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It’s not that Buck didn’t spend a lot of time with the Diazes before, but since he started fostering Theo, he’s spending a lot of time with the Diazes. Theo imprinted on both Eddie and Chris like a duckling, and it’s not like Buck’s going to deny him the opportunity to spend time with them. Not when they’re Buck’s favorite people, too.
Sometimes they go places – the zoo, last weekend, for example – but more often they just hang out at home. Chris isn’t always with them; he’s got a more active social life outside the family than Eddie, Buck, and Theo put together. Today, though, it’s all four of them, and they’re just at the Diaz house doing home stuff.
Chris has been in and out of his room, alternating between working on homework and trying to talk Theo through doing a puzzle to mixed success. Theo is alternating between his puzzle with Chris and coloring and also occasionally just taking full speed laps around the house. Eddie and Buck are doing laundry. Together, even though Buck and Theo don’t live here. Buck brought their laundry over specifically for this reason, because he’s chronically bad at folding it when it’s done and that was fine when he was living alone and a major problem now that he’s responsible for a preschooler.
It is, if Buck were to be entirely honest, almost painfully domestic. He keeps thinking of the four of them as a single family unit, almost without noticing. If he were to be completely honest, he might say that he’s done that longer than Theo’s been around, sort of automatically thinking of himself and Eddie and Christopher as a unit. It’s important to know, though, that Buck is not really in the business of complete honesty. Not when it comes to Eddie, or his family, or his own feelings.
Chris and Theo are making a spirited case for a movie night tonight, once all the homework and housework is done.
“A movie marathon, even,” Chris suggests.
“There’s not enough time in the day,” Eddie says. “It’s already five, and we’ve got to have dinner, and then we’ll probably be maybe one movie away from Theo’s bedtime.”
“I’m big though!” says Theo. “I can stay awake.”
“Maybe you can,” says Eddie. “But should you?”
Theo looks over at Chris. Chris, who is not going to be the one bearing the brunt of overtired four-year-old stubbornness in a few hours, is nodding.
Theo turns back to Eddie. “Yes!”
“Buck,” Eddie says, turning toward where Buck is leaning on the archway into the dining room, “what do you think?”
“How about this,” Buck says, considering, “we pick two movies. But if anybody falls asleep, we just watch the second one on another day. Tomorrow, even.”
“Good idea,” says Eddie.
“But I’m not gonna fall asleep!” Theo chirps. “I wanna watch two!”
“Right,” Chris says. “But what if Dad or Buck falls asleep, huh? We want them to see the movies too, right?”
“Exactly,” Buck says. He’s grateful that Chris is on board. Theo thinks Chris is the coolest, in a way that kind of reminds Buck of his own childhood hero worship of Maddie, without the parenting. Anyway, getting Chris to agree usually means that convincing Theo is much easier. “And you might not be feeling sleepy, but I’m starting to get sleepy.”
“Fine,” Theo says, entirely too longsuffering for four years old.
So now Buck is making dinner while Eddie clears the table and Theo “helps,” while they try to choose a movie. Theo has so far been talked down from the Paw Patrol movie, for obvious reasons, but also from Toy Story 3, because Buck doesn’t want to cry today. Chris seems to think that Buck crying would be funny, actually, because all of his suggestions have been things like Finding Dory and The Lion King and The Incredibles.
Eddie is making a case for Newsies, which Chris doesn’t particularly like, but Theo seems intrigued by purely because Eddie likes it. Buck suggests that they do that one second, so that when Theo inevitably falls asleep, Chris can opt out and the two of them can watch it on their own if Eddie wants.
“Maybe third,” Chris says, wrinkling his nose.
“That’s fine,” says Eddie. “It’s embarrassing that your taste is so bad, but –“
“Your childhood crush on Christian Bale does not make it a good movie, Dad,” Chris says dismissively.
Eddie laughs. “Whatever you say, kid.”
“How about Cars?” Buck suggests. Cars doesn’t make him cry. Cars 3, maybe. Cars the first, usually not.
“CARS!” Theo cheers.
“I’m good with Cars,” says Chris. “Maybe Wreck-It Ralph after?”
“Yeah!” says Theo.
“You sure you’ll be okay with Cars?” Eddie says, coming into the kitchen fully to ask Buck in a low voice.
“Yeah, Cars is fine,” says Buck. He doesn’t even look up from the stovetop.
