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Eddie left Texas wanting to be where he is today.
That is his mantra: what he reminds himself of when he drops Christopher off at daycamp on a bright, much-too-early morning in mid-July. Eddie himself is newly twenty-six, and when he looks around at the clusters of parents standing in the sunlight; mothers shielding their eyes with big sunglasses and a handful of other dads wearing collared shirts— it’s not hard to tell that he’s the odd one out. These parents are mostly of a different age and class than Eddie. Everything about them tells this story: their cars and their clothes, the way that they contrast Eddie’s aging truck and the scrubs he goes to work in. He works hard not to let this bother him, though, and even harder to make sure that it doesn’t affect Christopher.
He’s seven now, and the brightest thing in Eddie’s life. Better than the job that he worked so hard for and loves so much; better than shiny Los Angeles; better than the freedom to be himself, though that last one admittedly comes pretty close. Or maybe they’re just intertwined: he knows that he’s a better dad to Christopher because he’s better to himself than he might have thought he could be even a few short years ago.
The sun slants into his eyes as he lifts his baby up out of the backseat of the truck.
“Watch your head,” he reminds him as Chris ducks obediently. And then, seconds later: “Strong legs!”
Christopher stabilizes himself and Eddie, who could do the whole thing backwards and in his sleep, mindlessly helps him navigate his arms into his crutches; holds his shoulder until he’s sure he’s balanced; reaches back in to grab the little backpack that Chris takes to camp: patterned with fish of all colors and filled with his matching water bottle and the lunch that Eddie packs for him each day.
Eddie glances around, watching as a mom in a pristine white matching skirt set bends delicately to hug a child that Eddie can’t see from here beyond her dark hair and the glitter scrunchie around her ponytail. The place is nice, and Chris loves it, even if Eddie sometimes hates dropping him off here. During the school year, it’s easier: Christopher needs to be in school, and would be no matter what. Daycamp replaces time that Eddie could be with him; a reminder that he’s not wrapped up in a pretty package, a place he sends his kid to grow and learn without him. There’s guilt in that, even if he knows he’s going to pick him up again tonight.
Still, Eddie thinks, it’s certainly better than Texas.
Blowing up his life to go to nursing school had been the best thing Eddie could have done, no matter how hard it was at the time. In hindsight, he can look back on it and see that it was one of two major turning points in his life, only second to the birth of his son. There had been an Eddie who existed before Shannon got pregnant; an Eddie who existed as Christopher’s dad; and the Eddie who had stood up to his parents in a living room in El Paso. All of these versions of himself paved the way for the one that he is today: an Eddie who had forged a new life in Los Angeles and, along the way, found it in himself to forge space in his chest for things he’d never known. Maybe it had taken sacrificing his relationship with his parents to come to terms with being gay, but Eddie is better for it. They both are.
“Alright, baby,” he says, dropping to one knee next to the truck and looking up into Christopher’s face. His glasses are askew and already smudged even though Eddie had cleaned them before they left the house, the same as every morning. He reaches up, adjusting the frames as Christopher grins.
Eddie smiles, too. Anybody would, in the face of that.
“You ready?” he asks.
“Ready!” Chris cheers, and Eddie laughs.
“Okay,” he says, opening his arms.
Christopher folds into him; against Eddie’s ribs, through his scrubs, the sharp corner of one of his crutches digs in, but Eddie lets it happen. The rest of the hug is soft and warm and smells like coconut sunscreen.
“Remember,” he says, letting Chris pull back when he’s ready. “Your extra sunscreen is in your backpack.”
“And my hat,” Chris nods.
“And your hat,” Eddie repeats. He pauses, brushing his thumb over Christopher’s still-pink cheekbone. “We do not want a repeat of Friday, okay?” he instructs. “So if you feel your face getting hot, you…”
“Tell the teacher,” Chris recites, already bored.
“And?” Eddie prompts patiently.
“Drink water,” Chris answers dutifully.
“Good boy,” Eddie says, leaning in to kiss his cheek and adjusting the strap of his bag on his small shoulder over the bright blue daycamp t-shirt he’s wearing. “Okay. I love you.”
“Love you, Dad,” Chris calls, already turning to head inside.
Eddie hangs back long enough to watch as the staff member at the door locks eyes on Chris and ushers him inside, sparing a quick wave to Eddie, and then— alone for the first time this morning— Eddie’s peaceful morning ends, and the day is on.
Every morning in the emergency room is a different beast. Eddie loves this shift: loves arriving when the day is beginning; loves the sense of pace that it gives him; the coffee in the staff lounge and reliable eastern light that chases him across the hallway as he makes his way down to start his day. He was on nights for a rotation when he was fresh out of school, and hated it passionately. Day shifts are much more his speed.
“Good morning, Eddie,” a voice says from across the counter as he moves through the neverending hum and bustle of the emergency room up to the nurse’s station.
He smiles. “Hi, Carol. What’s the news today?”
“Nothing new around here,” she says, waving him off. “Pretty usual night from what I hear. How’s your boy?”
Eddie’s smile softens. “Couldn’t wait to get away from me this morning,” he answers, shaking his head. “Every day he’s more ready to get rid of me.”
Carol grins, then claps him lightly on the shoulder. “You don’t hold a candle to summer camp. Get used to it, Dad.”
“I’m trying,” Eddie laughs after her as she heads in another direction, only to be replaced a moment later on Eddie’s other side by another familiar presence.
She’s known to Eddie as Gia— though she insists on being known by a plethora of nicknames, everything from Dr. G to Gigia, as opposed to any version of her full and very Italian name. She’s a pediatrician turned emergency medicine attending, and she more or less runs the ER these days.
Eddie has admired her from the moment they met for her braided warmth and low tolerance for nonsense; her cool head in a crisis; and her ability to command a room with a look.
“Eddie, good,” she says, traces of a thinned-out accent curling her vowels. “I have a scraped-up baby with a rambunctious big sister in three and they have your name all over them.”
Eddie is a trauma nurse. Less officially, he’s a baby whisperer. It hadn’t taken long for everyone in the ER to catch onto his particular niche of skill; and not long after that for them to find out that he’s the single dad of the world’s most adorable boy and to understand why. Since then, he’s shepherded into almost every pediatric case they catch in the emergency department.
He loves this, most of the time. Sometimes, it’s heartbreaking and awful; sometimes he has to go to the staff bathroom and cry and sometimes he gets home and hugs Christopher so tight that he squirms and begs to be freed. But a lot of the time, it’s rewarding and fulfilling. There’s something that touches him about it— about knowing that kids of all ages will respond to him like that; knowing he can help them.
“What are we looking at?” he asks.
“I saw them briefly,” she replies, shaking her head. “Nothing crazy. The mom is beside herself; I don’t get the sense that it’s anything to be on the lookout for. Classic kid stuff, I would say.”
Eddie nods, taking the file. “I’m on it, then,” he says, and a moment later he’s pulling aside the curtain on his first cubicle of the day, the rings skittering over their rod like a familiar soundtrack to each of Eddie’s days.
“Good morning,” he says, looking between the file and the little clustered family waiting for him in the room. “I’m Eddie, I’m a nurse. I heard someone here took a little fall.”
Before Eddie can go any further, there’s a sharp clatter at his feet and he looks down to find a three or four year old with bright dark eyes splayed out on the floor and along with him, a shiny bright red fire engine that he has just thrown at Eddie’s feet like an offering.
“Oh,” Eddie says. “Hi, bud.”
“Hi!” the child giggles as his mom runs a frazzled hand through her hair, reaching for him while keeping a hold on the fussing baby in her arms.
“Jackson,” she pleads, then looks up at Eddie. “I’m so sorry, he is not normally like this. It’s just been—”
“A morning,” Eddie fills in, nodding. “No worries. Here.” He crouches down then, and picks up the firetruck, holding it out. “I think,” he says. “You are going to need this so that you can help me with your sister.”
