Work Text:
Eddie’s always loved Christmas. Getting to watch his sisters on Christmas morning come running into the room, and seeing the same excitement on his son’s face as he rips open the wrapping paper.
Getting to see all of his family on one day was Eddie’s favourite part, and helping Abuela and Tia Pepa too.
But since he’s moved to LA he’s never hosted a dinner party, or Christmas for that matter. It’s mostly just been him and Chris.
“I’m putting the gravy in the middle of the table Eddie, you can’t put the parsnips there.”
Except this year, Buck and Eddie are hosting the 118 Christmas dinner party at Eddie’s house since Buck still lives with them.
Evan Buckley seems to be running the place like the navy and Eddie’s clearly not doing anything right.
“You told me I can’t put it down at the end of the table where Bobby’s going to sit as that’s where the dinner rolls are going.” Eddie’s standing there with the tray of parsnips in his hands, the heat radiating through the oven gloves. He’s got to put this somewhere soon.
“It’s going right next to the roasted potatoes.” Buck walks into the room, holding said roasted potatoes and then takes the parsnips off of Eddie.
Eddie holds his hands up in surrender as he goes back into the kitchen.
He goes to open the fridge and makes eye contact with the dessert Buck made. “If you even think about taking even the tiniest strawberry off of the top, I will notice.”
Let’s just say, Eddie normally sits on the counter and watches Buck do the work and Eddie’s okay with that.
“I was just grabbing the wine, chill out.” Eddie grabs the non alcoholic wine from the fridge when the doorbell rings.
Buck mumbles something under his breath which after many years of knowing each other, if that happens, they ignore each other before some petty argument ensues.
“Drill Sargent Buckley at full speed in there?” Chimney says as Eddie opens the door.
“I’d avoid the kitchen.” Eddie says as he steps aside to let them in.
“Tried helping him with pancakes the other morning,” Maddie pulls Eddie in for a hug. “Wish I’d never even bothered”
Jee-yun waves at Eddie and before he even gets to respond:
A clatter is heard from the kitchen and they all wince. Eddie hears his name being cursed out as he watches Chris walk out from his room.
“Why did you agree to this again?” Chris raises an eyebrow in his dad’s direction.
Eddie walks back into the kitchen as Buck points a spoon at him. “I almost split all the gravy as someone left the pan with the potatoes on the side. Can you please mash them for me.” Buck sighs heavily.
They both jump into at least five minutes of bickering about why they need two types of potato, and it goes on long enough to not even notice when Hen and Karen arrive with Denny and Mara.
“It never changes with you two, does it.” Karen laughs.
Bobby and Athena arrive a little later with May and Harry not too far behind him.
Ravi’s the last to arrive and tries to help Buck with anything he can but that’s not long before he walks out of the kitchen with his arms up in surrender and saying, “How do you work and live with him?”
Eddie’s in the living room with everyone else while Maddie has Buck cornered in the kitchen trying to get him to slow down. He’s tried all day to get Buck to work at a normal speed or to at least let him help but Buck has the desire to make everything perfect and if that means doing everything himself, Eddie’s going to make sure he’s nearby in the event of Buck wanting a hand or two.
Maddie shakes her head as she walks into the room, “Hopeless. How do you live with him?” She laughs.
“You lived with him longer, you should know as well as I do.”
Eddie hears a gasp from the kitchen and cautiously gets up to check out the issue.
“I can’t believe I forgot it.”
Eddie raises an eyebrow, “Forgot what?”
“The mistletoe.”
“Buck, we don’t need mistletoe.”
“Eddie, we need mistletoe. It’s not a Christmas party without it.”
“I’m sure we can survive without everyone noticing.”
Chris walks into the room and picks a strawberry off the dessert as Buck looks directly at him. If Eddie had done that he’d probably no longer have a hand and been exiled to the living room for the rest of the night.
“You need mistletoe.” Chris questions and Buck nods. “Don’t worry about it. Denny and I have it covered.”
Buck and Eddie share a look as he walks out of the room.
“Do I ask?” Buck furrows his eyebrows.
“Not if you want mistletoe you don’t.” Eddie tries to take a strawberry, fails, and gets a swift swat on the arm with the tea towel Buck’s holding.