Eddie’s hand grazes his lower back. “Yeah, usually. But we haven’t exactly had a reason to watch it in the last year. Might be – different, now.”
It takes Buck a long moment to parse what Eddie means by that. But yeah, maybe Cars will be harder to watch now.
“Oh,” says Buck. “I mean, I think I can handle it. I can’t avoid, uh, father-figure type mentors in movies forever. Cars 3 is definitely a pass for the moment, though.”
(Doc Hudson is dead in Cars 3.)
Eddie chuckles quietly. “Yeah, alright.”
“This is about done, if you want to get the boys settled,” Buck says.
Jesus Christ that was a domestic sentence. Buck just can’t fucking help himself, apparently.
“On it,” Eddie says, like it was normal.
And it was. Normal. Not just in a general sense but for them, in their life, it was normal. They talk about their kids like they’re their kids without blinking an eye. Eddie barely even seems to notice it. Buck can’t stop fucking thinking about it.
Anyway.
The four of them eat their tortellini and garlic bread and talk, though the exact content of the conversation Buck would not be able to describe later. It’s easy and familiar and familial, and it sets something buzzing contentedly in Buck’s chest.
After dinner, they pile onto the couch and armchair for the movies. And by movies, naturally, Buck means movie. Singular. Because Theo is visibly fading by the time Lightning McQueen is learning the true meaning of sportsmanship.
“You know, when you think about it,” Buck muses, combing his fingers absently through Theo’s soft curls, “this is exactly what happened in Nashville with the Kenosha K/Carls.”
Eddie snorts. “I mean, I guess so.”
“Only in our universe, Chick Hicks isn’t an asshole who won the race anyway,” says Buck. “Since in this scenario, Chick Hicks was helping me carry the King over the line.”
“And in this scenario, you’re Lightning McQueen?” Eddie says, his tone teasing.
“Only if you’ll be Sally Carrera, Ed,” Buck says. It’s a little more earnest than he intends it to be.
“You two are so weird,” Chris says.
“No, I think it kind of works,” Buck insists. “If the 118 is Radiator Springs –“
“Then this is still a really weird metaphor,” Chris points out.
“I wanna go to Radiator Springs,” Theo mumbles. Buck is a little surprised he’s still awake.
“Maybe we can go down to Disneyland sometime this summer,” Eddie says.
“Could be fun,” says Buck. Theo hums.
By the time the movie actually ends, Theo is fully asleep, carelessly flopped across Buck’s legs.
“Hmm,” Buck says. The fatal flaw in tonight’s plan is that once Theo falls asleep, he needs to stay asleep because if he’s woken up on the way to his bed, it always takes at least an hour to get him back down. Buck had really been banking on sleepy but not sleeping when he committed to this, which was probably his first mistake. “Ed, you wanna do the doors and I can try to get him in the car without waking him up?”
Eddie sits up. He had also been leaning heavily on Buck. “I mean, we can. But you know there’s a pretty good chance he wakes up in the car and then you’re screwed.”
“I don’t really see another option,” says Buck.
“You don’t?” says Eddie.
Buck shrugs.
“Just stay the night, man,” Eddie says. “We were all going to end up together again tomorrow anyway. We can set Theo up on the couch, and you can share with me.”
“Are you sure?” says Buck.
“Buck,” says Eddie.
“Right,” says Buck. “Sorry.”
“You two are so weird,” Chris says in a low voice. He gets up from his chair. “I’m going to my room. Night.”
“Hey, don’t stay up too late,” Eddie says, twisting to call after him without waking Theo.
“I won’t,” says Chris.
“We will check in,” says Eddie.
“Good night, Dad,” Chris says. “Night Buck.”
“Night, bud,” says Buck.
“He’s going to be up later than we are,” Eddie says in a low voice.
“He’s a teenager,” Buck reminds him. “I think that’s part of the deal.”
Eddie sighs. “At least it’s not a school night.”
Eddie slides away from Buck, careful not to dislodge Theo. Then he gets up and helps Buck carefully ease Theo off of his lap, settling him on the couch with one of the throw pillows and the fuzzy blanket that’s everyone’s favorite.
“You want a beer?” Eddie asks, nodding toward the kitchen.
“Sure,” says Buck. He leans down to brush Theo’s hair away from his face before walking away.