This gives Jackson pause. He studies Eddie, his little head tilted. “Help?” he asks.
Eddie grins. “I don’t know about you,” he says, leaning in conspiratorially. “But I love firefighters. And that’s what firefighters do, right? Help save the day?”
“Yeah!”
“Okay, then,” he laughs. “Let’s see what we’ve got going on here.”
In a matter of a few minutes, Eddie has managed to wrangle a toddler and his firetruck; clean the scrapes on baby Ruby as their mom tearfully explains the situation, which had as Eddie suspected involved the firetruck and the driveway in the first place; and settle both kids with bright, sparkly stickers that he always keeps in his scrub pocket for occasions just like this one. They’re in and out in half an hour at most, with Mom assured that baby is perfectly fine and Jackson happily waving to Eddie as they exit the ER.
“Look at you,” Carol says, meeting him by the nurse’s station with a smile. “Not even nine a.m and you’re already nurse of the day.”
Eddie grins, shaking his head. “All in an hour’s work,” he jokes, pumping hand sanitizer gel into his palm and spreading it over his hands. “What else do you have for me?”
Over the course of the morning, this amounts to two more kids and a couple of adults; a broken wrist on an eleven year old; a sick college student who Eddie leaves in Gia’s care but is very sure has mono; a severe migraine; a cook with a deep cut in his palm. Eddie moves from chart to chart and cubicle to cubicle, assisting where he’s needed, ducking in and out as the usual rhythm of the emergency room pulses around him. It’s this rhythm that had appealed to him in the first place. He’d always known that he had the temperament for it— the necessary calm and quick thinking— but it had only been once he actually got into an ER that he learned how much he liked it. Now, he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else, though he does enjoy the occasional cover shift on the pediatric floor.
He takes a quick lunch and then gets back to it. He’s still in an exam room with a young woman who’d been injured at her construction job when there’s a burst of activity outside: muffled shouting with a controlled beat to it; the braiding of voices that are familiar to Eddie; the slam of the ambulance bay doors. All of the telltale signs of an incoming trauma.
By the time Eddie finishes up what he’s doing and steps outside, what might have begun as a run of the mill trauma has escalated.
The hallways are packed with nurses and doctors from various departments; there are paramedics in their navy LAFD-issue clothes; by the door, Eddie catches the reflective glint of turnouts. There are vital signs being lobbied over heads and the squeaky wheels of gurneys flickering by; overlapping voices raised to a fever pitch. Simply speaking, it’s chaos.
Eddie doesn’t hesitate to jump in, and finds himself pulled into a room with a little kid wearing swimming trunks who’s thrashing and screaming on a gurney. There are two doctors in the room who already know what’s going on, so Eddie goes where he’s needed and crouches down by the kid’s head.
He’s maybe five or six if Eddie had to guess, just a little younger than Christopher, and hysterical.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Eddie says, keeping his voice calm over his screaming. He tugs gloves on over his knuckles, then gently holds the boy’s shoulders down with a firm but careful grasp. “My name is Eddie; you’re safe here, okay? We’re taking care of you.”
“Mommy,” the boy sobs, and Eddie’s heart twists in his chest. He moves one hand to the boy’s hair, soft damp strands of strawberry blonde, and smoothes them back gently.
“I want my Mommy!” the boy screams, his voice breaking.
“I know,” Eddie coos. “I know, baby. It’s okay. You’re being so brave.”
He glances down and, between quick motions and hands, briefly catches sight of what look like chemical burns along the little boy’s legs. His lungs tighten; whatever had happened, it doesn’t look good. It would be a lot for an adult to handle, let alone a scared little boy.
“Where are his parents?” Eddie asks, tilting his head up to look at Gia, who has materialized next to him.
She gives a tight shake of her head. “Not here,” she answers grimly. “Accident happened at a pool. I’m not clear on all the details yet, but there were a whole lot of kids there.”
“Without their parents?” Eddie asks, his voice tight. But his question goes unanswered, because an alarm starts to ring and everyone’s attention returns to the boy.
Eventually, he has to be sedated. With nothing left for Eddie to do now that the boy is still and quiet and in good hands, he steps back out into the hallway.
In his absence, things seem to have calmed down a little bit, though not entirely. Their regular patients are all mixed in or moved out of the ER to make space, as far as Eddie can tell. It’ll be an uphill climb to get everything back in order, but it won’t be the first time.
“Eddie!” Carol’s voice calls, and he spins in place, following the sound around the corner to where she’s sliding back the curtain on a cubicle. “Can you take this patient?” she asks as he steps closer.
“Yeah, what’s—”
The rest of Eddie’s words die in his throat, all their space taken up by the unpleasant leap of his heart as he lays eyes on the child in front of him. A little girl, maybe eight years old— not severely injured like the boy that he’d just seen, but scraped up and in tears. But what Eddie is looking at is her t-shirt.
“Eddie?” Carol prompts.
But Eddie is looking at a bright blue t-shirt and thinking about helping Christopher turn it around the right way after he got dressed himself, just this morning, and had it on backwards. He’s looking at a little sun-shaped logo on the right side of the chest and picturing it dropped haphazardly on his baby’s bedroom floor. He’s looking at this little girl in front of him and remembering a flash of her dark ponytail with the sparkly scrunchie; remembering watching her mom dressed in white leaning over to hug her just this morning before she disappeared into the same building as Christopher.
His chest is closing up with panic so tight and fierce that he forgets where he is; forgets he’s wearing blush scrubs; forgets about the stickers in his pocket and what he’s supposed to be doing and the kid in front of him; forgets about the lanyard around his neck and the badge hanging from it branding him NURSE.
All of a sudden, in the space of one horrifying second, he’s only Dad again, like he’d been in the flickers of dappled sunlight over the breakfast table just hours ago or last night tucking Christopher into bed, giving in to reading one more book, leaning over him and kissing his little face. Like he’d been just before the left the house, spraying Chris with sunscreen, rubbing it into his scrunched-up nose. Like he’d been, on one knee to hug his son, thinking that he would be back to pick him up later today and that Chris would be full of chatter just like every other afternoon.
“Eddie?” Carol says again. She sounds like she’s understanding, suddenly, that something isn’t right. She sounds concerned. Eddie hears it as if through water.
“Christopher,” he gasps, looking up at her.
Her features darken. “What?”
“Chris— Christopher— his day camp,” Eddie stammers. “I have to—”
Understanding, chased by horror, on her face. “Go,” she says, but Eddie barely hears her. He’s already gone, turning the other direction.
He knows every room of the ER like the back of his hand, practically, could identify any nook or cranny in the place, every closet and curtained cubby. It all leaves him in this moment, thoughts like blown leaves, scattering. He becomes nothing but heartbeat and shaking hands, wading through people, searching and scanning every space.
“Christopher?” he calls, not thinking. This is true panic— more than whatever he’d felt on cold nights in Afghanistan, and worse than the fear of waking up to an empty house having become a single parent overnight. He’s a mouth and a body and eyes and nothing more than a frantic pulse; later, he’ll look back on it and understand the parents who come into the ER day in and day out; he’ll remember Jackson and baby Ruby and their frazzled mom from the morning and look on her with softer eyes, having known some version of how she was feeling more freshly.
“Christopher,” he calls out again, passing by people he knows and people he doesn’t.
“Eddie?” Gia asks, frowning as they cross paths in the hallway, her white coat swishing as she turns to keep him in sight. “What’s wrong?”
Eddie swallows hard, like eating thorns. “My son,” he gets out. “It’s his day camp. I’m—”
“Shit,” she says. Eddie doesn’t have it in him to register it, but if he did, he’d be grateful— when things are really bad, she curses in Italian. “Check the waiting room. There are uninjured kids there with some of the first responders. Nobody has seen him in here, we would have recognized him.”
