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Buck has experienced many different kinds of Christmas.
He’s had stiff, formal, boring Christmases at his parents’ house as a child— Christmases where thing were meant to be seen and not touched, and the matching outfits were all for show and not a sign of any real family connection. Just pretty for the annual photo, all of it a facade.
He’s had white Christmases. He’s spent Christmases on the road, just him and the Jeep and an aching pit of loneliness. He’s spent Christmases with friends who weren’t quite family enough for it to feel right. He’s spent Christmases just on the outskirts— those years before he and Eddie became what they are, the years when he was part of it but it wasn’t really his.
And there have been the Christmases since. The good Christmases. The ones where even if he or Eddie or both were on shift, it was okay, because they were coming home together or to each other. The Christmases spent making their own traditions; the Christmases where Buck woke up happy and warm and safe and pressed against his husband, knowing that Chris was just down the hall.
And there have also been the Lucas Christmases. Five perfect, shining, beautiful holidays have passed since their family was completed by the little blonde-haired, blue-eyed ball of joy that the youngest Diaz is. These have been the best Christmases of Buck’s life— watching Eddie with their tiny baby; watching Christopher flourish as a big brother; knowing that he is one of two pillars in this little boy’s life. Being the one to wrap the presents and the one he brings the packages to when he can’t open them alone. Making cookies with him; lifting him up so he can put the star on the tree; reading him Christmas stories on the floor by his bed at night even though it makes Buck’s knee twinge. It’s so worth it. He’s so worth it.
Buck has also experienced many different kinds of disaster. So many. Probably close to as many kinds of disaster as he’s experienced kinds of Christmas. It’s just that usually, it doesn’t all happen at the same time.
He stands in the kitchen on the night of Christmas Eve, and looks out at the darkness beyond the glass. Rain lashes hard and relentless against the window and in the dark there’s a familiar flicker, a blueviolet splitting glow against the clouds. He turns instinctively, searching for Eddie, knowing he’ll be close.
The lightning strike feels like it happened a lifetime ago, if you’re asking Buck. He knows that his husband feels differently, even now.
Eddie is right there, as Buck had thought he’d be, so he turns his back to the kitchen window and faces Eddie instead, gets one hand under the hem of his shirt on his hip and uses the other to reach up, pressing his thumb to the furrow between his eyebrows.
“Sweetheart,” Buck says softly, pulling Eddie’s gaze back to his face and away from the window. “Hey. You okay?”
Eddie swallows hard enough that Buck sees it.
“Mhm,” he hums. He means it— mostly. He still leans into Buck, though, and Buck lets him. He can’t imagine a world in which he might ever not shift to accommodate Eddie: a reality in which he’s not doing this, wrapping his arm around Eddie’s waist beneath his shirt and settling in the curve of his lower back; tugging him closer, bracketing his shoulders and pulling him into a tight, secure hug as Eddie tucks his head into Buck’s neck and they breathe each other in. Buck turns his head, pressing a kiss to his dark hair.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, just for Eddie, too quiet to be heard even in the same room. Eddie relaxes against him, going pliant.
That’s as far as they get before there’s a sudden flicker above them, and then all at once, the lights go out.
Eddie tenses as there’s a startled shriek from the direction of the living room, and Buck and Eddie both move as one through the dark.
“Dad!” Lucas calls out. “Daddy!”
“Stay right there,” Buck says as they move together around the dining table, moving on memory. “I don’t want you to trip in the dark. One second.”
“It’s dark!” Lucas cries, sounding— understandably— freaked out. A power outage is probably pretty terrifying to a five-year-old.
Eddie gets to him first. Shadowed in the dimness, he scoops the boy up from where he’s standing by the couch and perches him securely on his hip as Lucas clings to him. “Hey, honey, you’re okay,” Eddie says lowly. “See? We’re right here.”
The door on Christopher’s bedroom unlatches and opens, and he stands in the doorframe, barely more than a shadow.
“Chris, be careful!” Lucas says, vaguely frantic. “It’s dark!”
There’s a half-laugh from Christopher’s direction. “It’s okay,” he says patiently to his little brother. “I’m being careful.”
With Lucas taken care of, Buck doubles back to the kitchen and comes up with flashlights and candles from the junk drawer. With a little bit of light, Eddie moves onto the couch with Lucas still in his arms, and Chris steps into the room. Against the window, the dark silhouette of the Christmas tree is illuminated by another flash of bright lightning.
With a couple of candles lit and the initial shock of the moment passing, it begins to sink in on Buck what this actually means, late into the evening on Christmas Eve, and his heart sinks a little bit at the thought of it.
He’s not the only one who’s having a similar thought.
“Dad!” Lucas says urgently, looking around at Eddie in the dim glow. “How will Santa find us? We don’t even have the tree!”
He sounds distraught, even near tears.
“Okay,” Eddie soothes. “Let’s not get too worried yet, okay? The lights might come back on soon.”
