Work Text:
“You okay?”
Eddie startles, caught, and tears his eyes away from the dark glass of the bedroom window.
At the foot of their bed, his husband in all his showerdamp, softened evening glory. He’s wearing loose shorts that ride up on his broad, soft thighs and holding a sweatshirt in his hands. It’s ridiculous, a navy blue innocuous sort of thing except to Eddie, who knows that it sports the LAFD logo on the front and says Diaz across the back. He also knows that Buck bought it from an Etsy shop within weeks of their wedding. The LAFD issues no such article of clothing, and certainly not in two sizes too big for his broad-chested, six-two husband— but when Buck pulls it over his head and tugs it down over his chest, he still has to cuff the sleeves twice on his wrists. He sleeps in it every night, and Eddie loves him so much it hurts.
He smiles now, a little, as he watches Buck’s curls drip onto his bare shoulders and the crease between his blue eyes.
“I’m fine,” he answers.
It’s mostly true. Outside, the air is thick and heavy and the dark sky is obscurant, grey and swirling against a backdrop of velvet nothingness. It leaves Eddie feeling uneasy, even now, the imprint of a night long gone not quite faded from the backs of his eyelids.
But there’s Buck. In front of him in their bedroom wearing a wedding band and holding a stupid sweatshirt with Eddie’s name on it, like he can’t get enough of being his in all the ways he can. Eddie is so ridiculously fortunate that it feels impossible, even though he keeps waking up in this life day after day. Buck is here, and whole and safe and soft. Eddie reaches out from his place in their bed and grabs at nothing with his fingers.
Buck grins, bright and quick and canine, and shoves himself into his sweatshirt, leaving the sleeves uncuffed in his haste to get to Eddie, who goes from empty grabby hands to a lapful of Buck in a matter of seconds.
He laughs, breathless with the impact, and Buck tumbles playfully onto the bed. He’s gotten skilled at the maneuver, twisting in such a way that doesn’t irritate his knee, and he executes it perfectly at least three or four nights a week. Eddie languishes in the light of something so hot and glowing and bright, but comes back to life in the same instant. It’s so normal and sweet and perfect that he can’t imagine, even now, how he thrives in it.
Except that he does. They do.
Buck smiles up at him, his head in Eddie’s lap. But his blue eyes are soft and understanding, like he’s seeing something Eddie can’t.
“Sure you’re okay?” he asks, his voice low and easy. Eddie is reminded often, when Buck speaks to him, of a place draped in moss and sunlight where the air tasted of salt. He’s never sure whether he’s been or dreamed it up.
He brushes his fingers over his husband’s cheek. “I’m good, baby,” he murmurs, and feels Buck’s dimple carved out beneath his fingers, wonders for the millionth time if that’s what it might have felt like to work art from marble.
Buck tucks them both into bed, and Eddie lets his body follow mindlessly, limbs magnetic as his husband settles with a soft huff of precious breath and Eddie curls in around him. Eddie used to crave dancing, sometimes, but now he gets this: the rhythm of Buck shifting into place, the tempo of the in and out routine, spliced with Buck reaching for the light and the drama of the plunge into soft darkness. It’s near enough to the heartbeat of his feet in dance shoes, when Buck nuzzles into him and their lungs fall into sync and Eddie’s whole body goes lax and soft in a way that makes him feel very young.
He hums, contented. Closes his eyes, then opens them.
“Door open?” he asks, his voice a floating thing in the dark.
Buck shifts behind him, settling and tangling until Eddie can feel the brush of his socks against his own bare feet and the way his stomach presses into Eddie’s back, warm and familiar.
“Mhm,” he affirms. “Lucas’ door, too.”
Eddie is not on edge. In fact, in this house, in this bed, Eddie is rarely ever on edge. He’s just making sure. More habit than uncertainty.
Outside the window, the sky remains foreboding. Eddie tilts his head back until his neck is bared, exposed and vulnerable. But his crown knocks gently into Buck’s collarbone, and then Buck’s breath ghosts over his temple and ruffles his hair. He smells like the shower, their shared scented gel, their shared laundry detergent, a little bit like their three-year-old, somehow. Eddie inhales and Buck kisses him high on his cheekbone, messy and easy, reminding Eddie of Lucas’ fingerpaint.
“Love you,” he hums.
Buck smiles and tucks his face into Eddie’s neck, so close that Eddie feels the barest gentlest scrape of his teeth. “Love you back,” he mumbles, the faint scratch of sleep creeping into his voice.
