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“Okay, okay,” Buck laughs, loud and bright. “But what about—” He wheezes, unable to get the words out as he leans forward over the small table they’re sharing. “What about— when— when you—”
“No!” Eddie insists. He’s laughing, too, so much that it aches behind the cage of his ribs. “No, I swear that was an accident.”
Buck laughs even harder at this, dissolving into breathless giggles as he throws himself against the seat of his side of the booth. There are tears in his eyes and Eddie watches him blurrily, dizzily, and thinks—
God, that’s the love of my life.
“Buck,” he groans, still laughing as his husband wipes his eyes. “C’mon, man, why would you even—”
“How could I not mention that?” Buck laughs, trying desperately to pull himself together. “Eds, that was, like…” He shakes his head, smiling big enough that it takes up his entire face and makes Eddie want to kiss him even more than he usually does, which is to say a lot, all the time. “The highlight of the whole thing! I feel like they’re still telling that story at the Academy.”
“I fucking hope they’re not,” Eddie replies, going for vehement and ending up undercutting his own point with the laughter still trailing into his voice.
Buck laughs again, and Eddie shakes his head. “You’re lucky you’re so pretty,” he teases, flicking water in Buck’s direction from the ice in his mostly-untouched water glass just to see him flinch and then lean immediately back into Eddie’s orbit.
He does, of course. Eddie knows him like the back of his hand and then some. Buck responds immediately to the praise, though, warming instantly under the glow of it and dropping his head to look at Eddie through his pale lashes like the whole thing pleases him immensely.
All of a sudden, Eddie can’t stand being across the table from him anymore. He moves abruptly, abandoning his own seat in favor of sliding into Buck’s, pressing himself into the other half of the booth alongside Buck’s warm body. Buck laughs, but this time it’s not the uproarious, breathless kind— instead, a warm, soft, reaching thing that belongs to Eddie alone, and has for some time now.
“Hello,” he says, like he’s never been more pleased than to find his husband next to him in a cramped corner booth.
“Hi,” Eddie replies, smiling as he tilts his head up to look at Buck’s pink cheeks. “I missed you over there.”
Buck’s face softens. “You did?” he asks.
“Mhm,” Eddie hums. “What, you didn’t miss me?”
Buck presses them closer together and puts his hand on Eddie’s thigh beneath the table, then leans in and kisses his cheek. He’s warm and his jaw is ever so slightly scratchy with the evidence of a seventy-two off that will conclude tomorrow morning.
“You know I did,” he says, his voice low and warm.
Eddie preens a little, biting back a smile into the inside of his cheek. “I know you did.”
It is Valentine’s Day. On the table between them, there are the remains of an appetizer and their second round of drinks. They’d ordered the special cocktail on the menu for the occasion, which is something bright pink and sweet and a little bit addictive, the kind of thing that makes you forget you’re consuming alcohol. Two drinks in, neither of them is close to drunk but the drinks are stronger than they look and they don’t really do this kind of thing anymore. Their tolerances are low and they’ve barely eaten, and the result is that when Eddie tilts his head and looks at his husband, he feels a little bit flushed and dizzy.
The waitress reappears and asks them if they’re ready to order, but they go for more drinks and another appetizer instead. The restaurant is abuzz and they’re surrounded by other similarly cozy couples on what is meant to be the most romantic night of the year, and they’d told each other when they planned this that they were going to savor a rare night out. Drag it out a little. Spend time doing exactly what they’re doing now, squishing into one side of the table and making each other laugh.
The restaurant— a tucked-away place with casual atmosphere and Italian fare— has gone all out for Valentine’s Day. There’s a version of Eddie, the person he’d been before Buck, who would have scoffed at it. As he exists now, he leans his head back and smiles softly as he watches an iridescent pink and red heart spin lazily over his head, attached to a paper chain that’s wrapped endlessly around the beams.
Buck follows his gaze as their waitress clears and re-fills their table, and he smiles, too. “Do you think it’s like mistletoe?” he asks.
Eddie snorts. “No,” he answers. Then grins. “You can kiss me anyway, though.”
“Can I?” Buck asks, leaning in. He smells like cologne and coconut-scented curl cream and Eddie meets him halfway to press their lips together and understands entirely what Valentine’s Day is for.
Then again, he feels like this every day.
They break apart and Buck offers him some of the garlic bread from the basket on the table. Eddie sips from his drink and then takes it, the scent of it eclipsing Buck. It melts in his mouth, perfectly crunchy and soft in equal measure. He swallows, then considers Buck again.
“Do they even eat this in Italy?” he wonders aloud.
“Probably not,” Buck replies, his mouth full of garlic bread. Eddie shrugs and takes another bite.
From there, the conversation wanders through another drink and the rest of the garlic bread. They cover a podcast Buck has been listening to and gossip about the new C-shift probie that everyone is saying is a disaster.
“Oh!” Eddie says, turning further in Buck’s direction. “Did Chris tell you why he went home with Denny this afternoon?”
Buck frowns, shaking his head. “No,” he pouts. “What do you mean? What did I miss?”
