Chapter Text
Eddie Diaz did not run because he was avoiding anything.
That was important.
He ran because he liked the routine of it. Because it was practical. Because it kept his body from feeling stiff after long shifts and awkward sleep and carrying more tension in his shoulders than any reasonable person should. He ran because his doctor said cardio was good for him. Because Christopher had once informed him, with the full authority of a thirteen-year-old who had watched half a fitness video online, that his “heart health seemed kind of important, Dad,” and Eddie had decided not to argue with that.
He did not run because the house got too quiet sometimes.
He did not run because there were mornings when silence settled into the rooms like dust and he had to move before it found a place inside him.
He did not run because he was thirty-something years old and still learning that being alone was not the same thing as being abandoned.
No.
That would be dramatic.
Eddie wasn’t dramatic.
He left dramatic to Buck.
Which was, unfortunately, the exact thought that entered his head three minutes into his run.
Eddie grimaced at the sidewalk.
“Absolutely not,” he muttered, breath fogging lightly in the early morning air.
Los Angeles was doing that thing where it pretended to be soft before the day got too hot. The sky was pale, the streets still half-asleep, the neighborhood quiet except for the occasional car rolling past and the rhythmic thud of Eddie’s sneakers against concrete. It was early enough that most people were still pretending they had better habits than they actually did. Early enough that the world felt briefly manageable.
His playlist had been fine when he started.
Old rock. Some Spanish songs Pepa had added to his phone because, apparently, Eddie’s music taste was “tragic and joyless.” A few running tracks Buck had insisted were “scientifically good for pace,” whatever the hell that meant.
Then Spotify, in its infinite betrayal, decided it knew Eddie better than Eddie knew himself.
The song changed.
A bright guitar slipped into his ears. Something sweet, sharp, too young, too glittering for the kind of morning he was trying to have. Eddie checked his watch without slowing down.
Olivia Rodrigo.
He blinked.
He did not remember adding Olivia Rodrigo to his running playlist.
He definitely did not remember adding an entire album.
He considered skipping it.
His thumb hovered over the side of his watch.
Then the first few lines landed, and Eddie, despite himself, listened.
Not because he cared.
Not because it caught him.
Just because his brain had the unfortunate habit of paying attention to things he had already decided were irrelevant.
“You’re lookin’ like an angel on the walls of Versailles”
He ran past a row of quiet houses, past a woman watering plants in pink slippers, past a dog that watched him with the dead-eyed judgment of a creature that had never had to pay rent. The song kept going, all nervous energy and impossible sweetness, something about seeing someone and feeling like the world had tilted around them.
Eddie almost laughed.
Christ.
He was too old for this.
This was the kind of music Christopher would play in the car and then pretend not to like when Eddie glanced over. The kind of thing Buck would know all the words to for no apparent reason except that Buck collected facts and pop culture and people’s favorite snacks like it was his moral obligation.
Buck would probably say something irritatingly sincere about it.
Buck would probably say, “No, Eddie, listen to the bridge.”
Buck would probably sing along badly.
Eddie’s mouth twitched.
Then he realized he was smiling and immediately stopped.
That was the first warning sign.
He should have skipped the song then.
He didn’t.
Instead, he turned left at the corner and kept running.
The lyrics shifted into something breathless. Something about someone looking impossible, unreal, almost made up. Eddie’s mind, unhelpful and traitorous, supplied Buck standing in the firehouse bay years ago, younger, cockier, all long limbs and stupid confidence and that ridiculous birthmark catching under the fluorescent lights like punctuation.
“You’re so, so pretty, boy, I’m paranoid I made you up”
Eddie’s foot hit the sidewalk wrong.
Not badly.
Just enough to make him stumble.
“Jesus,” he hissed, catching himself before some retired neighbor could witness his death by Olivia Rodrigo.
He slowed for half a second, shook out his leg, and kept going.
Buck had not looked like an angel.
That was absurd.
Buck had looked like a guy trying too hard.
A guy who talked too much.
A guy who had walked into Eddie’s life like a dare, all sharp edges and bright smiles and something restless under his skin Eddie had recognized before he knew what to do with it.
Back then, Eddie had thought Buck was annoying.
Back then, Eddie had thought a lot of things.
