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It begins when Christopher receives the results of his junior year sitting of the ACT.
He sits for the test on a Wednesday morning, missing half a day of classes, and the results come in on a Friday, just more than two weeks later. It’s October, and the days are shortening as the weather turns milder. Eddie is still reeling, if he’s honest, from Christopher’s seventeenth birthday last month. He’s been putting a lot of effort into not thinking about how quickly weeks are turning into months, and how quickly those dwindling months will disappear and fade to nothing.
Admittedly, he’s not doing a very good job of it. He keeps busy— with work, with sixteen-month old Lucas who does serve as a strong distraction by virtue of being on the move constantly— but in the back of his mind, there’s always this. The fact that Christopher is on the fragile cusp of adulthood. That the next year or two will be rife with change, a season of its own like the reflection of the way the world turns outside the windows of the house he’d raised one son in, and is now raising another.
So Eddie has been melancholy about the whole thing, a little. He’s allowed.
They’re all in the kitchen together as the evening wears thin and dusky. Lucas is confined to his high-chair in the aftermath of dinner, ostensibly eating a banana for his dessert. This mostly amounts to smearing banana all over the tray and giggling gleefully about it, but anything that keeps him occupied and busy is a win in Eddie’s book. In the meantime, Buck is washing and Eddie is drying, steam lifting off of the sink and a tiny bubble of dish soap drifting lazily through the air. The scent of their dinner lingers in the air, a rich and comforting thing with the leftover sharpness of roasted tomato beneath the soft notes of banana on Lucas’ little palms. Eddie breathes it all in as he stands at the counter shoulder to shoulder with his husband.
Lately, he’s been taking care not to take anything for granted.
At the table, Christopher is flipping through something on the screen of his iPad. When he speaks up, his voice is casual.
“Oh,” he says. “They emailed my ACT scores.”
Christopher is like that, increasingly so as he gets older. He’s not as prone to anxiety as Eddie, thank god, and when it comes to academics this is especially true. He’s dedicated, and smart— smarter than Eddie could ever begin to take credit for— and he cares very much. But he also has a sureness about it, a stillness that only comes from a place of founded confidence. It’s something Eddie admires about him so much, the kind of thing he and Buck marvel at late at night when both boys are asleep.
“Oh yeah?” Eddie says, going for something deliberately casual.
Buck is less so. He splashes the whole front of his own shirt with water in his haste to turn around, forgetting that his hands are wet entirely. Chris looks up, unimpressed behind his glasses, as Eddie wordlessly hands over a towel without looking.
“Thanks,” Buck says, glancing at Eddie as he dries his hands, and then focusing all his energy on Christopher again. “So?”
His enthusiasm is everything that it should be— like it always is with Buck. Christopher could announce a failing grade and Buck would be just as invested. It’s part of the charm of the whole thing, and why Christopher shares a quick, flickering smile with Eddie as he shakes his head and turns back to the iPad.
“I haven’t even opened it yet,” he says, about ten times as patient as Buck has ever been in his life. Next to Eddie, Buck is practically vibrating.
“You felt good about it, right?” Eddie asks, light conversation covering up the way his heartbeat is steadily increasing.
Chris nods. “Yeah,” he answers. “It went fine.”
Eddie reaches for a cloth and runs it under the water, busying his hands as he makes quick work of taking it over to Lucas’ high chair.
“Okay,” Buck says. “You’ve totally got this. I’ve had a good feeling about it the whole time.”
“He can take it again,” Eddie points out needlessly. He’s removed the banana-smeared tray and set it out of Lucas’ reach, and he’s using the cloth to wipe down the baby’s hands as he coos senselessly. “In the spring.”
“I don’t need to,” Chris says, with a still-conversational tone as he glances up from his iPad. “Scored a thirty-five.”
There’s a beat of stillness in which Eddie is somewhat overwhelmed. Even Lucas goes quiet, perhaps sensing the gravity of the moment. Buck is always saying he’s very empathetic. Admittedly, he started saying that when Lucas was about three days old but Eddie is starting to think it’s true now that he’s getting older.
“A thirty-five?” Buck repeats, vaguely breathless. When Eddie glances up, it’s in time to catch Buck grinning and Christopher unable to stop himself from beaming back, a moment in which they look so alike it’s hard to comprehend that they’re not actually related at all.
Eddie knows, from Buck’s extensive ACT research, that a thirty-six is a perfect score. Christopher, on his first sitting of the test, has received an Ivy-League level score. Eddie’s heart is in his throat by the time he follows Buck around the table. Christopher is laughing as Buck hugs him fiercely from behind, and Eddie follows with a softer approach.
“We’re so proud of you!” Buck is gushing, all energy.
“Thanks,” Christopher grins, tilting his head back. For a moment, Eddie sees him as the little boy he’d once been— just a handful of years older than Lucas is now, all curious and wide-eyed and needing so much care and attention. He hopes, somewhere in the back of his mind, that Chris feels all of that now, too, as he converges on his other side.
He leans in and kisses the top of Christopher’s head, with a firm press of his lips to the curls that smell just like Buck’s, because they use the same curl formula shampoo. Chris leans his head back then, and looks up at Eddie, smiling just as big and bright as ever.
