Archive of Our Own

* * * * *

As Eddie makes his way up the stairs to the loft, he’s greeted by the familiar ramblings of the man he adores, mid-sentence and fully committed to whatever point he’s making.

Eight years ago, Eddie had found himself switching, faster than he’d like to admit, from mildly annoyed to completely enamoured by Buck’s voice. Buck could read the chemical list off a jug of Clorox and it would still sound like something sacred. Eddie had stopped questioning that particular fact about himself a long time ago.

As he approaches the pool table, he finds Buck and Ravi in the middle of what appears to be a very serious debate.

“...Storm is an Omega-Level mutant, Ravi. She is literally the goddess of weather, why on Earth would Cyclops, an Alpha-Level mutant at best, be in charge over her? Hmm? Explain that to me.”

Eddie’s eyes dart to Ravi, who already looks like a man who regrets every decision that led him here.

“Cylops has always been-” Ravi starts.

“Oh, so just because that’s how things have always been, things shouldn’t change? Buck interjects. “Why are you holding a proverbial glass ceiling over Storm’s head, Ravi? Should she not be able to vote either? Have her own credit card?”

“WOAH.” Ravi holds booths hands up. “Do not turn this into that.”

“You started this!” Buck turns, clocking his boyfriend at the railing. “Eddie.” The please is implied entirely in his tone. “Back me up. Tell him Storm is the superior leader.”

Eddie straightens up, arms still crossed. “I mean, didn’t Cyclops have a bigger role in the movies?”

“Thank you,” Ravi breathes.

Buck blinks. “I’m not talking about the movies. I’m talking about the animated series.”

“Oh.” Eddie lifts a shoulder. “Then I’ve got nothing. Never seen it.”

He says it the way he says most things; simple, matter of fact, like it’s not information that should detonate anything.

But it does.

Because the truth is, cartoons were never something that happened in the Diaz household. Not X-Men, not anything. Ramon and Helena had kept a tight grip on what came through their television; even PBS was deemed “too provocative”. So Saturday mornings had just been.. Saturday mornings. Nothing special. Nothing remembered.

Eddie hadn’t thought about it in years.

“You’ve—” Buck stops. Starts again. “What do you mean you’ve never seen it?”

“Never seen it.” Eddie shrugs.

Buck looks at him like he just confessed to murder.

Before Buck can retaliate, they're saved by the bell.

Well, by the alarm.

BEEEEEP. BEEEEEP. BEEEEEP.

* * * * *

After shift, Buck drives Eddie home. Well, to Eddie's house. They trade off; days, nights, full weekends, rotating between 4995 South Bedford Street and Buck's place depending mostly on Chris's schedule and partly on whose fridge is better stocked. Today, it's Eddie's.

Once they've crossed the threshold, shoes get toed off at the door without discussion. Buck resigns himself to the couch; sinking into it the way he always does, like it was built specifically for him, while Eddie disappears into the kitchen and comes back with two beers. Cold, already opened.

They clink. Sip. Kiss.

Eddie thinks about that sometimes. How it became a thing without either of them deciding it would be a thing. How, no matter whose house they end up in, no matter how long the shift was or how much his back aches or how loud the world got that day, it always comes back to this.

Clink, sip, kiss.

Sometimes more, if the mood is right. Which, lately, it usually is.

"So you really never watched X-Men growing up?" Buck says, like the firehouse conversation has just been sitting in his mouth this whole time, waiting.

"No, Buck." Eddie says patiently. "Never seen it. Cartoons just… weren't really a thing in our house."

It was one of those boxes that never existed in the Diaz household — not a rule that was broken or a privilege that was taken away, just a thing that simply never was. Ramon and Helena had a very specific idea of how a childhood should be structured, and Saturday morning cartoons had no place in that blueprint. Eddie had never thought to mourn it. You can't miss what you never knew to want.

"Oh." Buck takes a sip and sets his beer down. "That's kind of sad, Eds."

Eddie turns toward him a little. He can hear it already — that particular frequency in Buck's voice, low and sincere, the one that means he's feeling something on Eddie's behalf that Eddie hasn't quite given himself permission to feel.

"I mean, even my parents let me watch cartoons," Buck starts, "and they also let me fall out of a tree, so the bar was admittedly on the ground. But that's not…" he stops, sets his beer down fully, shifts to face Eddie. “…that's not the point."

Eddie tilts his head toward his own lap in offering, and Buck doesn’t hesitate, he swings his legs over and settles back against the arm of the couch like he belongs there.

Buck has belonged by Eddie’s side ever since they had to diffuse a grenade from a man’s leg in the back of an ambulance.

“You can have my back any day”

"Yeah. Or, you know, you can, you could have mine."

Eddie's hand finds Buck's calf, thumb moving in slow, absent circles.