Most of them had been wrong.
The song kept going.
Eddie kept running.
And then, because the universe hated him personally, his brain gave him the memory.
Not the first day.
Not the grenade.
Not the hospital.
No.
It gave him the nightsky.
A truck.
His voice.
“You can have my back any day.”
And Buck's own voice, easy as breathing, saying, “Yeah. Or, you know, you could have mine.”
He remembered the look on Buck’s face after.
The tiny pause.
The way Buck had blinked, like Eddie had handed him something and he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to keep it.
Eddie had not thought much about it at the time.
Or maybe he had.
Maybe he had just been good at not naming it.
He sped up.
That was what he did when thoughts got too loud. He moved faster. Put his body to work until his brain had to follow. Mile one into mile two, breath in through his nose, out through his mouth, shoulders down, pace steady.
Buck was just Buck.
That was the thing.
Buck had always been just Buck.
Which should have made him easy to explain.
It did not.
Buck was the guy who showed up with three different kinds of soup when Christopher had the flu because he “didn’t know what kind of sick he was.” Buck was the guy who knew Eddie’s coffee order but still asked every time, like ritual mattered. Buck was the guy who sat on Eddie’s couch with one sock half-off and talked to Christopher about space documentaries like the fate of NASA depended on it.
Buck was the guy Eddie trusted with his son.
Buck was the guy Eddie trusted with his back.
Buck was—
The song hit another line, something about staying forever, and Eddie yanked one earbud out.
“Well, I think I might just have to stay forever”
“Nope,” he said out loud.
A woman pushing a stroller on the opposite sidewalk looked over.
Eddie nodded once, like a normal person who had not just gotten into an argument with a pop song before seven in the morning.
He put the earbud back in.
The song was still playing.
He could skip it. He knew that. He was an adult man with thumbs and free will.
Instead, he let it finish.
By the time he looped back toward Bedford, sweat had gathered at the back of his neck and the sun had climbed higher over the rooftops. His breathing was heavier now, legs warm and familiar, lungs working the way they were supposed to. The song ended somewhere around the last stretch, fading into another track from the album before Eddie could stop it.
“Kiss me and I might drop dead”
He did stop that one.
Immediately.
Not because the first song had gotten to him.
Because one was enough.
He switched back to his old playlist and pretended the relief he felt was because the tempo was better.
When he reached the house, Christopher was at the kitchen table eating cereal from a bowl that looked too large for the amount of cereal inside it. His curls were still sleep-flattened on one side, his face lit by his phone.
“You look gross,” Christopher said without looking up.
“Good morning to you too.”
“You went running.”
“Observant.”
“You smell like outside.”
Eddie grabbed a towel from the laundry basket folded on the counter. “That tends to happen when people go outside.”
Christopher hummed, unimpressed. “Buck texted.”
Eddie stopped with the towel halfway to his face.
It was ridiculous. It was immediate. A tiny, stupid shift in his chest like someone had turned the volume up on the room.
He hated that he noticed it.
“What did he say?”
Christopher finally looked up, and there it was: the beginning of a smirk. A very dangerous smirk. A smirk that belonged partly to Shannon, partly to Eddie’s own worst qualities, and partly to whatever demonic influence Buck had brought into their home.
“I don’t know,” Christopher said. “He texted you.”
Eddie stared at him.
Christopher took another bite of cereal with deliberate innocence.
Eddie picked up his phone from the counter.
There was a message from Buck.
Buck:
you alive? or did your old man knees finally give out.
Eddie rolled his eyes.
He absolutely did not smile.
Eddie:
I’m younger than you in firefighter years.
Buck:
that’s not real.
Eddie:
Sounds like something an old man would say.
Buck:
wow.
Buck:
attacked in my prime.
Buck:
anyway chris said you went running voluntarily so i’m calling for a welfare check.
Eddie glanced over at Christopher.
“You’re reporting my activities to Buck now?”
Christopher shrugged. “He asked if we wanted pancakes.”
“That does not answer my question.”
“It answers mine.”
Eddie looked back down.
Buck:
pancakes?
Buck:
i can come by after errands.
Buck:
i bought blueberries because maddie said i need antioxidants or whatever and i refuse to deal with them alone.