“You’re amazing,” Eddie says softly. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Dad,” Christopher answers, but it lacks teenage embarrassment. His voice is soft and warm this time.
“I mean it,” Eddie insists, still gentle. “Buck’s right, we’re really proud of you.”
“It’s just a test,” Christopher says, breaking the moment. Eddie squeezes his shoulder, a lingering thing, and then lets it go with some reluctance.
Buck, who has taken it upon himself to scoop Lucas out of his high-chair, smiles brightly.
“Just a test?” he asks. “Does that mean it’s not enough of a reason for last minute ice cream?”
Christopher, an echo of the young boy he’s always been and the shadow of the man he’s becoming, is out of his chair in a matter of seconds.
Later that night, after Lucas is sugar-crashed and tucked into bed far too late and Chris has disappeared into his bedroom, Buck climbs into bed beside Eddie. The weight of his body settles something in the space around them and behind Eddie’s ribs. It always does. He turns to look, catches Buck snuggling into his pillow and casting blue eyes up to look at Eddie through his lashes.
Years of this now, and Eddie just loves him so much that he feels it, right down to his bones.
“Hi,” he says, smiling in spite of himself.
“Hi,” Buck echoes, equally soft. His eyes catch on Eddie’s face, roaming over the features like he’s seeing something Eddie can’t. “You okay?”
Eddie lets out a breath. It’s a big question, even if it sounds like a small one. He takes his time turning it over in his head as he shuffles downward, brings himself level with his husband, tucks his arm beneath his pillow and lays his head equal with Buck’s so that they’re facing each other.
“Yes,” he says eventually, a precursor.
Buck shifts, tangling their legs with strength and ease beneath the soft sheets. Eddie leans into him instinctively, and when he looks up again they’re close enough that Buck is a little bit blurry.
“But?” Buck prompts, knowingly. Eddie sighs, the scent of Buck’s toothpaste and their laundry detergent soothing him a little bit on the inhale.
“It’s dumb,” he starts, but Buck shakes his head.
His fingers find Eddie’s temple, sweeping back dark pieces of undone hair, gone soft and gentle where they flop over Eddie’s skin. “It’s not dumb,” Buck says patiently. “Come on. Tell me.”
Eddie searches for the words, toying with his tongue between his molars as he thinks.
“It’s just that he’s so—” he starts, hesitating.
“Grown up?” Buck suggests, a knowing, understanding note in his low voice, the way he talks when the baby is asleep. Lucas doesn’t sleep in their room anymore— hasn’t for a while— but some habits have stuck anyway.
Eddie hums, tilting his head. “Is it bad that I keep thinking about him going to college and dreading it?”
Buck laughs, a warm soft sound. “I hope not,” he says. “Because yeah, same.”
Eddie feels a little bad, now that he’s thinking about it. Buck has known Christopher since he was seven: for well over half his life now, he’s been a present and steady force in his life. But they’ve only spent the last couple of years living like this— seeing each other every day, Buck firmly categorized as one of Christopher’s parents. There’s a flash of guilt at the thought, a brief flicker of if I had figured it out sooner. But Eddie tamps it down, smothers it like small meaningless kitchen fires before they set off the smoke alarms. He knows better than that, now. He is better than that now, and goes to great lengths to stay better for all of his boys. Guilting himself over the path his life has taken never got him anywhere. Choosing to let go of that feeling got him—
This. Everything.
He flops over onto his back and looks at the ceiling through a long exhale.
“Something else?” Buck prompts gently from beside him, still curled on his side in a way that makes him seem small even though he’s far from it.
Eddie considers how much to say, but in the end he comes to the same conclusion as always. There’s nothing he doesn’t want to say to Buck, these days.
“I guess— the money?” he ventures, still looking at the light on the ceiling above him, swaths of soft gold against the white paint. Buck goes preternaturally still, listening. “I mean,” Eddie says. “He’s so smart, with test scores like that there’ll be scholarships, right?”
Buck nods. “No, yeah,” he says. “I’m sure there would be.”
“And financial aid,” Eddie adds. “And we have— it’s not like we don’t have any savings.”
He’s not even sure who he’s defending himself to. Buck knows their finances as well as he does. It’s not like he’s saying anything new to either of them, and besides, it’s an issue that’s not exactly on their plates at this moment, anyway.
Still looking at the ceiling, he misses the way Buck stills in response, the clearing of his throat. It’s his voice that tugs Eddie back into the moment, and the touch of his hand to Eddie’s hip— a broad, familiar warmth.
“Let’s maybe cross that bridge when we come to it, yeah?” Buck says, still low, still soft.
Eddie releases a breath.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “You’re right.”
And so the subject is laid to rest, and Eddie really does manage to forget about it for a little while. But as the autumn grows deep, the letters begin to arrive. First, it’s the physical copy of the results; Buck tries to hang them on the refrigerator and Christopher takes them down the second Buck has left the room, and Eddie grins easily as he watches them.
But then, it’s the colleges. It’s been a long time for either Buck or Eddie, and neither of them had been anywhere near as in demand as their teenager is when it came to university recruitment. But they take what is effectively a crash course in the subject when their mailbox is suddenly overflowing, day after day, with pamphlets and brochures and postcards of various length and formality, all addressed very officially to Mr. Christopher Diaz.