"So you never had that?" Buck asks softly. "A Saturday morning with nowhere to be and nothing to do except plant yourself in front of the TV?" He pauses, and Eddie can tell he's really thinking about it, reconstructing the memory from the inside out. "Because there was something about it, Eds. Like-like the whole week didn't matter. School didn't matter. You'd wake up before your parents, pour yourself a bowl of cereal; way too much sugar, the kind that turns the milk pink — and it was just yours, you know? You’d turn to Channel 4 and it was just you and the TV and nobody asking anything of you." He gets a little faraway look. "X-Men, Batman, Gargoyles, Animaniacs…God, Animaniacs, Spider-Man, Tiny Toons. You'd just go from one to the next and lose like four hours and it felt like nothing. It felt like everything."

Saturday mornings were not a thing in the Diaz household. Saturday nights however, meant evening mass. Pressed clothes and polished shoes and sitting up straight in the pew while Father Ortiz’s voice filled the nave like something that expected to be obeyed. And then Sunday service the very next morning, because one round of Catholic guilt apparently wasn’t sufficient, and the Diaz family had never been known for doing anything halfway.

Every weekend.

For 676 weekends of Eddie’s life, plus or minus.

Each one a little heavier than the last, in the particular way that childhood obligations accumulate; not all at once, but slowly, like sediment, until you’re grown and you realize you spent every Saturday of your formative years being reminded of everything you owed and nothing of what you were allowed to just have.

So no.

Eddie never had that.

"Not really, no," Eddie says. "We just didn't do that." He turns his beer in his hand. "I remember watching that Charlie Brown pumpkin thing once, around Halloween."

"It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," Buck corrects, automatically.

"Right. That." Eddie almost smiles. "That's probably the closest I got. And I know SpongeBob exists, and I know the entire cast of the Backyardigans because of Chris, but…" he shrugs"...No. Never really got around to cartoons."

Buck opens his mouth.

"Did you know it was nominated for an Emmy," Buck says, closing his mouth.

He opens it again. "Yes, actually, and you know Snoopy was a World War One flying ace because of it? His whole aerial sequence took up nearly a quarter of the special. It basically single-handedly cemented Snoopy as a character completely independent of the rest of the Peanuts gang, which is—"

"I know that now," Eddie says warmly.

He's looking at Buck the way he's been looking at Buck for years, long before he had a name for it. Like Buck is the most unintentionally wonderful thing that has ever happened to him.

Buck goes quiet for a moment.

"It's just…" he starts, then stops. Picks his words carefully, which is not always something Buck does, which means he means this one. "It's a little unfortunate. That you didn't get that. Those mornings."

"I turned out fine," Eddie says simply.

"I know you did." Buck shifts, settling deeper into Eddie's lap, looking up at the ceiling. "That's not the point."

Eddie doesn't push it. He knows better than to push it when Buck gets like this; quiet and sincere and full of something he hasn't figured out how to say yet. He just lets his hand move, slow and steady against Buck's leg, and lets the comfortable silence do its work.

* * * * *

Buck continues to stare at the ceiling.

"I turned out fine."

Eddie always says that. "I turned out fine", "I'm okay", "it was just how things were." And he's right — Eddie Diaz is the most okay person Buck has ever met, which is either a miracle or an indictment of everything that tried to make him otherwise.

But okay isn't the same as having had everything you deserved.

And somewhere between the clink and the sip and the kiss, between Eddie's hand warm on his leg and the low hum of the evening settling around them, Buck makes a decision that he doesn't announce. Doesn't even hint at.

He's going to fix it.

Not the whole thing; he can't fix Ramon and Helena and every Saturday morning that came and went without X-Men and too-sweet cereal and four hours of nothing. He can't give Eddie back what wasn't given to him.

But he can give him this Saturday. And maybe the one after that.

He'll figure out the details later.

For now, he just pulls the blanket off the back of the couch, drapes it over both of them, and lets Eddie draw him in closer.

Clink, sip, kiss.

Sometimes that's enough.

* * * * *

The week goes by fast, the way weeks only do when they’ve been genuinely terrible.

Eddie never anticipated that becoming a firefighter would mean negotiating with angry mobs. He definitely never anticipated the alpacas. A full pack of them, agitated and organized in a way that felt personal, like they’d met beforehand and agreed on a strategy. Eddie has faced burning buildings with more composure than he managed on Wednesday.

To say it’s been a week is putting it generously.

By the time Friday rolls around, Eddie is running on the specific fumes that only exist at the tail end of a shift that never should have lasted as long as it did. He lets Buck drive them to Buck’s tonight without argument, which probably tells Buck everything he needs to know about the state of him.

Chris is away for the weekend; a sleepover that had turned into a full two-night affair the way Chris’s plans tend to and with 48 hours of nothing stretching out ahead of them, Buck had been uncharacteristically cryptic all week.

“Don’t make plans.” He’d said. “I’ve got us covered.”