Eddie is suddenly thankful that he’d tried so hard to build a kind of community when he and Chris moved to LA. Glad that he’s been going to things when they were invited; glad that there are people here who know Christopher’s face, who would recognize him if he came in.
He brushes past her, checking each of the rooms at a glance anyway— just in case. Everyone in the ER would know Chris, maybe, but there are other doctors and nurses from other floors and it’s not beyond possibility that he might have ended up with one of them. His heart thrums in his chest, straining at its tether, desperate. He can’t catch his breath or think straight. He’s a muscle, an animal, a parent.
He makes his way through the doors out to the waiting room, hearing the familiar click of their lock. Out here, it’s really chaos. The noise greets him like a wave or a wall, sudden and deafening. The voices here are unfamiliar; there are patients who were waiting to begin with and parents and paramedics and kids in that electric blue all over the place.
Helpless, Eddie taps the shoulder of the closest person to him— a paramedic, he realizes quickly with a glance at her uniform. She’s sturdy built and dark skinned, bald and wearing thick glasses; she looks at him with an immediately kind face that would normally settle him. Nothing can do it right now, though.
She sizes him up in the space of an instant, and Eddie vaguely registers that he’s confusing her— his scrubs at odds with his demeanor.
“I’m looking for my son,” he says. “I’m sorry to bother you, I was hoping you might have seen him.”
“You had a kid at the day camp?” she asks.
“Yeah, yes,” Eddie says. “Christopher. He’s seven, he has, um— curly hair. He was wearing—” Eddie cuts himself off, glancing around and realizing that Chris was wearing what they’re all wearing. “He has a backpack with fish on it,” he says instead. “And— and crutches and glasses, they’re red. His crutches and his glasses, they’re both red.”
Miraculously, her face clears with recognition.
“Oh,” she says. “Christopher, yeah, I’ve seen him. He’s with—”
She scans the room, gesturing, and Eddie turns in place with his heart climbing up into his mouth.
And then a clustering family in front of him shifts, and he gets a look at Christopher, the appearance like taking in fresh air for the first time in what feels like forever. Across the room, he may as well be made of gold, the way he shines as Eddie’s lungs collapse in relief.
“Thank you,” he says, half to the paramedic who had pointed him in the right direction and half to himself, already moving.
“Christopher!” he calls, and Chris looks up. All the chairs are full, so Chris is in the arms of a firefighter— in his peripheral vision around the gaze that he has only for Chris, Eddie catches the LAFD t-shirt; the turnouts and suspenders against his chest. At the sight of Eddie, Christopher’s face lights up entirely.
“Daddy!” he cries, delighted, reaching for Eddie.
Eddie scoops him easily out of the grasp of the firefighter who had been holding him, and the weight of him in his arms could be enough to have him weeping if he isn’t careful.
“Oh,” he breathes, burying a kiss in Christopher’s curls as he holds him close. “Hi, honey. Are you okay? Did you get hurt?”
Chris pulls back, shaking his head. “No,” he says.
“Are you sure?” Eddie presses, looking him over— cataloguing him without thinking. “Nothing hurts at all, baby? Look at Dad.”
Christopher— the audacious child that he is— rolls his eyes. “No,” he insists again. “I wasn’t in the pool.”
Eddie kind of doesn’t know what that means. He’s still not even sure what exactly happened at the day camp, and it must show on his face because the firefighter— who Eddie has barely paid any mind to at all— jumps in.
“Chemical spill situation,” he says. “Um, it was kind of a domino effect thing. Nobody’s fault, but the kids who were in the pool got the worst of it. Christopher here tells me that he was inside the building. Missed the whole thing.”
Eddie flashes back to the screaming child in the ER on a gurney, to the burns on his legs, and suppresses a shiver followed by a rush of guiltladen gratitude.
And then, for the first time, he looks up.
The firefighter in question, the first time Eddie really registers his presence, is smiling. He’s very broad and tall— even taller than Eddie— and has soft blonde hair that’s combed but looks like it wants to curl. He has bright blue eyes and a splashed red birthmark over his eye, and he’s standing in front of Eddie smiling in such a way that can only be described as warm.
And a moment ago, he’d been holding Eddie’s baby on his hip.
Now, Chris perks up, beaming. “This is Buck!” he says.
“Buck,” Eddie repeats, sounding sort of distant and faint even to his own ears.
The firefighter— the hottest man that Eddie has ever seen in real life— Buck— smiles even brighter at this, his cheeks faintly pink as the smile takes over his whole face.
“Buckley,” he says. “E-Evan Buckley. Yeah. But, uh— p-people call me Buck. Everybody calls me Buck.”
With that, he holds his hand out to Eddie, and Eddie adjusts his hold on Chris to take it, and when he does he finds that it— like the rest of Buck— is warm and broad.
“Eddie,” he says. “I’m Eddie.”
“I know,” Buck says, seemingly recovering. He ducks his head a little, and then looks back up with his eyes on Christopher and his features softening. “I heard all about you from this guy. He said you were a nurse here so I—I was just hanging with him until things calmed down enough that we could come and try to find you.”
“But you found us!” Chris adds, clearly delighted and not at all traumatized by this whole experience. Eddie has to assume that this has a lot to do with the firefighter who’s been acting as his personal entertainment, apparently. He squeezes Chris and kisses his temple lightly, then looks back over to Buck.
“Thank you,” he says, knowing that it falls short and having no idea what more to say. “I— really, thank you so much.”
“Oh, yeah, no,” Buck says quickly, waving him off. “Just, uh— just doing my job.” He hesitates, looks at Chris, and then brings his gaze back to Eddie, just wildeyed enough to be endearing. “Not that— not that I wouldn’t have done it anyway. Not just my job. He is such a great kid.”
Eddie finds himself smiling. An impossible feat, he’d have thought about five minutes ago. But he manages it, standing here in this corner of the waiting room.
“He is,” he says, his voice so bright and warm that he can hear it in himself as he glances at a smiling, happy Christopher on his hip.
“Yeah,” Buck says, sharing a grin with Christopher. “I would hang out with him anytime.”
The thing that strikes Eddie, immediately and wholly, is that there’s no doubt Buck means it. He radiates honesty, a kind of openness that draws you in. That, and the suspenders that work surprisingly well for him.
“Anytime?” Chris asks, perking up. “So we can see you again soon!”
Eddie flushes with heat, feeling the color of it as it creeps over his cheeks. “Christopher,” he says, half-admonishing.
“What?” Chris asks, the picture of innocence. “Buck wants to! Don’t you, Buck?”
Buck turns to him, a sort of melting expression on his face. Eddie gets the feeling— the kid is kind of impossible to say no to.
“Well,” he stammers. “Of course I want to, buddy. But, uh, that would be—” He pauses, looking over at Eddie. “That would be up to your dad.”
And okay, so admittedly realizing that he was gay in the middle of going to night school and forging a life as a newly single parent to a high-needs child in a brand new city and state had not been the most practical thing that could have happened to Eddie.
And since then, he hasn’t had much of a dating life. So for all his wrangling of his self-talk and teaching himself to shed the skin of a kid from Texas, Eddie doesn’t have much experience being gay. So he’s not entirely sure that the way the hot firefighter—Buck— is looking at him actually means anything at all. It could be nothing, really.
“And,” Chris says between them, pulling Eddie back into the moment, “you could also go on a da—mmpfh.”
Eddie, in a flutter of panic, has covered his child’s mouth with his hand, his eyes widening.
Buck grins, impossibly dazzling. Eddie watches his sanity slip down an imaginary drain as his face grows impossibly pinker. The only consolation is that across Buck’s nose and the tops of his cheeks, there’s a dusting of pink deepening to the color of the birthmark on his face.
“A date,” Chris says, freeing himself from the confines of Eddie’s hand.
“Chris,” Eddie hisses. “You have been spending way too much time with Tía Pepa.”
