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There’s something about Eddie in the mornings that Buck just… loves.
Maybe it’s the way the sun filters through the window blinds, rectangular patterns, intermittent spots of sunlight that fall perfectly on Eddie’s face—his forehead, his eyes, across the tip of his nose. Highlights the sweetest parts of him. Gives him a glow kind of hard to recreate in any other setting.
Or, maybe, it’s the way there’s still traces of sleep in his features: swollen under-eyes, puffy doe eyes staring up at him through heavy-blinking lashes. Sometimes a blink takes a second longer than usual. Eddie yawns a lot, the first ten minutes he’s awake. He cannot go through a sentence without yawning at least three times, and his most coherent sentence at six in the morning is Coffee, please. And Buck serves him coffee in a mug—a splash of milk and three sugars, a good sugar rush to start the day, in Eddie’s frog-shaped mug that goes well with his sponge holder—and sits him down on the table, kisses the top of his head, and stays.
And maybe it’s the way Eddie wakes up more with each sip, each bite of the cheesy scrambled eggs Buck served alongside the coffee. How his sentences go from two words to five, ten, more coherent, more normal. He recalls his dreams, sometimes. Jack Sparrow was following Chris around a field with a fish for a sword. Or, Theo was a 6-foot-7 toddler that demanded uppies, or—and Buck’s favorite one yet—, The 118 responded to a call at the aquarium and a mermaid got you to swim around with her. Buck had started the day with merfolk myths while Eddie sobered up over breakfast.
But, as soft lips press against his own over and over again, chaste and sweet under the morning sun, in a house where tranquility is the norm, for the kids are not awake just yet, Buck believes it might be this: “Mmm,” Eddie hums, breaking the kiss with a slight smack of their lips. “Sorry. You just…”
Buck kisses him once more, just a peck. “I just…?”
A small smile forming on his face, Eddie lifts a hand and uses his index finger to trace the line of Buck’s nose. “You’re so hot when you start talking about mermaids.”
“Mer-folk,Eddie,” Buck corrects very seriously. “Maid for lady, man for men, folk for all.”
“Uh-huh,” Eddie nods, also very seriously. “Merfolk, that’s correct. I’m sorry. You’re just sooooo hot when you talk about merfolk.”
They both share a small laugh at this, Buck looking up at Eddie while barely blinking. Almost every morning of theirs, if possible, ends up with Eddie sitting on Buck’s lap. Their kitchen chairs are sturdy, very strong, really good wood. And Eddie has one of his arms around Buck’s shoulders, resting on the back of the chair, while his other hand remains hovering above Buck’s face.
Buck smiles then, a grin that is so incredibly flirty it makes Eddie blush instantly. With a chuckle, Buck says, “you know, I once spent three hours reading about the Aztec Empire in one sitting.”
“Yeah?” Incredibly, Eddie already kind of sounds breathless. He shuffles a bit, accommodates his own body to the most comfortable position. “Wha’ddya find out?”
“Mmmm…” Buck sighs, tapping his chin with his finger as he thinks. “Moctezuma’s coronation.”
Eddie leans in, kisses Buck’s cheek. “What about it?”
“Was annotated in stone,” Buck replies. His eyes fall closed as the kisses spread down his neck. “It had five suns, relevant to the… the Aztec civilization’s evolution… what’re you doing?”
“Kissing your neck,” Eddie replies, as if it was obvious. He gently bites on top of Buck’s pulse, and Buck shivers. “Duh.”
“Duh.” His hand comes up to Eddie’s nape, fingers threading through soft, growing hair.
He’s gonna talk Eddie out of his next haircut, he decides. He opens his mouth and says, “leaving marks before work is risky,” instead.
Huffing out a laugh, Eddie lifts his head. “Y’don’t trust my make-up skills, Buckley?”
“Oh, I trust any skill of yours, Diaz. Believe me.” Smiling, their mouths meet again. The kiss has too much teeth to be even classified as one, but it has Buck cupping the back of Eddie’s head and Eddie clutching Buck’s shirt in a fist, pulling him impossibly closer.
They remain like that for a second, a minute, two, twenty, an hour, Buck’s not even sure. It feels eternal. Time flows slowly, like honey dripping from a spoon, salve running down a tree. They separate to look at each other, stop smiling, and kiss properly, the familiar movements of Buck sucking Eddie’s bottom lip into his mouth, Eddie sometimes biting him in reply, soft and unhurried. Birds chirp outside, probably in the nest up in Buck’s neighbor’s orange tree. A car rushes by, sometimes two, a calm neighborhood without much traffic. The house is quiet, a faint tick-tock of the kitchen clock flows in and out of their awareness as they melt against each other, hands roaming as if they had found something new, unexplored: long fingers tracing abdomens, biceps, the shape of elbows and skulls and ears. Like finding each other for the first time.
Buck separates with a small pop, leans his head back on his shoulder. He looks up at Eddie. The sun has shifted, and now it casts light upon his eyebrows, the bridge of his nose—and that beautiful mark below his eye—, his bottom lip. Buck stares.
Eddie brushes his messy curls back with a carefree hand. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” Buck says with a shake of his head. “Just looking.”
“I don’t think my morning face is that interesting at six a.m, Buck,” Eddie says around a laugh. Twirls one of Buck’s curls around his finger.
And Buck, a natural flirt, but more natural at making Eddie laugh, lets his voice drop down a few tones and says in the cheesiest, sultriest way, “Just admirin’ the view, honey.”
