Work Text:
The first time Eddie and Buck kiss, it's for a dare.
It was on one of those rare bar nights where everyone had managed to find a babysitter for the evening, and no worries about having to relieve them early. The night had started out mostly tame, as always, but it hadn't taken very long for all the drinkers in the group to end up on just the wrong side of tipsy.
Unsurprisingly, that was when the trouble started.
"You know," Buck said, looking around the table, "It's— It's unfair, that's what it is."
"What's unfair, Buckaroo?" Hen asked, tucked neatly against Karen's side, and Buck pointed a dramatic finger at the two of them.
"That is!" He exclaimed, before turning his finger on the rest of the group. "That you're all happily coupled up, while me and Eddie are just. Sad and alone."
Eddie frowned at that, sitting up straighter and knocking into Buck with the movement.
"Hey," he protested. "I'm not sad, I have Chris!"
"Sad and alone," he repeated, louder this time, "Watching you all be cute and coupley all the time. Maddie and Chimney keep looking at photos of Jee together and that shouldn't be allowed."
"You two spent five minutes crying over pictures of Chris on Eddie's phone earlier," Chim pointed out, looking up from where Maddie's phone was indeed open on a picture of Jee-Yun. "I don't think you're allowed to talk."
"It doesn't count if we're not kissing each other," he argued, leaning into Eddie's side. "Gross couple rules only apply to couples."
"You could be kissing Eddie," Chim said, grin spreading across his face. "So that neither of you are being left out of the love. It's an easy fix!"
The suggestion, realistically, made no sense. Buck had just been saying that the only reason they were allowed to look at photos of Chris was because they weren't kissing, so by his own rules, kissing Eddie would make him a hypocrite.
And if Buck was about two percent more sober, he'd have realised that. But the logic seemed sound to his tipsy brain, likely bolstered by the fact that Buck always wanted to kiss Eddie, so his half of the decision was simple.
"Eds?" He asked, leaning back in the booth slightly to better meet Eddie's eyes.
The table fell silent for a beat, then two, before Eddie raised a challenging eyebrow.
"So?" He asked, and Buck leant in not a moment later.
The kiss was chaste, barely more than a peck, but was met with a chorus of catcalls and whistling despite that. They both pulled away laughing, knocking elbows as Chim raised his beer at the two of them.
"I rest my case," he declared, and Buck rolled his eyes, resisting the urge to look in Eddie's direction.
He failed a moment later, glancing to the side when the group's attention shifted, and found Eddie was already staring back.
"We good?" Buck murmured, leaning in closer, and he felt his heart skipping a beat when Eddie's lips curled up into the beginnings of a smirk.
"Yeah, Buck, we're good."
After that, it kind of becomes. A thing.
A regular enough to drive Buck mad but not regular enough to make him feel confident Reading Into It kind of thing.
Normally, it happens around the crew. Eddie and Buck will see them being cute with their partners on a night out and amp up their already casual touchiness, occasionally kissing when Chim or one of the others raises a challenging eyebrow. It's all in good humour, and if Buck is resolutely ignoring the knowing looks Hen sends his way any time it happens then that's for him to know and her to never find out.
The problem starts when it begins escalating.
"Don't look now, but your boy is attracting some attention at the bar," Hen said, nodding over Buck's shoulder.
"He's not my boy," Buck insisted, flushing, but he turned to look anyway, ignoring the way Hen snorted at him.
Eddie had, indeed, attracted attention, but not the kind Buck had expected. He felt the corner of his lips twitch down into a frown as a slim blond man placed a hand on Eddie's arm, smiling cheekily up at him.
"Is he even old enough to drink?" Buck asked, eyeballing the cocktail he had in his hand, and Hen laughed louder this time.
"Like that's your main concern in this situation."
Buck should go rescue him, probably. He can't imagine Eddie was interested in anything the man was offering, and that was what good friends did in these situations.
Except… Eddie wasn't pulling away.
The man stepped closer, leaning in to Eddie's space. Eddie wasn't matching his movements by any means, but he also hadn't stepped back to create distance.
So going up would definitely be overstepping, right?
Right.
Buck was still up out of his seat and halfway across the bar less than a second later.
It's worth it for the way Eddie lights up at the sight of him.
"Figured I'd see what's taking you so long," Buck said with a grin, stepping into Eddie's space.