Eddie had tried to get more out of him exactly once and been met with a smile that gave away nothing, which on Buck, is actually a difficult expression to pull off. He’s been sitting with it all week, letting himself wonder. The planetarium, maybe. That Korean fusion place on Wilshire that he had mentioned in passing three weeks ago and honestly hadn’t expected Buck to file away. Knowing Buck, it could be either. Knowing Buck, it’ll be good.

It’s always good, with Buck.

They get to Buck’s and Buck steers them both toward the shower with the kind of confidence that suggests he’s already decided this isn’t a discussion. Eddie doesn’t fight it. He doesn’t need an excuse to get in a shower with Evan Buckley. He’s not going to pretend otherwise.

The bathroom fills with steam. Buck reaches past him for the expensive shampoo; the one Eddie had raised an eyebrow at the price tag of, argued about briefly, and then quietly stopped arguing about once he caught his own reflection two weeks in and noticed what it was doing for his hair. He’ll take that particular confession to his grave.

Buck works it through Eddie’s hair with both hands, slow and thorough, like he has all the time in the world.

“So tomorrow,” Eddie starts. “What should I wear?”

“Nope.” The p pops. Buck doesn’t even look up from what he’s doing. “Not happening.”

“Buck—” Eddie whines.

“It’s a secret, Eds. I told you.”

“I just don’t want to be overdressed.” Eddie presses. “Or underdressed. What if it rains?”

“Do you trust me?” Buck asks.

The question is quiet. Straightforward. No performance behind it.

“Of course,” Eddie says, without hesitation. “Always.”

He turns into Buck as he says it. A thin rivulet of shampoo makes a break for his eyebrow and Buck catches it with his thumb before it can reach his eye; gentle, practiced, not even thinking about it.

“Then trust me when I say you’re going to look great,” Buck says, meeting his eyes. “No matter what you wear.”

Eddie holds his gaze for a moment, then sighs.

“Okay.” Eddie says as he furrows his brows and purses his lips, staring up at Buck.

Eddie has learned that if he uses his big brown eyes against Buck, Buck usually complies.

“You’re pouting.”

“I’m not pouting.” Eddie says, pouting.

This, will not be one of those times.

“You’re absolutely pouting and it’s very cute but I’m still not telling you anything”

“Buck, c’mon —”

Buck leans in and silences Eddie with a kiss before Eddie can fully form a counterargument. It’s slow and warm, and whatever objection was next in line dissolves entirely.

Eddie decides, not for the first time, that Buck is very good at ending conversations.

* * * * *

When Eddie wakes up at 7:38 AM on Saturday morning, it's without Buck beside him.

No warm breath against the nape of his neck. No nose tucked into the curve behind his ear, the spot Buck gravitates toward in his sleep like it was made for him specifically. No arm anchored across his waist, heavy and certain.

Eddie doesn’t like that.

He lies there for a moment, blinking at the ceiling, then sits up and stretches, rolling his neck, pushing the hair back off his forehead. When he finally shuffles out of the bedroom and down the hallway into the living room, he stops.

The TV is paused on X-Men: The Animated Series.

On the coffee table: two empty cereal bowls. And beside them, arranged with the kind of care that suggests Buck thought very seriously about the presentation, four boxes: Cookie Crisp, Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Fruity Pebbles, flanked by a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts and a few rolls of Fruit by the Foot.

Eddie doesn’t know what most of that felt like on a Saturday morning. He knows what it looks like. He knows the logos, sure, knows the mascots from grocery store runs and Chris’s passing references. But the feeling those boxes are supposed to carry, the particular warmth of a Saturday that belonged to nobody but you, that’s not a memory he has.

He’s looking at the outline of something he never got to scribble in.

He’s still taking stock of all of it when Buck emerges from the kitchen, beaming, holding two spoons like he’s presenting them for inspection.

They are not regular spoons.

They are lightsaber spoons.

“Oh good, you’re up!” Buck says, with the energy of someone who has been awake for a while and has been waiting. “I was worried these wouldn’t get delivered in time. Would have really compromised the experience.” He holds both spoons up and flicks them on. They light up, one blue, one green, casting small colored glows across his knuckles.

“Okay,” Buck says seriously. “Do you want to be Luke or Qui-Gon?”

Eddie looks at the TV. At the cereal. At the spoons. At Buck, standing there in a wrinkled sleep shirt with his curls going in four different directions, looking so unreasonably handsome it’s almost inconsiderate.

“Buck,” Eddie says slowly. “What is all this?”

Buck walks over and sets the spoons reverently beside the bowls.

“This, my love,” he announces, “is Saturday morning cartoons.” He spreads his hands like he’s presenting something vast, something that deserves the gesture. “Prepare yourself for a sugar-induced coma while we venture down memory lane.” A pause, deliberate, very Buck. “Well, memory lane for me, anyway. A new road for you. But an important one.”

“You did all this,” Eddie says, a little breathlessly. “For me.”

“Of course.” Simple. Immediate. Like it required no thought at all, when Eddie knows Buck has been sitting on this since the moment he said “never seen it” and shrugged like it was nothing. “I figured we could make up for lost time.”