Eddie shifts his ankles so that they are further inextricable from Buck’s, and closes his eyes, and it’s in this way that he falls asleep— wrapped up very snug against his husband, and unseeing the way the sky flashes distantly bright.
When Eddie wakes, it’s in the midst of a breath— his lungs seize with the shock of it and he startles as his body careens into consciousness.
Eddie blinks, and then there’s a soft sniffle, and he’s face to face with soft red cheeks lined from the cotton of a Toy Story pillowcase; blonde curls everywhere; big, glassy blue eyes framed by soft lashes clumped in tears; a swath of golden light from the nightlight in the hallway illuminating his baby’s tearful face as Eddie’s chest goes tight.
“Oh, baby,” he coos feather softly, already reaching for Lucas where he stands in his favorite firetruck pajamas. “Come here, honey. What’s wrong?”
Lucas’ lower lip trembles as Eddie eases him up off the floor, bare feet lifting easily until he’s in Eddie’s arms. He opens his mouth to answer, but doesn’t quite get that far— beyond the window, where Eddie’s gaze had been earlier, there’s a shattering rumble and a blueviolet flash nearly on top of each other.
Lucas wraps his fingers into the fabric of Eddie’s shirt, his other hand tight around his favorite stuffed duckie as he curls tight and small against Eddie’s chest. Eddie aches as he cradles his baby’s head in one hand and rubs his back with the other, his shoulder getting damp.
“Shh,” he soothes into the dark. “Hey, mi sol, you’re okay. I’ve got you.”
“Too big,” Lucas cries into Eddie’s shoulder.
Eddie knows all about it. Remembers nights before Lucas was born, when the sky flashed with something that threatened to take everything away from him and Eddie froze like something caught in camera light, his lungs tight with the feeling of loss.
“You’re okay, buddy,” he whispers. “I know it’s scary. It’s okay.”
“Dad, too big,” Lucas insists.
A helpless tug unravels something in Eddie’s chest and he holds his baby closer. “I know, my angel,” he hums, rubbing Lucas’ back up and down and counting the ridges of his spine. “It feels too big, I hear you. You’re okay, I promise.”
It occurs to him then, that Lucas is made of pieces of Buck. When he brushes his fingertips over the soft skin that covers scapula and vertebrae, the marrow in those bones carries Buck’s. On a night much like this one, the body sleeping next to him had hung from a ladder. Beneath Eddie’s hands, his bones had collapsed in on a heart that was still. For three minutes and seventeen seconds, Buck had been gone.
And then, he’d come back to them. His ribs had grown safely together again. He had returned to life like gardens in spring, and some time afterward he’d handed over part of himself in exchange for Lucas— who curls up in Eddie’s lap on a wet and later midnight, feeling too small for the storm as the rain lashes against the windowpanes.
And next to them, the body whose weight Eddie had felt at the end of a useless rope sleeps soundly. The chest that had caved in beneath his hands rises and falls with devastating steadiness.
Eddie’s throat feels tight, suddenly.
He looks down at Lucas in the halflight, and uses his fingertips to brush some of his curls off of his warm forehead.
“You want to know something?” he asks.
Watercolored and shaky, Lucas nods, a pout still affixed to his little face.
“Dad gets scared of storms, too,” he says, watching Lucas’ eyes widen fractionally. Eddie cups his cheek, brushes against the sticky teartrack with his thumb. “But you know what always helps me when I’m scared of storms?”
“What?” Lucas asks, his voice a whimper.
Eddie leans in close. “Daddy,” he whispers. “He’s the best at making me feel better. Do you want to wake him up so he can make you feel better, too?”
Lucas nods, quick and urgent.
“Go ahead, baby,” Eddie encourages him, leaning in toward his sleeping husband so that Lucas can crawl out of his lap— all knees and elbows— and into the barely-there space between them, tumbling into Buck’s sturdy shoulders.
Eddie watches, heart in his mouth, as Buck comes out of sleep— his face creases and Eddie aches; his eyes flutter softly open like butterfly wings and he comes to life with a breath, and Eddie aches on the inhale; he turns his gaze like a magnet to their baby, and Eddie aches.
“Oh, hi there,” Buck murmurs. His voice is a different kind of low now— not the salted kind for Eddie, but the lullaby kind for Lucas. He reaches, broad palms and easy grasp, and fits his hands easily around their son’s waist, hauling him fluidly into his arms. “What’s wrong, my baby?” he says, soft and gentle and warm as Lucas collapses into him, pure trust wound up in the skin and heartbeat of a living child.
