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It’s a quiet day in the emergency room.
It’s not a word they say here, ever. Eddie Diaz knows better than that. But he’s thinking it nonetheless. This morning since he left Buck and Christopher at the breakfast table— very reluctantly, with kisses planted deep into their messes of curls, both of them still in their pajamas as the sun rose and Eddie’s shift loomed— he’s treated two sprained wrists in a seven year old and a twelve year old; one stray case of out of season influenza; and a six-month-old with her mother’s hair wrapped around her pinkie toe. A very quiet day, indeed.
Some of his coworkers, particularly an eager brunette named Ashley who had graduated nursing school just this spring, would bemoan the quiet. She, and others like her, chomp at the bit for good cases, things to do. Eddie gets the sentiment. He knows it’s boring to sit around like this. But he also knows what a not-quiet day in the ER looks like, and he knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Which is why today, around noon, he can be found in the staff room on his break, sifting through a box of cookies that he’s pretty sure are Stephanie’s handiwork. He had been off yesterday, when they were presumably brought in, but he’s delighted to be finding a homemade version of a fudge round in the container— his personal favorite, which he suspects has been left there for him on purpose.
He gets as far as taking a bite of it before Carol, one of the senior nurses and one of Eddie’s favorite people to work or gossip with, peeks her head in around the doorframe in deep blush pink scrubs identical to Eddie’s.
“Hey,” Eddie says, dusting his fingers of decadent crumbs of chocolate as he sweeps his eyes over her face. “Everything okay?”
“I was just in triage,” she starts. “Your boys are here.”
Eddie processes this in the blink of an eye, flickering from the initial flare of irrepressable joy at the mention of them to the inevitable conclusion: that Buck and Christopher being in triage means they’re here for a reason. His stomach turns in seconds as he pushes back from the table in a flash of blind panic.
Eddie is a calm person. He always has been, for the most part. But there are exceptions. Two of them have blonde curls and endless curiosities and a talent for getting him to agree to things he doesn’t want to do.
“What happened?” he asks, already on his feet, heart already racing.
Carol holds her hands up. “Woah,” she says, shaking her head. “They are fine. Do you think I’d be standing here chit-chatting if they weren’t?”
It only eases a fraction of the tightness in Eddie’s chest. The rest requires a lot more information and for him to set eyes on Buck and Chris for himself.
“Okay,” Eddie says, following Carol out into the hall. “But— triage.”
“And what I triaged,” she explains calmly, “is a standard eight-year-old fall and a parent who is losing his mind over nothing.”
Under other circumstances, the casual reference to Buck as a parent would be enough to have Eddie’s heart skipping a beat for entirely different reasons. In this case, he’s preoccupied with the thought of getting to them, and primarily the thought of seeing Chris and making sure he’s okay for himself.
“He fell?” he asks as they cross the hall toward the cubicles, effortlessly weaving familiar steps around an orderly on his way back from getting lab results and a wheelchair carrying someone who looks green around the edges. Eddie barely registers these things. He’s as familiar with the emergency department as his own home; could walk its halls in his sleep if the need arose. He’s equally familiar with keeping track of every patient around him, watching out for what he might need to help with, who could benefit from an extra pair of eyes or hands.
At the moment, he’s not there at all.
It’s funny, how being a parent changes a person. Eddie, who is otherwise talented at multitasking and even more so at cataloguing the things around him, had learned within minutes of Christopher’s birth that if his son is in the room, he becomes singularly focused. Admittedly, he sometimes thinks that’s just Christopher himself— that the kid emits such bright light that anyone would have a hard time seeing anything but him. He doesn’t think he’s particularly biased, having watched plenty of people fall for Christopher in a matter of seconds of meeting him.
Buck included, of course.
It had been, after all, a day much like this one— quiet, until it wasn’t— less than two years ago, when Christopher and Buck had both been here in the ER and Eddie had pushed through a frantic crowd in desperate, fearful search of his baby only to find him thoroughly charming a certain firefighter, both of them in stitches.
“See for yourself,” Carol replies, gesturing to the ringed curtain over cubicle six, and then patting him lightly on his shoulder before turning to head for the nurses’ station. Eddie is still reeling, and feeling vaguely nauseous with anxiety, as he reaches for the curtain and draws it back.
Immediately, there’s an excited flurry of movement on the table at the center of the small exam room, and Eddie’s chest eases at the sight of Christopher’s messy curls and bright, eager smile; the dimples carved in his cheeks and his little face looking younger than usual without the presence of his glasses.
“Dad!” he shrieks excitedly, already reaching for Eddie.
