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It happens in October, on a Sunday.
Eddie is fine. This is what Buck keeps telling himself as his heart pounds against his ribs and he tries to get his fingers to stop shaking. Because Eddie is fine. Eddie is sitting in the back of an ambulance chit-chatting with Hen as if nothing even happened, because he is fine.
Mostly.
He shifts slightly in front of Buck, running a hand through his hair as Buck rakes his eyes over him.
“You okay?” he asks, unable to help himself. Because an hour ago, he’d watched as Eddie– Eddie, who normally doesn’t do these things anymore, but very much was because Ravi is out sick and they’re a man down– had partially fallen through a floor in a burning house. It could have been much worse, but it’s also not an image that’s likely to leave Buck’s mind anytime soon. The weight of Eddie against him; the pained sound he’d made; the precarious moment in which Buck had thought he might fall before he could get to him, and that he would simply disappear–
“Fine,” Eddie sighs, gesturing to his knee where there’s an ice pack laid across it. “This is just going to suck.”
Buck swallows hard. It’s just going to suck. Nothing more than that. Eddie isn’t going anywhere.
Anywhere, as it turns out, except for a hospital room. Buck is banished to the waiting room, where he calls first Maddie to let her know that he’s going to be late coming to get Theo, and then Pepa, where Christopher is currently.
He paces the floor in the familiar, too-cold hallway outside the emergency room and tries not to think about how recently they’d all been here– how, not long ago at all, Eddie had nearly bled to death in the elevator that Buck is currently trying hard not to look at; how not long before that, he’d been in one of those chairs agonizing over the empty space left behind by Connor and Kameron, and watching the little boy who wasn’t his walk away from him.
Things are different now.
Things have been getting different since the last time they were here, he guesses. Since he took Eddie home after the stabbing and Eddie was recovering while Buck couldn’t stop worrying over Theo and they turned inward toward each other, the way they always do. And then they didn’t stop; and then their May stretched into June and their lives continued to overlap in startling new ways and then Theo came to live with Buck and all of a sudden it was impossible to tell where one family unit ended and another began.
He doesn’t think he would have made it through these last few months without Eddie and Christopher: all the nights that Theo wouldn’t sleep, when he would scream relentlessly and Buck was so exhausted he was seeing stars, nights when Eddie showed up without asking and sat by Theo’s bed on the floor and told Buck to go be by himself for a little bit. He would sit outside and wait, and Theo would eventually tire himself out, and Eddie would end up sleeping over. And he wasn’t just there for bedtimes gone wrong, either. He also took it in turns to hold Theo when he was distraught; brought dinner over when he could tell Buck was at the end of his rope; jumped in afterwards to either shepherd Theo into the bath or do the dishes, whichever Buck wasn’t doing.
He also read bedtime books, picked up toys, tied shoes and answered questions. He never got tired of Theo, never grew impatient, and never seemed to mind that overnight Buck’s life had started to revolve around a toddler.
Christopher, equally, had slipped into a role in Theo’s life that Buck would never have presumed to ask him to occupy. These days, he can often be found alternating homework with breaks to play with Theo and he’s the only person who can pick a movie that Theo will go along with. When Buck suggests Cars, Theo is not interested at all; but then Chris suggests it and suddenly Cars is Theo’s favorite movie in the world. On the days that their schedules do not overlap, all Buck hears is begging and pleading to see Christopher, complete with adorable lisp and puppy dog eyes.
And in between all that new stuff, there are bits and pieces of what has always been true. Buck, Eddie, and Chris crammed onto Eddie’s couch during Theo’s nap, ribbing each other and doing their best to get ahead in whatever game they’re playing. Buck and Eddie sitting up late when Theo is down for the night and Chris is at least closed into another room with headphones on: usually on Buck’s back patio, their knees brushing as they talk about nothing or sit in the quiet together. All the things that their lives have been built on for the last eight years, continuing to persist.