They litter the table every afternoon, piling up rapidly six days a week as they come in from all over the country. There’s Duke University and Georgetown and UCLA alongside schools Eddie has never even heard of before— Carnegie Mellon, which Buck helpfully informs him is in Pennsylvania when he catches Eddie squinting at it, and Baylor which Eddie tells him in turn is a school in Texas. Beyond that, they’re both a little lost.
“What the hell is Thomas Aquinas College?” Eddie asks, wandering in one afternoon with the baby in one hand and the mail in the other. Buck looks up from where he’s wrist-deep in cookie dough and shrugs helplessly.
“Maybe it’s for philosophy?” he guesses.
Christopher, without glancing up from where he’s sitting at the table with his open laptop, says: “It’s a Catholic school.”
Eddie drops this particular pamphlet in the trash without further comment.
And then there are the Ivy Leagues. Eddie had known, somewhere in the back of his mind, that with an ACT score that high, Chris would be sought after. It’s a different thing to see the schools laid out in front of him on paper with his son’s name attached— Harvard, Yale, Stanford. It makes his head spin a little to look at them.
For his part, Christopher seems mostly unmoved. He reads through the pamphlets sometimes, and he stacks them up for later research, but as he’d explained to them both early on— “It’s not like they’re acceptance letters. Everybody gets these.”
Eddie isn’t sure that’s true of all of these schools, but he lets it go.
“How many Ivy League schools are there, anyway?” Eddie asks Buck one afternoon in January as he wrestles Lucas into his coat so that they can all go pick up Chris from school. It’s unseasonably cold today, and Lucas is an LA baby through and through, who hates his coat more than much of anything else.
“Oh!” Buck says, lighting up. “I did research on that. There are only eight!”
He takes the pamphlet Eddie had brought in with the mail and looks it over. It’s Princeton today.
“What does that make us up to, then?” Eddie asks from his crouch on the floor as he patiently tries again to help Lucas put his arm into a puffy green sleeve.
“This is five,” Buck answers, sounding very proud. “So far he’s got Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and Columbia.”
Eddie frowns a little, tugging Lucas’ hand free from the cuff of his coat. “Aren’t, like, all of those on the East coast?” he asks.
Buck pauses at that, considering. “Yeah, all but Stanford,” he concedes. “But it’s still exciting, though, right?”
Eddie nods. “It is,” he says, hoping he manages to sound more agreeable than he feels. “It’s just— I don’t know how I feel about paying a fortune to have my kid thousands of miles away from us.”
He straightens up, Lucas’ coat finally zipped, and lifts the baby with him as he goes. When he looks at Buck, he seems to be considering this angle of the issue for the first time and Eddie feels a little bad for bursting his bubble.
“But like you said,” he says, trying to recover. “Cross that bridge when we get to it, right?”
Lucas takes this moment to squeal with delight and start squirming in Eddie’s arms, apparently deciding he wants Buck exclusively. Eddie can’t help but smile as he watches his husband light up and reach for their baby— their baby, who is still only one year old and at least fifteen years from taking the ACT, thank God. At least there’s that.
Eddie hands him over, brushing his fingers over Lucas’ blonde curls, and Buck nods as he takes their son into his arms.
“Yeah,” he says, smiling easily. “Not today’s problem.”
There are a lot of days when it’s not the problem. Though it lingers in the back of Eddie’s mind as Christopher’s junior year slips by, it begins to take a backseat. They have busy lives— Lucas is growing so fast and Chris keeps an active social life on top of school and there’s work, of course. They fill their days off with the same family activities as always, and in the spring Christopher and Buck take to the garden with even more abandon than usual. Though Eddie has a still-persistent black thumb, Chris flourishes. The whole backyard is lush and green by the time the summer rolls around and brings with it Lucas’ second birthday.
They mark the occasion with a duck-themed cake and a little party at their house, with all of their family gathered. Chris is the one to help Lucas blow out the candles on the cake and later when the boys are in bed there’s the bittersweet softness of knowing that they’re both growing up so much faster than Eddie or Buck can stand to think about.
And in between, the issue comes to life a little at a time. What had been a stack of recruitment letters is whittled down a little at a time and as Christopher’s school year ends, they frequently find him poring over the websites of various schools, narrowing it down and choosing where to apply.
“Did you know that you have to pay like eighty dollars to apply to every college?” Eddie gripes to Buck one morning as his husband patiently helps Lucas with his fork and scrambled eggs. He’s getting pretty good at it, but it remains a messy endeavor.
“Eighty dollars?” Buck asks, turning to look at him. “Each?”
“No!” Lucas adds helpfully from his high-chair, and Eddie smiles at him.
“That’s what I said too,” he agrees, nodding at Buck. “But yes. Well— there was one that was sixty.”
“Great,” Buck says. “That’s so much better.”
Eddie shrugs. It’s not that much of a hardship for them; they can afford the application fees, and he’s very aware that that’s not necessarily the case for all of Christopher’s classmates. But it does make him think. They’re well enough off not to worry about application fees, but the actual cost of college remains a different story.
“Has he narrowed it down yet?” Buck asks him.
“Yep,” Christopher’s voice answers from the doorway as he steps into the kitchen, joining the conversation. He walks over to the coffee pot, the fragrance thickening as he pours it carefully into a mug.