Eddie read the messages twice.
There was nothing strange about them.
Buck came over all the time. Buck made pancakes all the time. Buck bought too much fruit because Maddie told him something once and Buck had the survival instincts of a golden retriever with internet access.
Normal.
All of it.
Completely normal.
Still, the song from his run crawled back into his head, soft and irritating, brushing up against the word forever like it had any business being there.
“You’re making that face,” Christopher said.
Eddie put his phone down. “What face?”
“The Buck face.”
“I don’t have a Buck face.”
Christopher’s expression said he was too old to be lied to this poorly.
Eddie pointed at him. “Eat your cereal.”
“Text Buck back.”
“Eat your cereal.”
“Tell him yes.”
Eddie looked at his son. His son looked back, calm and certain and smug in the way only a teenager could be when he knew he was right.
The thing about Christopher was that Eddie had spent years teaching him to be honest, to ask for what he wanted, to speak clearly even when the world made that harder than it should have been. Unfortunately, Christopher had learned those lessons and then turned them against him.
Eddie sighed.
Eddie:
Pancakes are fine.
Buck responded instantly.
Buck:
“fine”.
Buck:
such enthusiasm diaz.
Buck:
i’ll be there in an hour.
Eddie stared at the little gray bubble after the message disappeared.
An hour.
There was no reason for that to settle something in him.
No reason for the morning to feel suddenly arranged around a point it had been missing.
No reason at all.
He locked his phone.
Christopher was still watching him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Eddie narrowed his eyes. “That was not nothing.”
“Okay.”
“What was it?”
Christopher grinned into his cereal bowl. “Nothing.”
Eddie hated teenagers.
He showered.
He did laundry.
He loaded the dishwasher.
He did not think about the song.
He did not think about Buck looking younger in memory, eyes bright and smile too easy, saying Eddie could have his back with the kind of openness Eddie had not known what to do with then.
He did not think about why that memory had been the one his mind chose.
He did not think about the fact that Buck had said it like an offer and Eddie had answered like a promise.
The door opened forty-seven minutes later.
Not knocked.
Opened.
Because Buck had a key.
Because at some point Eddie had given Buck a key and never asked for it back. Because emergencies happened. Because Christopher loved having Buck over. Because Buck watered the plants when Eddie was on long shifts, even though Eddie did not own any plants that required the level of emotional commitment Buck gave them.
Because it was practical.
Everything had an explanation if Eddie worked hard enough.
“Hello, family,” Buck called from the entryway, voice already filling the house before the rest of him appeared. “I come bearing groceries and exactly one fun fact about bees, because apparently blueberries need pollinators and now I know too much.”
Christopher’s chair scraped back immediately. “What kind of bee?”
“Great question, buddy.” Buck came into the kitchen carrying two bags, curls a little messy, jacket hanging open, cheeks pink from the morning air. “Several kinds, but the main one involved in commercial blueberry production is—”
He stopped when he saw Eddie.
Not dramatically.
Just a tiny pause.
His eyes flicked over Eddie’s face, then down to his damp hair, then back up.
“You went running,” Buck said.
“Yes, you already knew that” Eddie said. “Everyone is very impressed.”
Buck’s mouth tilted. “I didn’t say impressed.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was thinking you look like you survived an attack.”
Christopher laughed.
Eddie took one of the bags from Buck, mostly so he had something to do with his hands. Their fingers brushed around the handle.
It was nothing.
It had happened a thousand times.
The song, because it had apparently decided to live rent-free in Eddie’s skull, supplied the phrase pretty boy with malicious timing.
Eddie nearly dropped the bag.
Buck frowned. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
“Convincing.”
“Make pancakes.”
Buck lifted both hands. “Bossy.”
“You offered.”
“I did.” Buck smiled then, bright and familiar and unfairly pleased with himself. “Because I’m generous.”
“You’re avoiding blueberries.”
“Also that.”
Christopher had already started pulling things out of the second bag. Blueberries. Eggs. A carton of milk. A jar of peanut butter Eddie had not asked for but Buck bought anyway because Christopher liked that brand and Eddie always forgot because he bought the one with less sugar.
There were whole systems in their life that existed because Buck had noticed something once.
Eddie watched him move around the kitchen like he belonged there.
