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“Theo!” Buck calls, his voice hitting a wall and going suspiciously, silently, unanswered.
He frowns, turning in the kitchen to peek down the hallway, where Theo’s bedroom is, but there’s no sound. They’re ten minutes late to meet Eddie and Christopher for dinner after parent-teacher conferences at Chris’s school— something that Buck hates to miss especially as Christopher’s school years are rapidly dwindling, but parenthood is an every day tag-team in the combined Diaz and Buckley household.
Two years ago, things in Buck’s life had taken several sharp turns, a dizzying but ultimately wonderful set of surprises.
First, of course: Theo. He’d barrelled into Buck’s life with characteristic unexpectedness. And though the circumstances had been difficult and tragic and not ever what anybody had wanted for him, there had been a silver lining in Theo himself; in the fierce love that Buck built up for him; in the sparkling threads of a bond that Buck had never seen coming.
Not that it was the only one.
It had been a matter of weeks after Theo came to live with him that he’d been cornered in the backyard of his then-rental house beneath a twilight sky by his best friend, and quietly, somewhat unceremoniously, kissed. He can remember even now every detail of that moment: the streaks of lilac and the backlight of a summer evening behind Eddie’s soft hair; the warm press of the air around them that seemed to crackle with anticipation; the catch of his breath in his chest like every bit of him had paused to stand in awe of Eddie’s mouth on his. He remembers the rightness of it, the same rightness that he feels every single day when Eddie repeats this ritual, pressing good morning kisses and goodnight kisses and just because kisses to Buck’s mouth.
There had been challenges. Plenty of them.
But when Theo woke up screaming every night for weeks; when he acted out so severely that Buck had to leave shift three times in one week to pick him up from preschool; when he threw himself on the floor and wept, his little chest heaving and Buck’s heart breaking into sharp pieces beneath his ribs— Eddie was there, too. It was Eddie who covered for him when he had to leave work; Eddie who followed him into Theo’s bedroom; Eddie who had been the one to drop himself to the floor and let Theo climb into his lap, who had sat there on the hardwood floor for as long as it took, calmly rubbing Theo’s back and saying nothing, just being there with him.
He filled the space in Buck’s life spectacularly, and by extension Theo’s, too. He and Christopher started spending nights crammed into Buck’s house that summer and one day at a time, the four of them became a unit. Maybe they had been, really, for a lot longer than that. He’d found himself thinking about that one evening in the late summer when Chris was sitting at the counter helping him prep for dinner and Eddie was out in the yard with Theo, chasing him through the evening rays of sun as he giggled and shrieked.
When Chris had glanced up at a particularly shrill sound from Theo and smiled, a soft thing that looked like Eddie on his face, and said, “I’m glad we’re here.”
Buck had turned to look at him— this grown-up kid, all of almost sixteen and looking more like his dad every day, this piece of Buck’s heart turned human in front of him. He’d had to swallow hard around the feeling as he’d said, “You are?”
Chris had rolled his eyes. Talk about looking like Eddie.
“Yeah,” he’d answered with a nonchalant shrug. “It’s nice. All of us being a family.”
And so they were just that. Maybe it was fast for some people, but within the first year Eddie’s landlord had offered to sell to him and something about that had seemed like a sign. At least, that’s how Buck had seen it. Eddie’s view was that it was a sensible decision and nothing more, but either way— the house changed hands and then they spent months half-split between houses while they dipped into Buck’s savings to renovate it, adding another bedroom at the back of the house.
It was, ostensibly, because Eddie’s house was already accessible for Christopher and because they were offered a good price on account of Eddie having been a good tenant for so long. But on their first night there— with Theo in his brand-new bedroom with a firetruck bed that had cost too much but made him so happy that it was worth it— Buck had stood in the hallway between the boys’ rooms and thought, privately, that it was about more than that.
4995 South Bedford Street had been home for a long time, if he was honest with himself.
And it is still today, when he stands in its hallway again and calls out for Theo.