It’s like breathing, being with Eddie. It fills Buck with an ease that he doesn’t find anywhere else. Which is maybe why it feels so wrong now, being on the other side of a series of walls from him while he’s hurt. Why Buck’s chest is tight and why he feels like he can’t settle. He knows that Eddie is fine, but there’s so much at stake and there have been so many times that he wasn’t, and things are and are not the way they’ve always been.
Pepa picks up and reads Buck like an open book, picking up on the tension in his voice in seconds.
“He’s okay,” Buck rushes to get out, staring at a little smudge on the wall opposite him in the hallway until it starts to go blurry. “Just– uh, banged up, a little.” He sniffs and shakes his head. “I’m still waiting to hear specifics, but it’s just his knee as far as Hen could tell.”
Pepa sighs, sounding fond and exasperated through the phone. Buck is almost surprised to realize that he can practically see her face in his mind. He’s not sure when that happened– when she, as an extension of Chris and Eddie, became an extension of his own interior life, too.
“And you?” she asks, her voice gently prompting him. “Are you alright?”
Suddenly, Buck wants to cry. He doesn’t, though. He won’t. Instead, he exhales on a halfhearted, humorless laugh. “I’m okay,” he says, even though it only feels half-true right now. He will be, sometime later. That’s close enough. “Can I speak to Christopher?”
He hadn’t wanted to call him directly, wanted to be careful about this even though it’s not as bad as it has been before, even though Chris is older now. It doesn’t make it easier, not really. Every time Eddie is hurt, even like this, Buck sees Chris at eight or nine or ten years old, and he’s not sure he’s ever going to be able to stop.
Pepa tsks softly in his ear. “Of course,” she says, and there’s a shuffle on the other end of the line and Buck leans against a wall and resists the urge to slip down it, all the way to the unforgiving floor.
“Buck?”
He knows Christopher’s voice inside and out, feels the caution in it now.
“Hey,” he says. “Hey, Chris.”
“What happened?” Chris asks, sounding weary. More than he should have to.
He’d turned sixteen last month, and he’d wanted to celebrate with them. Eddie had been bracing for him to want to do something with his friends, but on the actual day– a weeknight– he’d asked if they could go to Buck’s. The following weekend had found him out of the house for a solid forty-eight hours, but on that particular day it had been the four of them crowded around a cake on Buck’s back patio as the sun died for the day and the sky turned pink and Chris let Theo help him blow out his candles.
He’s such a good kid that it makes Buck feel dizzy sometimes. He takes no credit for that– it’s all Eddie– but to be witness to it is more than enough for him. Being close to Christopher has always felt like sunlight and the brightness of it never wanes even now.
“Dad’s okay,” Buck tells him. His voice is stronger than it feels in his throat. “Just took a fall, but he’s okay. We’re at the hospital now and I just wanted you to know.”
Chris is quiet for a moment. “Are you sure?” he asks.
“I’m sure,” Buck tells him. “He banged up his knee pretty good and I think they’re gonna do an x-ray to be sure, but Hen thinks nothing is broken. He’ll call you himself in a little bit.”
Chris sighs, but when he speaks again there’s a spark that’s come back into his voice. “You guys really can’t be left alone.”
Buck huffs a laugh. “No,” he agrees. “I guess not.” He pauses, glancing up at a nurse who appears to be trying to catch his attention. He nods at them, and then turns his attention back to Chris. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Chris replies. “Is Theo okay?”
Buck’s heart goes tight in his chest. The fact that it’s Chris’s dad who’s hurt, and he’s thinking about Theo: it slices right through Buck’s fragile composure, sharp and silver.
“He’s with Maddie,” he tells him. “He’s fine.”
“Good,” Chris replies. “And Dad will call me?”
“Promise,” Buck tells him. “I’m going to go see him right now, I think.”
“Okay,” Chris says, softer. “Thanks, Buck.”
Buck swallows hard. “Anytime, Chris. I’ll see you later, okay?”
And then he’s left with just the nurse at the end of the hall and he’s making apologies and Chris’s voice lingers in his ears and then he’s through a doorway and Eddie is sitting in a hospital bed again, again, again.