Which he did.
Obviously.
He knew where the mixing bowls were. He knew which drawer stuck unless you pulled it up first. He knew that Christopher liked chocolate chips in his pancakes but Eddie would pretend to disapprove before eating one from the plate anyway. He knew Eddie kept the good pan in the lower cabinet because one time, years ago, Eddie had complained that Buck put it away wrong and Buck had looked so offended Eddie still remembered it.
Buck knew things.
Eddie knew things too.
He knew Buck hummed when he cooked, but only when he was comfortable. He knew Buck always read the instructions and then ignored them halfway through. He knew Buck liked being watched but got embarrassed when he realized it. He knew Buck would say “just a splash” of vanilla and pour enough to make the whole kitchen smell like a bakery.
He knew Buck.
That was normal.
People knew their best friends.
People did not usually feel strange about it before breakfast.
Eddie turned away and grabbed plates from the cabinet.
“You’re quiet,” Buck said behind him.
Eddie set the plates down. “It’s morning.”
“You’re a morning person.”
“I’m a coffee person. There’s a difference.”
Buck leaned his hip against the counter, whisk in hand. “You sure you’re okay?”
Eddie looked at him.
Really looked, which was the mistake.
Buck stood in Eddie’s kitchen in a faded navy shirt, sleeves pushed up, flour dusting the side of one hand. His hair was doing that stupid thing where it refused to behave but somehow looked better for it. His expression was open, concern tucked between his eyebrows like Eddie’s moods were puzzles he had a right to solve.
Something in Eddie’s chest tightened.
Not pain.
Not exactly.
Just awareness.
Buck became visible.
The thought was so clear, so sudden, that Eddie almost hated it.
Buck had always been there. That was the problem. Buck had been there so consistently, so completely, that Eddie had stopped seeing the shape of him. He had stopped noticing the space Buck occupied because Buck had become part of the room.
Part of the house.
Part of the morning.
Part of Christopher laughing at the table and pancake batter on the counter and sunlight cutting through the blinds in thin gold lines.
Part of everything.
“Eddie?” Buck said softly.
Eddie blinked.
Christopher was watching them both now, spoon suspended over his bowl like he had accidentally tuned into a show he was not supposed to watch.
“I’m fine,” Eddie said.
Buck did not believe him. Eddie could tell. Buck had always been terrible at hiding concern.
But he let it go.
For now.
“Okay,” Buck said, turning back to the stove. “But if you pass out because you ran too hard trying to prove you’re not old, I’m not carrying you.”
“You would absolutely carry him,” Christopher said.
Buck pointed the spatula at him. “I would absolutely carry him, but I’d complain the whole time.”
“You complain anyway.”
“That is because I contain multitudes.”
Eddie huffed a laugh before he could stop it.
Buck looked over his shoulder, triumphant.
“There he is.”
Two words.
Nothing special.
But they landed somewhere Eddie didn’t have a name for.
There he is.
Like Buck had been looking.
Like Buck knew when Eddie went missing inside himself.
Like Buck expected to find him.
Eddie swallowed and reached for the coffee pot.
The rest of breakfast was normal.
Painfully normal.
Buck burned the first pancake and blamed the stove. Christopher called him a disgrace. Eddie ate the pancake anyway because he was hungry and because Buck looked secretly pleased when he did. They argued about documentaries, about whether bees were cute or terrifying, about whether Buck’s fun facts counted as fun if they made everyone at the table Google something.
Eddie listened more than he talked.
Not because he had nothing to say.
Because something inside him had shifted and now everything looked slightly different.
Buck reaching over to steal a blueberry from Christopher’s plate.
Buck bumping Eddie’s shoulder when he moved past him.
Buck saying, “You need more coffee,” and refilling Eddie’s mug before Eddie asked.
Buck knowing.
Buck staying.
Buck laughing in Eddie’s kitchen like he had always been meant to.
It was annoying.
Deeply annoying.
Eddie wanted to blame the song.
That was easier than blaming himself.
After breakfast, Christopher disappeared to his room under the sacred teenage claim of homework, though Eddie suspected he was mostly texting his friends and watching videos. Buck stayed to help clean up, which meant he washed three dishes, got distracted by a podcast episode he suddenly remembered, and then spent five minutes explaining something about deep-sea creatures while Eddie wiped down the counter.