“Theo?” he tries again, taking a step down the hallway. “Honey, we’re going to be late for—”
There’s a faint clatter from Theo’s bedroom, and Buck takes the last few steps a little faster, pausing in the doorway to survey the room and automatically scanning for damage.
All he finds, though, is Theo.
He’s standing at the center of the room, his sneakers untied but on his feet, and when Buck steps into the room he tilts his head back and grins, showing the gaps where his baby teeth had been. He’s lost his left canine and his bottom front tooth recently, and it’s sort of the cutest thing Buck has ever seen.
Now six years old, he’s getting tall and outgrowing the jeans he’s wearing, which brush his ankles and show off the Star Wars socks underneath. And he’s still as energetic as ever— though not usually quite as chaotically so since his official ADHD diagnosis last year.
“What was that noise?” Buck asks him, glancing again around the room.
“Nothing,” Theo answers.
Buck puts a hand on his hip, and realizes not for the first time that he’s picked it up from Eddie. “Nothing?” he repeats. “I didn’t know nothing could crash.”
He punctuates this with a step forward, and scoops Theo up as he laughs, tilting his head back and sending his mop of curls flopping. Buck smiles at the sight of him as he tosses him gently onto his bed and kneels to help him with his shoes.
“Dad, I’m ready to see Teddy,” Theo declares.
Teddy had once been a joke. It had started when a then-four Theo had started calling all of his teddy bears Eddie bears, which he’d found hysterical. Then, he’d started smushing the two together and before any of them knew it, Eddie was Theo’s Teddy. It had stuck.
Dad had come later. Theo has only been calling Buck that for under a year, after several careful conversations about it. The first time had sent Buck spiraling, worried that he was replacing Theo’s parents or that he hadn’t done enough to help him remember them. But Theo’s therapist— who’s been a lifeline to their family since Theo started seeing her right after he was placed with Buck— had told him that it was a great sign that Theo was adjusting well.
They’d made it clear to him that he could call them whatever he wanted, at any time. And so they’d become Dad and Teddy.
“You’re almost ready,” he says, tapping his own knee and prompting Theo to prop his foot on it so that Buck can make quick work of his laces. He’d insisted on them, even though he’s still learning to tie them himself. Eddie had reminded Buck merely days ago, with a teasing pat to his shoulder, that as soon as Theo learns to do it himself Buck is going to miss when he needed one of them to do it for him.
Such is parenthood, as Buck has learned it in fits and starts.
“And Chris,” Theo says, continuing like Buck hadn’t said anything, his other foot swinging against his bedframe.
“And Chris, of course,” Buck laughs as he finishes with the laces and switches to the other shoe.
If Theo is attached to Buck and Eddie, it’s nothing compared to how he is about Christopher.
He had been in total adoration of Chris from day one, and over the course of the last couple of years they’ve become true brothers in every sense of the word. Despite their significant age gap and mostly thanks to Christopher’s patient nature, they spend all kinds of time together now. Buck is worried about what it’s going to mean for Theo when Chris goes off to college next year, but nobody in their house is quite willing to think about that just yet. Theo is certainly not the only one who’s going to struggle with it.
In the meantime, the days are long and Buck tries to focus on each of them with the same attention; savoring even the hard stuff and knowing that someday, these will be the days he looks back on with the most fondness.
He lifts his head, catching Theo’s gaze and reaching up to tap his nose.
“Are you sure nothing crashed?” he asks. “You know it’s okay if there was an accident.”
“Just my picture,” Theo tells him, already clambering off the bed and reaching for Buck’s hand, tugging him insistently. “Come on, I want to go.”
“What picture?” Buck asks him.
Theo— God help them all— rolls his eyes at him. Where he learned that is anyone’s guess, because the truth is that it could be Eddie or Christopher equally. It could also be Jee-Yun, perhaps even more probably.
“Dad,” he whines, tilting his head up with his fingers tucked into Buck’s pocket, the way he’s been doing since they first got to know each other. “You said we’re late.”
Buck can’t help but huff a laugh at that, cradling the back of Theo’s head as he brushes through his curls. “Okay,” he relents. “I get it, you want your Teddy. Come on, bud.”