His knee is propped up and swollen, and it only takes one glance at his face for Buck to see that he’s annoyed. He’s frowning, not the in pain and stoic kind, but the petty irritated kind. He looks up when Buck walks in, scowling.
“Hey,” Buck says, taking a seat next to the bed and watching the dappled morning sunshine on his face. “How you feeling?”
Eddie huffs. Not good-naturedly at all. “I’m fine,” he says, like he’s trying to convince a jury and not just reporting the facts to Buck. “Which is why it’s stupid that they’re keeping me here.”
“They’re keeping you?” Buck asks. “Why? Is it broken?’
“No!” Eddie replies, throwing his hands up. “That’s what I’m saying. It’s for no good reason.”
Buck raises his eyebrows. “No good reason?”
“Observation,” Eddie huffs.
“But nothing’s broken?” Buck asks again.
“No,” Eddie repeats. Some of the fight seems to be leaving him now in favor of something like reluctant resignation. “But they want twenty-four hours because it happened in a fire. I tried to tell them I’m a firefighter, but apparently that doesn’t matter.”
Buck smiles a little at this.
“It’s not that bad.”
Eddie glares at him. “Okay,” he says. “You try getting stuck here for nothing after working a twenty-four-hour shift.”
Buck softens. It’s hard not to. “I’ll bring you something to eat after I check on Theo,” he says.
Eddie softens too, at that. “You don’t have to,” he says, relenting.
Buck reaches out, squeezes Eddie’s ankle lightly on his good side. “I know you’re not going to eat what they give you. Don’t want you starving in here.”
It pulls a halfhearted smile out of Eddie, and Buck will take that. The truth is, it feels strange that he has to leave at all. Normally– in the time before Theo– he would have stayed here, pestering Eddie for the better part of the day or napping in a chair that was definitely not comfortable enough to nap in.
Things are different now– mostly in ways that are good, but sometimes it’s still strange.
As if he can read his mind, Eddie fixes him with a look. “Go check on Theo,” he says, nudging patiently. “I’m fine here.”
Buck sighs. “I called Pepa and spoke to Chris,” he says. “He’s fine, but worried about you. I told him you’d call him yourself in a few minutes.”
Eddie smiles, and it’s soft and easy and something that Buck could see with his eyes closed if he tried.
“Thanks, Buck,” he says, and he sounds so much like Chris– or Chris sounds so much like him, or they sound like each other in new and unfolding ways that become more and more each passing year– that Buck has to swallow hard.
“Sure you’re okay here?” he asks.
“Go,” Eddie says, waving him off. “I’ll be fine.”
So Buck does, but it isn’t easy.
He swings by Maddie’s to pick Theo up, and it’s like going through the motions as he quietly fills Maddie in about Eddie, out of earshot of the kids. He’s exhausted as it is, and keeping up a facade of cheerfulness as Theo chatters to him about the toys Jee-Yun reluctantly shared with him is not easy today.
Buck does it, though. And some of it turns real, somewhere in between Theo’s excitement to see him and the way he kicks his feet in the car on the way back to their house. He loves this kid, seemingly more every day.
But Christopher’s question continues to follow him as he unloads Theo from the car and brings both of their bags inside. It’s only occurring to him now, through the scattered uncertainty in his brain, that taking Theo to the hospital might not be a viable plan.
Every day, there’s something about parenting that Buck has to figure out as he goes. It’s a lot of Googling stuff only to get frustrated with the lack of results, which leads him to asking Eddie for his advice more times than not. Today, that’s not an option.
“Buck,” Theo calls, spread out on the carpet with two toy cars in his hands. “Can we have a snack?”
“Uh,” Buck answers, moving into the living room. “Yeah, sweetheart, of course. But– um, can I talk to you real quick first?”
Maybe it’s the wrong move entirely, he thinks as he perches on his coffee table and Theo gets up and comes to stand in front of him obediently. He’s been doing so well lately– undoubtedly, he still has his moments, but his behavior has been better and he’s been settling in and he seems happy, mostly.