Like he’d said about the sun.
“¡Hola, mi sol!” he enthuses, his fear buried deep and disguised for Christopher’s sake— another little thing that had come more or less naturally to Eddie from the day Chris was born. Occasionally too naturally, maybe. He’s programmed with a deep-seated need to be sure that Chris is not scared, even when he is. “What are you two doing here?” he asks, reaching for his baby.
He feels a lot better with his hands on Chris: one gently tipping his head back and the other brushing over the torn shoulder of his t-shirt.
“I fell!” Chris says, with undeniable enthusiasm.
Eddie glances over at Buck then, for the first time since entering the room.
If Eddie tends to be anxious, Buck is a different beast altogether. It’s not so much specifically anxiety, he’s learned over time, but more a tendency to feel any emotion at an extreme. Buck— put simply— is big. He takes up space and spreads out; he fills entire rooms with presence; protects and emotes in equal, huge measure.
Eddie loves this, among many other things, about him. At the moment, however, it looks like this: Buck, whose bottom lip is raw from him biting it; whose curls are wilder than Christopher’s from his repeated running through then with his fingers; the same fingers, cuticles picked apart; whose shoulders are tense with fear and whose blue eyes are wide and wild.
And, somewhat predictably, who trips and falls over his own words in a rush to get them out.
“Eddie,” he says, breathless. “I swear I was watching him, okay? I-I was, I looked away for just a second and-and he wasn’t doing anything dangerous, but there was a ledge on the sidewalk and I didn’t see it and he didn’t see it and I— I literally just looked up to check nobody was coming and the next thing I knew, he was—”
“I fell,” Christopher repeats, with an impressively nonchalant shrug of his scraped shoulder.
Eddie suppresses a small smile as he puts his hand on the back of Christopher’s head, glancing from Buck over to him. “I see,” he muses, leaning in close to Chris so they’re eye to eye. “And how did you end up here?” he asks, tilting his head quizzically. “Let me guess. Two broken legs?”
Buck shifts on his feet in Eddie’s peripheral vision, but Christopher giggles delightedly.
“No!” he says, shaking his head.
“Oh,” Eddie says. “Hm. Two broken arms?” He punctuates this with lifting one of Christopher’s arms and letting it fall back down as he laughs.
“No, Dad!” he groans. “I’m not broken!”
“You’re not?” Eddie gasps, holding both hands out in a gesture that they are both familiar with. Chris responds easily, reaching up, and Eddie grunts for dramatic effect as he lifts him up, then settles him on his hip with ease.
“Nope,” Chris says. “But Buck wanted to bring me here.”
Eddie looks over at Buck again, then, softening as he takes a step forward and closes the distance between them with his free hand, which he settles on Buck’s waist. Sometimes, he has to marvel at how familiar a movement it is— as simple as reaching for his baby, or lifting him up onto his hip.
Buck looks up, still wide-eyed. “I didn’t know what I should do,” he says. “He was crying and-and then in the car he was saying he was fine but, you know, I know he has a baseline pain level and I started thinking what if he’s more hurt than he realizes, and then—”
Christopher turns to Eddie. “I wasn’t crying,” he insists.
Eddie squeezes him lightly. “I hear you, baby,” he assures him, then looks back over at Buck. “Hey,” he says, his voice going softer. “Breathe, okay? He’s fine.”
Buck’s breath catches hard enough that Eddie can see it in the stunted rise and fall of his chest.
“I’m so sorry, Eddie,” he says, his words still a jumble. “I promise, I was watching him.”
“Of course you were,” Eddie soothes, squeezing gently where his hand is still on Buck’s waist, and then drifting to his wrist. He catches Buck’s hand this way and feels the butterfly wings of his pulse beneath the thin skin and tendons. He starts to count, pure habit, and then lets the numbers trail off, in favor of focusing on Buck’s face as their palms connect. “It happens. Okay? Everything is fine. You guys saw Carol in triage, right?”
“Yep!” Chris says. “She said the insurance doesn’t cover Band-Aids.”
Eddie laughs, turning his head to kiss Christopher’s cheek. “That’s okay,” he says. “Lucky for you, Daddy does cover Band-Aids.” He looks back at Buck, feeling his own face go soft and sympathetic. “And,” he adds meaningfully. “Carol is the best nurse around here, right? So if she says everything is okay…”
Buck hesitates, worrying his lip again. “Everything is okay?” he fills in tentatively.
“Everything is okay,” Eddie repeats again. “In fact, better than okay, because I get a surprise visit from my two favorite boys in the whole world!”