Realistically, Buck knows that his husband does not believe that for a moment. On a holiday, in a storm, the likelihood of getting power restored to their neighborhood before morning is very, very slim.
Christopher silently turns his phone in Buck’s direction. Across the screen, there’s an outage map that confirms Buck’s suspicions— dots representing houses without power nearly cover the screen, confirming that it’s affecting their entire neighborhood and then some. Below it, a grim chart with an estimated restoration time of 10:30 a.m, tomorrow morning.
But something else catches Buck’s eye— a clear spot on the map, an area he knows very well with no outage dots at all. And that gives him an idea.
“You know what?” he says aloud. “I think I have a plan.”
He starts by calling Hen. She and her family are also out of power, and a few taps in the group chat to review the messages from the others confirms that they’re not the only ones. But there’s one place that isn’t. And Buck thinks he knows exactly how to salvage Christmas.
“I don’t know, Buck,” Hen says, her voice hesitant across the phone.
“Come on,” Buck says, keeping his voice low where he’s standing in the kitchen, away from prying ears. “We’ll go offline and become a- a community center. Everybody’s got food for tomorrow that needs to be eaten; we can all bring our presents. It’s shift-change anyway, the others will be happy to have the option of going to their families and if anybody in the neighborhood needs help, they’ll have a place to go.”
She hesitates still, and Buck presses. “Hen,” he says gently. “It’s Christmas.”
“Okay,” she relents. “Let’s do it.”
Buck moves back into his living room.
“Okay, Diazes!” he announces. “Christmas is saved!”
Eddie looks up at him from the couch, confused, while Lucas pokes his head up with a hopeful expression on his little face.
“You can make the lights come back?” he asks.
“Not quite,” Buck replies. “But I think I’ve got something just as good. Come on.”
They divide and conquer: Buck loads up all the Christmas cookies and everything he’s prepped for tomorrow, while Eddie carefully deposits all of their Chrismtas presents into waterproof bags so that they can carry them to the car. In the meantime, Chris goes with Lucas to his room to get his shoes and his coat.
“What is this grand plan, exactly?” Eddie asks as he and Buck finish up with the gifts, casting a nervous look past the windows to where it’s still storming.
“Hey,” Buck says gently, getting his husband’s attention. “I know the storm freaks you out, but I’m going to take the main road. Hen’s agreed to put the station offline so we can be like, kind of a community center. And they have power! So we’ll take some of the extra lights and everybody is going to come. It’ll be like a-a big family Christmas.”
Eddie softens a little, looking at Buck’s face.
“You know,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re really something.”
Buck smiles, face-to-face with his husband on the floor and feeling jittery and soft under the glow of his attention, even now.
“Thanks,” he whispers, and then leans in and lets Eddie kiss him.
He makes two trips to the car and loads everything in, moving quickly through the relentless rain. The storm doesn’t scare Buck. Not much does, really. But the thought of letting his family down. The idea of Lucas losing a Christmas, missing one of these early magical years when they’re already so few and dwindling. That scares Buck. He’d do anything to keep that from happening— including loading up the car and transforming the whole firehouse in the middle of a torrential downpour.
“Who’s ready to go save Christmas?” he calls, stepping back into the house and being met with an excitable little five-year-old in rainboots, a grinning and impossibly grown-up Christopher, and Eddie watching them all with his smallest, fondest little smile.
“Me!” Lucas insists, bouncing up and down.
“Okay, then!” Buck agrees, scooping him up. “Then let’s make a break for it!”
They’re all a little damp by the time they’re safely in the car, and Buck drives them carefully to the firehouse without incident. When they arrive, he backs right up to the engine doors since they’re offline now anyway, and the Diazes pile inside. Hen and Karen with Mara in tow have already arrived and the lights are on; people from the shift that just ended are milling about a little bit aimlessly; upstairs, the Christmas tree is brightly lit. Chris leads Lucas inside and Lucas excitedly runs for the elevator, overjoyed to press the buttons for his brother, while Buck and Eddie unload the car.
Hen stands before them with her hands on her hips and a barely-suppressed smile on her face.
“What am I going to do with you?” she asks as Buck passes her laden down with presents.
He grins. “You love me, Henrietta.”
She raises her eyebrows. “You’re lucky your kid is here, Buckley.”
He laughs and heads up the stairs with Eddie right behind him, fully in his element. He lays out the presents in neat piles, sorted by recipient since there are going to be so many. He goes to the kitchen and lays out all the food he brought, chatting with everyone who walks by. Eddie brings up the bag of their extra lights, and Buck brightens at the sight of them.
“Oh, yeah!” he says, dusting his hands off. “C’mon, I have a plan for those.”
Downstairs, Chim and Maddie are arriving, shepherding their damp children in through the engine door.
“Uncle Buck!” Jee-Yun shouts, racing across the floor in his direction.
“Oh!” he laughs as she slams into him and he lifts her off her feet in a big hug. “My favorite little girl. Hi, Jee!” He turns to his nephew, then, grinning as he offers one open arm to loop him into the hug, too. “Hi, Jae-Jae! Merry Christmas, you guys.”