The last thing Buck wants is to do something wrong, to upset that. But Eddie will probably be out of commission for a little while, and Theo is a smart kid who’s going to notice that their plans have changed if Buck tells him nothing. That, and Buck hates the idea of lying to him. So the way he sees it, the only way out is through.
He brushes Theo’s wild hair back slightly from his forehead, his thumb brushing over his warm cheek.
“What?” Theo asks, his curious hazel eyes on Buck’s face. “It’s about my snack?”
Buck huffs a soft laugh. “No,” he says. “No, not about your snack. I have to tell you about something that happened at work today.”
“Okay,” Theo agrees. “Did you fight a fire?”
“I did,” Buck admits, clearing his throat. “Me and Eddie.”
Theo brightens at this. “With Teddy!” he cheers, and Buck’s chest goes tight as he puts a hand on Theo’s hip, tapping him lightly.
“Yeah,” he says. “And– um. You know how sometimes fires can be dangerous?”
“Yep.”
He’s so little, Buck thinks. A wild, absent, stray urge to stop this in its tracks courses over him. To protect him from everything, even the little things. Instead, he tries to remember what the family therapist they’ve been seeing had said about explaining things to him; about how knowing what’s happening around him will give him stability.
At the time, it had made sense to him. He didn’t know then that it would often feel like ripping his heart out of its place in his chest.
“Well,” he tries. “Um, today the fire got a little bit dangerous. And while we were putting it out, Eddie fell and hurt his knee.”
Theo looks at him for a moment, his expression confused. “Did he got a Band-Aid?”
“Yeah,” Buck assures him. “He got a Band-Aid.”
“Okay. So can he come over?” Theo pulls his bottom lip absently between his teeth and Buck tries to stifle the urge to abandon this entirely and kiss him all over his little face.
“No, honey,” he says gently instead. “He has to stay at the hospital until tomorrow.”
At this, Theo freezes.
Buck had worried that might be the case. There’s been no reason to even mention the hospital to Theo in the time that he’s been living with him, but it does make sense that he would be afraid of it, given the associations that he must have with it.
“But, hey,” he starts, going for an easy tone. “You don’t need to worry about that. You don’t have to go there. You can–”
“No!” Theo says, suddenly ferocious. His bottom lip trembles and his eyes are bright. “No! No!”
Helpless, Buck reaches for him. “Theo–”
“I want to go there!” Theo says, his voice tremulous. “I have to go there!”
Buck’s breath catches as Theo balls his fingers into fists, tears spilling over onto his cheeks.
“Theo. Sweetheart,” Buck says gently, holding his hands out. Theo throws himself into Buck with abandon, then, and Buck’s chest aches as he sobs into his shoulder.
“I want to go!” he wails. “I want to. I want to!”
“Okay,” Buck soothes, scooping him up. He’s so small that it sometimes feels astonishing to Buck: when he lifts him easily with one hand and when Theo throws his whole weight into Buck and it’s still just so little. Frequently, he marvels at how such a small body can hold so much, a whole world of a person.
Now, Theo throws his head against Buck’s shoulder, smudging hot damp tears against his neck. “I want Teddy,” he sobs.
If he’s honest, Buck doesn’t know how to argue with that. Theo had gone from fine to inconsolable in a matter of a moment, and though he’s reluctant to take Theo to the hospital for fear of making everything even worse, he’s not sure there’s a better option, either.
Most days, Buck thinks he’s doing okay at this whole parenting thing, for someone who’d been unexpectedly thrust into it overnight. Today is just– not one of those days.
So he picks Theo up and gives in.
Eddie hears Theo well before he sees him.
He’s spent the last hour or so in the boring and relative quiet of a hospital room– again. Frankly, he’s sick of these walls and would like to not see them again for at least a year and ideally more. Calling Christopher and reassuring him that he was completely fine had occupied about ten minutes of his time before Chris was ready to hang up, and after that it had been just Eddie and the dull throb in his knee.
He doesn’t do so well with the quiet these days. There had been a time not so long ago when he was getting used to that, comfortable in it. Chris was getting older, no longer a little boy who made a lot of noise, and he spent plenty of time outside the house. But then–
Theo.