Eddie exhales. Something moves through his chest, quiet and warm, the particular feeling that only shows up when Buck catches him completely off guard with the sheer fact of him.

“Okay,” he says. Then, softer: “Okay. That sounds really nice.”

Buck closes the distance between them, his hand coming up warm against Eddie’s cheek. Then, those eyes find his.

Blue. Impossibly, unfairly blue, especially in the soft grey wash of early morning light, when Buck hasn’t fully woken up yet and his guard is completely down and it’s all just there. Eddie has spent years trying to find the right word for that color and coming up short every time. It isn’t any one thing. It shifts. Deep as open water in some lights, bright as sea glass in others, and occasionally, in moments exactly like this one, so pale and clear they’re almost silver.

Eddie used to be afraid of the ocean. Too vast, too unknown, no visible bottom.

He’d walk into this one without hesitation.

Every single time.

“Do you want coffee?” Buck asks, breaking Eddie’s train of thought. “I also got Sunny-D.” He tilts his head toward the kitchen. “Figured that was on brand.”

Eddie almost laughs. “Then let’s stay on brand.” A beat. “But Buck, I swear, if it upsets my stomach…”

“We have Tums.”

Eddie hums. Buck really did think of everything. Which isn’t surprising, considering it’s Buck, but it’s still nice — the thought Buck puts into making sure Eddie is happy and comfortable. “Then Sunny-D it is.”

“Perfect.” Buck’s hand drops from his face, slow and reluctant. “You pick your cereal, I’ll grab the milk.” He’s already moving toward the kitchen. “Oh! Do you want your Pop-Tart warmed up? Have you ever had one with butter?”

Eddie smiles.

He smiles because the man he loves has built an entire morning out of sugar and lightsaber spoons and thirty-year-old cartoons, a morning that lives in Buck’s memory like something golden, something kept, and is now asking, with complete sincerity, if Eddie wants butter on his Pop-Tart.

For Buck, this is a homecoming. He’s been here before, and he’s been carrying that feeling around all week, waiting to hand it over.

For Eddie, there’s no memory to return to. No before. Just this, offered to him now, some thirty years too late, by the person who loves him the most.

It turns out, that’s more than enough to make a first memory out of.

Eddie gives Buck the smile, the small private one that belongs only to him, and says,

“Sure, Buck. That sounds great.”

* * * * *

Eddie does not anticipate the theme song.

He settles into the couch with his Fruity Pebbles, chosen after approximately forty-five seconds of deliberation in front of the lineup, during which Buck watches him like he’s making a very important decision, because to Buck, he is. Buck hits play with the kind of ceremony usually reserved for film premieres.

And then the music starts.

Guitars. Actual, aggressive, electric guitars, and a horn section that means business, and Eddie sits up a little straighter without meaning to.

“Is that—”

“Yeah.” Buck, already three bites into his Cookie Crisp, looking deeply satisfied.

“That’s a cartoon theme song?”

“That’s the cartoon theme song.”

Eddie looks at the screen. At the animation, bold and kinetic, mutants assembling like they had somewhere important to be. The music keeps building, keeps pushing, and something about it just works. It genuinely, objectively works.

“That’s a good theme song,” Eddie says, with some surprise.

“Eddie.” Buck turns to face him fully. “That is one of the greatest theme songs ever committed to television. Cartoon or otherwise.”

Eddie took a bite of his Fruity Pebbles. The milk had turned faintly pink already, which was a new experience.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll give you that.”

Buck points at him with his blue lightsaber spoon. “I lift to that song sometimes.”

The thought of Buck power lifting to the song makes Eddie smile. He makes a note to add it to his gym playlist as well.

“I chose Captive Hearts specifically,” Buck says, as the opening scene rolls out, “because I need you to watch Storm and then tell me, with a straight face, that Cyclops deserves to be in charge of anything.”

Eddie hides his smile behind his glass of Sunny-D.

The episode opens in the Danger Room, the team running drills, and within about ninety seconds Storm’s claustrophobia derails the whole exercise; walls closing in, her powers spiking, nearly taking out her own teammates.

“Okay but…” Eddie starts.

“Don’t.” Buck points the spoon at the screen. “Keep watching.”

Cyclops and Jean go on a date to see Phantom of the Opera, “good choice,” Buck notes, and within ten minutes of leaving the theater they get themselves captured in the subway by an underground colony of mutants called the Morlocks, led by a woman named Callisto who decides, without much preamble, that she wants Cyclops to provide her with an heir.

Eddie stares at the screen.

“So the eye patch lady, she wants him to—”

“Yep.”

Eddie looks at Buck. Buck looks back with the expression of a man who had been waiting years to share this with someone.

They both look back at the screen.

The rescue mission is genuinely good, Storm leading the team into the tunnels despite her claustrophobia, pressing on anyway because that’s what a leader does. Wolverine turns out to have very complicated feelings about Jean Grey.