Eddie's lips twitched in an amused smile when Buck reached out to sling an arm around his waist, barely even acknowledging the blond man's presence.
"Was thinking I might ditch you for someone who doesn't give me daily heart attacks," Eddie teased, leaning into Buck's side, and something inside Buck settled.
"Trading me in for a newer model?" He joked, and Eddie laughed.
"Something like that. No, Alex is in training to be a disability support worker, I got distracted talking about Chris."
Without even thinking about it, Buck leant in to brush a kiss against Eddie's cheek, snagging the drinks for their table in the meantime.
"Don't take too long, yeah? Or I'm stealing your beer."
"I'd expect nothing less," Eddie murmured, flashing a grin his way, and Buck ducked his head to hide the way his cheeks flushed as he walked back to the table.
He was fucked.
Ok, so Buck knew the way that him and Eddie were acting wasn't exactly platonic.
They had realistically stopped toeing the line between 'just friends' and 'something more' that very first night that they'd kissed in the bar, and had been wildly stomping over its remains basically every day since.
But they still hadn't actually talked about any of it, and part of Buck was hoping that they just never would.
Talking meant an acknowledgement of what was happening, was the thing. Right now, they were existing in a state of limbo, where Buck got both the benefits of having Eddie as his best friend, as well as some occasional (arguably) risk-free kissing on the side.
The idea of taking a sledgehammer to their friendship in favour of trying (and possibly failing) to build something more was terrifying enough that Buck wasn't sure he'd ever feel ready to make that gamble.
"Morning," Eddie grumbled, slinging his arms around Buck's waist and burying his head into the back of his shoulder.
"Morning," Buck replied with a laugh. "You doing alright, Eds?"
Eddie grunted in response, squeezing his arms tighter before pulling back just enough that he could hook his chin over Buck's shoulder.
"Bed got cold," he eventually explained, staring down at the pan Buck was cooking in. "Felt lonely."
Buck's smile grew at that, cheeks flushing lightly.
"Well," he said, brushing a kiss against Eddie's cheek, "I'd apologise, but I figured I should feed Chris given we ran out of cereal two days ago. If you want to sit down I can bring your serve over once it's done."
Eddie made a contemplative noise at that, grip slackening for a moment before tightening once more.
"Then I'll still be cold," he pointed out, fingers rucking up Buck's sleep-tee just enough to creep below it.
Buck shivered lightly at the sensation, and he froze for a moment, wondering if Eddie would pull away. When Eddie's only response was creeping his hands further up Buck's shirt, he huffed out a laugh.
"Can't have that, can we?" He asked, and the smile was audible in Eddie's voice as he responded.
"Good thing I have you around keeping me warm, huh?"
It was stupid of him to hope that no one would press the issue with him, considering. That doesn't stop him from eyeballing all his escape routes when Maddie asks if she should be having a shovel talk with Eddie at some point soon.
"We aren't actually dating, Mads," he protested, and she raised an eyebrow at him.
"What does the 'actually' mean, Buck?" She asked, and he sighed, taking a swig from his coffee as he figured out how to answer.
"We're not dating," he stated more firmly, and Maddie's eyebrow raised further.
"But?"
"But we're also not not dating."
"That… doesn't actually clarify as much as you think it does," she laughed, and he pouted.
"We're definitely crossing like, a bunch of friendship lines right now. But we haven't actually talked about what any of it means."
"Why not?" She asked, smile as kind as ever. "I know I don't know Eddie as well as you do, but you have to know it's two-sided at this point. What's stopping you from taking that last step?"
Buck fell silent, and she reached across the table to place a gentle hand on his wrist.
"Just… Make sure you're not holding yourself back from this needlessly, okay? You deserve a happy ending, Buck. You both do."
The thing is, he wasn't even concerned about the possibility of having to talk about whatever the fuck they were doing anymore, because he was pretty sure that he was going to have a heart attack long before they even got the chance.
Eddie was just so free with his affection, now that whatever boundaries he'd had up surrounding touch had been thoroughly knocked down, and his latest habit had been brushing a kiss across Buck's birthmark almost any time it was in reach.
Buck had frozen the first time, heart skipping a beat, and while he'd not managed a verbal response to Eddie's check that it was okay to kiss him there, his flushed cheeks had apparently done the job for him.
He didn't outright freeze anymore, but he was pretty sure that the blush was never going away.