“I thought we were talking about bees,” Eddie said.
“We were. Then we evolved.”
“Into sea monsters?”
“Nature is connected, Eddie.”
“That means nothing.”
“It means everything.”
Eddie shook his head, but he was smiling again.
Buck saw it.
Of course he did.
He always saw too much.
“What?” Eddie asked.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Look at me like that.”
Buck’s eyebrows lifted. “Like what?”
Eddie had no answer.
Because Buck was just looking at him.
Concerned. Fond. Warm in a way Buck probably didn’t even realize he was being. Like Eddie was something familiar and worth paying attention to.
Like Eddie was—
He cut the thought off before it could finish.
“Like you’re about to ask if I’m okay again,” Eddie said.
Buck looked down at the dish towel in his hands. “Are you?”
“Buck.”
“I know, I know.” Buck held up one hand. “You’re fine.”
“I am.”
“Okay.”
There was a pause.
Buck set the towel down.
“You know you can just be weird sometimes, right?”
Eddie frowned. “What?”
“I mean—” Buck winced. “Not weird. That came out wrong.”
“Usually does.”
“I mean, you don’t have to have a reason.” Buck leaned back against the counter, arms crossing loosely over his chest. “If something’s going on in your head, you can just say that. You don’t have to present a case file.”
Eddie stared at him.
The problem with Buck was that he said things like that.
Just tossed them out in the middle of a kitchen, surrounded by dirty plates and half a carton of blueberries, like he didn’t know he was cracking something open.
Eddie looked away first.
“Nothing’s going on.”
Buck was quiet long enough that Eddie felt the silence.
Then, gently, “Okay.”
Not convinced.
Not pushing.
Just there.
Eddie almost said something.
He didn’t know what.
Maybe: I heard a song this morning and it made me think of you.
Maybe: I remembered something you said years ago.
Maybe: I think I know you better than I know how to explain.
Maybe: Why are you in everything?
Instead, he rinsed the sponge and said, “Christopher has a history project.”
Buck accepted the subject change because Buck was generous when it mattered.
And because Buck had always known when to let Eddie have the lie.
“Yeah?” Buck asked. “What kind?”
“Family tree thing.”
Buck’s face changed in that subtle way it always did around Christopher. Softer. Attentive. Like anything connected to Chris immediately mattered more.
“Need help?”
“Probably not.”
“Cool. I’ll help anyway.”
“I assumed.”
Buck smiled, and Eddie hated the song again.
He hated how it had made everything loud.
He hated how one stupid track had taken things that had been easy and made them visible. Buck in his kitchen. Buck with his son. Buck’s key in the lock. Buck’s voice in the morning. Buck’s concern. Buck’s hands. Buck’s eyes.
Especially Buck’s eyes.
Those had always been a problem.
Eddie could admit that objectively.
Buck had expressive eyes. Everyone knew that. Maddie said it. Hen weaponized it. Chimney once claimed Buck had “wet puppy eyes” and Buck had pouted for twenty minutes while everyone pretended not to find it funny.
So Eddie noticing Buck’s eyes did not mean anything.
It was a fact.
A neutral fact.
Like the sky was blue.
Like fire was hot.
Like Buck had eyes that could make a person feel like the only thing in the room.
Eddie gripped the edge of the sink.
Okay.
Maybe he needed sleep.
Or electrolytes.
Or to never go running again.
Buck stayed until early afternoon.
Because he always did.
Because leaving Eddie’s house seemed to require Buck remembering that he had his own apartment, and Buck was very bad at remembering things that did not emotionally matter to him.
He helped Christopher with the history project for exactly twelve minutes before the two of them ended up arguing about whether Buck counted as family for the purposes of a family tree.
“Technically,” Christopher said, “you’re in the will.”
Buck froze.
Eddie looked up from where he was pretending to read emails at the dining table.
“Chris,” he said softly.
Christopher glanced between them. “What? He knows.”
Buck did know.
Of course Buck knew.
But there was knowing, and then there was hearing Christopher say it like it was simple. Like Buck’s place in their lives was not a question, not a complication, not something strange enough to require explanation.