“You know Kaylee,” Eddie says. Buck nods— they have all been well-aware of Denny’s misguided choice in high school girlfriend since they went together to Denny’s junior prom. Eddie leans in emphatically. “She broke up with him,” he reveals.
Buck gasps. “She broke up with him?” he asks.
“Yes!” Eddie says. “I know. I said the same thing.”
Buck shakes his head. “How am I relieved and offended?”
“Exactly,” Eddie agrees. “But that’s why Chris went to hang out with him. The day before Valentine’s Day, too, which—”
“Brutal,” Buck agrees.
For a moment, they’re quiet. Neither of them need to speak to know that they’re both thinking about the same thing: Christopher; how grown-up he is at eighteen; his kindness.
After almost four years of marriage, Eddie has found that the novelty of it hasn’t worn off at all. They can sit and do exactly this— effortlessly slipping between the kind of attraction that sends sparks up his spine at the touch of Buck’s fingers and the easy banter they’ve always had like it’s nothing. They are partners, now, in every sense of the word— work, life, parenthood. All the shades in between.
Buck shifts to reach down into his pocket and Eddie knows what he’s doing before he even gets there. He gets a glimpse of his phone as he turns it on to check for notifications that aren’t there and then lays it down on the table between them.
On the screen, the picture tugs at Eddie a little more than it usually might. Getting tipsy on overpriced Valentine’s Day cocktails with sugar on their rims will do that to a person, in his defense.
He can’t really be blamed for the way he feels looking at a picture of their two-year-old, whose face is split into a beaming smile just like Buck’s. It’s one in Buck’s rotating carousel of lockscreens, a picture of Lucas taken last summer in the shade, his little toddler hands covered in dirt that’s also smudged all over his t-shirt and his round cheeks after an afternoon of gardening with Christopher in which Lucas mostly threw dirt around and had the time of his life.
Buck catches him looking and visibly softens.
“No texts,” he says.
Eddie shrugs one shoulder, though the romantic little bubble he’s been in since they left Lucas for the evening is starting to feel less romantic by the second. “He’s with Carla,” he points out meaninglessly— the question, of course, had never really been whether Lucas was in good hands. It’s just that he’s not in theirs.
They leave Lucas all the time. He’s very used to spending nights at Chim and Maddie’s house with his cousins; or at Bobby and Athena’s. Carla, who is still the life raft to their family at least until Christopher graduates in the spring, picks him up occasionally if Buck or Eddie can’t. He can be shy with people he doesn’t know sometimes, but with everyone in his orbit he’s perfectly content to be without his dads.
Buck and Eddie glance at each other, and then at the empty table.
“We shouldn’t,” Buck whispers, like they’re conspiring somehow. “We said—”
“I know,” Eddie groans. “But—”
Buck hesitates. “We could get it to go,” he says slowly, tapping his phone to wake the screen this time in search of the clock. “If we hurry, we could put him to bed.”
As silly as it seems— cutting what was supposed to be a night away from home short just to rush back and do the thing that most parents are trying to get away from— Eddie finds that it’s all he wants right now.
And maybe that’s the thing about love. About the day they’re supposed to be celebrating.
He smiles. “Let’s get outta here.”
They pay for takeout pizza that smells so good it’s all Eddie can do not to open the box then and there. Buck leans over the counter to ask the waitress who delivers it to them if they eat garlic bread in Italy, and she suggests that he Google it, and Eddie laughs so hard that he still can’t get it together by the time the Uber arrives.
On the way home, Buck checks the time as Los Angeles passes them in a mild, wintry blur. Eddie watches him in the glow of the streetlight— the way the gold of it catches in his curls and the pink settling high in his cheeks and how firm and safe his shoulders look in his date-night sweater.
“Hey,” he says as the city narrows down to residential streets and they near home.
Buck turns to him, his expression open and a smile still on his face like it has been all night. “Yeah?”
Eddie can feel an ache in his cheeks from smiling so much, and Buck’s hand is resting on his knee and Eddie doesn’t even think he knows he’s doing it. And there’s something so big and vast about this feeling that he can’t keep it from spilling over into the space between them, even with a stranger in the driver’s seat.
“I love you,” he shrugs.
Buck beams like it’s the first time Eddie has said it, instead of the one millionth. “I love you, too,” he answers, and squeezes Eddie’s knee lightly, the tenderest squeeze. Eddie could cease to exist, like any one of thousands of moments.
Instead, they roll quietly onto South Bedford Street and Buck leans forward to thank the driver as Eddie gets out; and they walk hand-in-hand up the driveway, home hours early, toward the glowing windows of the house that is theirs now, together.
Eddie unlocks the door and they step over the threshold right into their living room— and all at once they get a front-row seat to Lucas’ face when he looks up and sees them. They’ve parted with him just a couple of hours ago, but he leaps to his feet and squeals with joy as he scrambles to meet them and throws himself into the arms of whichever of them is closer, which happens to be Eddie.