Christopher giggles, a peal of laughter that lightens Eddie up in spite of how mortifying this whole ordeal is quickly becoming.
“Be quiet,” Eddie says, half-laughing as he kisses Chris’ cheek again, unable to stop himself.
When he glances back at Buck, he’s grinning from ear to ear.
“Well,” he says again, though his voice is softer now. “Like I said. That would be up to your dad.” He’s speaking to Chris, ostensibly, but his blue eyes are on Eddie, and he lowers his head a little to flutter his pale lashes.
Okay, Eddie may be inexperienced but that look definitely means something.
He gathers himself. There’s a version of Eddie who would be terrified to make a leap like this. Sometimes, he still thinks he is that man. But the truth is that he’s done a lot of hard work to leave him behind, to make sure that the Eddie who would have let fear get the best of him stays where he belongs across a couple of state lines.
This is an Eddie who has made a whole life for himself. Who’s already done the work to know who he is. He looks between Christopher, who’s still grinning, and Buck— Buck, who Eddie feels like he knows in a matter of minutes. Buck, who’s been here for god only knows how long, entertaining Eddie’s kid and keeping him safe and holding him because his crutches are nowhere to be seen. Buck, who’s looking at Eddie like he wants him; who Eddie knows, somewhere deep down, he’ll be thinking about forever if he doesn’t say something now.
Some would have called it fate, maybe, that Buck was on shift that day; that the 118 responded to the call at the day camp; that Bobby agreed to let everyone hang around at the hospital to help with crowd control and Buck got to stay with Christopher long enough to hear him go on and on about his Dad, who’s a nurse at this very emergency room.
Eddie doesn’t believe in fate. Not even when it comes to this. Not God, or the universe, or the aligned stars.
But he does believe in himself. That’s the thing he’d fought for by coming here; the thing he fights to keep every day that he shows up for work— including the day when a beautiful firefighter wandered into his life with his baby already comfortably perched on his hip.
And so he doesn’t think it’s fate when he pulls himself together, smiles at Buck, and tilts his head.
“We could do something,” he offers, his voice a little softer. “If you’re up for it.”
Buck lights up, looking startlingly like a dog who’s just been offered his most favorite food in the world.
“Really?” he asks, audibly excited, blue eyes bright. “With— both of you?”
Eddie smiles, charmed. “We’re kind of a package deal,” he admits.
“Yeah!” Chris says, grinning, and then wrapping his arms around Eddie’s neck. Eddie had never imagined that his kid would be the reason he got a date, but now he’s seeing how it might be appealing under the right circumstances.
Buck seems to agree, because his gaze turns to Chris and goes warm. “Who could say no to that?” he asks.
“In my experience, it is pretty hard,” Eddie admits.
Buck looks back at him then, and Eddie is surprised to find that his eyes go even warmer, now that they’re on Eddie’s face. “I’m getting that,” he says, smiling. “Um— would you—”
Eddie isn’t sure what possesses him.
“What are you doing tonight?” he asks.
Eddie is expecting surprise at best, and for him to be entirely put off at worst. But Buck doesn’t miss a beat. He beams, bright like the sun and completely earnest.
“I’m off at six,” he says.
“Great,” Eddie answers.
Christopher, completely delighted, looks between them. “Can Buck come to our house?” he asks, excitement building in his voice.
“If Buck doesn’t mind takeout and toys all over the place because someone never cleans up when he’s told to,” Eddie answers, glancing back across at Buck.
“I love that,” he says, faintly breathless, nodding. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” Eddie says, smiling back at him. “Good.”
He takes Buck’s phone when it’s offered, types his own phone number and address into Buck’s Notes app, and hands it back.
“Buckley,” comes a strong voice from across the room, and they both turn. “Let’s go.”
“M-my captain,” Buck explains. “But I’ll— I’ll see you guys tonight? You’re sure you don’t mind me crashing your evening on that short notice?”
Eddie is surprised and delighted to find that he really, really doesn’t.
“We’ll see you tonight,” he says, and Buck lights back up into a bright smile.
“Okay,” he says, then reaches out to Chris, holding his hand up for a high-five that’s returned so enthusiastically Eddie has to adjust his grip on Christopher so that he doesn’t throw himself out of Eddie’s arms.
Buck laughs, and it’s warm and open and a sound that Eddie likes immediately.
“I’ll see you tonight, Eddie,” he says, looking back at Eddie.
And then he’s gone, Chris waving wildly after him. And Eddie is left in the hospital waiting room with a half-finished shift; a kid he no longer has childcare for; and a date.
Somehow, as he watches Buck turn at the door to wave one more time before he disappears, he thinks that it might be the beginning of the rest of his life.
Buck is energy.
He stands in the locker room and visualizes himself this way: like a ball of light; like a storm on Jupiter; like a comet burning through layers of atmosphere. He’s light and energy and he cannot stop thinking about Eddie Diaz.
The image of his face comes to Buck easily, hours later as his shift inches to a close. The terrified panic on his features and the way it had melted so easily into sweet, soft relief at the sight of Christopher. Afterward, the concern as he looked his son over. And once any threat of danger had really passed, the sweetness in his big dark eyes; the flush on his cheeks; his smile.
Between that and the cutest kid in the world, Buck isn’t sure anybody would have stood a chance. He’s just glad he was the one standing there against it.
He’s standing at his locker, debating the clothes that he has with him, when there’s a faint knock, knuckles against glass. He turns instinctively, finding Hen standing in the doorway with her arms over her chest and a knowing look on her face.
“What happened to not picking people up on calls?” she asks.
Caught, Buck ducks his head. “This is different,” he says, before he can think about it. “How did you know?”
Hen scoffs, her breath an amused scrape of sandpaper. “Come on,” she says. “Don’t think I didn’t see you over there with your cheeks all pink, Buckley.”
“That’s not fair,” Buck half-laughs. “Did you see him?”
“Oh, yeah,” Hen says, wandering into the locker room and perching on the bench in front of him. “We all saw him.”
“So,” Buck says, holding his hands out. “You understand that I cannot be held at fault here.”
Hen laughs. “I can admit,” she allows with a shrug of her shoulders. “That’s a beautiful man. But,” she adds, brandishing a pointed finger in his direction. “Look me in the eye and tell me it’s not about the kid.”
Buck groans, reaching down to pull his shirt over his head in one quick motion so that he can replace it with the one in his locker.
“Hen,” he says, muffled through fabric. “You know how I am about kids.”
“I do know,” she replies, her eyebrows raised. “That’s why I’m asking.”
Buck thinks back.
Christopher had been the only kid who wasn’t in hysterics when they first arrived, responding to the call at the day camp. Understandably, the rest of them were terrified. It had taken more than just the 118: the whole thing was just shy of a full-scale disaster. That’s how Buck had ended up inside the building at all, when he would probably have normally been outside in the action. Too many cooks in the kitchen, so to speak.
So Buck had gone inside to scope the building; to help with rounding everybody up and organizing transport, making sure that everyone was where they needed to be. Which, of course, they weren’t. Most of the day camp staff were young— college kids taking summer jobs— and the ones who were actually in charge were all outside. So the recreation center they were using as their base camp was chaos.
Christopher had stood out to Buck immediately, because he was just sitting in the corner in a chair, kicking his high-tops and looking around through his glasses.
Buck had gone over to him while Bobby rounded up the staff and the kids that were crying or screaming, and he’d taken a knee in front of him.
“Hey,” Buck had said, smiling up at him. “I’m Buck. I’m a firefighter. Are you okay?”
“Yes,” the kid had said. “But I lost my crutches. So I have to sit here.”
“You have crutches, huh?” Buck had asked him, glancing around for them and seeing no trace of them. “What’s your name, bud?”
“Christopher Diaz,” he’d answered. “My crutches are… because I have CP,” Christopher had told him calmly. “I can walk without them but my dad says it’s better to save that for home.”