Buck cleared his throat.
“Yeah,” he said, voice rougher than it had been a second ago. “I know.”
Christopher shrugged and kept writing. “So you count.”
Buck looked at Eddie then.
And there it was again.
That pause.
That same look from years ago, when Eddie had said, you could have mine.
Like Eddie had handed him something too big to hold.
Like Buck still wasn’t sure if he was allowed to keep it.
Eddie’s chest did something stupid.
The song whispered stay forever somewhere in the back of his head.
Eddie stood abruptly.
“Coffee,” he said.
Buck blinked. “You already had coffee.”
“More coffee.”
“It’s one in the afternoon.”
“Your point?”
Buck’s mouth twitched. “No point.”
Eddie went to the kitchen.
He did not make coffee.
He stood with both hands braced on the counter and took one slow breath.
Then another.
The house sounded alive behind him.
Christopher’s voice, annoyed and amused.
Buck’s voice, lower, affectionate, answering him.
Chairs shifting.
Paper rustling.
A laugh.
Eddie closed his eyes.
He had spent years building a life out of what remained.
After Shannon left.
After Afghanistan.
After his parents’ disappointment became a constant background noise.
After Christopher needed more than Eddie thought he knew how to give.
After every version of the future he had once imagined folded in on itself and left him with a house, a job, a son, and the persistent fear that he was failing all of it.
Then Buck had appeared.
Not all at once.
Not like a rescue.
Not like some miracle.
Just steadily.
A hand at his back.
A voice in the dark.
A body beside his in danger.
A laugh in his kitchen.
A name that meant Christopher smiled before he even entered the room.
And Eddie, apparently, had not noticed.
Or he had noticed and called it something else.
Partnership.
Friendship.
Family.
All true.
All incomplete in ways he did not want to examine.
A floorboard creaked behind him.
Eddie opened his eyes.
Buck stood in the doorway, careful and quiet.
“You okay?” Buck asked.
Eddie almost laughed.
Maybe because it was predictable.
Maybe because it was Buck.
Maybe because the answer was starting to feel less like yes and more like not if you keep asking me like that.
“I’m fine,” Eddie said, because he was a coward in small, ordinary ways.
Buck nodded slowly.
Then he stepped into the kitchen, close but not too close, giving Eddie space he had not asked for.
“You know,” Buck said, “you’ve said that about four times today.”
“Maybe I mean it.”
“Maybe.”
Eddie looked at him.
Buck’s expression was gentle.
Too gentle.
It made Eddie want to confess to crimes he hadn’t committed.
“I went for a run,” Eddie said.
Buck’s eyebrows drew together. “Okay.”
“My playlist did something weird.”
“Like what?”
“Played Olivia Rodrigo.”
Buck stared at him.
Then his whole face lit up.
“Oh my God.”
“No.”
“Eddie.”
“No.”
“Which song?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I don’t.”
Buck pulled out his phone. “Was it from the new album?”
“Put your phone away.”
“It was, wasn’t it?”
“Buck.”
Buck was grinning now, delighted in the specific way he got when he sensed an opportunity to be unbearable. “Did you like it?”
“No.”
“You listened to the whole thing.”
“I was running.”
“So you couldn’t escape.”
“I could have skipped it.”
“But you didn’t.”
Eddie glared.
Buck’s grin softened.
“What was it called?”
Eddie looked down.
He did know.
Unfortunately.
“Drop Dead,” he said.
Buck went still.
Not fully.
Just enough.
Eddie realized too late what he had said.
The song title. The memory. The thing between them neither of them had mentioned in years.
Buck’s smile faded into something quieter.
“Yeah?” he said.
Eddie’s throat felt tight.
“It reminded me of something.”
Buck did not ask.
That was worse.
Eddie leaned back against the counter and stared at the tile floor. “That day. After the call. When you said I could have your back.”
Buck’s breath caught just barely.
Eddie heard it anyway.
“I remember,” Buck said.
Eddie looked up.
Buck was watching him with that same impossible expression. Like the memory mattered. Like it had been tucked somewhere safe all this time.
“I didn’t think about it much back then,” Eddie lied.
Buck smiled faintly. “I did.”
That landed.
Eddie had no defense for that.