Eddie winces. “The coffee?” he asks, and Chris spares him a withering look.
“You know I’m almost eighteen, right?”
“Yes,” Eddie says, rolling his eyes. “I’m too aware, actually. Just— don’t make it a habit.”
“It’s Saturday,” Christopher tells him. “And I’m not addicted to it like you two are.”
“Someday,” Buck muses, shaking Lucas’ foot to make him giggle. “You, too, will have a demanding job and a toddler to chase after and maybe a teenager and you’ll understand caffeine addiction.”
Chris shrugs, nonchalant as ever, and sits down at the table between them in a pool of summer sunlight that streams in through the window. In the light, the steam rises from the cup in front of him and his curls glow and Eddie wonders for the millionth time where all the time went.
“So,” he prompts. “Fill us in on the college apps.”
“The college counselor at school told us we should be applying to five schools minimum,” he recites. “So I narrowed it down to seven. Like—” he pushes his glasses up on his nose, glancing between them— “to have a cushion.”
“Seems reasonable,” Buck offers.
“Thank you,” Chris says, nodding importantly.
“And the seven schools?” Eddie asks.
Chris looks up, recounting. “UCLA which is just as a safety,” he tells them with a dismissive tone that tells Eddie there’s no doubt that the eighty-dollar application fee will be pointless for that one. “And then CalTech, The University of Washington, and Stanford. That’s all the West coast ones.”
Eddie glances over at Buck, whose face is doing that very still thing it does when he’s trying hard not to express too much. He hopes his own features are achieving anywhere near the level of impassiveness that his husband’s are, despite the faintly sick feeling in his throat.
“Oh?” he asks, voice deliberately even. “Well— where are the other three?”
“On the East coast,” Chris answers. “Yale, UVA, and Rensselaer."
He says it all so matter-of-factly. Like they aren’t each thousands of miles and three time zones away. Like Eddie’s not swallowing hard against the tightness behind his ribs at just the thought of it.
“It sounds like you’ve got it figured out,” Buck says, more encouraging than Eddie has the heart to be when his mouth feels like it’s stuffed with cotton. He’s grateful for their partnership in moments like this, even more than usual. “Let us know if there’s anything you need help with though, okay?”
“I will,” Chris assures him and the world keeps turning— Buck offering eggs, Chris declining in favor of an everything bagel from the bag on the countertop, Lucas happily getting his fingers sticky with bits of fruit as Buck lays them out on his tray.
But this time, it sticks with Eddie longer. Summer feels tainted with it, a little. For every beautiful evening they spend together, mouths sticky with ice cream or skin pink from the sun, there’s also the reminder that it’s one less. He’s being dramatic, probably, but it’s hard not to dwell on the days that he’s already missed out on in Christopher’s life, time he can never get back measured up against the time that remains now, dwindling as the days stretch and begin to grow shorter again.
The acceptance letters start coming in the fall. Chris turns eighteen, and his childhood ends on paper, and when Christopher has left their family gathering to hang out with his friends, they both snuggle Lucas a little longer and later than they usually might. He’s just so aware, as he lies in bed listening for the click of Christopher’s key in the door and the lock to bolt behind him, that it goes by so quickly.
He’s accepted to UCLA first, and doesn’t want a fuss about that— reminds them that it’s his cushion, his safety school. They congratulate him enthusiastically anyway, and when Buck is the one to insist that it’s still a big deal, his first college acceptance, Chris relents a little bit.
And then it’s UVA and an unexpected and unexplained rejection from Yale that Christopher doesn’t seem too bothered by. After that one, Buck climbs into their bed in a huff, arms crossed.
“What’s wrong?” Eddie asks, bemused.
“They’re stupid not to want him,” Buck insists. “Just because it’s an Ivy League school doesn’t mean that they’re too good for him.”
Eddie smiles a little. “You’re mad at Yale on Christopher’s behalf?”
“Yes,” Buck insists. “Aren’t you?”
Eddie shrugs. “Yale has got to be the most expensive school on his list,” he points out. “So maybe we got away with something there.”
Something passes over Buck’s face, brief but there. Eddie can’t exactly place it. “What?” he presses.
“Stanford is only like two thousand less than Yale,” he says. “And same with CalTech. I researched.”
Eddie groans, dropping his head to the pillow behind him and closing his eyes. “Do I even want to know what the cheapest one is?”
“Uh,” Buck says. “You can probably guess.”
“UCLA,” Eddie sighs, and takes his husband’s non-answer as an answer. “Great.”
Buck is uncharacteristically quiet as he tucks himself into bed next to Eddie and flicks off the light. “Try not to worry about it,” he says, voice soft as he reaches out for Eddie in the space between them. He doesn’t have to fumble in the dark to find Eddie’s waist, knows to touch it like an instinct and curls his broad palm over bare skin.
Eddie relaxes back into him, but still lets out a huff. “Easier said than done,” he points out.
“I know,” Buck says. His lips find Eddie’s shoulder, and he settles in spite of himself at the gentle press of a kiss there. “But we don’t even know what he’s going to pick yet.”
Eddie nods. “No, you’re right,” he concedes. “We still have time. Right?”
Buck nods, too, nuzzling his face into the crook of Eddie’s neck from behind, close enough that Eddie can smell his moisturizer and the sharp mint of his toothpaste. It’s hard to feel like much is wrong, like this, wrapped up in Buck.