Buck had smiled. “Dad sounds smart,” he’d offered.
Christopher had lit up then, unbothered by what was going on around him but apparently more than willing to talk to Buck about his dad.
“He’s a nurse!” he’d said. “He’s really smart. He went to school at night when we moved here. And I- I come here because he’s working at the hospital.”
“Cool job,” Buck had grinned. “Almost as cool as firefighter.”
Christopher had laughed, an open warm bright sound that touched deep in Buck’s chest. “Maybe,” he had grinned.
Buck was sort of a goner before he had time to stop himself. Any kid would do it, but this one— he was special. Buck could tell right away.
“I’ll tell you what,” he’d said, glancing around to be sure he wasn’t needed elsewhere and finding that Bobby had it all well under control. “How about since we don’t know where your crutches are, you just hang out with me until we get everybody squared away? Does that sound okay to you?”
“Yeah!” Christopher had grinned.
“Okay, let’s go,” Buck had laughed.
There had been a look from Bobby when Buck walked up with a kid attached to his hip. But after he’d explained the situation, it turned out that Bobby had already heard about Christopher from the director of the day camp: as one of two disabled kids in their care, she’d been quick to fill him in. The other one had been in the pool at the time of the accident, which left just Christopher on their high-priority list.
A little cajoling from Buck, and Chris had ended up riding with them in the engine. At the hospital, the kid had lit up and launched into telling Buck all about his dad— Eddie, he’d said, in an amusing grown-up kind of way, like he understood that his dad was more than just Dad.
Simply put, Buck had fallen in love with Christopher.
Eddie had been a bonus— and not at all what Buck had been expecting from the father of a seven-year-old. Young— around Buck’s age, if not younger than him— and beautiful, not to mention dedicated and attentive, nearly in tears over seeing Christopher safe and sound in the waiting room.
So—
“It’s different,” he tells Hen as he slams the door of his locker and listens for it to click, the mechanism sliding into place.
He turns to look at her, finding her smiling but with her eyebrows raised. “Is it?” she asks.
“Yes, Henrietta, it is,” Buck replies. “I liked Eddie. This isn’t about picking someone up like it was before. I am refined.”
“Reformed,” Hen corrects dryly.
“Yes,” Buck amends, pointing at her and grinning. “I am reformed. You see? Buck of the past would have never let you correct him like that. I’m a better man.”
“Mhm,” Hen says, though her smile breaking through gives her away easily.
“Which is why,” Buck continues, glancing at the watch on his wrist. “I have to go.”
“Go to…”
Buck smiles. “Eddie’s.”
Her face flickers. “Already?”
Buck’s smile turns sharp, then. “What can I say, Hen?” he asks. “I’m a catch.”
And then he’s gone, leaving her shaking her head after him as he slings his bag over his shoulder and heads out to the Jeep.
It’s a beautiful, bright summer evening— the kind that glows long and lasting, dusted in blue and gold. There’s glitter in the air and a warm breeze; settling in the driver’s seat, Buck immediately rolls down the windows and breathes it in. Sometimes, he does long for the fresher air he’d taken in across the country or the saltiness of all the beaches he’s laid on. But Los Angeles is the first place that has ever felt like home to him— smog and all, he wouldn’t trade it for any big sky or blue ocean.
Especially not today.
He pauses before pulling out to open his notes app, where he finds Eddie’s phone number and address. First things first, he types out a quick text.
Its first iteration, he erases, deciding it’s too slang-y and casual. He’s surprisingly comfortable and not as nervous as he could be, but he doesn’t want to give the impression that he’s not taking this seriously.
The re-typed version reads: hey it’s buck!! i’m off shift now, still on for tonight? can i bring anything?
He waits— watches— and is still looking when the screen lights up with a quick reply.
Still on, we’re home so you can come over whenever. You don’t have to bring anything, we can order dinner when you get here.
Buck smiles a little, then quickly types out his own reply, which says: on my way!! see you guys soon :)
He saves the number to his phone under just Eddie; then, with fresh determination, he starts up the Jeep with a familiar rumble of the engine and pulls out of the parking lot. Eddie may be saying he doesn’t have to bring anything, but Buck knows better than to show up empty-handed and wouldn’t want to, anyway.
He swings by a bakery that’s near the firehouse. Lately, he’s been working hard to learn to cook under Bobby’s close supervision but even if he’d had more notice, baking would have been far out of his purview. So he stands in front of a glass case and scans the options. There’s a lot to choose from but in the corner at the back there’s a box of chocolate cookies, ready to go and wrapped in ribbon. He has no way of knowing what either Eddie or Christopher likes, but they’re free of nuts which seems like a safe bet, and they look fresh so he takes them; pays; and then buckles the box into his passenger seat just in case. He’s a careful driver, but you never know.
Eddie’s house isn’t far; at this time of day, there’s a bit of traffic but he still makes decent time and it’s not long before he’s double-checking the house number and pulling into the driveway alongside a grayish truck that looks a little bit worse for wear, but sturdy.
The house is small but kept-up, with pretty white stucco arches that reflect the evening light and a Spanish style tiled roof; along the side, the laden branches of a couple of orange trees drape with fruit; and inside the little flat alcove by the door there’s an inviting porch light that glows incandescently.
Buck wanders up the pathway with the cookies in his hand having made it safely through the drive, and is surprised to find that he isn’t really nervous at all. There’s a faint flutter of anticipation in his chest, but it doesn’t feel like anxiety. Not like he’d felt when he and Abby were first dating; or back in South America when he’d been kissed by a man for the first time and felt his world shift under him like sweet sand.
This feels a lot like that in other ways, though. That sparkle in his chest is there, had been there when he looked back at Eddie and Christopher to wave to them earlier, one last look. Like fireworks or the glitter of light on water: the coming of change; the surefooted certainty that something was happening to him in that moment.
He raises his hand to knock on the sturdy wood of Eddie’s front door, then takes a moment to brush a hand through his hair even though he’d taken the time to make sure it looked right before leaving the firehouse.
And then the door opens.
Eddie, no longer in pink scrubs but instead in light jeans and a white t-shirt made of thin cotton, barefoot. His dark hair is faintly damp like he’s showered recently and there’s a breathless quality about him, a warmth to his brown skin. He looks younger like this, softer, sweeter. They’re close enough that Buck can catch a scent off of him— something fresh and soapy and clean, something that makes him want to lean in.
And he’s smiling— bright, easy, with a dimple in one cheek.
Later, Buck will admit that this is the moment he knew he was in love with Eddie Diaz. One look across a waiting room and a second across the threshold, and that was it.
In the moment that his life falls into place, Buck just smiles and says, “Hi.”
“Hi,” Eddie answers. His dark eyes drop to the box in Buck’s hands and he softens, the folded edges of his ears pink. “I told you that you didn’t have to.”
“Oh,” Buck answers, holding the box up. “I know. I wanted to. They’re chocolate, I hope that’s okay.”
Eddie opens his mouth to reply, but they’re interrupted by a smaller, much more excited voice.
“Buck!” Christopher cheers, delighted. He appears then, behind Eddie, no longer in his clothes from day camp but wearing— to Buck’s delight— a new t-shirt, this one with firetrucks all over it. He’s grinning from ear to ear, his curls wild, blue eyes bright as he steadies himself against Eddie’s hip and the doorframe.
“Christopher!” Buck grins. “Hi, bud.”
“You came!” Chris says.
“Of course,” Buck laughs, watching as Eddie picks him up in one smooth motion and steps aside to leave the doorway clear.
“And you brought cookies!” Christopher says as Eddie rolls his eyes.
Buck steps inside, smiling. “I hope you like chocolate,” he says.
Christopher nods his head enthusiastically. “I do!” he says. “But Dad does more.”
Something flashes warm in Buck’s chest at that as he glances over at Eddie, who’s smiling like he’s been caught. He catches Buck’s eyes and shrugs as he shuts and locks the door behind them.