Bobby hadn't even bothered asking about it. He'd just… slid over the change of relationship forms one morning, as casual as can be, and politely ignored the way that Buck immediately spluttered.
"I— We're not dating, Bobby," he eventually stuttered out, and Bobby flipped the bacon he'd started cooking in the pan.
"I know," he replied. "I just thought you might want to get prepared early. We all know that you two have been heading down this path for a while."
Buck didn't have a response for that, but picked up the forms to tuck away in his bag anyway. Another moment passed, and he sighed.
"I keep feeling like taking that final step would ruin everything. I don't know how to make my brain believe that he's not going to abandon me at the first sign of trouble."
Bobby set his spatula down on the counter and met Buck's eyes seriously.
"You do it by realising that you've already been taking that step, over and over again, and the only mistake would be not embracing the family you two have already built."
"Are you… okay?" Eddie asked, pausing as he walked out of the bunk room, and Buck shrugged from where he was lying awkwardly on the couch.
"Couldn't sleep," he admitted. "Not sure why."
That was partially a lie. He did know why, had known since the very first moment that they'd shared a bed that he was ruining his schedule whenever he'd be sleeping alone, but usually the bunk room had been an exception to that. It was hard to feel like you were alone when there were half a dozen other people trying to sleep in the same room as you, after all.
But lately, he'd been craving more than just the sound of Eddie's breathing. He'd been spoiled, and now his dumbass of a brain had decided it was only able to sleep if he had his best friend's arm flung over him like a weighted blanket.
He tipped his head further off the edge of the couch, half hoping that enough blood would rush to his head for him to pass out.
Eddie walked closer, squatting down to quirk an eyebrow at him.
"Not sure why you think lying like this will help, but I'm also not surprised."
"You never know," Buck replied, trying to distract himself from thoughts of Spider-Man kisses and the scratch of Eddie's stubble. "I've slept in weirder positions."
"I'm sure you have, baby," Eddie replies, and Buck has scarcely a moment to feel grateful for the fact that his cheeks were already flushed with blood before Eddie is brushing his lips against Buck's own, the sensation as perfect as Buck had imagined it would be. "But you didn't have me then, did you?"
"Are you and Dad getting married?"
Buck startled at the sound of Chris' voice, hissing as he splashed hot coffee on himself.
"Chris! Jesus, bud, we need to get you a bell or something! You've been getting sneaky lately, the crutches aren't enough anymore."
Chris raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him.
"So?" He demanded, and Buck busied himself with running his hand under cold water.
"Why, uh. Why are you asking?"
Chris sighed, rolling his eyes dramatically.
"Because you've basically been together forever, and it would mean my friends' moms stopped asking questions about whether either of you are single."
"Wait, moms at your school are asking about your dad?" When Chris just stared at him instead of responding, he winced. "Right, not the point."
"If you got married then they'd stop," Chris repeated, and Buck sighed.
"Slight problem with that, superman. We're not actually dating, and that sorta feels like a pre-requisite to anything else."
Chris frowned at that, confused.
"Are you sure?" He asked. "And does Dad know that? Because he's been more smiley recently."
Buck internally debated the merits of explaining the whole complicated mess to a fourteen-year-old before deciding to just cut to the chase.
"We're not not dating," he started, before being cut off by Chris' groan.
"Are you telling me you and Dad are in a fucking situationship?"
"You know, sometimes I think back to my first shift with the 118 and laugh," Eddie admitted a few days later, stilling his hands where they'd been absentmindedly tracing vague circles into Buck's calves.
Buck groaned in response, slumping forward and somehow wedging himself further onto Eddie's lap in the process.
"I was such a dick to you for no reason. Still can't believe how quickly you let me in after that."
"I could tell you were a good guy, even if you weren't at your best. And the rest of the station was vouching for you. It's not like I was entirely blameless either, Buck," Eddie replied, shrugging, and Buck snorted out a laugh.
"You weren't, were you, mister 'I've just done it while people are shooting at me'?"
Eddie grinned, shameless.
"What? I wasn't exactly lying, was I? Though I guess I can't exactly use that line anymore, can I."
Buck frowned, shuffling himself closer.
"Are we at the point where we can make jokes about that yet?" He asked, and Eddie shrugged.
"I am," he replied, voice easy. "But I get it if you aren't. It's not just my trauma, after all."