“Yeah,” Buck breathes. “We have time.”
Buck hates keeping secrets.
It’s not that he’s bad at it. Maybe part of the issue, actually, is that he’s good at it. If he were bad at it,, then he could get away with blurting things out like Chim does and everyone would just accept that as part of his personality.
But he’s actually a pretty decent secret keeper. And this one is eating him alive a little bit. It has been for a while— off and on for years, since before he and Eddie got married, since before they were even together like that, since the lines were blurred and Christopher wasn’t quite his.
But now…well, now things are reaching a fever pitch.
Chris stops mentioning college admissions for a while, which probably should have been a red flag. They were a little too quick to accept that, most likely. It’s just that things are hectic with a high school senior and a two year old in the house on top of demanding jobs, and— okay, maybe they’re both guilty of wanting not to think too hard about what college for Chris will mean to their family.
But today, a Friday in autumn nearly a year after the subject was first broached, Buck is faced with the harsh reality that it’s something they’re going to have to talk about.
Because he’s standing in Christopher’s bedroom looking at what he’s pretty certain is an acceptance letter from Stanford University, which he knows is Christopher’s top choice, and it’s the first he or Eddie have heard about it at all. He doesn’t make a habit of coming into Christopher’s room when he’s not home, but Lucas had been in here last night and now his second favorite stuffed animal is missing, and they knew Chris wouldn’t actually mind. But here’s the letter, right on the desk in Buck’s eyeline. And worse— next to it, open and half-filled out on Christopher’s desk, there’s the UCLA acceptance form.
Half filled out.
Buck’s heart sinks slowly, as if through water, and he thinks about the little kid he’d pulled out of rushing waves once. A kid he’d been willing to die for long before he was his, the way he is now. Buck swallows hard, shaking his head as if there’s anybody there to see it. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s happening here, and he can’t—
He can’t let that unfold.
The secret had gotten away from him— it wasn’t that he’d ever meant to keep it from Eddie, not really. It was one of those things that just sort of happened. And now it can’t be like that anymore. Time’s up, or whatever, he thinks as he reaches for the letter in a vaguely frantic haze and walks back out of Christopher’s room and across the hall to the dining room where Eddie is sitting with Lucas and an open pack of crayons, and stands in the doorway facing his husband.
Eddie looks up, taking in the undoubtedly wild look on Buck’s face, and frowns.
“Are you okay?” he asks, scanning Buck from head to toe and catching his gaze on the paper. “What is that?”
Buck swallows hard. “Eddie,” he says. “I have to tell you something.”
Eddie frowns deeper at that, glancing at Lucas who is still happily occupied and then back to Buck. “Are you okay?” he repeats. “What’s wrong?”
“Um,” Buck says. “I— nothing is wrong, I don’t think. It’s—”
He looks down at the paper. Christopher’s careful handwriting, in the process of accepting a future he doesn’t want because he’s selfless like that, good like that, and it’s nearly enough to make Buck want to cry so he holds it wordlessly out to Eddie instead.
“Look,” he says.
Eddie takes it slowly, his eyes scanning the page as the furrow between his eyebrows deepens.
“What is this?” he asks, confused. “UCLA? I don’t—”
“It’s the acceptance form,” Buck says. “He’s— it was on Christopher’s desk with his Stanford acceptance letter.”
He waits as the words sink in on Eddie: as his eyes widen and he looks up at Buck in understanding.
“He didn’t tell us,” Eddie says, needlessly. “But— what? He doesn’t want to go to UCLA, he’s said it a hundred times.”
“Yeah,” Buck breathes. “Eddie, I have to tell you something.”
Eddie looks up at him for a careful moment. “Okay.”
Buck takes a breath, shaking his head as if it might clear it, and then looking earnestly back up at Eddie like he might be able to will him to understand, somehow.
When the words come, it’s all at once.
“I have a trust fund,” he says. “And I’ve never touched it because I want to use it to pay for Christopher to go to college.”
For a long time, there was nothing that Buck wanted to use the money for. It felt dirty to him, a meaningless offering passed down to him from a family he didn’t fit into, one that didn’t want him. He felt itchy at the thought of using it for anything, for years.
But then there was a boy and his dad. A perfect, shining, delightful boy who saved him in ways Buck still doesn’t have the words for all these years later. And it was the first time that Buck thought maybe there would be something good he could do with that. Something that he could offer, one day.
For a moment in the wake of his words, there’s silence. It’s a shattering kind of thing, something Buck can’t stand to let linger. And now that he’s started, the words just keep pouring out of him as he takes a small step closer to Eddie.
“I swear I was going to tell you,” he says. “I really was. But it was just that we weren’t really anything then, and Chris was so young when I decided that I wanted him to have it. I didn’t even know if he would want to go to college, a-and we weren’t even together yet, so—”
“Stop, stop,” Eddie interrupts, a vaguely frenetic note to his voice. When Buck looks at him, he’s wide-eyed. “We weren’t together yet?”