For all the time that Buck has spent in the Diazes’ kitchen, he and Eddie don’t hang out in here very much. It’s kind of nice, though, if Buck were to be honest. Especially at this time of night, with warm light filtering in the window from the streetlamps out on the street. They choose seats next to each other at the corner of the kitchen table, knees brushing under the table.
They don’t really talk. Yeah, yeah, Buck might be known for being a talker, and he could talk to Eddie for hours and days and years, don’t get him wrong. But one of the things Buck has always treasured about his relationship with Eddie is that it’s easy to be quiet with him, too.
Some of the noise in his head dies down when he’s with Eddie, is the thing. And Eddie doesn’t get weird when Buck is quiet for too long. Everybody else seems to have a mental timer for how long Buck is allowed to be quiet before they get weirdly concerned about it, though the exact length of that timer seems to vary. If Eddie’s got a timer, Buck’s never reached the end of it.
It's nice, having someone in his life who makes being quiet as easy as talking.
Anyway.
They sit in companionable silence, drinking their beers, and when they’re done they put the bottles with the recycling, turn out the light, and head toward Eddie’s bedroom.
Halfway through getting ready for bed – wearing borrowed pajamas, since the ones he usually wears at Eddie’s are in the laundry and he doesn’t feel like fishing them out, but using his own toothbrush that lives in the cup on the bathroom sink – Buck freezes.
“Wha’ssa matter?” Eddie says around his own toothbrush. It’s the first either of them has spoken in at least thirty minutes.
“I’m a terrible guardian,” Buck groans. “My kid’s out there in day clothes, and he didn’t even brush his teeth.”
Eddie spits out his toothpaste. “Well, first of all, your kid is four, so he doesn’t actually give a damn what he wears to sleep. Kids can sleep in anything.”
“He’s gonna get cavities,” says Buck.
“He’s gonna lose all of these teeth,” Eddie reminds him. “Also, even if he weren’t, missing one day wouldn’t kill him.”
“But –“
“Do you want to go wake him up for pajamas and toothbrushing? Because I was under the impression we were trying to avoid that.”
“Sorry,” says Buck.
Eddie puts a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You’re doing fine, Buck.”
“Thanks,” says Buck. “Sorry.”
“Come to bed,” Eddie says.
Buck goes to bed.
He lets Eddie throw a careless arm across his chest, hoping the weight and grounding of it will curb his usual tossing and turning a bit. They’ve shared a bed before, and Eddie holding onto him works about half of the time.
They’ve shared a bed kind of a lot, Buck is realizing. He’s tried, historically, not to think about it too much. But tonight, he’s thinking about it. His brain is going and there’s no stopping it.
The thing is, when the world ground to a screeching halt in 2020, they didn’t have a lot of choice. Or, no, they did – Chris was staying with Tía Pepa, who was working from home, and Eddie didn’t need to stay with Buck, but he was crawling the walls alone in the house. Eddie stayed with Buck, and because Hen and Chim were also staying with Buck, Eddie slept in Buck’s bed.
Since then, they slept in the same bed sporadically. For about half of the time Buck spent in the Diaz house after Eddie got shot. For a few nights, here and there, when the two of them got too deep into something they were doing and looked up and it was too late for Buck to reasonably go home. For a week and a half after Buck died, Eddie’s hand splayed firmly over Buck’s heart because he was having as much trouble sleeping as Buck was.
For almost six months, last summer into fall, when they’d been roommates but couldn’t figure out how to talk to each other.
Tonight, Buck’s racing thoughts are interrupted by Eddie’s arm, draped across him, tightening slightly but noticeably across his middle.
“If you start with the rotisserie chicken impression right now, you’re sleeping on the floor,” Eddie says into the sleeve of Buck’s shirt, quiet but clear.
Buck, who was absolutely about to start twisting away, freezes. Takes a slow breath.
“Sorry,” he murmurs.
“Don’t be sorry,” Eddie says. “Whatever’s eating you can wait till morning though, ‘kay?”
Can it, though?
Buck feels like he’s teetering on a precipice, about to tumble into the unknown. He thinks something important waits below him. He thinks it might be important. Can that wait, till the morning?
“Yeah,” Buck says. “Yeah, probably.”
Eddie scoots a little closer, curling his fingers in the fabric of Buck’s shirt.