“You did?”
Buck gave a small shrug, eyes dropping to the counter between them. “Yeah. I mean, you were new. And you were… you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you walked in like you didn’t need anybody.”
Eddie almost corrected him.
Almost said, I didn’t.
But that would have been a worse lie than fine.
Buck continued before he could. “And then you said that. Like it was easy. Like you meant it.”
“I did mean it.”
“I know.” Buck looked up again. “That was the thing.”
The kitchen went very quiet.
Eddie could hear Christopher in the other room, humming under his breath. The refrigerator running. A car passing outside. His own heartbeat, steady and too loud.
Buck took a breath, then smiled like he was trying to make the moment less heavy for both of them. “Anyway. Good song?”
Eddie huffed.
The relief was immediate and embarrassing.
“It was fine.”
“Fine,” Buck repeated. “Wow. Olivia will be thrilled.”
“I’m sure she’ll survive.”
“I don’t know. Your approval means a lot in the pop world.”
“Shut up.”
Buck laughed.
And Eddie—
Eddie felt it.
The simple, stupid brightness of it.
The way Buck’s laugh loosened something in him. The way the room warmed around it. The way Eddie had spent years accepting Buck’s joy as part of the weather of his life, something constant and golden and easy to miss until it was gone.
He looked at Buck and thought, with a clarity that made him briefly dizzy:
You matter.
Not dramatically.
Not romantically.
Not in any way he was prepared to name.
Just that.
You matter.
More than I knew.
More than I let myself see.
Buck tilted his head. “You’re doing it again.”
“What?”
“Looking weird.”
Eddie rolled his eyes, but he was grateful for the opening. “Your face is weird.”
“Wow.”
“Walked into that one.”
“I came here with pancakes.”
“And stayed for lunch.”
“Because I’m beloved.”
Eddie opened his mouth to argue.
Nothing came out.
Buck noticed.
Because Buck always noticed.
His smile changed again.
Softer.
Less joke.
More question.
Eddie was suddenly very aware of the space between them.
Not much.
A few feet.
The kitchen island at Buck’s hip. The counter at Eddie’s back. Sunlight across the floor. The scent of coffee Eddie had never made and pancakes still lingering in the air.
He was aware of Buck’s hands.
Of Buck’s eyes.
Of Buck standing in Eddie’s house like he had nowhere else he needed to be.
The song’s last line returned without permission.
Not the full thing.
Just the idea of it.
A kiss so impossible it could kill you.
Eddie looked away.
Immediately.
“I should check on Chris.”
“Yeah,” Buck said, too quietly. “Yeah, okay.”
Eddie escaped the kitchen like the adult man he absolutely was.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of homework, laundry, a grocery list Eddie kept forgetting to finish, and Buck sprawled on the living room floor helping Christopher glue printed photos to poster board.
At some point, Buck found an old picture of himself and Christopher from years ago and made a wounded noise.
“Oh, my God, look how small you were.”
Christopher groaned. “Buck.”
“You were tiny.”
“I was a child.”
“You still are.”
“I’m thirteen.”
“Exactly. A child.”
Eddie leaned in the doorway and watched them.
Christopher snatched the photo back. Buck laughed. Christopher tried to shove him away with one hand, but Buck dramatically collapsed like he had been shot. It was stupid. Ridiculous. Loud.
Home.
The word appeared and vanished so quickly Eddie almost missed it.
He straightened.
No.
Not doing that.
He went back to the kitchen.
This was getting out of hand.
A song had made him weird for one day. That was all. Tomorrow he would wake up and everything would feel normal again. Buck would be Buck. Eddie would be Eddie. Christopher would continue being too observant for everyone’s good. Olivia Rodrigo would no longer have any impact on his cardiovascular health.
Problem solved.
Except later, when Buck finally left, the house changed.
Not emptied.
Christopher was still there. The TV was still on. Dishes still sat in the sink. The hallway light flickered the way Eddie kept forgetting to fix.
But Buck’s absence had a shape.
Eddie noticed it.
He wished he hadn’t.
The front door clicked shut behind him, and Eddie stood in the living room for a second too long, listening to the quiet that followed.
Christopher glanced up from the couch.
“You’re doing the face again.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
Eddie sighed. “What face?”