Eddie had not expected Buck to become a parent overnight; but more than that, he hadn’t expected to feel the way he does about Buck’s kid. He thinks that he can understand a little bit of what it is that sparkles between Chris and Buck now, in a way that he didn’t before. Because watching pieces of his best friend appear in Theo: in his face, in the way he laughs, in his big heart and the even bigger way he moves through the world. It’s become so integral to Eddie’s life that he can no longer imagine how he ever existed in a pre-Theo world.
These days, he’s all about the noise that comes with a rambunctious, wild-hearted four-year-old with Buck’s smile.
In this way, he would be able to recognize the sound of Theo screaming anywhere, and when he hears it from the hallway it’s not the kind of disruption to his boredom that Eddie had been hoping for.
He presses himself up straighter, his eyes on the door. He’s just about to figure out how to move out of the hospital bed when the need to do so resolves itself in the form of Buck, appearing in the doorway.
He looks more exhausted than he did when he left, and his curls are riotous, and his arms are full of Theo. Theo, who is currently clinging to Buck with both fists wrapped in his shirt and sobbing, strings of incoherent, breathless sound that reaches into Eddie’s chest and scrapes him raw.
“Buck?” Eddie asks. “What’s–”
“I’m sorry,” Buck says, sounding anxious over Theo’s head. “He’s–”
“I want Teddy!” Theo bawls, and something in Eddie’s chest twists tight and doesn’t let up.
Teddy had become Eddie’s nickname from Theo pretty early on and had stuck quickly.
“Sweetheart,” Buck murmurs patiently– a testament to who he is, the kind of parent that he’s becoming, because he doesn’t sound exasperated at all even though carrying a screaming child through the hospital hallways is anybody’s idea of being pushed to a limit. “Teddy is right here, okay?”
Eddie struggles to catch up, but ultimately it doesn’t really matter how they got here. Theo turns in Buck’s arms and reaches for him, lunging out of his place on Buck’s hip as Buck holds him back.
“Hey, easy,” Buck says. “Eddie has a hurt knee, remember?”
“No,” Eddie says, speaking up over Theo’s cries. “No, no, it’s okay. Give him to me.”
“Eddie–” Buck starts, flickering a cautious look at his knee.
“It’s okay, Buck,” Eddie assures him, holding his arms open. “I got him.”
Buck relents; a moment later, Theo is scrambling into Eddie’s lap while Buck hovers over them, carefully dropping Theo into Eddie’s arms without letting him get close to Eddie’s knee. It still hurts at first, being jostled by the movement, but Eddie swiftly ignores it in favor of wrapping a distraught Theo up in his arms.
Theo melts into him instantly, burying his face against Eddie’s neck and clinging to him the same way he’d just been doing to Buck a moment ago.
“Teddy,” he sniffles.
“Hi, muffin,” Eddie coos, rubbing his back. “Hey. What’s all the crying about? What’s wrong?”
“Buck said,” Theo gasps, trying to catch his breath. “You got hurt and–and– and– we can’t go, and–”
“Hey, okay,” Eddie soothes, brushing through his hair and kissing him on top of his head. “I’m right here, honey. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“I wanted to come,” Theo cries. “Because– because–”
Eddie nods gently. “You were scared, huh?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Theo whimpers.
“Oh,” Eddie soothes. “It’s okay. Look. Just a little ouchie on my knee, I promise.”
Buck watches them, his heart in his throat as Eddie lowers his voice and tilts Theo’s head up to him so that he can meet his eyes; as Eddie puts everything aside to brush Theo’s hair back and reassure him, to talk to him and calm him down; as Theo settles a little at a time, his breath still catching but calming with Eddie’s hand on his chest.
He stands, frozen, at the foot of the bed, and watches as Eddie parents his child.
When did that happen? he wonders, a buzzing alarm set loose in his head. The knowledge of it– the feeling that comes with it– crashes over him.
Eddie glances up, all dark eyes and warm concern when he’s the one in the hospital bed, and oh–
Buck loves him.