“And Chris!” Theo adds.
“And Chris,” Buck agrees.
He sweeps his eyes over the room again as he ushers Theo out into the hallway, but still finds nothing amiss at a glance. What Theo had meant, he doesn’t know, but it tugs at him insistently anyway like a loose thread he should be pulling at.
In the car, Theo is quiet.
This, too, is a red flag. Though Theo’s impulsivity and ability to focus have been improved by his diagnosis and the medication he takes every morning for his ADHD, he is— thankfully— still Theo. He’s curious about everything and goes a mile a minute from the moment he wakes up to the moment his head hits his pillow every night. A heat-seeking missile, Kameron had called him the last time Buck saw her alive. He thinks about that a lot— about her, and Connor, and about the fact that it’s their son he’s raising even though Theo is also his now. She’d been right to say that, and it’s still apt two years later.
Buck watches him in the rearview mirror as they pull out of their neighborhood to make the short drive to meet Eddie and Chris. He’s running a toy truck along the ledge of his window, but he looks thoughtful.
“You okay back there?” Buck asks him, watching as he looks up and their eyes meet in the glass.
“Yep,” Theo answers, offering nothing more.
Buck hesitates. “You know,” he says. “If you want to tell me anything, you can.”
Theo seems to think about this as Buck pulls the car to a stop at a red light, and then he shrugs his shoulders. “Yeah,” he says agreeably, turning his eyes back to his truck. “Can we get fudge?”
Hot fudge, he means. More specifically, the hot fudge sundae that they’ve split more than once after eating at this particular place. Theo was a chocolate fiend when he came to them and has only been encouraged by being around Eddie’s sweet tooth the last two years. Buck’s baking hobby might have something to do with it, too, but not if you’re asking him.
“Sure, baby,” Buck relents.
If he doesn’t now, Eddie certainly will later. He’s just saving steps.
Theo livens up, naturally, the moment they pull into the parking lot of the little hole in the wall diner that their family frequents. In the parking lot, Eddie’s truck bed is folded down and Chris is sitting on it with his crutches leaned against the tail light; next to him, Eddie is standing in a pool of sunlight with strands of dark hair flopping over his forehead, looking angelic even as Buck squints against the light to angle his Jeep into the next parking space. He can’t really blame his kid for the excitement, even though they’d both seen Eddie just this morning.
“Can I unbuckle?” Theo starts begging before the car is fully parked.
“Hold on,” Buck chuckles. “You know when.”
“Turn the car off!” Theo groans dramatically.
Buck does, and within a moment Theo is pulling his seatbelt off of him, practically vibrating at the door as he waits— impatiently, but he waits— for Buck to open it for him. The second he does, Theo is throwing himself out of the car, landing solidly on his feet and taking off.
In the next parking space, Eddie is laughing and leaning down as the sound touches Buck deep in his chest.
“Teddy!” Theo shouts, opening his arms wide as he throws himself into Eddie’s waiting hug.
“Oh,” Eddie groans, scooping him up on impact and lifting his feet up off of the ground. “Hi, muffin.” He turns his head and kisses Theo’s cheek with a loud mwah and Theo giggles delightedly.
Buck grins at the sight of them, catching Eddie’s eyes over Theo’s head for a brief second, and then turning to Chris as he pats his pockets, being sure that his keys are there.
“Hi,” he breathes, leaning in to kiss Christopher’s head. “Hi, hi, hi,” he adds breathlessly as he turns to Eddie, too, planting a soft and quick kiss to his lips as Theo makes his usual sound of disgust. “Sorry we’re late.”
“Hey, baby,” Eddie says, soft and warm and slow. Easy, like always. His hand finds Buck’s waist, fingertips brushing as he adjusts Theo on his hip.
And then he smiles, like they have all the time in the world— and just like that, with Theo already leaning out of Eddie’s arms to talk to Christopher and Eddie’s soft eyes on him, whatever trepidation Buck had felt is forgotten. It melts away in a pool of hot fudge and vanilla; eclipsed entirely by Eddie pressed against him in a booth and their boys across from him and the sparkle in their eyes.