“You got me,” he admits, setting Chris back down on his feet with a hand on the back of his head— a habit, Buck is sure, but a subtle thing that keeps Christopher steady.
“Good,” Buck says, holding the box out to him. “For you, then.” Then, he looks down, winking at Christopher, and lowers his voice to add, “And for us.”
Christopher giggles, and Buck crouches down a little, taking a hand to tap gently at Christopher’s chest.
“I like your shirt,” he says.
“Thanks!” Chris grins, looking up at Eddie, who smiles fondly back down at him.
“Someone has been telling me all day about his ride in a fire truck,” he says.
“Dad,” Chris says, shaking his head. “Cap said it’s an engine.”
Buck laughs, the feeling of it taking over his chest like sunlight from the inside out. “Go easy on your dad,” he advises. “Cap gets onto me for that one all the time.”
Eddie shakes his head. “I’m going to put these in the kitchen and grab the takeout menus,” he says, then glances at Buck and gestures to the living room. “Make yourself at home, Buck.”
These words linger as Eddie leaves the room. It’s a normal thing to say, but there’s something about how Eddie says it— the warmth in his voice; the soft earnestness. There’s no way for Eddie to know that making himself at home is kind of what Buck does. There’s no way for him to know how many times Buck has been burned doing just that; how often he’s tried to make himself comfortable somewhere only to end up doing it wrong or messing it up. How often it’s been the wrong fit, before he came to LA and in some ways since then, too.
He looks around Eddie’s warm living room— taking in the throw pillows on the couch and the fake but inviting plant in the corner; the pictures of Christopher all over the mantle and the little end table scattered with keys and little things left behind and the coffee table with Christopher’s toys on it.
It feels like a home. Like a place that these people really live in, a place that’s comfortable to them. He aches to be a part of it in a way that should scare him, given his track record, but strangely doesn’t.
Eddie had said it like he meant it, and Buck finds that he believes it without hesitation. For a moment, there’s a glimmer of certainty: like maybe it can just be that simple.
Eddie comes back into the room as Buck is perching on the couch and Christopher is launching into an explanation of the trucks on the table, telling Buck how he got the blue one in Texas and brought it here with him.
“You’ve been to Texas?” he asks curiously, but it’s Eddie who answers, taking a seat on the other side of the couch from Buck.
“Actually,” he says, “we’re from Texas.”
“El Paso!” Chris adds, not looking up from the road that he’s constructing between a tissue box and the TV remote.
Buck looks over at Eddie, who smiles as he holds out a few colored, glossy takeout menus with folded corners.
“We moved a few years ago,” he says. “So I could go to nursing school. My grandmother and my aunt both live in LA, and the program was good, so it made sense for us.”
Buck burns with a million questions that he knows he shouldn’t ask but wants to anyway. He’s curious about anyone, always, but never so much as he is about Eddie. He wants to know more about Eddie than he’s sort of ever wanted to know about anyone— wants to dive headfirst into Eddie’s life; wants to hear the minutiae of every day of his life since he was born in Texas up until now.
“What about you?” Eddie asks curiously, tilting his head and keeping his warm eyes on Buck. “What’s your story?”
“Uh, I’m from Pennsylvania,” he says. “Hershey.”
“Like chocolate!” Chris says, looking up from his truck. “Dad’s favorite!”
Buck smiles. “Exactly like that,” he says, glancing back at Eddie again. “Anyway,” he says. “I grew up there, and then I left to…” He pauses, briefly thinking of Maddie, of the keys to the Jeep in his hand. He shakes his head a little, swallowing that down. He tries not to think too hard about losing Maddie; about what this life has cost him, for all that it’s given him. “To find myself, I guess,” he says.
Eddie smiles at him a little, the flicker of fondness. “And did you?” he asks.
Buck smiles, too, brighter, widening. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I think so.”
They splay the menus out on the coffee table and Buck makes Eddie and Chris tell him their favorite orders from each, then tries to get Eddie to choose one anyway but Eddie insists.
“You’re our guest,” he tells him.
“I thought I was making myself at home?” Buck asks back, surprising even himself.
It doesn’t seem to faze Eddie in the slightest; he grins, bright and beautiful. And then he says, “Okay. So Christopher’s choice, then.”
Which is how they end up with a spread of samplings from a greasy, definitely inauthentic Chinese food place near Eddie’s neighborhood— jalapeño chicken that Christopher is crazy for, apparently; sides of fried rice and wonton soup; Eddie’s preferred Mongolian beef and the coconut shrimp that Buck had his eye on immediately.
It’s quick to arrive and Eddie pays for it before Buck can manage to object.
“You brought dessert,” Eddie reasons as Buck pouts about it.
“That is so not the same thing,” he argues. “I’m crashing your dinner, I should at least be allowed to pay some of it.”
“Ah,” Eddie corrects, tilting his head as he looks up from the table in the late light of the day, the glow of it on his face as he grins. “I thought you were making yourself at home?”
Buck fights against it, but the smile breaks through anyway.
“Okay,” he laughs. “Next time, then.”
The words hover in the room, while Christopher rummages through the silverware drawer in the kitchen and the sound clatters around them. Their implication floats like dust in the shafts of light coming through Eddie’s dining room; the both of them looking at each other for a beat.
“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Okay. Next time.”
Buck smiles brighter still.
They sit down to eat and if there was ever a doubt about whether an awkwardness would creep up, it dissipates over the course of the meal. The conversation is quick and easy and Christopher giggles between them as the light slowly sinks outside. They pass food back and forth and learn about each other in between bites: Buck talks about the places he’s seen in his travels; Chris gets excited about the idea of Buck as a cowboy; Eddie briefly mentions that he enlisted in the Army young and served as a medic. He seems to be watching Buck closely here, like he’s searching for something. Buck doesn’t know what it is, though.
Swallowing a bite of jalapeño chicken, he nods and says, “Is that what made you want to go into nursing afterward?”
Something on Eddie’s face clears, and then softens. “Yeah,” he says. “Pretty much.”
“That makes sense,” Buck says. He pauses, using his fork to turn over a shrimp, and then looks up again. “My, uh— my sister is a nurse, too.”
“Oh,” Eddie says, his gaze flickering over Buck’s face like he sees something there. It might make him feel too seen, if it were anyone else. But there’s something about Eddie that makes it easy, somehow. “Yeah? Are you close?” he asks.
Buck shrugs one shoulder. “Not so much anymore,” he admits, finding that it only stings a little bit. “She’s almost ten years older so, you know—”
Eddie nods, watching him. “Yeah,” he admits. “I get it. I’m almost that much older than my youngest sister, too.”
“Are you the oldest?” Buck asks, glad to shift the conversation.
Eddie smiles a little. “Is it that obvious?”
Buck shrugs. “You kinda seem like you have it all together,” he says.
In that moment, with his plate cleared, Christopher seems to have had enough. “Dad,” he says. “Can I go play?”
“Sure, baby,” Eddie tells him, patiently leaning over to help him push his chair back from the dining table. “Go and wash your hands first and then you can have a cookie in a little while after we clean this up. Okay?”
“Okay,” Christopher agrees, easily balancing against the wall with his little fingertips. At the right angle in the light, Buck can see the smudges there around the doorframe, right at Christopher’s height. There’s something about the sight of it that tugs at his chest a little.
In Christopher’s absence, Eddie leans back and Buck takes a moment to look at him.
He looks relaxed, warm, lit by the setting sun in long stripes of horizontal orange from the blinds on the dining room windows. His hair is fully dry now, and it flops lightly over his forehead in a way that makes Buck want to reach out and smooth it back just to see it fall again, to feel how soft it is.
He smiles a little bit more shyly now, the barrier of his son down between them for the first time.
“I definitely do not have it all together,” he offers, picking up the thread of their conversation.