Buck swallows hard. “Eddie,” he pleads, gesturing to the paper that’s now on the table between them. “He thinks he has to go to UCLA. That’s why he’s doing this. He doesn’t want to go to UCLA, you know he doesn’t but he’s— it’s the cheapest school. And we can’t let him do that, because I-I can pay for it. I want to, I’ve known I would since he was, like, eight, if that’s what he wanted, and—”
“Okay,” Eddie interrupts, getting out of his chair and coming to stand in front of Buck. It’s only then, wide-eyed and frantic, that Buck realizes he’s breathing fast. Eddie puts his hands on both of his shoulders, does that thing where he ducks his head to meet his eyes, and captures Buck in his steady gaze. “Just stop for a second. Okay?”
Buck nods, taking a breath that only shudders a little bit.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you,” he says earnestly. “I swear I meant to, Eds, it just all got away from me and it had been so long.”
Eddie gives a little disbelieving shake of his head. “I don’t understand,” he says. “You have a trust fund? Like— I’m not— how much are we talking about here, Buck?”
Buck shrugs, a little helpless.
“It’s a high-interest account,” he says, his voice unnaturally high. “I don’t look at it. But— enough, like more than enough. For both of the boys, probably, if that’s what Lucas wants when he’s older.”
Eddie stares at him for long enough that it makes Buck start to feel like he’s sweating, a hot uncomfortable fear prickling over his skin. He tries to rationalize it— he doesn’t actually think Eddie is going to be angry with him, but they are married and this is a big thing to hide from your husband and the father of your children, no matter how inadvertent, and maybe—
“Are you mad at me?”
Eddie blinks, like he’s coming back into himself, and Buck watches a storm of emotion flicker over his face with rapid succession before his features settle into something soft and sweet and open.
“Buck,” he breathes, all a rush. “Baby, no; are you out of your mind?”
Before Buck can answer, Eddie has thrown himself fiercely into hugging him— the best kind, the kind that encompasses him even though he’s a little taller and a little broader, the kind that Eddie puts all his strength and love into. There’s a lot. So much that the backs of Buck’s eyes feel hot and prickling, and he blinks hard and stubborn so that he doesn’t actually cry.
Eddie holds him tight for a long time, long enough that Buck goes soft in his hold— can’t help it, when Eddie has him wrapped up like this.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, though he’s sure now that it’s needless.
Eddie lets out a little sound that’s wet but amused against Buck’s shoulder and hugs him just slightly tighter, a warm squeeze.
“You absolutely can’t apologize for this,” he says, his voice sharper and sterner than Buck’s expecting. He nods.
“Okay,” he whispers.
They only pull back when Lucas shrieks in his high chair. They both turn to look at him, still connected by various points of contact: Buck’s fingers at Eddie’s waist and Eddie’s hand on his shoulder.
“Daddy!” Lucas grins, loud and bright around little baby teeth, and something in Buck’s chest caves in a little bit.
“Hi, sunshine,” he coos, stepping away from Eddie to hold his hands out to Lucas. “You want up?”
“Yep,” Lucas chirps, and Buck laughs softly as he extracts him from his chair and picks him up, the weight of the toddler in his arms simultaneously comforting and heartwrenching. It always is, a little— no matter how long the days are and how hard it can be, he’s never not aware of how quickly those long days slip into short years.
Christopher is proof of that much.
Buck looks back at Eddie, at the paper on the table. “What do we do about this?” he asks. “I don’t want him thinking I was— spying on him or something.”
Eddie shakes his head. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ve got it covered.”
Eddie’s plan, as he explains to Buck when he’s put the letter back in Christopher’s room and retrieved Lucas’ stuffed animal, is simple enough.
They’ll wait for Chris to come to them.
Buck thinks about it late that night, feeling strangely proud. There had been a time when Eddie— anguished, afraid— had pleaded with Buck for his help, anything to avoid having to break down Christopher’s door, desperate for his son to be the one to come to him, to them.
He’s confident now. It makes something glow warm in Buck’s chest when he thinks about it, and despite the impending hanging over them and a slight worry that Chris might take matters into his own hands and just haphazardly accept a spot at UCLA that he doesn’t want— Buck feels better, having told Eddie everything.
And in the end, it doesn’t take that long at all for Chris to do exactly as Eddie had thought he would.
They’re in the kitchen again, dishes nearly finished as Lucas plays at their feet, in the way every step but in too active of a stage to be contained to his chair anymore. Christopher has been entertaining him in a game of what passes for hide and seek when you’re two— primarily, it consists of Lucas hiding behind the table leg, fully visible, while Chris pretends not to see him.
Lucas is still giggling from their last round when Chris looks up and, in his usual nonchalant fashion, announces to the room at large that he’s picked a college.
Buck and Eddie glance at each other, and then back at their son.
“Have you heard back from everywhere already?” Eddie asks casually.
“Yeah,” Chris answers, with just as much forced ease. With his back to both of them, Buck huffs a quiet sigh. They’re so alike that they might as well be mirrors of one another, in all the best ways. At least, if you’re asking Buck.
“What about Stanford?” Eddie presses as Buck reaches for the dishtowel and dries his hands.
“Yeah,” Chris repeats evasively. “I heard back from them, but I think I’m going with UCLA.”
In an effort not to react, Buck reaches for Lucas and scoops him up. When he chances a look at Chris, he’s not looking back at either of them.
“UCLA?” Eddie repeats. “I mean— no offense, Chris, but why?”