In the end, it’s not Buck at all who gets to the bottom of Theo’s picture and the mysterious clatter coming from his room.
Christopher had not ever thought he would be anybody’s brother. As a little kid, he didn’t wish for a sibling like some other kids did. He probably wouldn’t have minded it, but he didn’t hope for it. He was content with his mom; and then with his dad, with Buck, with their lives.
He remembers, faintly, following Adriana around back when they lived in Texas. She was only ten years older than him, like his dad is nine years older than her and like Maddie is to Buck.
Like he is to Theo.
Theo, who had become Christopher’s brother in such a way that now he can’t quite wrap his head around what life had been like before him. He hadn’t thought he’d be much of a big brother— because by the time he met Theo, he was fifteen. They were ten years apart and some change, but it didn’t really matter. At least, not in the way that Chris had thought it might.
It turns out, being Theo’s brother comes naturally to Christopher. His dad says– with a sweet kind of smile, the kind that’s soft and fond– that he has a knack for it. The truth is, Chris thinks it’s pretty Theo-specific. He isn’t sure he’d be the same with any other kid as he is with Theo.
Part of it, he guesses, is that they have a lot in common.
Which is also probably why he notices it when he goes into Theo’s room after school on Monday and something is missing. Several somethings, actually.
“Hi, Chris,” Theo says, grinning at him from his place on his firetruck bed. He’s turned upside-down with his head hanging off the side and his hands reached out so that his fingertips brush the floor. His face is bright red and his messy curls hang comically down off of his forehead.
“Hi, Theo,” Chris grins back at him. “Whatcha doing?”
“Hanging,” Theo giggles, tapping his fingers against the floor.
“Why?” Chris asks, just for kicks. Theo always has silly answers that make no sense, and Chris likes to hear them.
This time, it’s: “Because I’m hungry.”
Christopher smiles, easing off of the doorway and moving into the room. He takes a seat on the bed near the footboard, and then looks around. On Theo’s bookshelf, there are several empty spaces.
“Where did your pictures go?” he asks.
Theo doesn’t answer.
Chris studies him for a moment: his small body, the way his tshirt rides up on his tummy exposing smooth baby skin. He’s six now, but six is so much littler than Chris remembers it being. He’d been six his last year in El Paso and so much of it is a blur now, over ten years later. A colorful one, like looking through a kaleidoscope and seeing all the shades; like a stained-glass window or the iridescent shine of oil in the parking lot.
He wonders if it’s like that for Theo yet. If he remembers his mom and dad that way; if he really remembers them much at all. It makes Christopher ache all over like a chill that sweeps through the room. At least Chris had been old enough when his mom died that he can remember her. At least they’d had those last few months together. Theo had gotten none of that.
But otherwise, their losses are similar. Chris thinks about it sometimes when they all climb into the car together: about crosswalks and bridges and the instant thief that is death.
So maybe it was always going to be him who noticed when all of Theo’s pictures of his birth parents went missing from his shelf. Maybe it could only be him.
He nudges his brother lightly, Christopher’s knee against his hip. “You don’t want to tell me?” he asks.
Theo shakes his head, suddenly sullen and quiet. It’s so unlike him that it makes Chris anxious, but he pauses and listens and he can hear Dad and Buck in the kitchen– the familiar hum of their layered voices; the clatter of life from just on the other side of the wall, just down the hallway.
He re-centers.
Something about this feels like it’s his responsibility, somehow. Not in a way that burdens him, but in a way that just exists like that. In the way that it had felt within that first summer, when Theo used to not be able to pronounce his name and would smile up at him with his baby teeth and ask questions that Chris wanted to answer more than he’d expected to.
“Is it because you miss your mom and dad?” Chris asks.
“No!” Theo says, suddenly fervent. He pulls himself up from where he’s hanging off of the bed and turns his back to Christopher, crossing his arms over his chest. It makes him look remarkably like Chris’s dad, actually, in a way that has him biting back a small smile before he comes back to the moment.