“I told Buck we should just go in the nurse door,” Chris shrugs, and Eddie can’t help but laugh again.
“Alright,” he says. “How about you and Buck sit right here,” he starts with a nod to the table, “and I will work on a selection of Band-Aids for those scrapes?”
He holds Christopher in Buck’s direction then. It’s an unmistakable movement, like the others, but Buck still hesitates just for a beat before he tentatively takes him in his arms, perching them both on the edge of the table as Eddie crosses the room to quickly wash his hands and then rummage around in the drawers.
From there, he grabs a box of assorted Band-Aids and settles on the wheeled stool, easily navigating back to sit in front of Christopher, and then he smiles up at them both.
“So,” he says. “How did you fall, Mr. Diaz?”
Chris smiles. “On my face.”
“And where are your glasses in all this?” Eddie asks.
“Oh,” Buck says, reaching down into his t-shirt and extracting them, their red strap around his wrist. “They’re not broken, but I-I was worried about his face and I took them off of him.”
Eddie pauses, looking up at him softly, and then rests a hand on Buck’s knee, where he notices for the first time that there’s dirt on his jeans. It pulls at a loose thread in his chest to imagine how it got there, invoking an image of Buck frantic and on his knees to check on Chris.
“No big deal,” he says— the words for Chris, but the tone for Buck.
This is Eddie at his best, after all. Dad, nurse, boyfriend— all in one package. All the things he knows he can do.
“We’ll clean those up later,” he says. “But you first, sweetheart. Show me the scrapes and I’ll show you the Band-Aids.”
As it turns out, Chris hasn’t done much damage at all. There’s a scrape on his knee that’s the worst, and Eddie starts there with a warning of a little sting. It’s routine for Chris, who doesn’t remember a time before Dad was a nurse and therefore knew how to patch up all manner of ouchie things, and he barely flinches as Eddie cleans it quickly and efficiently.
“For you,” Eddie offers, holding out an array of Band-Aids in all colors and sporting various characters.
Chris studies them for a moment, and then looks up at Eddie. “I can’t see them,” he says, and Eddie laughs.
“Sorry, bud,” Buck murmurs, and gently sets Christopher’s glasses over his head, the strap loose and the lenses smudged but plenty enough for Chris to see.
“Oh!” he says, delighted and unbothered as he surveys his choices. “This one.”
“No surprise there,” Eddie grins, looking down at where he’s pointing to find that he’s chosen a Band-Aid with little firetrucks printed on its red plastic. He looks up at Buck, holding it in his eyeline, and watches the way he flushes a little bit at the sight of it; the way his fingers tighten just a little on the hem of Christopher’s shirt where his hand rests at his opposite hip. “Here we go,” Eddie says, putting the bandage over the scrape and securing it with the usual routine— first a flourish to seal it, and then a kiss.
It goes similarly for the scrape on Christopher’s shoulder, though it requires two Band-Aids— one solid red, the other with dalmatians on it.
“Any more?” Eddie checks when he’s finished.
“Just this one,” Christopher says, turning his head. The scrape on his cheek is much milder, not even bleeding so much as irritated.
“Ah,” Eddie says, preparing another antiseptic pad. “Okay. Quick sting.”
Christopher doesn’t even flinch as Eddie swipes it over the center of the scrape, mostly for good measure, and Eddie smiles sweetly.
“Look at you,” he praises. “No Band-Aid for this one,” he adds. “But it still needs part two.”
Obediently, Chris leans forward, and Eddie presses a light, painless kiss to Christopher’s cheek with an exaggerated mwah.
Off-script, the boy turns to Buck, all blue eyes and soft features that Eddie treasures every single day as he watches them grow and change.
“You too, Buck,” he chirps.
Buck’s face shifts, surprise and uncertainty and that soft touched look flickering over his eyes and the shape of his mouth.
“Me?” he asks.
Christopher— Eddie’s kid through and through— rolls his eyes as his Dad bites back a laugh. “Yeah,” he says. “You’re the only Buck here.”
Buck laughs then, breathless with a kind of relief that Eddie understands intimately, and then recovers, composing his expression.
“Okay,” he agrees softly, and then leans in and kisses Christopher’s cheek, too, right over where Eddie had just a moment ago.
Deep in Eddie’s chest, something akin to the flutter of wings.
Before he gets a chance to say anything, there’s a familiar swish and the curtain opens. Carol smiles at them from around it, one hand on her hip.
“Hello, Diazes,” she says, her eyes on Christopher. “Are we all patched up in here?”
“Yep!” Chris says. “Look, my Band-Aids are firefighter!”