It is, after all this time, a little bit of an anticlimactic realization to have on a Sunday morning in a hospital room, but it comes anyway. Buck has learned that life happens like this: in spite of you, whether you want it to or not.
Buck has never allowed himself to get this far, and he couldn’t have imagined it would happen this way, so when it does– like this, with Theo in Eddie’s arms and Chris’s voice still lingering in the back of his mind and the adrenaline of it all wearing into sheer exhaustion– all he can do is drop into the chair next to Eddie, lower his head to the mattress by Eddie’s hip, and try not to cry.
“Buck,” Eddie says gently, his voice from somewhere above him.
And doesn’t it just make sense, that all roads lead back to this?
“Hey,” Eddie says, and then his hand finds the back of Buck’s head– the only thing he can reach.
If Buck were a better person, if he knew what was good for him, he would get up and leave this room. But he can’t, because his child is tucked into Eddie’s side with no intention of ever moving. And he wouldn’t, anyway, because he can’t stand the thought of being far away from Eddie either. Not even now.
Buck will feel like this– this sinking, awful, certain feeling wrapped in tangles of love and affection– for the rest of his life if it means being close to Eddie. This knowledge comes screeching in close behind the knowledge that this is what he’s been feeling for so long he can’t really remember a time when he didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice thready.
“Buck?” a small voice says, before Eddie can reply.
At this, Buck lifts his head. Theo is still pressed into Eddie’s lap, but he’s peering at Buck with a confused, scared look on his little face.
Buck pulls himself together and reaches out, gently brushing his thumb to Theo’s cheek. “Sorry, pumpkin,” he murmurs. “It’s okay.”
“What’s wrong?” Theo asks, tilting his head.
Buck exhales. “I’m okay,” he says. He glances at Eddie, then, who’s watching him with soft eyes and furrowed eyebrows. He has to force his gaze back to Theo. “I just got a little scared, too.”
Theo’s eyes are wide. “You got scared?” he asks.
“Mhm,” Buck hums. “It’s scary when someone you–” He takes a breath, aware of Eddie’s eyes on him. “When someone you love gets hurt. But, um– but–”
Eddie reaches out to him, then, and squeezes his wrist gently. Buck aches, deep down in the center of his chest, and swallows hard.
“But,” Eddie says softly, looking at Theo as he picks up the thread of where Buck left off, “everybody is okay.”
Buck blinks rapidly.
At the edges of his consciousness, there’s a flicker of oncoming panic. It would be worse, he thinks, if he wasn’t so exhausted. As it is, it hums like a warning signal at the back of his mind, and is mostly drowned out by the way Eddie is looking at him for the time being.
“Okay,” Theo says, his voice small. “Teddy?”
“Yeah, honey.”
Theo tilts his head back, looking at Eddie through his damp lashes. “Can I give your ouchie a kiss?”
Buck’s breath catches. For every moment that’s felt impossible: for every broken thing in his house; for every night that Theo screams and refuses to go to sleep; for every time Buck has had to explain death to a four-year-old who shouldn’t need to understand it– there has also been one like this. One in which Theo proves himself to be open-hearted and soft and sweet and full of so much love that it’s hard to comprehend.
Eddie smiles, taken by him, and leans in to kiss his cheek. “You can, baby,” he says softly, and then winces through it when Theo tries his best to be gentle and it still hurts anyway. The sight of it is Buck’s near-undoing, and all of a sudden everything that isn’t this feels like a waste.
He blinks hard, flickering back to Eddie halfway through a floor just a few hours ago, and it takes the breath out of his lungs.
“Thank you,” Eddie says, smiling at Theo as he wiggles back into place, smushed against Eddie’s side.
“Does that feel better?” Theo asks seriously.
“It definitely helps,” Eddie laughs softly, giving him a small shake and making him giggle. “Do you want to watch Bluey on my phone for a few minutes?”
Theo nods, eager and excited, and then before Buck can clear the thickness in his throat or blink the tears out of his eyes, the Bluey theme song is playing its familiar tune from Eddie’s phone while Theo smushes into Eddie’s side, and Eddie’s full attention is on Buck.