“The Buck left face.”
“I don’t have a Buck left face.”
“You have a lot of Buck faces.”
Eddie pointed toward the hallway. “Bed.”
“It’s not even nine.”
“Then get ready for bed slowly.”
Christopher grinned, victorious and evil, and started gathering his things.
Eddie did the dishes.
He checked the locks.
He folded the towel Buck had left on the back of a chair.
He found a receipt on the counter from the grocery store Buck had gone to before coming over. Blueberries, eggs, milk, peanut butter, chocolate chips, a pack of gum.
A bunch of stuff.
Eddie stared at it.
Then threw it away too forcefully.
He was fine.
He was aggressively fine.
He got ready for bed. Brushed his teeth. Checked on Christopher, who was pretending to sleep and failing badly. Turned off the hallway light. Got into bed.
The room was dark.
The house settled around him.
And because apparently Eddie had learned nothing, he opened Spotify.
The album was still there under recently played.
He stared at it.
No one was around to see him make a terrible decision.
So he tapped the first song.
It sounded different in bed.
Softer.
More dangerous.
Without the rhythm of running to hide behind, without the morning air and the burn in his legs, the song had nowhere to go except directly into him.
Eddie lay on his back and stared at the ceiling.
This time, he did not think of Buck at the station.
He thought of Buck in his kitchen.
Buck with flour on his hand.
Buck saying, I did.
Buck saying, That was the thing.
Buck remembering.
Eddie closed his eyes.
He thought of the first day again, the old memory sharpening around the edges.
“You can have my back any day.”
“Yeah. Or, you know… you could have mine.”
He had meant it then.
That was the problem.
He had meant it before he understood the weight of it. Before the well. Before the lawsuit. Before Christopher’s nightmares and Eddie’s breakdowns and Buck’s lightning-still body hanging above them. Before the will. Before therapy. Before a thousand dinners and rides and phone calls and half-finished conversations in the kitchen.
He had meant it when it should have been too soon.
And he meant it now in ways he did not want to examine.
Eddie turned onto his side and shoved the pillow under his head.
The song ended.
For a moment, he let the silence sit.
Then his phone buzzed.
Buck:
forgot to tell you.
Buck:
your left cabinet still squeaks.
Buck:
i’m fixing it next time.
Eddie stared at the message.
Next time.
Not if.
Not maybe.
Next time.
A small, unreasonable warmth spread through his chest.
He typed before he could think better of it.
Eddie:
You don’t have to fix everything in my house.
Buck:
i know.
A second later:
Buck:
but i like being useful.
Eddie’s throat tightened.
He knew too much about that.
About wanting to be useful because wanting to be wanted was harder to admit.
He stared at Buck’s message for a long time.
Then typed:
Eddie:
You don’t have to be useful to come over.
He almost deleted it.
He didn’t.
The response took longer this time.
Long enough that Eddie watched the bubbles appear and disappear twice.
Buck:
yeah?
Eddie breathed in.
Eddie:
Yeah.
Another pause.
Buck:
okay.
Buck:
goodnight eddie.
Eddie:
Goodnight Buck.
He set the phone on his nightstand, screen down.
The house was quiet.
The song was over.
But something in him was still listening.
Buck was just Buck.
Eddie told himself that in the dark because it was familiar. Because it had worked for years. Because it was easier than looking directly at the shape Buck had taken in his life and asking why his absence left echoes, why his presence felt like relief, why a memory from years ago could still catch under Eddie’s ribs like a hook.
Buck was just Buck.
His best friend.
His partner.
His son’s favorite person.
The man who had his back.
The man who walked into Eddie’s kitchen with groceries and terrible facts and made the house feel fuller without trying.
Eddie closed his eyes.
Tomorrow, he would forget about the song.
Tomorrow, this strange awareness would fade.
Tomorrow, Buck would go back to being Buck, and Eddie would go back to not thinking about any of this.
That was the plan.
It was a good plan.
A practical plan.
A plan Eddie could survive.
But somewhere between one breath and the next, before sleep finally pulled him under, Eddie thought of Buck’s smile in the kitchen and felt the truth of it settle quietly beside him.
Buck had always been visible.
Eddie had simply stopped looking too closely.