“Oooh,” Carol says, leaning in with interest. “I bet I can guess why that was your pick,” she adds, her eyes sparkling as she glances at Eddie.
“Because of Buck!” Christopher grins.
“Of course,” Eddie laughs, shaking him by his un-scraped knee. “We are all about Buck, right, mijo?”
“Right,” Chris nods.
“Well,” Carol says, tilting her head at Christopher. “How do we feel about cookies? Because I have some in the staff room that I think are just waiting for you.”
Chris brightens, and Eddie smiles as he looks over, a pleading expression already on his face. “Dad?” he asks. “Can I go? Please?”
“Yes,” Eddie laughs. “Of course you can. Here.” He lifts Chris down from his place next to Buck, then spins to grab Christopher’s crutches where they’d been leaning against the table, and with a couple of practiced movements helps him get his arms through them. “You go ahead with Ms. Carol, okay? Buck and I will come and get you in a minute.”
“Okay,” Christopher agrees easily, bouncing back like kids do, already easily navigating his crutches and paying no mind to the scrapes or pain.
Eddie gives Carol a thankful nod, and then they’re gone, leaving Buck on the exam table and Eddie on the wheeled stool in front of him, their eyes meeting as Eddie tilts his head.
“Hey,” he says gently, putting both hands on Buck’s knees and brushing gently over one with his thumb, and then back again.
Buck takes a breath. “Hey. I’m—”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Eddie cuts in.
“But I am sorry,” Buck replies earnestly. “I was watching him and he got hurt.”
“He got scraped,” Eddie corrects gently, standing up from the stool and moving to stand between Buck’s knees, so that he can reach out and smooth his curls lightly. As if in spite of himself, Buck relaxes a little beneath his touch. “Like all kids do,” Eddie adds. “Like all kids should. He is completely okay.”
Buck’s face twists. “I was probably overreacting,” he admits.
“A little,” Eddie says around a small smile. “But it means a lot to me that you love him that much. You know that.”
Buck shakes his head. “Anybody would.”
Eddie thinks of his parents, a brief flicker of a memory in which the way they talked about his son got under his skin like a scrape of his own, one that couldn’t be fixed with a firetruck Band-Aid. And then of the preschool he’d tried to enroll Christopher in when they had just moved to LA, whose thinly veiled ableism had been brushed under the rug as standard questions when Eddie knew they weren’t.
“Not anybody,” Eddie says gently, offering Buck a soft smile. “You treat him like I would. Which is how I know that watching him get hurt, seeing him cry—” He shrugs. “It’s scary. Even when he’s fine.”
Buck lets out a breath like he’s been holding it the whole time.
“I’ve never seen him cry like that,” he admits.
Eddie smiles. “Ah,” he says. “I heard he definitely didn’t cry.”
Buck laughs, faint but real. “Right,” he says, nodding. “Revisionist history.”
“It always is,” Eddie agrees.
There’s a beat.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
Buck looks up at him, blue eyes and soft lashes. “I think so. How are you so calm?” he asks.
Eddie smiles again. “Practice, baby,” he says, leaning in and kissing his cheek. “You’ll get there.” He pulls back, holds out a hand to Buck as an offering, and grins. “C’mon,” he says. “You interrupted my cookie break, too, and Chris has probably finished my fudge round by now.”
Buck hops off of the table, but pulls Eddie back by his hand.
“Um,” he says. “I— listen, I would get it if—”
“Save it, Buckley,” Eddie interjects. “I’ll keep my free childcare, thank you.”
Buck smiles. “You’re not mad?”
“At what?” Eddie banters as he draws the curtain back and leads them back into the hall. “The sidewalk? Oh, I’m furious. I’m considering legal action.”
Buck tilts his head back and laughs, the most like himself he’s sounded. “Okay,” he relents. “I get it. It wasn’t my fault.”
“You’re smarter than you look,” Eddie grins, holding the door to the staff room open for him.
Christopher, who’s digging into a homemade zebra cake like his life depends on it, looks up at this as they cross over into the room.
“That’s passive aggressive,” he states through a mouthful of frosting, sending both Buck and Eddie into startled laughter as Carol tilts her head back— amazed, like most everyone is, by Eddie’s kid.
“You’re right,” Eddie replies, leaning over to kiss the top of his head. “And you’re too smart for your own good.”
“I know,” Chris grins.
And as it turns out, as Buck settles at the table with them for their cookie break and Eddie polishes off the remainder of his dessert from earlier, pausing in between bites to press his lips lightly to Buck’s over Christopher’s halfhearted protest: it’s all nothing that a cookie and a kiss from Dad couldn’t fix.