“We thought we wouldn’t see you until tomorrow!” Jee chatters, her eyes bright and something about her looking so much like Maddie. “But then— then Daddy said we were spending the night at the firehouse.”
“At the firehouse!” Jae repeats after his sister, throwing out his hands for emphasis as Buck grins.
“Isn’t that way better than spending Christmas in the dark?” he asks, and laughs when they nod enthusiastically.
“Go find your cousins, they’re upstairs!” he encourages them, and watches them race off before turning to hug Maddie one-armed as she shares a fond look with Eddie.
“Leave it to you,” she says, her voice warm, “to have me dragging my kids to my husband’s workplace in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve.”
Buck smiles brighter still.
“Hope you brought your sleeping bags!”
The place steadily fills up as Buck and Eddie work on his Christmas light project— which is to say, haphazardly string colored lights across the length of the engine. When they’re finished, Buck plugs them in and they head upstairs to join the party.
In the loft, there’s Christmas music playing from someone’s phone and a portable speaker; the kitchen is bursting with people and far more food than Buck had left it with, including Bobby who looks as at home as ever there, serving plates for people; the kids and a few others are crowded around the TV playing a brutal round of Mario Kart; and nearly everyone is in their pajamas.
It’s kind of everything that Buck could have imagined in a perfect Christmas. Their house might be sitting empty and powerless, but everyone he loves is in this room and the lightning has disappeared from the sky outside, leaving his husband relaxed where his shoulder is pressed up against Buck’s, and their boys are laughing and leaning into each other over on the couch, all in the very room where Buck first felt like he belonged somewhere.
He smiles over at Eddie. “You hungry?”
They share a plate, piled up with some of everything, and settle down together in one oversized chair. It’s a tight fit, but Eddie is half in Buck’s lap and if you’re asking Buck it’s kind of everything. The storm calms down and aside from giving directions and patching up a wanderer or two, handing out some bottled waters down in the engine bay amid calls of happy holidays, it’s pretty quiet. The evening wears on deep into the night and the kids start to flag. Everyone finds a spot; Bobby goes to turn the overhead lights out, citing it’s still my house as he waves Hen off good-naturedly; and Lucas wanders over to his parents, a hopeful look on his otherwise tired face.
“Hi, sunshine,” Buck says, picking him up and getting a giggle out of him as he’s deposited into the chair and the tangle of dads in it. “Are you having fun?”
“Yeah,” Lucas says, tilting his head. “But I have a question.”
“What is it, baby?” Eddie asks, gently brushing a stray curl off of his forehead.
Lucas’ blue eyes are wide. “Will Santa be able to find us here?” he asks.
“Are you kidding?” Eddie asks back, not missing a beat. “Of course he will. Right, Chris?”
They all look over. Christopher, who has taken one of the couches and is already laid out on it with Mara in a sleeping bag on the floor next to him, grins at his brother. “Promise, buddy,” he says. Without his glasses, he looks so young that it takes Buck’s breath away— just for a second.
“Okay,” Lucas agrees, satisfied with Christopher’s certainty. He looks back to his parents. “I have another question.”
“Go for it,” Buck says.
Lucas turns to look over the railing, where the multicolored lights on the truck are still glowing in the now-dim engine bay.
“Can we sleep there?” he asks. “Please, pretty please?”
Buck and Eddie glance at each other, wordless. And that’s how they end up, five minutes later, spreading blankets and pillows on the top of the engine in the hollowed out empty space. Eddie kneels on top and Buck stands at the base.
“Ready?” he asks, and Eddie nods.
“Ready!”
Lucas giggles as Buck boosts him up and Eddie reaches down, and he’s passed between his parents and up onto the top of the truck. Buck follows, climbing up over the side, and grins at Eddie as they settle down with their baby nestled between them.
Buck smiles softly at his husband then, over Lucas’ head, as Eddie tilts his cheek into Lucas’ curls and mouths, Love you, at Buck.
Buck blows him a kiss back and watches him melt as Lucas cuddles in closer, his eyes already closing.
“What do you think, bud?” Buck whispers, his hand on Lucas’ rising and falling chest. “Is this a good Christmas?”
Lucas opens his eyes, his little face bathed in the glow of the multicolored lights, all soft and pink and warm.
“This is the best Christmas ever,” he declares sleepily.
Buck smiles, then leans in and kisses his little cheek as Eddie does the same on the other side.
“Yeah,” he whispers, smiling across him at his husband. “I think so, too.”
And in the morning, his knee will be locked up and Eddie will be sore from sleeping up here. But there will be endless coffee and everyone they love in one place, and Lucas will wake up overjoyed and then they’ll watch him play with his new addition to the ever-growing collection of firetrucks that he owns, right here in the room where his parents met for the very first time.
And by lunch, the lights will be on at all of their homes, but nobody will want to leave. So yeah, Buck thinks as he closes his eyes with Eddie and Lucas pressed against him. It’s the best Christmas yet.