like you’d never seen it before.”
Christopher leans his cheek, ever so slightly, into Eddie’s hand.
“It’s not about what the firsts are,” Eddie reiterates. “I just— I don’t want to miss anything else. For either of you, Chris.”
Behind his glasses, Christopher’s brow furrows, slightly twisted— Eddie recognizes the justabouttocry expression from his own features in the mirror over the course of a lifetime, and reaches out before he can think about it.
“Honey,” he whispers, more breath than word, into Christopher’s curls as he hugs him close and tight.
“Sorry,” Chris mumbles.
Eddie shakes his head, one hand on the back of his baby’s head and the other rubbing his back without thought. “Don’t be sorry,” he says softly. “You’re okay. You’re good.”
Christopher tucks his head into the space on Eddie’s shoulder that has always been his— from that first, heartbreaking newborn week all through his childhood— and Eddie lets out a soft breath. Sometimes, he thinks, there are these moments when Chris is still that little baby that Eddie longed to be close to, even before he knew anything about himself beyond the way the beat of his heart changed with his child’s first breath.
Everything since has belonged, firstly, to Christopher.
“I love you so much,” he whispers, fierce and sure.
In his arms, Christopher nods. “I love you, too, Dad.”
Eddie pulls back— not far, just enough to look at Christopher’s soft face.
“You okay?” he asks, gentle and wavering.
Chris nods. “Are you okay?”
Eddie blinks. There are other moment, sometimes, when everything is different and Chris is so grown up it takes his breath away. Eddie loves them all, in their own heartwrenching ways.
“I’m okay,” he says.
Christopher tilts his head a little. “You know,” he says, uncharacteristically soft. “You were there for all the firsts that I remember.”
The breath leaves Eddie’s lungs and rushes back in again like something inevitably changing. Sometimes, he thinks, there’s also this. Moments that transcend anything else he could imagine— moments when Christopher is so bright and brilliant and perfect that Eddie is sure he must have had nothing to do with it, that something bigger touched this child in a way that none of them will ever understand.
He bites back tears and nods his head, and when he speaks his voice comes out rough.
“You want to know something?” he asks, and waits for Chris to nod. Then, for good measure, he reaches up and tucks one of Christopher’s curls softly off of his face. “I hope,” he says evenly, “that your brother grows up just like you.”
Christopher smiles— the real kind— and Eddie just breathes in.