“Scary,” Lucas whispers. He tilts his head back, blue eyes wide. “It’s so big, Daddy.”
Buck glances up at Eddie, who feels better just looking at him.
“The storm,” Eddie clarifies.
No sooner has Buck’s face gone warm with understanding does the thunder come again, roaring and lingering. Lucas tenses, but Buck is there in the space between heartbeats, cradling him with one arm and using the other hand to brush through his curls, a soothing softness in his touch.
“Oh, it’s okay,” Buck coos. He scoops Lucas closer, and then he inches across the space that separates the two of them from Eddie.
Eddie has always thought that Buck was extraordinarily caring. Never more so than since they brought home a perfect little newborn three years ago. And maybe never more so than now, when he reaches out and opens his arm to Eddie with a soft certainty on his face.
Eddie leans in, and wonders how it’s possible for someone to have such space in their heart. How someone could be so singularly good, that he might be in the midst of comforting his child, and still have the space and love to consider the faint patter of fear in Eddie’s chest, too. If earlier he’d felt fortunate, in this sleepy moment in the chrysalic safety of their warm bedroom, Eddie feels rich, abundant beyond what anything in this life could cost.
He curls up at Buck’s side and puts his hand on their baby’s side, his palm a span over his soft, small ribs.
Lucas lies between them, his little face curious and cautious as he looks up from their mattress.
“Dad says he was scared,” he says.
Buck looks over his head at Eddie, soft and sweet.
“That’s okay,” he murmurs. His ankle finds Eddies, hooks over and settles between the sheets. “Do you know why?”
“Why?” Lucas echoes. On his chest, his duckie lays just beneath Eddie’s hand. Buck’s is splayed across his hip. He’s cocooned between them, their bodies brackets.
“Because,” Buck smiles, leaning in like it’s a secret. “We don’t have to be scared of the storm when we have our own little sunshine right here in our bed!”
He gives Lucas a little shake and Eddie watches as, like magic, their baby’s face melts into joy. That’s Buck, though. Always has been. If Lucas is sunshine, and he is— it’s because of the pieces of Buck that glimmer and shine in him.
“Me?” Lucas asks, delighted.
“Of course, you,” Buck coos, leaning in until he can press his nose to Lucas’ cheek, insistent and soft.
Lucas giggles, the perfect sound, and turns to Eddie. “Are you scared?” he asks, with all the easy distractible curiosity of a three-year-old that Eddie could envy if he wasn’t so full of deep, deep love.
He looks across at Buck, who’s looking back at Eddie like he’s the magic, somehow, impossibly.
“No,” he whispers, looking back at Lucas and feeling in many ways like he’s still looking at Buck, too. “Not anymore.”
“Because of Daddy,” Lucas says, with finality.
Eddie reaches out. His hand lands on his husband’s waist and he squeezes gently. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “Because of both of you.”
Buck looks down at Lucas. “What do you think, sweetheart?” he murmurs, his hand rubbing gently over Lucas’ tummy. “You want to sleep in here with us tonight?”
Lucas is easy. His lashes are already fluttering, his little body furnace warm and lax and soft in ways that sometimes make Eddie want to cry. Like this, trapped between them, he looks babyish again, in the same way that the morning will make him look so big. Time tricks them like tides, in and out and in again.
“Mhm,” Lucas hums, and then he turns on his side and, still clutching his duck, tucks himself into Buck’s arms.
Buck lets out a warm, soft breath of a laugh and Eddie—
Eddie doesn’t believe in God. Not exactly. But there are moments that are so beautiful, when he’s so thankful that they’re both here to witness them that it almost feels like something irreversibly divine. Whatever that is, whatever it means beyond the lash of rain on the windows and the sky lighting up lilac, he’s grateful.
Buck tucks their baby into his chest, holding him tenderly and close, and Eddie inches close enough that he can feel them both breathing.
Over Lucas’ head, Buck blows him a kiss.
In response, while Lucas dozes easily off to sleep, Eddie leans in— cups Buck’s cheeks with both hands, squishing his face lightly, and kisses him firmly, surely, certainly.
Buck still goes warm and pink and pliant beneath him. And when Eddie pulls away, his husband is smiling sleepily.
“You okay, sweetheart?” he whispers.
Eddie nods his head, then tucks it onto the pillow next to them both and closes his eyes again.
Outside, lightning flashes stark against a swirling sigh of wind in the clouds above Los Angeles. And inside, none of them see it at all.