“Go to sleep,” Eddie says again.
“I’ll try,” Buck replies. “G’night.”
“Night.”
Buck wakes up comfortable, content, and warm, still wrapped up in Eddie. He’s aware of this for about four seconds before that calm, easy comfort is interrupted by a four-year-old launching onto the bed at full speed.
Theo is talking a mile a minute before Buck’s brain has fully come online, which is mostly fine because he’s still that age where only maybe 80% of what he says is fully intelligible English when he gets going, so Buck isn’t really missing much. He isn’t really sure what Theo could possibly have this much to say about at – he lifts his head to look across Eddie at the alarm clock – 7:04 AM.
“Hey, buddy, how about you get down and head to the kitchen for breakfast?” Eddie suggests. “Buck and I will be right behind you, promise.”
“Okay!” Theo chirps.
He wriggles down from the bed and runs surprisingly loudly out of the room. He’s not that big, but he does have an impressive talent for noise.
“Thanks,” Buck wheezes, still catching his breath from Theo landing his full, if little, weight square on his chest.
“No problem,” Eddie says. “Not that I bought us that much time. I can go make sure he’s not gonna burn the house down, if you need another minute to wake up.”
“You just woke up, too,” Buck points out.
“No,” Eddie says softly as he slides away from Buck, “I didn’t.”
Buck doesn’t know what to do with that. How long has Eddie been awake, but still lying curled around Buck in the soft light of the morning?
All of a sudden, Buck finds himself back on that precipice he’d almost forgotten he’d been teetering over last night.
He falls.
“Hey, man, you good?” Eddie says in a low voice when Buck finally finds his way into the kitchen.
“Hmm? Yeah, yeah, I’m – yeah,” Buck says. He’s feeling a little bit dazed, actually, but he’s not about to explain why.
Eddie studies him, brow just slightly furrowed. “Right. Well, Theo and I decided it’s a really good day for eggs and toast and bacon, so we’ve already got breakfast started.”
“Thanks,” Buck says, a little distant.
He texts his sister while Eddie cooks and Theo peppers him with questions about what he’s doing.
“Hey, uh,” Buck says once Maddie replies, “Theo, I just remembered that I’m supposed to have lunch with Aunt Maddie today. Do you want to come with me to play with Jee, or stay here with Eddie and Chris?”
He doesn’t feel bad offering that option without asking Eddie first. He knows Eddie’s day is clear, and that he doesn’t consider watching Theo to be a hardship or chore any more than Buck does spending time with Chris.
Eddie is watching him, though, his head tilted just a bit to one side as he tries to figure out what Buck is thinking.
Good luck to him; Buck barely knows what Buck is thinking.
“I wanna play with Jee-Jee!” Theo chirps.
“Alright, that’s a plan, then,” says Buck.
“Think you’ll make it back for dinner?” Eddie asks. “We said we’d do that other m-o-v-i-e, after all.”
It feels more weighted than just following through on a promised second movie with the boys. It feels like Eddie is saying whatever this is, come home when you’re done.
Maybe Buck is projecting. But he thinks he might be right about this one.
“Yeah, we’ll be back,” Buck promises.
“Good,” says Eddie.
Buck is distracted all through breakfast, all morning, until it’s time to pack Theo up and head over to Maddie’s for a much needed supervised breakdown.
Eddie catches him on his way out the door, his right hand loosely circling Buck’s left forearm.
“Hey,” Eddie says, soft, “we’re okay.”
“Yeah,” Buck agrees, just as soft. “I know.”
Buck is grateful that Jee-Yun took so easily to Theo, when he first introduced them a few months back. She’s taken to being the (slightly) older cousin with gusto, and rules over playtime with an iron fist. Theo, who is not always great at sharing or taking turns, seems perfectly content to let her boss him around.
Buck is grateful they get along because he wants Theo to feel connected to their family, and Jee is the closest kid in the family to his age. He’s also grateful for this because when he needs to sit in his sister’s kitchen and melt down for a minute, Theo has a readymade and enthusiastic distraction.
Which is great.
Because about that meltdown –
“Remember how I told you a lot of times that I’m not in love with Eddie?” Buck says.
“I do remember that, yes,” Maddie replies. She’s wearing an expression that Buck would define as intentionally neutral, if one considers that intentional neutrality might also be defined as well contained judgement.