Buck leans back, too. The remnants of their dinner sit lazily on the table between them, but Eddie seems content to sit and talk now that the telltale sound of Legos crashing to the floor has reached them from what must be Christopher’s bedroom across the hall.
“Well,” Buck says. “Christopher definitely thinks you do. He talked about you like you were the center of the world earlier.”
Eddie smiles softly. “He’s a good kid,” he says softly. “The best.”
“And you seem pretty together to me,” Buck offers. “Good nurse, good dad.”
“How do you know I’m a good nurse?” Eddie challenges.
Buck grins. “Christopher told me.”
Eddie laughs at that. He has a great laugh— warm and full with the soft kind of scratch to it. Buck wants to listen to it forever, wants to cause it forever. The intensity of that feeling sweeps over him.
“What about you?” Eddie asks, watching him. “Why firefighting?”
Buck considers this. “I tried a lot of things,” he says. “Like I was saying earlier. And even more than that. I never felt like I found anything that was…me, I guess. I wanted to feel like I was helping someone but I also wanted to be doing something, you know? Like— like, I wanted to be a part of something.”
Eddie nods, attentive.
“Firefighting kind of fell in my lap,” Buck admits. “But once I started doing it, it— it just felt so right. Like it was meant for me, you know?”
Eddie smiles, a little wistful. “Yeah,” he says softly. “I do know.”
“Anyway,” Buck says, shrugging. “It’s nothing compared to nursing and night school. For being so young, you seem like you’re doing pretty well to me.”
Eddie flexes his wrists, lightly bracing his palms against the corners of the table. “You can ask,” he says. Caught, Buck hesitates. But Eddie shakes his head, his expression open. “I’m twenty-six and he’s seven,” he says. “You’re not wrong to wonder about it.”
Buck tilts his head, studying him. “I wasn’t— not really,” he says. It’s honest. He’d thought about it briefly, but now he isn’t sure how to tell Eddie that he’s been mostly too caught up in being enchanted by them both to worry about it.
Eddie looks at him, closing up a little bit for the first time all evening.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I was eighteen when Chris was born. Barely. His mom and I..” He pauses, looking into the distance. “We were best friends,” he says. “And we had sex once and looking back at it I’m not sure either of us really wanted it to be like that but we were seventeen and stupid and it happened and then she was pregnant. It’s—” He waves his hand a little, dismissive in places Buck doesn’t think he needs to be, then exhales wryly. “It’s the usual story. We were a mistake, but Christopher isn’t. We tried to make it work but it turns out that I’m gay and she was going through a lot. She’s not really in his life now, since we got divorced.”
Buck watches him carefully. There’s something guarded on his face, like he’s expecting something. Like he feels he’s said too much.
Buck wonders how many people have underestimated him. How often people have made him feel he was too young to be giving Christopher what he needs. What else they’ve implied or said about Eddie’s ability to care for him.
“He’s a perfect kid, Eddie,” Buck says softly.
Eddie looks up at him, a flash of vulnerability. “Thank you,” he says. “He is. I’m not sure how much of that is because of me.”
Buck smiles.
He flickers back, just for a moment, to Hershey. To growing up in a house that sometimes felt like a museum with parents who often felt like statues. There’s no trace of that here. Eddie and Christopher’s house is a home. A place for takeout menus and toys and life, where Christopher’s fingerprints live shiny on the doorframes and it’s easy to feel like you’re making yourself at home even if you’ve only just stumbled into their lives.
Buck isn’t sure what it is that comes over him. He looks at Eddie and can’t help wanting to touch him, and so he does.
Earlier, he’d put his hand in Eddie’s like a formality. Now, he does it by covering Eddie’s knuckles on the table; by folding his own fingers around Eddie’s darker, longer ones and squeezing lightly.
Eddie looks up at him, vaguely startled.
“I think it’s a lot because of you,” Buck says.
Eddie swallows hard, and for a brief moment there’s a flicker of something in his eyes that Buck can’t quite identify. Then, it’s gone all at once and in the same instant Buck gets this feeling, like he’s missed a step somewhere.
“I—” Eddie starts. “Um. I’m not sure how ready I am for a relationship.”
Buck blinks.
“Okay,” he says. Then shakes his head a little. “That’s— Eddie, that’s fine. We can just be friends.”
A conflicted expression appears on Eddie’s face. “I—” he starts. “I spend all of my free time with Chris. It’s— it’s just the two of us, so I’m either working or with him.”
It would be easy to take this as a rejection. To take it for what it sounds like and go home licking his wounds and cutting his losses.
Buck, even a year ago, would have. But there’s something about Eddie— about his face, about the suddenness of it, about the way he looks back at Buck. There’s something that tells him to push. Not to give up that easily.
“Hey, that’s—” Buck starts, shaking his head. “That’s okay. I mean, I would have come to hang out with you guys either way. That’s— you know, that’s what I signed up for. I’m always happy to just hang out like this again. Anytime.”
Eddie studies him for a moment. His expression flickers, but it’s unreadable.
“Are you sure?” he asks, eventually.
Something in Buck floods inexplicably with warmth. No matter how he feels, no matter how much he went into this hoping for it to be something, there’s one thing that he is sure of: that he wants to be close to Eddie, and to Christopher. That’s the reason he’s here, after all. It’s been a long time since he felt this sure about someone, about knowing that he wants to be close to them. Maybe he’s never felt it at all, before today in the ER waiting room. If the sparkle of connection that he feels in his chest amounts to spending weekends at the zoo or nights eating takeout, that’s good enough for him.
“I’m sure,” he says, squeezing Eddie’s hand again before letting go with a smile.
A shimmering uncertainty, a moment— there and then gone again. The silence broken by Christopher, who peers curiously back into the room.
“Can I have my cookie yet?” he asks.
Eddie shakes himself out of the moment— a visible thing, endearing, like there’s something in his ear. He glances down at the watch on his wrist and then back at Chris.
“Of course you can, honey,” he says lightly, getting up out of his chair and gathering some of the debris of their dinner to bring it to the kitchen. He glances back at Buck, an offering and a question wrapped up on his face. “Coming?” he asks, his voice a note too soft.
“Course,” Buck answers.
He gathers the rest of the plates and follows Eddie into a small, warm kitchen. They gather around a smaller breakfast table to eat cookies, leaving the chocolate crumbs across the surface as the light truly starts to fade outside.
“This is good,” Chris says around a bite of chocolate.
Eddie fixes him with a look that Buck thinks is supposed to be stern, but still looks fond. “We don’t talk while we chew, Chris,” he says gently.
“Sorry,” Chris says, his mouth still full.
Buck ducks his head, hiding his smile, as Eddie shakes his head, glancing over the table at him.
“They are good,” he offers more softly, his mouth empty.
Buck smiles. “I’m glad,” he says. “I’ve been learning to cook but I’m a long way from baking.”
Christopher swallows audibly, then grins between them. “You should teach Dad,” he says in a voice that betrays how much he definitely knows what he’s doing.
Buck laughs as Eddie leans back, clutching his chest as if he’s been wounded, sending Chris into peals of giggles. And it’s good, and warm, and the best night Buck has had in a long time. It feels right in the same way that he’d been describing firefighting earlier to Eddie. And if this is what life is handing him, Buck doesn’t see anything to complain about in it at all.
Soon, it’s Christopher’s bedtime. He lobbies for more time to play with Buck and they reach a compromise— Buck gets the sense that they reach these a lot, like the script is well-worn on Eddie’s side.
“If you go and brush your teeth, then Buck can read you one of your books. That’s my final offer,” Eddie tells his son. He’s standing in the kitchen doorway with his hands on his hips and Christopher offers a long-suffering sigh but ultimately seems to think that his dad means it, because he nods.
“Buck,” he says, looking back at him from the doorway on his way to brush his teeth. “Don’t leave before I get back.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” Buck promises seriously.
Eddie watches Chris go down the hallway and then looks back at Buck. “I hope you don’t mind,” he says.