Has he always looked at him like that, Buck wonders? Has it always been so soft and warm and dark? Is it now, or is he wishful thinking, or just precarious, on a ledge that he hadn’t expected to find himself on?
In the light of the morning, he looks so warm and alive that Buck can’t help scrunching his nose against the feeling of tears pricking behind his eyes.
Eddie softens all over.
“Buck,” he says softly. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
So much, Buck thinks. And nothing, at the same time. Eddie is alive and safe in front of him and he’s in love with his best friend and maybe nothing will ever be the same again.
What comes out of his mouth is: “I didn’t pick up food.”
He looks up in time to watch an expression he’s never seen before settle over Eddie’s features. Buck doesn’t know the word for this look, which is gentle and soft and warm.
“Buck,” he sighs. “It’s okay.”
“No,” Buck hears himself argue. “I should– I can go–” His body moves without him, and he’s halfway out of the chair before Eddie’s hand finds his and tugs him back down.
“Hey,” Eddie says. “Come on, sit down. You’re okay. It’s fine.”
“But you– I told you I would– and Theo wanted a snack,” Buck argues.
Eddie glances at Theo, who’s so engrossed in Bluey that he doesn’t seem to hear them at all. “I think he’s okay,” he says, light and amused, looking back at Buck. “I’ll ask Pepa to pick something up when she brings Christopher. Okay?”
Buck lets out a breath. “I’m sorry, Eddie. I’m– I’m all over the place today, and I messed up with Theo, and–”
“No, you didn’t,” Eddie says softly. Buck notices then, that he’s still holding his hand: Eddie’s warm, steady fingers wrapped around his own.
“I did,” Buck says weakly.
“No,” Eddie argues. “You told him the truth and you got him what he needed.”
What he needed, Buck repeats in his head. Which was Eddie. Eddie, who showed up for him, who’s showing up for Buck now.
“Still,” Buck whispers. “I’m sorry you had to–”
“I didn’t have to do anything,” Eddie says.
For a long moment, his eyes fix on Buck. And then he squeezes his hand, tight. Surprised, Buck looks up and finds Eddie’s dark eyes blazing.
“Tell me,” Eddie says.
Buck’s breath stumbles somewhere in his throat and his stomach turns. Had he been so obvious, he wonders?
“Tell you what?” he croaks.
“What you’re thinking,” Eddie replies.
They’re still holding hands. Suddenly, Buck is hyperaware of every part of his body, every cell alight.
“I got scared, too,” he says, the words tumbling out of him much to his horror and against his better judgement. “Because I– I–”
Eddie softens. The look returns to his face, and with the twist of a thin ribbon in the center of his chest Buck wonders if he does know what it means.
Between them, Eddie squeezes his hand. “It’s okay,” he says gently. “You can tell me, bud.”
Maybe, Buck thinks, it’s not just him. Maybe all this slow meshing of one life further into another– even further than they’d been last summer when they lived together, further than they’ve always been– has changed something for Eddie, too. It feels impossible, otherworldly, to hope for that or even to entertain the possibility.
But Eddie is looking at him like that, and Buck’s kid is smushed into his side, and Eddie’s kid is the first thought Buck has every time anything happens, and it’s something. Maybe it’s been something all along, and they just needed to look up and see it.
He thinks about what he’d said to Theo. It’s scary when someone you love gets hurt.
It is. It always has been– when Eddie was buried beneath layers of wet earth and Buck’s whole body seized with panic; when Eddie had collapsed beneath the force of a bullet in front of Buck and he’d gone blind with the need to get to him; every call gone wrong in between; just a few months ago, when an elevator somewhere in this building had slid open and Buck’s whole body had gone still with the breathless fever of fear at the sight of him pale and bloodless.
And this morning, when Eddie had cried out and the smoke had been thick and Buck’s vision had narrowed down to him and nothing else.
“I was scared because I love you, too,” he says, his voice a raw scrape, a trembling thing that barely makes it past his teeth.
And he’s scared, now, studying their hands, waiting for the floor to collapse beneath them all over again.