And then Callisto corners them, and the ultimatum is simple: surrender, or the X-Men die one by one.

Storm steps forward.

She doesn’t use her powers. Doesn’t call the wind or split the sky. She just looks at Callisto and issues a challenge — one on one, just the two of them, laser staffs, and there’s something in her voice that makes it clear this was never really a question.

Eddie sits up straighter. “She just…”

“Yep,” Buck says quietly.

The fight is fast. Callisto is good, and she knows it, and she uses it; calling Storm soft, calling her pampered, saying the surface world has made her gentle in ways she can’t afford to be. For a moment it almost looks true.

And then something changes in Storm’s face.

Not anger. Something colder than that. Something that was always there, just waiting to be provoked.

Fifteen seconds later it’s over.

“There it is,” Buck says softly.

Storm stands over Callisto and doesn’t take the crown. Doesn’t claim what she won. She offers it back, offers the Morlocks a home, gets refused, and accepts that without a flicker. Then she walks out of those tunnels the same way she walked in; like the outcome was never really in doubt, and she simply had the patience to wait for everyone else to catch up.

“Okay,” Eddie says.

Buck turns to him slowly.

“Storm should be in charge,” Eddie proclaims.

The noise Buck makes is not dignified. He pumps his lightsaber spoon toward the ceiling, sloshing a little milk over the edge of the bowl, “Thank you, someone in this universe has finally…” Buck says as he reaches for his phone.

Eddie points a finger at him. “Do not call Ravi.”

Buck pauses for a moment, staring blankly at Eddie before saying, “I’m calling Ravi.”

“Buck.

“I just want him to know that you—”

“It is eight in the morning.”

Buck puts his phone down. But he’s smiling that smile, the big unguarded one that takes up his whole face and has been Eddie’s undoing for the better part of the last eight years.

Eddie looks back at the screen.

He thinks about the Diaz living room on a Saturday morning. The silence of it. The particular way a childhood can be structured so neatly that there’s no room left in it for something as simple as this; a couch, a cartoon, cereal going soggy at the edges, nobody asking anything of you.

He thinks about how Buck would have watched this the first time. Probably cross-legged on the floor, too close to the screen, bowl in his lap, completely gone into it.

He thinks about how Buck had remembered that. Had held onto it. Had quietly decided that Eddie deserved a first time of his own, even now.

On screen, Storm raises her hands, and lightning splits the underground sky.

Eddie eats another spoonful of Fruity Pebbles.

The milk is fully pink now.

He doesn’t mind at all.

* * * * *

The second bowl of cereal happens without discussion.

Eddie had reached for the Lucky Charms before he fully registered he was doing it, and Buck had wordlessly gotten up to get the milk, and that was that. The buttered Pop-Tarts had materialized somewhere around the Animaniacs intro, warm from the toaster, butter melting into the golden edges, and Eddie had taken one bite before his world was tilted upside down.

Eddie takes another bite.

He’s watching Buck. Buck is watching Eddie. Buck is watching Eddie eat and enjoy the buttered Pop-Tart.

“It’s good.” Eddie admits. “It’s annoying that this is actually good.”

Buck’s smile was insufferable. “I know.”

On screen, three creatures exploded out of a water tower and Eddie squinted.

“What are they?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean..” Eddie gestures at the screen, “what are they. Are they dogs? Cats? They have ears, but they also –”

“They’re the Animaniacs.”

“That’s not an answer, Buck.”

“Yakko, Wakko and Dot.” Buck points to each one in turn. “Brothers and sister.”

“Of what species.” Eddie says as he unwraps his second Fruit by the Foot.

“They’re the Warners.”

“But what are they, Buck. Biologically."

Buck looks at him. Looks at the screen and then back to Eddie “...Warners.”

“You don’t know.”

“Nobody knows, Eddie, that–that’s part of their charm. Just watch.”

Eddie watches. He eats his buttered Pop-Tart. He accepts, quietly, that he is not going to get a straight answer about the taxonomy of Yakko, Wakko and Dot, and that this is apparently fine and normal.

The episode shifts, something about “Nations of the World…”

Buck is practically vibrating out of his seat.

Eddie watches Buck sit up straight, watches Buck crack his knuckles and take a deep breath.

Buck turns to him. His expression is somewhere between reverence and delight and completely unhinged. “Eddie. I need you to understand that you’re about to witness one of the most important things I have ever shown another human being.”

“Buck–”

And Eddie doesn’t stand a chance.

“YAKKO’S WORLD.” Buck announces, and then he was just, fully committed, every word in perfect time, leaning forward, one hand conducting himself, the other, gesturing weirdly at each lyric like was narrating a nature documentary.

“United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru…”

Eddie stares at Buck.

“...Republic Dominican, Cuba, Caribbean, Greenland, El Salvador too..”