──⋆.˚✧ ✧⋆.˚──
“In my defence, Eddie hadn’t woken me up, and I was running slightly behind.” Buck held his hands up.
“That’s why you chose a mug to bring your coffee in yesterday? Surely you could have used the travel cup we got you last Christmas.” Karen sighed.
Buck’s telling this story completely wrong.
It was actually Buck’s fault the reason why they were both late. Buck had decided in the middle of the night to roll over and fell back asleep practically on top of Eddie, wrapping his arms and legs all over him.
The alarm did go off at least five times, with Buck hitting snooze every single time, and listen, Eddie wasn’t going to complain as he was very comfortable, but the rush to work wasn’t the most fun thing he’d done in a while.
Buck practically ran around the house while looking for said travel mug for his coffee before giving up and having to use his mug that he’d gotten from Chris when he was eight (the same mug that Buck had cried over for a few hours after Chris went to bed).
It was going smoothly, no coffee spilt over anyone until Buck hit a pothole which he probably could have avoided. Eddie had to hold back a grin as he’d seen the travel mug over the other side of the kitchen not even five minutes before that and he had tried to tell Buck who wasn’t listening at all.
Eddie was on the couch with Buck, leaning up against Buck who’d draped one arm around the back and was running his hands through his hair. Maddie keeps catching his eye and raising her eyebrows ever so slightly at him.
The timer begins to sound out from the kitchen and Buck begins to make a move towards it, not before taking Eddie’s hand and bringing him with him.
They work seamlessly taking food back and forth from the table as Buck’s seemed to de-stress a little.
Throughout dinner, Eddie looks over at Buck every so often, which is probably more times than he thinks he’s doing but he likes looking at how happy Buck is being surrounded by everyone.
Compliments come flying in from everyone and Eddie thinks that Buck might start crying in a minute, especially when Bobby begins.
Buck begins to look confused when they both notice May passing something to Jee-yun, who passes it to Harry, then along to Mara, next to Denny and finally to Chris and they all silently nod.
Buck and Eddie share a look with each other, then shrug their shoulders.
After dinner, they’re sat back in the living room, with Buck having brought out the game of Monopoly which is normally left in the back of a cupboard somewhere in the house as Buck, Eddie and Chris are all a little competitive with each other and can’t be trusted.
Chris and Denny keep whispering to each other and giggling as they look at something that’s around the corner from Eddie. He isn’t able to quickly look around as he’s leaning against Buck again who’s practically trapped him with an arm around the waist.
Later when everyone’s gone back home, and when Chris has gone to bed, the spend a little while cleaning up and quietly putting the house back together after having to move tables around to make a large enough table for all of them to sit at.
“Hey Eddie,” Buck calls from the doorway as Eddie’s stood by the sink.
“Hmmm?”
“Come look at this.” Buck doesn’t elaborate until Eddie is face to face with him.
Eddie looks at Buck confused until Buck points up.
“Oh, he really think’s he’s funny doesn’t he.”
Above Buck and Eddie isn’t a piece of mistletoe, it’s a: “Missile toad?”
It’s sure enough a plastic toad with fake Christmas lights on it and a pen on its back.
“A missile toad.”
They both look at each other and laugh.
“Would you look at that, we’re both under the missile toad.” Eddie muses.
“We are aren’t we.” Buck replies as he looks down at his lips.
Eddie’s unsure of who makes the first move, but suddenly they’re sharing a short and sweet kiss.
He really wants to do that again.
He doesn’t spend long thinking about it before Buck takes his face into his hands and pulls him in for another kiss.
They’re there for a little while longer, breaking the kiss, smiling at each other, before going back in for another one.
Buck finally breaks it, and leans his head against Eddie’s. “How about we leave this all till the morning and keep doing this?”
“You’d hate to have to deal with that in the morning.”
They spend the next half an hour quickly putting things away, giving each other a kiss if they walked past one another, and then Eddie took Buck by the hand and dragged him back to the bedroom.
(Chris saw it hanging there in the morning and had a giggle to himself, before walking in the kitchen before realising that he’s now subject to a lifetime of embarrassment from the both of them, afterall, it was his own fault.)