“No,” Buck answers quickly. “Not even a little bit. I’m all for bedtime stories. I— I love kids.”
Eddie glances back down the hallway again, his soft wistful gaze on where Chris had disappeared to.
“I love this one,” he says softly.
Beneath the muscles in his chest, Buck’s heart tightens.
He ends up on the couch with Christopher, reading through a book that Buck has never heard of but which seems to be old hat for Chris. It’s over too soon, if he’s honest. Darkness has fallen outside and the evening has stretched out blue, and Chris is settled against his side smelling like kid shampoo and bubblegum toothpaste and, in a way, Buck’s whole life looks back at him.
He’s known Christopher and Eddie less than twelve hours, and still: whatever this is, he knows it’s special.
“Thanks, Buck,” Christopher says when the book is closed.
“For what?” Buck asks, smiling down at him.
Chris grins. “The cookies. And taking me on the fire engine.”
“Anytime, bud,” Buck says, squeezing him lightly.
“Dad, will you tuck me in?” Chris asks, looking back at Eddie, who smiles and gets up from where he’s been sitting on the other side of the couch.
“Grab your book,” he says. Chris does, and then Eddie sweeps him off the couch and up into his strong arms. Buck had done the same thing earlier today and just as easily— but he knows that it hadn’t looked so natural on him, the way it does on Eddie, like second nature.
“I’ll be right back,” Eddie says, like it’s an apology.
“No worries,” Buck assures him, then tilts his gaze to Christopher.
For the first time, he worries. Looking at Chris, he feels a flicker of fear— that Eddie might not take his words to heart. That their friendship really will be too much of an imposition on Eddie’s genuinely busy, full life. There’s still so much that Buck doesn’t know about them. Maybe Eddie already has a best friend, and now that he’s decided he’s not up for a romantic relationship there won’t really be a place in his life for Buck.
Maybe, he worries suddenly, he won’t see Chris again at all.
“Goodnight, Buck,” Christopher says, smiling that big crooked smile full of baby teeth from his place draped over Eddie’s shoulder.
Buck swallows hard.
“Goodnight, Chris,” he says softly. “Sleep well, okay?”
“Okay,” Chris giggles, waving.
And then he’s gone, disappearing with Eddie into the hallway.
In their absence, Buck’s skin crawls. Quietly, searching for something to do with his hands while Eddie is gone and he’s wondering if maybe he should bolt after all, he does the opposite thing and walks across the dining room into the dimly lit kitchen.
He’s not the neatest person in the world, but there are a few things he’s picked up since being under Bobby’s strict kitchen command. At least while there’s nothing to do but spiral or worry, he can do this much for Eddie.
So he moves quietly around the kitchen, going through the motions. He closes the takeout containers that still have food in them and then takes them to Eddie’s fridge. He pauses, looking at the array of pictures and the magnets and the day camp schedule— now useless— attached to its surface. There’s one of Christopher when he was just a baby, with an Eddie who looks so young that it makes Buck’s chest ache.
He puts away the containers, nestling them into the free space next to a half-empty carton of orange juice on Eddie’s middle shelf, and then sets about with the dishes. It’s just takeout, so there aren’t very many. The plates and forks they’ve used; a couple of serving utensils; a few cups that must have been dirty before their dinner and the one Chris had been drinking lemonade out of while they ate. It’s quick work, with Eddie’s apple-scented dish soap and the sponge that he plucks with amusement from a frog-shaped sponge holder. It’s something to do to distract himself from thinking about how much he really wants to know about all of Eddie’s eccentricity, frog-shaped sponge holders included.
He’s just finishing up, turning to dry his hands on a towel that’s folded over the handle of Eddie’s oven, when soft footsteps tread back into the room and Eddie himself appears, shadowed and beautiful in the doorway.
He pauses midstep and glances around, his roaming gaze then finding Buck’s face.
“You did my dishes,” he says.
His voice sounds strange suddenly, different from before. Buck isn’t sure why.
“Yeah,” he says, hoping that it sounds nonchalant. “Sorry. Was that—”
“No,” Eddie says, his voice soft like something’s been taken out of it, like a breeze. “No. That’s— thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”
Buck smiles. It’s not sarcastic in the slightest, all genuine. “That’s what friends are for, I think.”
He takes a moment, looking at Eddie. There’s an odd look on his face now, and the silence between them stretches like pulled silk, shimmering and fragile.
Buck is the one who breaks it, clearing his throat lightly. “Thank you,” he says. “For having me over. I— this was kind of the best night.”
Eddie looks at him, something impossible to name on his features.
“You really mean that, don’t you?” he asks, softer even than before.
Startled, Buck nods. “Yeah,” he stammers. “Yeah, I— I had a great time. But, um— I’ll get out of your hair, you probably—”
This time, whatever that is on Eddie’s face surges up with force and takes hold of all his features: his soft lashes, his dark eyebrows, the set of his jaw.
“What if you didn’t?” he asks, taking one step forward across the semidark kitchen in Buck’s direction.
In his chest, Buck’s breath catches.
“What?” he asks, hearing the way his voice comes out weak.
The thing on Eddie’s face evolves into something new, something with a name. Something like a plea. He gives his head a little shake and then squares his shoulders, looking up at Buck.
They’re close now, somehow.
“I was wrong,” Eddie says steadily. “Or— I was scared. That’s the word. I saw you with Chris and I realized how much I like you, and—”
He pauses, takes a shuddering breath as he runs a hand through his hair, and Buck tries in vain to tamp down the fire in his chest as it sparks up fiercely.
“And?” Buck breathes.
Eddie looks up at him. He’s tall, but not quite as tall as Buck. They’re close enough now that he has to look up slightly to meet his eyes, and this ends with Buck seeing his dark gaze through his soft lashes.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Eddie admits, a helpless note in his voice. “I came to LA for a new life and I accepted that I was gay but I didn’t have time for a relationship. And then I convinced myself that it would be too complicated with Christopher, and then— then you walked into our lives and it scared me because I wanted you there.”
“Oh,” Buck says, feeling like an idiot.
“And then I tucked Chris into bed and he asked me if you were going to be here tomorrow,” Eddie says, like now he’s started he can’t stop. “And it sounded so easy. And so simple. And then I came in here and I found you doing my dishes and— and…”
Buck tries not to inhale too sharply, but there’s an echo of his own heartbeat and it thrums in his ears.
“Eddie,” he breathes. “I— I can do simple.”
Eddie looks up at him, looking soft and beautiful and a little bit like he’s seeing Buck for the first time.
“There are a lot of ways to do simple,” he whispers.
Buck smiles, hoping it comes out as soft as it feels on his tongue, like melting chocolate. “I could be here tomorrow,” he says. “I’m not a good cook yet but the only thing I’ve learned is breakfast.”
For a brief, terrifying moment, he thinks he’s taken it all wrong; pushed too far; ruined it entirely.
And then Eddie surges forward, with his hands on Buck’s cheeks, and kisses him. He does so like he does most anything else, as far as Buck can tell— bravely; with feeling. There’s slightly too much teeth, a brief gnashing; but it’s also soft and beautiful and raw. Eddie’s chest presses into his right there in the kitchen and they breathe into each other and taste chocolate cookies on each other’s tongues and in this way Buck wakes up to the world as it exists with Eddie Diaz in his arms: Eddie’s waist beneath his palm and Eddie’s pulse fluttering under his fingertips.
Eventually, Eddie pulls back just enough to breathe, and his eyes are like fire.
“I want breakfast,” he whispers, breathless.
“Okay,” Buck whispers back, nodding. “You like pancakes?”
“Love them,” Eddie says.
And then, like breathing, he’s kissing Buck again— better than before, like he’s made for this, like sitting down to dinner at the firehouse or shrugging on his turnouts, like a porch light.
And everything else, maybe forever, comes second to Eddie.