Buck wasn't slowing down; he wasn’t stumbling. He wasn’t even looking at the TV for help, he was looking at Eddie, gesturing at him like Eddie was supposed to be following along, eyes wide and sparkling and absolutely certain of every single word.

“Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guyana and still…”

“Buck–”

“Guatemala, Bolivia, then Argentina,” Buck continues, completely unstoppable, “and Ecuador, Chile, Brazil…”

Eddie laughs. He doesn’t mean to, it just comes out of him; loud and genuine. The kind of laugh that starts in your chest and takes over before you can do anything about it. Because Buck was animated, fully animated, bouncing slightly with the rhythm, mouthing along with Yakko frame for frame, a man in a wrinkled sleep shirt on a Saturday morning who had apparently memorized every country on Earth from a cartoon and retained that information with startling, frankly alarming, precision.

“Costa Rica, Belize, Nicaragua, Bermuda, Bahamas, Tobago, San Juan!” Buck points at him, Eddie laughs harder.

Buck is standing now. "Paraguay, Uruguay, Suriname, and French Guiana, Barbados, and Guam!!"

By the time Buck and Yakko hit Europe, Eddie has given up entirely. He is just watching Buck, bowl of Lucky Charms going soggy, shoulders shaking.

Buck is so happy. That's the thing. Not performing, not trying to make Eddie laugh, just completely in it, the same way he’d probably seen it the first time he heard the song, 8 old on a Saturday morning, and something about that makes Eddie’s chest do something complicated underneath all the laughter.

“Norway, and Sweden, and Iceland, and Finland and Germany..”

“How,” Eddies asks. “How do you still know all of this?”

Buck doesn’t answer because he is on Asia now and Asia was apparently not something you can just stop mid-continent.

"India, Pakistan, Burma, Afghanistan, Thailand, Nepal, and Bhutan, Kampuchea, Malaysia, then Bangladesh, Asia and China, Korea, Japan.."

Eddie can't help but lean in, chin resting on his palm as he looks in amazement as buck dances around the coffee table.

"Crete, Mauritania, then Transylvania, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Malta, and Palestine, Fiji, Australia, Sudan!!"

The song finally ends with a crash of music and Buck flops back down on the couch with the satisfied exhale of a man who just completed a marathon. A visible sheen of sweat above his brow.

“That song got me an A in middle school once.” Buck says.

“I believe you.” Eddie shakes his head, smiling, reaching for the remainder of Buck’s buttered Pop-Tart. “That was genuinely terrifying.”

Buck laughs, bright and easy. He drops his head onto Eddie’s shoulder and Eddie lets him. He tips his cheek briefly to the top of Buck's curls before looking back at the screen.

He thinks about how Buck had been carrying a song around for thirty something years, perfectly intact, just waiting in there somewhere between medical knowledge and recipes, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.

He thinks about how he’d never had that. Not really. Never had a song that lived in him that way, lodged there by a morning that was just his.

Buck looks up at Eddie. “You up for more?”

Eddie presses a kiss to Buck’s birthmark.

If Buck’s eyes are the ocean Eddie would willingly drown in, then this is the shore he always comes back to. The birthmark wins, just barely, in the quiet ranking Eddie keeps to himself and would never say out loud. It’s small and warm beneath his lips, a little raised if you know where to press, which Eddie does; he’s mapped it without meaning to, the way you memorize things you return to often enough. The shape of it. The texture. The way the pink stain darkness with exertion.

He used to think birthmarks were just biology. Melanin, pigment, nothing more than the body doing what bodies do.

He doesn’t think that anymore.

This one looks too deliberate. Too perfectly placed, like the universe had looked at something it was particularly proud of and couldn’t help but sign its name. Eddie had found it early, long before he had any right to be this close to it, and had thought; even then, before he had words for any of it — yeah. I see it. I know.

Eddie’s eyes then meet Bucks.

“Of course, what are you gonna put on next Buckley?”

“You pick...”

* * * * *

Eddie looks at him. "Seriously?"

"It's your Saturday morning too."

Eddie takes the remote. Scrolls through the various streaming apps until he lands on Batman: The Animated Series. He scrolls through the episodes with the particular focused energy of a man who has been given a task and intends to complete it properly, which Buck watches with quiet delight from his end of the couch.

"That one," Eddie says, landing on one without fully knowing why.

Perchance to Dream.

Buck glances at the title and says nothing. Just nods and reaches for his Sunny-D.

The episode opens on Bruce Wayne. Not Batman; Bruce. Waking up in a life where his parents never died. The manor full and warm, Thomas and Martha Wayne alive and present, and Bruce just… happy, in the uncomplicated way you can only be happy in dreams, because the dreaming mind doesn't know to interrogate it.

Eddie watches.

He's quiet in a different way than he's been quiet all morning. Not relaxed quiet. Paying attention quiet.

The dream is good. That's the thing the episode doesn't shy away from. It's genuinely, achingly good. Bruce has everything he lost. All he has to do is stay; just stop asking questions, stop pulling at the edges, let it be real.