“Oh my god, Buck,” Eddie says, face scrunched up in second-hand embarrassment as he laughs, and laughs, his body shaking with it. Drops his head on Buck’s shoulder and his grip on Buck’s shirt gets tighter, and Buck can’t do anything but hold back, laughing as well, breathing Eddie in—Buck’s shower gel, Buck’s fabric softener, Buck—and taking in his presence.
“You disgust me,” Eddie continues, no heat in his voice. “You’re a disgusting person.”
“Oh, I am.”
“Sleazy.”
“That’s me.”
“You’re a pervert, Buckley.”
Buck raises an eyebrow and uses the hand that had been resting idly on Eddie’s thigh all this time, moves it to his backside a few inches. “Oh yeah?”
Eddie leans in closer, the hand that was playing with Buck’s hair grabbing at it properly. “You heard me.”
“I see,” Buck says. Eddie nods. Their noses bump. “Then, what’re you gonna do about it?”
Eddie smiles, then—a little sharp, sun catching on his canines. His fangs, as Buck likes to think of them. The ones that just love to leave indents on Buck’s shoulder several times a week. And he leans in, and his breath mingles with Buck’s in the small pocket between their faces as Eddie opens his mouth—
A door opens down the hall. Tiny shuffles. Another door. A tiny voice. After a few seconds, another voice, this time deeper.
And Eddie sighs and pushes back and away from Buck. “Our morning got cut short, bud.”
With a whine, Buck hands his head back once more. “I really thought he’d sleep more this morning.”
“I know,” Eddie says as he moves to the fridge, taking out the milk. Buck watches him move across the kitchen, how he grabs the bowls and the cereal and the chocolate powder to make Theo’s chocolate milk and the honey for Chris’ Frosted Flakes. “I thought so too, but that kid,” Eddie raises an eyebrow towards the door, “all you, man. Insane morning person.”
“I’m not that crazy about mornings,” Buck mumbles.
He immediately looks away when Eddie turns his pointed glare at him.
“Anyway,” Eddie continues, pouring the cereal on Chris’ red bowl, then on Theo’s Spiderman-themed one. “I was thinking, I’ll drive them to school today and you drive us to work.”
Buck gets up, grabs Eddie’s earlier dishes and moves to the sink. He looks at the running water and tests the temperature with the tip of his fingers, then grabs the sponge. “So, our daily routine?” He asks as he pumps some detergent on the mesh.
“Exactly,” Eddie says. He pours milk on Theo’s sippy cup, then a teaspoon of chocolate powder. “And I drive us back home from shift tomorrow, and we get food from that Cuban truck you like so much.”
“Wow, Eddie. It’s like you’re trying to make me fall in love with you.” Buck looks up from the dishes to find Eddie already looking at him, still at the counter, breakfast for their kids ready to be served and enjoyed.
With a tilt of his head and a slow blink of his lashes, Eddie says, “is it working?”
And even with wet, soapy hands, Buck leans in and grabs Eddie by the jaw, pulling him in into one of the few last intimate kisses they’ll have for the next twenty-four hours. It’s long, unhurried, calm. Eddie kisses back just as sweetly, one hand landing on Buck’s chest, the other grabbing his wrist, thumbing at his pulse. One of Eddie’s many, many endearing traits.
When they hear another door creak open, they separate, not with one last peck. “Showtime,” Eddie murmurs. Buck grimaces, and Eddie shoves him away with a laugh, just in time for Theo to barrel into the kitchen.
“Chris said to ask Buck for pancakes for breakfast,” Theo says instead of greeting them, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
Walking up to him, Buck leans down to pick Theo up and kisses his forehead before walking up to Eddie. “Well, do you also want pancakes, or should I just make them for Chris? Eddie put together breakfast for you as well.”
“Today’s menu is Frosted Flakes and chocolate milk, kid,” Eddie says, poking at Theo’s tummy.
Theo, leaning on Buck’s shoulder as he looks at Eddie, takes a small moment to think it over before he leans forward into Eddie’s waiting hold and all but cuddles up to him, murmuring, “cereal and milk” into Eddie’s shirt.
“Then cereal and milk it is. Go get Chris?” The last part is directed at Buck, who glances up from Theo to Eddie. “We’ll get out the ingredients. We can drive them together.”
Smiling softly, Buck nods and says, “Sounds good,” then gives Eddie one last peck before pulling away towards the door to go wake up Chris from the oh-so-desperate five extra minutes that every teenager needs to survive the day.
Before walking out the door, though, Buck turns his head over his shoulder and takes in the scene before him.
Eddie, still holding Theo in his arms, opens the fridge and the pantry in order and gets every ingredient necessary out for Buck to make Chris’ pancakes, down to the chocolate chips and the fancy maple syrup Chris likes that they don’t really use that often. Eddie, asking Theo for help with the small things, like Can you open that cabinet for me? or Can you tell me where the pan is? and so on, waking the toddler up on this slow weekday morning. Theo, who answers to Eddie’s every whim, who thrives off of Eddie telling him good job! and kissing his forehead. Theo, resting his head back on Eddie’s shoulder and playing with Eddie’s St. Christopher medal as they talk in very low murmurs, backs still turned to Buck.
There’s something about Eddie in the mornings. Maybe, Buck thinks, as he watches Eddie turn his head and breath Theo in, his eyes fluttering up to meet Buck’s, soft and calm and golden under the morning sun as he lifts his head just a little to mouth the word Chris, reminding Buck to go get their other kid, so the four of them can continue their morning together—maybe it’s this. Maybe it’s Eddie himself, the Eddie that is always with him, within reach.
Buck smiles and exits the kitchen. He has a teenager to wake up.