Christopher shrugs one shoulder deliberately. “Maybe I just want to be closer to home.”
That’s a deep cut, and they all know it. Eddie and Buck look at each other for a moment, and Buck can practically see the gears in Eddie’s head turn as he formulates how to respond.
“Mijo,” he says, eventually, softly. “You know that we would want nothing more than for you to be close to home. But I’m not really convinced that that’s what you want when you’ve been clear that Stanford was your top pick for a while now.”
“Hi Daddy!” Lucas shrieks happily. It’s his favorite hobby lately, exchanging greetings for no reason at all.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Buck answers patiently, tapping the toddler’s cheek affectionately, before turning to Chris. “Your dad’s right,” he says. “Maybe you want to give it some more thought?”
Chris tugs his bottom lip briefly between his teeth. It’s a tell he’s had since he was young— as long as Buck has known him. The sight of it now makes Buck’s chest squeeze tight.
“Yeah, maybe,” Chris agrees. “I’ll think about it.”
He moves to get up before the words are even out of his mouth, and Buck starts to speak but Eddie reaches out, tapping his arm lightly with the tiniest shake of his head. The signal is clear, and Buck goes quiet.
It’s not until Chris is out of the room, the latch of his door clicking into place, that either of them speaks.
“I think you should tell him,” Eddie says without preamble.
Buck looks over, surprised, but there’s not a trace of uncertainty on his husband’s face. Eddie looks— sure, and calm.
“Me?” Buck answers, unable to think of anything else to say.
Eddie, true to form, rolls his eyes. “Yes, Buck,” he answers. “You.” He reaches for Lucas, plucking him with ease out of Buck’s arms and cuddling him close. “Can you believe your Daddy?” he asks, his voice taking on that softer note as he digs his fingers lightly into Lucas’ tummy and sends him into peals of laughter. “He’s so silly.”
“Silly Daddy!” Lucas says, half unintelligible through his laughter.
Buck can’t help but smile at that, ducking closer to them to tickle Lucas on his other side.
“Silly Daddy?” he repeats, reveling in the breathless giggles out of their two-year-old. “You’re the silly goose in this house.”
Catching his breath, Lucas shakes his head, points to his own chest, and says— “Lucas!”
Laughing, Buck nods and leans in to kiss his soft, pink cheek. “Okay,” he relents. “You’re Lucas.”
Looking back at Eddie, he finds warm brown eyes full of soft understanding.
“Buck,” Eddie says. “Go talk to him. It’s yours to tell.”
Buck hesitates. “Yeah?”
“Mhm,” Eddie says. “I’ll do bathtime. Go.”
There’s a moment, between kissing Eddie and Lucas each again on the cheek and coming to stand in front of Christopher’s bedroom door, when Buck pauses.
When he looks around at the home they’ve built together— a house that had once belonged to Eddie and Chris, and then briefly Buck, and then Eddie and Chris again. A house that had been bought and expanded. The house that had grown with them, changed alongside them as they became the family that they are now. The only home Lucas has ever known, and the one that has been Christopher’s since he first came to Los Angeles. Even when he was in Texas, the house had been the tether. A safe place for all of them, in their own individual ways.
And it’ll be home even when Chris is away— wherever that is. Buck knows that Stanford is three hundred and sixty miles away. That the drive would take them five hours and forty minutes on I-5 going north— not counting traffic, so longer realistically. And the thought of having Chris that far away from them is hard for him, too.
But it’s harder to imagine him giving it up. Harder to imagine the most brilliant, deserving, generous child he’s ever known putting himself into a box he doesn’t belong in. Buck would do anything— a lot more than dipping into a fund he’s never had any other use for— to make sure that doesn’t happen.
He’s known that for a long time. A lot longer than he’s known the name for it.
Feeling steadier, he raises his hand and raps his knuckles on the door. “Hey, Chris?” he calls. “Got a minute?”
There’s a pause, the faintest shuffling of paper beneath the hum of Eddie’s voice from the bathroom down the hall.
“Yeah,” Chris says. “Come in.”
Buck opens the door, invited this time, and walks into Christopher’s room. He’s at his desk, so Buck perches on the edge of the bed.
“Can we talk?” he asks.
Chris grimaces, turning in his swivel chair. “Is this about UCLA?” he asks, cautious.
Buck tilts his head, considering. “Kind of. More about, uh— college in general?”
Chris sighs, busying his hands by flipping a pencil repeatedly on the top of his desk, the eraser tap-tap-tapping against the wood.
“We can talk,” he says, “but I don’t want you to try to convince me.”
Buck smiles a little at that. “When have I ever done that?” he asks.
Conceding, Chris shrugs. “Okay,” he relents. “What is this about then?”
Buck takes a deep breath, his eyes finding a snowglobe that’s tucked into the corner of the bookshelf against the wall. It contains a snow leopard and it’s branded with the emblem of the LA Zoo across the front. Buck remembers it well— remembers buying it and handing it to an enthralled eight year old Christopher on a sunny day in some lost spring.
He looks back at Chris, who’s watching him with all his usual discerning calm through his glasses.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” he starts. “And— maybe I should have told you a long time ago, but for what it’s worth I also kept it from your dad until recently.”