"Why doesn't he just…" Eddie starts.

"Keep watching," Buck says softly.

The crack in the dream is small. Bruce can't read. Every time he tries, the words dissolve into nothing, because a sleeping mind can't generate language it doesn't already have. It's such a quiet, specific detail — not a monster, not a villain, just the inability to read a single page of a book, and it's enough. It's the thing that won't let him stay.

He wakes up anyway.

He chooses the life he actually has.

Alfred is there. Asks if he's alright.

"I have to be," Bruce says.

And the episode ends.

Eddie doesn't say anything.

He sits with it for a moment, the way you sit with something that got into you before you had a chance to decide whether to let it. He thinks about the life that went one way when it could have gone another. About Shannon. About Christopher growing up without a mother. About the version of himself that existed before the sniper, before the desert, before he understood that surviving something and being okay are not the same thing.

He thinks about what he would dream, if someone handed him a world where none of it happened.

He thinks about whether he'd be able to read.

He doesn't say any of this.

He just reaches over, finds Buck's hand, and holds it a little tighter than before.

Buck's fingers close around his without hesitation, without comment. No are you okay, no do you want to talk about it. Just his hand, warm and steady, already there.

Because it's Buck.

Because Buck always already knows.

They sit in the quiet for a moment, the credits rolling, the afternoon holding still around them.

Then Eddie clears his throat quietly. "I'm gonna use the bathroom."

"Okay," Buck says. Simple. Easy.

Eddie gets up.

* * * * *

The bathroom is small and familiar and smells like Buck's expensive shampoo. Eddie runs the cold tap, braces both hands on the edge of the sink, and looks at himself in the mirror for a moment.

He looks fine. He is fine.

He's also just been unexpectedly taken apart by a twenty-two minute cartoon from 1992, which is not something he anticipated putting on his list of life experiences.

He exhales slowly. Lets the water run over his wrists.

"I have to be."

He knows that feeling. He's lived inside it for years. The choice you make not because it's easy but because the alternative is staying asleep, and Eddie Diaz has never once in his life chosen to stay asleep.

He turns the tap off.

Eddie looks at himself for one more second.

Then he dries his hands, opens the door, and walks back down the hallway toward the sound of Buck already scrolling through the next thing.

* * * * *

When Eddie plops himself back on the couch, something is different about their drinks.

He picks up his Sunny-D, looks at it, looks at Buck.

Buck is very focused on the TV.

“Buck.”

“Mhm.”

“What’s in this.”

“Sunny-D.”

“Buck.”

“…and a little tequila.”

Eddie looks at the glass again. Takes a sip. Considers. “That’s not terrible.”

Buck’s smile spreads slowly, still not looking away from the screen. “I know.”

“Is this what Saturday mornings were like for you?” Eddie jokingly asks, settling back into the couch beside Buck.

Buck does look at him then. “That’s a new addition.”

“Good to know.”

They clink their tequila Sunny-D’s. Sip. Kiss.

And Buck picks up the remote.

“Okay,” he says, scrolling through the menu. “SpongeBob.”

“I’ve seen SpongeBob.”

Buck gives him a look. “Having it on in the background while Chris watched it doesn’t count.”

Eddie opens his mouth. Closes it.

“…That’s fair.”

Buck scrolls through Season 2 with his bottom lip tucked between his teeth, the way he does when he’s making a decision he cares about more than he’ll admit. His eyes move down the list, and then stop.

“This one.” He says it like he’s found exactly what he was looking for.

Dying for Pie.

Eddie refills his cereal bowl without comment, Fruity Pebbles again, the milk already faintly pink before he’s even poured it.

“Aaaaaare you ready kids?!!!” Comes through the TV.

It takes about forty-five seconds for Eddie to sit up straighter.

The setup is simple enough: Employee Brotherhood Day at the Krusty Krab, SpongeBob presenting Squidward with a sweater made entirely of his own eyelashes ,his own eyelashes, and Squidward, in the process of finding something, anything, to give in return, accidentally buys a pie from pirates that turns out to be a bomb.

A bomb that SpongeBob has now eaten.

A bomb that Mr. Krabs confirms, with the casual authority of a man who has seen this exact situation play out eleven times before, will explode at sunset.

Eddie stares at the screen. “This show is insane.”

“This show is perfect,” Buck says warmly.

Squidward does his best to make SpongeBob’s last hours meaningful without telling him why, dragging himself through SpongeBob’s handwritten list of the most ridiculous activities imaginable; showing Squidward to everyone in town, then again in a salmon suit, knock-knock jokes, walking in reverse, open heart surgery, naturally, and Eddie finds himself laughing before he can think about it.

Actual, unguarded laughter, surprised out of him in real time, which only gets worse when Buck laughs too.

Somewhere in the middle of it, without looking, Eddie reaches over and finds Buck’s hand.