But it doesn’t. Seconds slip away and nobody falls through and Eddie keeps his hand in Buck’s and eventually, Buck looks up.
And Eddie is still looking at him: wide dark eyes and soft lashes; a sleepy look about him; locks of hair flopping over his forehead. And he’s looking at Buck like he understands.
“Eddie,” Buck breathes.
Eddie nods. “I’m here, bud,” he says softly. His lashes flutter as he tears his gaze away, glances at Theo, and then looks back, clearing his throat. “I– I don’t know what it means yet, and I want to…I want to figure that out, but. I love you, too.”
Buck feels his lungs tighten beneath the wall of his ribs. “You do?”
Eddie nods, a tiny thing, and glances at Theo again. “We’re a family, right?” he whispers. “That’s– it’s not nothing anymore. It was never nothing, but I–”
Theo, who neither of them thought was listening, looks up from the phone and tilts his head. “We’re a family, right?” he asks, repeating Eddie’s words back at him.
Eddie lets out a soft sound, a half-laugh that sounds like the best thing Buck has ever heard, and then he leans in and presses a kiss to Theo’s head with an audible mwah.
“Yes, muffin,” Eddie says softly. “We are.”
Theo happily goes back to his show, and the world keeps turning with Buck left stranded. Eddie looks back at him, undisguised hope on his features. “We are, right?” he asks, softer now.
Buck nods. “Eddie,” he breathes. “Of course we are. We’re– yeah.”
“Okay,” Eddie smiles. “So–” He brushes his thumb over Buck’s knuckles and it sends a sharp, silver shiver down Buck’s spine. “We can talk about it? Tomorrow when I get out of here?”
Tomorrow, Buck thinks dizzily.
“You, um–” Buck pauses. “You’re sure about this?”
Eddie squeezes his hand, and Buck looks up and finds that he doesn’t need the answer at all. It’s written on Eddie’s face, clear and clean with no room for doubt.
Still: “I’m sure,” Eddie whispers.
“I really want to–” Buck starts, then scrunches his nose, glancing at Theo.
Eddie grins, wild and beautiful. “K-I-S-S me?” he guesses, as if it doesn’t do Buck in.
Suddenly, it feels like he’s living in a new, bright, untold world. As if everything he knows has just dropped out from under him and this is what’s left: everything he’s ever wanted. He isn’t sure how long it’s going to take him to get used to it, but he’s definitely going to try.
“Yeah,” he admits as Eddie shines back at him.
“Tomorrow?” Eddie asks, his voice low, his hand still in Buck’s.
Buck squeezes back. “Tomorrow.”
And so the world bends to the will of the sun. Christopher and Pepa arrive and Buck scoops Theo out of Eddie’s bed so that Chris can sit with him and they eat breakfast sandwiches and Eddie sparkles, somehow. They all crowd in together and Buck only reluctantly leaves with the boys, each of them giving Eddie hugs and kisses and getting them back from him tenfold. And then night is endless and dark and anticipatory and then it’s tomorrow and they’re sitting on the back patio and Buck trades places with Chris, who disappears into the house with suspicious speed.
And then Eddie is sitting in front of him, looking so at home in his skin that it’s almost hard to look at him but Buck does, anyway.
“So,” he says, tilting his head lazily in Buck’s direction and looking like a dream. “It’s tomorrow.”
“You still want me to?” Buck asks.
Eddie turns serious then, holding his palm out to Buck and waiting for him to take it. “I think,” he says carefully, “I always wanted you to. I just didn’t know it.”
“Yeah,” Buck whispers. “Me, too.”
Eddie looks at him, dressed in the sun, every bit what Buck wants.
“So?”
“Okay.”
And he leans in, his hand on Eddie’s jaw; Eddie’s knee propped up and iced; Eddie, Eddie, everywhere, everything; and kisses his best friend. It hums with the frequency of rightness, of right in front of you, of a perfect California morning.
Eddie opens up beneath him, and the world turns, and Buck finds that he tastes like home.
And beneath them, the floor is sturdy as ever.