Christopher’s eyebrows go up at that. “You kept it from Dad?” he asks. “Are you in trouble?”
Buck laughs, shaking his head and relaxing just a little. It’s hard, but it’s Chris. They’ve always spoken a particular language between the two of them.
“No,” he says. “Believe it or not, he wasn’t even mad at me.”
“Not exactly fair, but okay,” Chris shrugs, smiling a little, too.
It’s quiet for a moment.
“I know you got into Stanford,” Buck admits. “That’s— not the secret thing, but I thought I should be transparent about that, too. I saw the letter on your desk the other day when I came in looking for Lucas’ toy.”
Chris nods, looking back at his pencil. “Yeah,” he says. “Just because I got in doesn’t mean I’m going.”
Buck nods his head, buying himself a moment to collect his thoughts. “No,” he agrees. “It doesn’t. And you know that at the end of the day, we’re going to support whatever you choose. It’s— you know that, right? That we don’t care if you even want to go to college, we would be behind you no matter what?”
Christopher takes in a breath.
“I know,” he says on the exhale.
“So,” Buck says. “That being said. Um— do you remember the day of the tsunami, when we were on the pier, what I asked you?”
Chris looks up, a little surprised. “Yeah,” he says. “What I wanted to be when I grew up?”
Buck smiles, knowing it looks wistful on his face by the way it feels in his throat. It’s a good memory, with all this space between that day and this one. Distance, perspective.
“Yeah,” he affirms. “You said an astronaut or a pirate,” he laughs. “Or a firefighter.”
Christopher rolls his eyes, but Buck smiles broader.
“I would never make it as a pirate,” Christopher says, and Buck can’t help but laugh.
“Maybe not,” he concedes. “But you were so— you had such beautiful dreams. I was so in awe of you then, and I’m— Chris, I’m still so in awe of you now.”
Christopher ducks his head. “Why are you telling me this now?” he asks. “Your motivational speech is getting kinda rambly.”
“Not a motivational speech,” Buck laughs. “I knew then— before then, maybe, but especially after that day— that I wanted to be a part of your future. That I wanted to know what you would grow up to be like. I wanted to see you find those dreams, the real ones, what you would want to become when you were older. I was thinking about it when I was looking for you.”
He pauses, picking at the edge of Christopher’s comforter and listening to him breathe in the otherwise quiet. And then he looks up at him.
“Chris,” he says. “I think I know why you’re choosing UCLA over Stanford.”
Christopher hesitates, but doesn’t ultimately speak so Buck presses on.
“You’re so much like your dad,” he says softly, tenderly. In a way that makes it so obvious that he says it with every ounce of pure admiration he has for them both. “I know you’re thinking about this the way he would. I know you’re looking at how much an Ivy League costs.”
If he wasn’t sure already, he’d know now by the way Chris stiffens. Someone else might miss it, but Buck has known Christopher most of his life.
“Well,” Chris says. “They are expensive. UCLA is local.”
“Yeah,” Buck agrees. “But, um— Chris, hey.” He reaches out, puts his hand on the boy’s knee— barely a boy anymore, but when Buck looks at him he still sees little glasses and crooked teeth. Chris looks up, soft. “What I want to tell you is that I, uh. I have the money for you to go to college. Anywhere you want. It’s— like I said, maybe I should have told you and your dad a long time ago but I didn’t want you to ever feel like you had to, you know? And you still don’t! But it— it can be your choice, Christopher.”
Christopher frowns at him for a moment.
“What?” he asks. “What do you mean?”
Buck takes in a steadying breath. “I had money set aside for me,” he explains. “By my parents.”
Chris blinks. “You don’t talk to your parents anymore.”
“No,” Buck agrees. “But this money has been mine for a long time. And I decided years ago that this is what I would use it for, if anything. It’s money I never had any interest in using for myself. But I met you, and I knew that someday if you needed it, I would use it for that. I wanted—”
He pauses, clearing his throat, looking into Chris’ face deliberately.
“I want,” he says. “For you to be able to be whatever you want to be. You and Lucas. You wouldn’t be taking anything away from him, okay? Or from anything else. It was always supposed to be for you.”
There’s a long moment of soft, gentle quiet. The tension has drained out of the room now, and all that’s left is Chris, blinking behind his glasses, and Buck— heart in the hands of a child he’s loved so long that he can’t remember who he was without the space it takes up in his chest.
Christopher is quiet for so long that Buck starts to wonder, just faintly, if he’s made a mistake.
And then, Chris leans in closer to him, and swallows hard enough that Buck can see it in his throat.
“You know that you were always my dad, too, right?” Chris says, feather soft and so sincere that it shreds Buck’s heart and stitches it promptly back together again.
“Chris,” he whispers, and then without warning he has his arms full of nearly-grown, still little, warm teenage boy. It’s like every hug before, and nothing like any of them.
Buck feels it when Christopher wraps his fingers in the fabric of his shirt, just like he used to, and thinks—
It was always this. Always Eddie and Christopher, just like this, long before Buck had the words to say it.
“I love you,” he says, his hand on Christopher’s head. “So much.”
“I love you, Buck,” Chris breathes.
The words, Buck thinks, are not even the most important part. His eyes catch again on the snow leopard in its globe and he holds on— for a shimmering, fleeting moment— just a little bit tighter.