He studies Theo’s back; his shoulders and the way his hair curls against the nape of his neck.
“You don’t…miss them?” he ventures.
“No,” Theo answers.
“Why not?” Chris asks, keeping his voice level and easy.
Theo huffs. “They’re not my mom and dad anymore.”
Christopher pauses. Suddenly, he thinks he understands.
“Hey, Theo,” he says. “Will you come to my room with me?”
Theo looks at him over his shoulder, his small features set in a frown like Buck’s. “Why?” he asks, suspicious.
“I want to show you something,” Chris says. “Something really special to me,” he adds, hoping to ply Theo’s curiosity.
He can see it working on Theo’s face well before he relents. “Okay,” he agrees. “What is it?”
Chris smiles, getting up and gesturing for Theo to follow. “You’re gonna see in a second,” he laughs. “Come on.”
As they move down the hallway, Chris catches a glimpse of his dad and Buck in the kitchen, standing shoulder to shoulder working on dinner at the counter as the sun streams in. It’s the way it’s been for so long, even for him.
He imagines that for Theo, it’s even more like that. He was only four when his parents died, and still four when Dad and Buck got together. He’d come to live with Buck and never knew a life there that didn’t include his dad and himself. To Theo, with a malleable toddler brain, they were his family almost right away. His Teddy, his brother. His dad.
Chris follows him into his own room and for a brief moment remembers what this space had been like when he was around Theo’s age. The colors; the toys; the planets above the bed. That had been his world, and it had felt like the only thing he knew.
He thinks back to that Christmas, the last one he’d spent with his mom. His chest twists, more a twinge than anything, a feeling that has been whittled down over the years and still lives in him but is usually a lot smaller than it used to be. Grief comes and goes, but it takes up less of him now.
She’d stood where he’s standing now, though. She’d been in this space with him; this house; this room. She’d leaned over him to help him open the box of one of his new toys and he’d been wrapped up in the scent of her shampoo as her hair fell in a curtain over her face, as the ends brushed Christopher’s arm and made him shiver. She’d lived, once, right here where he’s standing.
“What is it?” Theo asks again, always impatient.
Chris goes to the shelf in the corner. He’s not surprised that Theo has never noticed the picture; it lives on the top shelf, way above Theo’s eyeline. He’s always on the go, never stopping too long to look at his surroundings. And he’s much more interested in Chris’s games or the toys of his own that inevitably migrate to Christopher’s room than the boring books on the shelf that are too big for him to read.
“Come and sit down,” Chris tells him.
Theo climbs up onto Chris’s bed, pulling the covers all out of place as he does, and Chris takes the picture off of the shelf and joins him.
It had been taken during that time between Christmas and when his mom died. His dad took it, he thinks. In it, his mom has her arms wrapped around him and she’s turning her head to look at his face. He’s small and beaming, his glasses lopsided even with the red band he used to wear to hold them on his head.
“Who’s that?” Theo asked, interested now that it’s right in front of him.
Chris smiles a little, glancing sideways at his brother. “That’s my mom,” he says.
Theo’s eyes widen and he turns his head sharply in Chris’s direction. “You have a mom?” he asks.
Chris’s feelings tumble through his chest, a free-fall. He guesses it makes sense for Theo not to know: at the same time, he can’t imagine how he doesn’t. For Christopher, it feels like she’s so much a part of him, like he carries her with him all the time. Even when he’s not thinking of her, she’s there. In the things he says and the person in the mirror; in his eyes and on his bookshelf and in how he thinks. Her love for him, mistakes and flaws and all, is a part of who he is. Sometimes, he’s angry at her. Sometimes, he misses her so much that it feels big again. Sometimes, she’s an empty space in his life. But she’s with him, one way or another.
There’s a brief flickering touch of guilt in his chest: that he’s done a disservice to them both by not sharing his mom with Theo before, any time in the two years they’ve known each other, in the time they’ve both been motherless boys. But maybe, Chris thinks, this is just the right moment for it.
“Yeah,” he says gently. “I had a mom. Her name was Shannon.”