"I don't know if I ever will be," Buck admitted, mouth twisting, and Eddie leant in to brush a careful kiss against his forehead.
"And that's okay, Buck. God knows I'm never going to be comfortable joking about the times where I could have lost you."
"You know I'm trying to be better at not doing that, yeah?"
"I know, baby. And I know you're always going to push the limits to pull off rescues, even with that. It's part of what makes you who you are."
"I just… I didn't always care if I made it home, back when I first started firefighting. But I do now. I know I can be reckless, but I always want to make it out in the end."
"And I'll always have your back to make sure you do."
It takes them another three weeks to actually talk about things.
Buck is the one who initiates it, somehow, and he's very proud of the fact that he manages to pull away from kissing Eddie long enough to actually do that.
"So," he starts, their breaths mingling on the pillow between them. "We should probably talk about this. At some point."
Eddie huffs out a laugh at that, and it takes all of Buck's self-control not to duck back in and place another kiss on his slightly swollen lips.
"You think?" He replies, eyebrow raised, and then Buck's letting out a laugh of his own.
"You haven't been any more eager to start this conversation than I have, Diaz, so don't start pretending this is all on me."
"Ah, but being emotionally repressed and uncommunicative is supposed to be my job in this relationship. You're the one that forces me to have uncomfortable conversations in the firehouse instead of ignoring my feelings."
Eddie is grinning as he says it, bright and wide and gorgeous, and Buck can't resist this time. His grin has somehow widened when Buck pulls away once more, and Buck makes an outraged noise at him.
"See, this?" He starts, eyes already drifting back to Eddie's lips. "This is why you shouldn't have relied on me starting this conversation. Every time I've tried I keep getting distracted by your face."
Eddie is the one to lean in at that, though he manages to keep the kiss brief. Buck knows he's probably sporting the same goofy grin that Eddie was a second ago, but he's always loved how consistently they were a matched pair.
"It's felt simpler, hasn't it," Eddie started with a sigh. "Not talking about it."
"Less likely that I'd fuck it up," Buck agreed, smiling wryly, though his heart wasn't exactly in it.
Eddie lifted his hand so that he could start stroking through Buck's hair gently.
"That's usually my job, looking at our track records," he argued lightly, before letting it go. "But yeah. Just continuing as we've always been felt safer. You mean so much to me and Chris, and I haven't wanted to risk rocking that boat."
"I didn't know if I was allowed to," Buck admitted, mouth twisting wryly. "It's like… our friendship is solid, but part of me was convinced that talking about it would mean we'd be starting from scratch and I'd lose you both."
"Frank's been calling me out for avoiding this conversation since before we started kissing," Eddie admitted. "I'm pretty sure he wanted to swear at me when I walked in and told him we'd kissed but like, platonically. He kept telling me that basically nothing would change if we just talked it out."
"Is it bad that I'm kind of worried about that?" Buck asked. "Like, nothing changing."
"No," Eddie replied. "I get it. We've been in relationship limbo for long enough; it feels like there should be a change if we're making things official. I don't want it to still feel like the half-dating half-not bullshit we've been pulling for years now."
"Chris called it a situationship," he offered, and Eddie pulled back to look at him incredulously.
"You talked to our son about this before you talked to me about it?" He asked, voice fond, and Buck's heart skipped a beat at the 'our'.
"Our son talked to me about it," he corrected. "He, uh, wanted to know if we were getting married. Apparently you've been 'smiley' lately."
Eddie grinned at that, not embarrassed by Chris' observational skills in the slightest.
"Now there's an idea."
Buck froze, heat rising to his cheeks.
"Wait, really?"
Of all the things he'd been expecting to come from actually talking with Eddie, this hadn't been one of them. Eddie shrugged, tracing a careful hand over Buck's jaw.
"It would guarantee that we actually change how we approach our relationship," he pointed out. "Part of the issue is the fact that we've been acting as de facto partners for so long, right? Marriage would change that."
Buck pulled a face at that.
"I— When you got married to Shannon, it was out of obligation. Even if you pretended it wasn't at the time. I— If we get married, I don't want it to feel like that."
Eddie tilted Buck's chin up from where it had dropped, a soft smile still on his face.
"The part where I'm crazy in love with you doesn't hurt either," he pointed out.
"Oh," Buck whispered, burying his head in Eddie's neck. "I love you too, you know? More than I've ever loved anyone. And I'd love to marry you."