Buck laces their fingers together immediately, like he’d been waiting.

Eddie doesn’t let go.

They stay like that through the final item on SpongeBob’s list: watching the sunset.

Squidward, terrified, builds a brick wall between them so he won’t have to watch the explosion happen. And SpongeBob, completely unbothered by the brick wall his best friend has constructed between them, says happily:

“Yeah, this is great. Just the three of us. You, me, and this brick wall that you built between us.”

Eddie huffs a quiet laugh. Buck squeezes his hand.

And then SpongeBob says, gazing at the sunset: “You know, if I were to die right now, in some sort of fiery explosion due to the carelessness of a friend… that would just be okay.”

Squidward starts crying.

So does Eddie. Just a little. Just at the corners. He says nothing about it and Buck, to his eternal credit, says nothing either.

The countdown starts: Five. Four. Three.

BOOM!

An explosion rocks behind the wall. Squidward collapses, sobbing, “…at least I made his last hours meaningful...I am such a good person…”

And then a second explosion blows the wall down entirely, knocking Squidward flat, revealing SpongeBob on the other side.

Alive. Happy. Blowing enormous bomb-shaped bubbles.

“Hey Squidward, check this out!”

Eddie laughs so hard he spills a little of his drink.

Buck is already gone, fully collapsed sideways into the couch cushion, shoulders shaking, and Eddie looks at him, really looks at him, the way he keeps doing today, because today keeps giving him reasons and Eddie feels something settle in his chest, warm and unhurried.

On screen, SpongeBob produces the pie from his pocket. He’d had it the whole time. He was saving it to share.

He trips over a rock.

The pie hits Squidward in the face.

All of Bikini Bottom explodes.

“Ouch,” says Squidward. The somewhat familiar end credits theme begins to play, the next episode auto-playing.

Eddie wipes his eye. Takes a final sip of his tequila spiked Sunny-D. He shakes his head slowly at the screen.

“I’ve been watching the wrong things my whole life,” he says.

Buck turns his head from where it’s resting against the cushion and looks at him, soft and amused and so unbearably fond it’s almost too much to look at directly.

“That’s what I’m here for,” he says simply.

Eddie looks back at the screen, keeping a steady hold of Buck’s hand.

* * * * *

The next episode plays automatically.

Neither of them moves to stop it.

The morning has gone soft around the edges, the light through Buck’s windows warm and unhurried in the way that Saturday mornings get when nobody has anywhere to be. Eddie is full and warm and still holding Buck’s hand and the world outside this apartment does not currently exist and that is perfectly fine with him.

Buck’s thumb is moving in slow circles over Eddie’s knuckles. He probably doesn’t know he’s doing it.

Eddie looks at him.

Not the way you look at someone when you’re waiting for them to say something, or when you’re trying to figure something out. Just—looks. The way you look at something you still can’t quite believe is yours.

Buck, who has been up since before seven making sure everything was right. Buck, who had stood in this living room holding two lightsaber spoons like they were the most important thing he’d ever held, and meant it, and there was not one single part of him that found that embarrassing.

There is something Buck does that Eddie has never been able to name. It isn’t grand. It doesn’t announce itself. It’s the way Buck holds onto things other people let fall; a shrug, a throwaway sentence, a gap so old Eddie had forgotten it was there, and comes back with it later, quietly, shaped into something else entirely.

Something that says “I heard you. I see you. You deserved more than you got, and I’m not going to let that just sit there.”

He never makes it feel like charity. That’s the thing Eddie can never get over. It never feels like Buck is fixing him or filling something in out of pity. It feels like love in its most functional form. Love as a verb, love as a Saturday morning, love as four cereal boxes arranged on a coffee table by someone who thought about which ones to buy.

Eddie exhales slowly.

“Hi,” Buck says, quietly, still watching the screen.

“Hi,” Eddie says back.

Buck turns. Finds Eddie’s eyes. And whatever he sees there makes him go still in that particular way, the way he does when he’s paying very close attention and doesn’t want Eddie to know how much.

“You okay?” Buck asks.

Eddie holds his gaze for a moment.

Then he reaches up and presses a kiss to Buck’s temple. Slow. Deliberate. Stays there a moment longer than necessary, his hand coming up to the back of Buck’s neck, feeling the warmth of him.

“I’m just really glad you’re you,” Eddie says against his hair.

It’s not eloquent. It doesn’t cover it. He doesn’t think there will ever be enough words to explain to Buck how he feels right now. But Buck makes a small sound, barely anything, and turns into Eddie the way he always does, fitting himself against Eddie’s side like the space was designed for him.

On the TV, Spongebob is talking to a robot Mr.Krabs.

“Oh, this a good episode too.” Buck says, turning his attention back to the scene.

Eddie reaches over with his free hand and takes the remote.

He turns the volume up, just a little.

It’s the best Saturday morning Eddie Diaz has ever had.

He’ll be back here next week.

Same time. Same channel.