He holds the picture out to Theo, then, and watches as he takes it with too-careful hands. Something else he’s learned in the last couple of years: growing into the ability to know when he has to be careful.
“Shannon,” he says.
Christopher’s heart twists.
“She died,” he says. “In a car crash, just like your mom and dad.”
Theo looks up at him, startled. “She died?”
Chris nods. “Yep. I was just a little bigger than you.”
Theo frowns, and Chris lets him think about it, watches as he pieces bits of it together as the picture sits in his little hands.
“What about–” Theo asks, frowning.
“Dad and Teddy?” Chris prompts, filling it in for him with the words he would use.
Theo nods, looking up at him. Christopher, blue-eyed like Shannon was, looks at Theo’s face and thinks of the pictures of Connor and Kameron that have lived in Theo’s room since he first joined them. Kameron, with her brown eyes, and Theo whose gaze is warm hazel.
Chris shifts to be closer to him. “They’re my parents, too,” he says. “I have my mom, and I have them.”
Theo doesn’t say anything, so Chris taps him lightly on his back. “Is that why you took your pictures away?” he asks softly. “So– you could just think about Dad and Teddy?”
Hesitantly, Theo nods.
“I have two dads,” he says.
Chris pauses, thinking. “You do,” he agrees. “We both do. Right?”
Cautiously, Theo nods.
“But–” Chris says. “I still love my mom. I still want to see her picture.”
Theo looks down at the photo of Shannon again, and Chris sighs. Maybe he’s sort of out of his depth here, but he’s in it now so he just keeps going. Just keep swimming, he thinks, remembering something he and Buck used to say to each other when he was little.
“It’s okay to be sad, Theo,” he says. This time, it’s words between himself and his dad that rise to his tongue. The two of them– the three of them, his parents– all live in him in pieces. “Sometimes,” Chris tells him. “Talking about it makes it less scary.”
Theo looks down, kicking his feet against Chris’s bedframe. “Are you sad?” he asks, glancing over at Chris. “About your mom?”
Christopher looks at the picture. How does he put this into words that a six-year-old will understand? Even if Theo feels these things, he won’t know the words for them.
But Theo is his brother. So Chris takes a breath and tries anyway.
“Sometimes,” he admits. “But I like to see my mom, too. It makes me happy to remember her, even– even when I’m sad, too.”
Theo frowns. “What if I have–” He pauses, huffing impatiently. He’s like Buck in this way, sometimes getting ahead of himself. But Chris has had lots of practice with them both; with watching his dad love them, too.
“Are you…” he starts, “scared that it makes you not as much in our family? If you have other parents, too?”
Theo nods hesitantly, and Chris’s chest goes tight.
“Theo,” he says gently. “That’s not true. You can have a lot of family, even a lot of parents. Just like I have my mom and you have your mom and dad, even if they’re not here with us. You’re still Dad and Teddy’s son, too. And my brother.”
He nudges Theo gently then, and all at once Theo bursts into tears.
Christopher only has enough time to realize that he doesn’t know what to do before his dad and Buck are in the room with them. Chris realizes– unsurprised entirely– that they were just outside. He’s not sure how much they heard, but he watches his dad scoop Theo into his lap and Buck get on one knee in front of them both, and he’s honestly just grateful that they’re here at all.
“Oh,” his dad coos, rocking Theo as Buck puts his hands on Theo’s small knees, bracketing them. “Hi, baby. We’ve got you, you’re okay.”
Theo drops his head to Eddie’s chest, his body wracked with sobs that obscure his words. Chris picks up the picture of his mom for something to do and turns, setting it back in place on his shelf.
There’s something to that, too, he thinks, looking at her smile. That she– and maybe Connor and Kameron, maybe everyone else they’ve lost– are here with them; with Theo. That their love is enough to tether them all like that.
“I broke it,” Theo sobs, his fingers wrapped in Eddie’s shirt, wrinkling it.
On the floor of Christopher’s bedroom, Buck breaks a little, too. He goes back to Friday evening, to the clatter he’d heard. He wishes he’d pushed more as the pieces fall together.