“Dad!” he shrieks as Eddie scoops him up in his matching, on-theme pajamas. Buck had been the one to insist on getting him the little white long-sleeve set with hearts all over it, but at the moment Eddie is so glad he did.
“Oh, my goodness,” he says, wrapping Lucas up tightly in his arms and pressing a litany of kisses to his head as Carla watches them knowingly over the back of the couch. “Hi, my baby!”
“Hi!” Lucas giggles as Buck reaches for him in turn and he easily throws his weight from one parent to the other.
“Somebody’s back early,” Carla remarks, amused, as she stands from her place and turns toward them. Eddie flashes her what he thinks is a guilty-looking smile.
“We just—” he starts. “Listen, we made it through drinks.”
She laughs, shaking her head, and Eddie looks back at Buck and Lucas, who have their faces smushed together as Buck tickles him relentlessly and Lucas giggles breathlessly.
“Alright,” Carla laughs. “In that case, you boys enjoy your night.” She turns to Lucas and smiles at him. “And I will see you on Saturday.”
He giggles as she pokes him lightly, and then she’s gone with a familiar wave, weaving in and out of their lives like she always has.
“We just couldn’t stay away!” Buck says to their baby, shaking his little foot.
“Daddy!” Lucas squeals, and Eddie watches them both with a smile too big for his features. Buck glances over and catches his eye.
“Right, Eds?” he asks as Lucas reaches out for Eddie again.
Instead of taking him from Buck, Eddie steps closer to them. The scent of the pizza which Buck had deposited on the coffee table now mingles with the usual clean, soft one of their home— but when Eddie gets close enough that Lucas can wrap his little fingers in the fabric of his shirt, he can mostly smell his apple-scented shampoo and the way it clings to his still baby-soft curls.
“That’s right,” he says, smiling as he leans in close enough to kiss Lucas’ cheek with a mwah. “Even on Valentine’s Day!”
Lucas laughs— lately, everything is a riot to him— and Buck swoops in to kiss him all over his face until they’re both breathless.
“We had to come home to our favorite little Valentine,” he beams between kisses as Lucas fights to catch his breath, his cheeks pink and his birthmark darkened the same way that Buck’s gets.
“Okay, enough!” Lucas giggles, an echo of words he’s heard them both use before, and Buck laughs like this is all even funnier than anything he or Eddie had been laughing at earlier tonight at the restaurant.
Eddie has to agree. “Come here, Valentine,” he says, holding his hands out to Lucas. “It’s your bedtime.”
“Dad,” Lucas says, sounding like Christopher in a way that breaks Eddie open a little. “I’m Lucas!”
Eddie smiles at him, then kisses his cheek. “Yes, you are, baby.”
A few minutes later— after fighting their way through brushing a two-year-old’s teeth after he’s been riled up thoroughly— they’re tucking him into bed. He begs for a book and then asks Buck to tell him about the monkeys again, and it takes them a good few minutes to decode exactly what he means by that without upsetting him, and then he attempts to bargain for another story and settles for a goodnight wish instead— something that Buck had taken from Maddie and adapted.
Buck sits on the edge of his bed while Eddie kneels next to them and he turns his head on the pillow and contemplates what his goodnight wish will be.
“Love!” he says eventually, satisfied with this answer.
Bemused, Eddie sweeps his hand over his forehead and brushes his curls back. “What do you mean, mi sol?” he asks softly.
Lucas throws his arms big and wide, taking up his whole toddler bed. “My wish is love!” he says.
Buck and Eddie smile at each other.
“Like this?” Buck asks, then leans down and kisses him on his nose.
Beaming, Lucas nods his head, and Eddie has to swallow hard. Sometimes, like when he’s three drinks deep and starving and it’s Valentine’s Day and Buck is next to him, he looks at his life and cannot believe it belongs to him at all.
Sometimes he’s tucking his two-year-old into bed and he knows that his older son is out there living, being every bit as good and kind and wonderful as Eddie’d ever hoped he would be, and he’s here on the floor fighting back tears because he’s never loved anything as much as he loves this life with them.
“Love it is,” he settles on, and leans in and kisses Lucas’ little nose, too.
Soon, beneath the faint light of his star projector, Lucas is sound asleep. By the time Buck and Eddie get back to the pizza, it’s gone completely cold. Eddie settles against his husband on the couch and flips the lid open and reaches for it, anyway.
“Do you want me to heat it up?” Buck asks, amused, but Eddie just shrugs.
“You know,” he says around a bite of cold cheese. “I actually don’t care about that.”
Buck smiles, his tenderest, softest Eddie smile. “No?” he asks.
“No,” Eddie answers, and leans up to kiss him, tasting like cold pizza.
“Yeah,” Buck grins when they break apart, then reaches for a slice of his own. “Me, either.”
Eddie laughs then, and Buck follows, and neither of them know what they’re laughing at until it’s gone quiet and their faces are pressed close together, so close that the features Eddie knows by heart are blurry. Buck is warm, and Eddie doesn’t need to see him to know exactly what he looks like.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Buck whispers.
In response, Eddie grasps him by his stubbled jaw and kisses him deeply. And love abounds and abounds.