Eddie's smile widened, and he buried it into Buck's hair.
"We can go ring shopping tomorrow, then," he decided, already picturing what one would look like on Buck's finger. "I don't want to waste any more time."
"Hey," Buck whispered, a small grin on his lips.
"Hey," Eddie replied, brushing a kiss against them. "Have you had a good morning?"
"I've been watching you sleep like a weirdo," he admitted, and Eddie laughed.
"I don't know what it says about me that I find that cute instead of creepy," Eddie replied. "Though if it was coming from anyone else then I'd definitely feel the opposite, so I probably don't need to be that concerned."
They fall into a comfortable silence after that, legs tangled on the bed between them. Buck found himself studying the colours of Eddie's eyes intently, cataloguing the variations in the flecks, before Eddie pulled him back into focus by threading a hand through his hair.
"We do need to get up eventually," he pointed out, voice gentle, and Buck groaned.
"Or we could stay in bed forever and ignore our responsibilities. Carla can keep Chris fed in between him visiting us in here."
"It's tempting," Eddie said, "but you'd be bored in less than an hour, Buck, and we both know it."
Buck smirked at that, threading a hand through Eddie's hair and tugging lightly.
"I'm sure I would find something to entertain myself with," he said, eyes darting to Eddie's lips pointedly.
Eddie rolled his eyes at that, but he was grinning.
"Ok, it might take more like a day. Point still stands, you'd hate not working almost immediately."
"You didn't have to go and be logical about it," he sighed dramatically, then sent Eddie a cheeky grin."You'll just have to make it up to me, I guess. I can think of a few ways."
Buck hadn't really expected anything to change just yet, even with them having finally acknowledged what was going on between them. That had been the entire point of their conversation, after all— the fact that they'd been so scared that taking the next step would somehow ruin things that they'd been resolutely ignoring all the ways that they'd already been taking it for years now.
Buck hadn't, however, expected to get home after covering for someone in B shift and find Eddie curled up on the couch in one of Buck's oversized sweatshirts.
It was amazing, really, how soft Eddie looked in that moment. Buck knew Eddie was smaller than him, but he wasn't a small man overall. In the sweater, though, he looked it, and Buck found himself crossing the room to try and squish on the couch alongside him without any active input from his brain.
"Comfy?" Eddie asked, tilting his head back just enough to arch an eyebrow at him.
"Always with you," Buck replied, voice far more genuine than he intended it to be.
Eddie's smirk softened into a smile at that, and he shifted so that he could sling an arm across Buck's side.
"I should've realised you'd be like this," he said fondly, and Buck tensed despite himself.
"I— I don't have to be, if it's too much."
Eddie pulled him in tighter at that, laying a kiss against his clavicle, right next to the ring he strung on a chain during shifts.
"Never," he murmured, breath ghosting across the top of Buck's chest. "Not for me."
They don't actually tell anyone that they had talked their shit out. It felt silly, in retrospect, how long they'd gone avoiding defining things, how insistent they were that they weren't actually together, despite everything. They just… go about their week as normal, slowly filling out the 'change of relationship' form to hand into Bobby.
It said a lot, the way no one batted an eye at Buck ducking down to kiss Eddie at basically any given moment. It said even more that their engagement rings went unnoticed for almost an entire evening the first time they wore them out, especially given the way that they were all over each other.
It was Chim who spotted the rings first, fittingly, and Buck had to bite back a grin when he literally dropped the drink he was holding.
"Are those—" he asked, and Eddie raised an eyebrow.
"What does it look like?" He asked, flashing his hand again, and Chim gaped.
"Looks a hell of a lot like you and Buckaroo got married and didn't tell anyone, including his sister!"
The table fell silent at that, everyone freezing as they registered what Chimney was saying.
"What?" Buck asked. "Do you really think I'd get married without Maddie there?"
The tension relaxed for a moment, and Maddie sent him a soft smile as he leant back into Eddie.
"No, these are clearly engagement rings, Chim. Get your eyes checked."
With that, he turned to pull Eddie into a showy kiss, laughing as the group broke out into exclamations of shock and delight. Really, they owed Chimney a fruit basket. It probably would've taken them another year to get to this point if it wasn't for him, and Buck was pretty damn glad that it hadn't.
Kissing his best friend had been great, sure, but he much preferred kissing his fiance.