But then Christopher– God, Christopher– who’s better at everything by miles than Buck or Eddie could ever have imagined, who’s so good and kind inside and so grown up and carries so much love everywhere he goes.
He and Eddie had stood in the hallway leaning against each other, listening. And now Buck watches as Chris sits down next to Eddie and Theo and puts his hand on his brother’s knee, brushing against Buck’s wrist, all of them touching Theo as he cries.
“It’s okay,” Chris says. “We can always fix it.”
“Yeah,” Buck soothes, leaning in and taking Theo’s free hand, bringing it to his mouth and kissing his small, open palm. “It’s okay, my love. We’ll get you a new one if it’s broken now, okay?”
Theo peers up at him through wet lashes, his face smushed into Eddie’s chest. He’s growing so fast, but he’s still so little in so many ways. It grasps at Buck, sticks its thorns in his skin and tugs.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his lower lip trembling.
“Oh, that’s– that’s okay,” Buck says, swallowing hard as Eddie kisses once, twice, and again on the top of Theo’s head, nestling the sound in his curls. “Don’t worry,” Buck says, opening his arms.
Theo turns to him, limply dropping himself into Buck’s hold as Eddie’s hands trail off of him; a pass between them that they still do every day, an echo of Buck dropping Theo into Eddie’s waiting arms the very day they met him, off of a ladder and safely into Eddie’s hold.
“Got you,” Buck soothes, cradling him close and kissing his cheek. “It’s okay. Chris is right, sweetheart. It’s okay to be sad.”
Theo nestles his head against Buck’s neck, his face wet and smearing against the collar of Buck’s shirt. Like he could ever care. He cradles the back of his baby’s head in his palm and closes his eyes against the warmth of Theo’s weight in his arms, and feels himself torn apart.
Then he opens his eyes, and Eddie is looking at him– warm, dark, understanding eyes and a look softened by love for them both as he puts his arm around Chris. And Buck feels put together again.
They go together to Theo’s room and help him pick up the broken pieces of his picture frame from where they’re shoved under his bed. They have an extra somewhere, because Eddie likes to change out the pictures on the living room mantlepiece, so they all huddle around him as Buck talks him through putting the picture in himself. Then Eddie lifts him, sets him on his feet, and steadies him with a hand on his back as he puts it back where it belongs on his bookshelf.
It’s only the beginning– Eddie knows that maybe better than anyone. But it’s this that leads him, a couple of hours later while Buck and Theo laugh through bathtime down the hallway– to his son’s bedroom doorway.
It’s evening now, and in the way that little children often do, Theo has bounced back. It will come and go, probably forever, but what Chris had said to him seemed to help and by the time they were finished with dinner he was on to the next thing for now.
But for Eddie, much of it lingered.
He can remember, with alarming vividity, how small Chris had once seemed in this space. How small he’d seemed in an ocean of grief; how worried Eddie had been about him growing like that, flooded by it at such a young and tender age.
And yet– here he is. Same room, same boy. But almost grown up now, and every bit the baby that Eddie had marveled over in his first moments of life; the baby who’d gotten his very first kiss from his mother, mere seconds old as Shannon pressed her lips to his tiny knuckles.
“Hey,” Eddie says, watching as Chris looks up in the lamplight.
“Hey,” he answers. Then, he smiles, and looks seven and seventeen at the same time. “Are you here to cry?”
“No,” Eddie laughs. He probably could, if he thinks about it too long. But he won’t. Instead, he moves forward, standing in front of Chris and putting his hands on his shoulders where he sits in his desk chair.
Chris tilts his head back, looking up at Eddie. And Eddie can’t resist the urge to brush soft curls back off of his forehead. Chris allows it, blinking at him through his glasses.
“What?” Chris asks.
Eddie shakes his head. “Thank God for you, kid,” he breathes, and then leans in to kiss his forehead as Chris huffs a laugh.
There’s a lot more that Eddie could say. Mostly, litanies of thank yous for what Chris had done. But he leaves it, because he knows what the answers would be.
It is, as it would be if he gave Chris the chance to answer, what families do.