“I’m not, uh,” Buck tries. He sits down. “I. Might have been wrong. About that.”
“Really,” Maddie says. She misses surprised by a smaller margin than Buck would’ve expected. That’s probably about the best he could hope for.
“Maddie,” Buck pleads. “Come on, this is hard.”
“Sorry,” says Maddie.
“No, you’re not!” says Buck. “You’re doing your I-told-you-so face! Maddie, I can’t be in love with Eddie, I can’t! What if I – what if I –“
“What if you what?” Maddie prompts. It’s gentle, genuinely, this time.
“What if I ruin everything?” Buck says, ragged. “What if this is the thing that breaks us? We’re fucking – we’re raising our kids together, Maddie! We have been! And we’re so – we’re all – we’re so wrapped up in each other, and if I mess this up –“
“Buck,” says Maddie. “Breathe, just for a second, okay? This is Eddie we’re talking about.”
“Yeah, exactly,” says Buck. “It’s Eddie. He’s the most important person – adult person, I guess – in my life. The stakes are really fucking high!”
“But Buck,” Maddie says, “it’s Eddie. The stakes might be high, but the risk is pretty low, you know? He loves you. Maybe that’s not the same way you love him, maybe it is, but there’s no way you lose him over this. You know that, right? I don’t think that you can mess up in a way Eddie Diaz wouldn’t forgive.”
“He’s too important,” Buck says. “I can’t – he’s too important.”
“He loves you,” Maddie repeats. She reaches over to put a hand on his forearm. “Say you tell him. What’s the worst that could happen? The real, actual worst thing?”
Buck thinks it over.
“I don’t know,” he admits. His deep, instinctive panic that Eddie would drop him completely and never speak to him again isn’t realistic. It’s also unkind to Eddie, who isn’t the type of person to just cut a friend out of his life out of the blue. He might not reciprocate Buck’s exact feelings, but he wouldn’t leave him. That’s Buck’s own shit getting in the way of seeing Eddie clearly.
“Okay,” says Maddie. “Well, I know. I’m pretty sure that, if you went home from here and told him you love him, the worst thing that could happen would be him not wanting to pursue a romantic relationship with you. That nothing would change.” She squeezes his arm. “But even if I’m wrong, even if he’s uncomfortable with it, and I really don’t think he will be – even if I’m wrong, hiding from the worst possible outcome means that you’re hiding from the best outcome, too.”
“Oh,” says Buck.
“He might feel the same way, you know,” Maddie says, removing all ambiguity over what best outcome she might mean.
“He’s straight,” Buck says. It comes out weaker than he means it to.
Maddie gives him a look he can’t quite parse. “Buck.”
“He’s straight!” Buck reminds her.
“As far as you know,” Maddie corrects.
“He would’ve told me if he weren’t,” says Buck. “I’m his – he would’ve told me. First, maybe second after Chris.”
Maddie watches Buck. Her eyes are slightly narrowed, and she’s sucked her lower lip into her mouth like she needs to bite into it to physically stop herself from commenting.
After a beat, she takes a breath that seems a little more longsuffering than is really necessary. “How did you realize you weren’t straight, again?”
“That’s different,” Buck says.
“Is it?” says Maddie. “You’d never considered it before, you said. But once the option was presented to you –“
“You cannot get my hopes up about this, Maddie,” Buck interrupts. “You can’t. I can’t – it’s one thing to say – I mean. Yeah, it probably won’t go bad. I probably – I probably can’t ruin everything, if I tell him. But he’s not going to – he’s not.”
Maddie puts her hands up in defeat. “Fine. But whatever you think his feelings are, it will be okay.”
It’s easier to believe than Buck would’ve expected. But Maddie says it with so much certainty, and it shakes loose the part of Buck that knows – that trusts – that there really, truly isn’t anything he can do to scare Eddie away. It had gotten tangled up in the panic of realizing a fundamental truth about himself.
Honestly, Buck was less freaked out by realizing he was bisexual in his thirties than by realizing that he’s in love with his best friend. It’s a similar kind of discomfort, though, the same kind of learning something new about yourself that you feel like you probably should have figured out sooner. That you feel like anyone else would have figured out sooner.
Is Buck really so unselfaware to have not one but two fundamental truths about who he is come to him this late?
(Or has he known, deep down, that he’s in love with Eddie all along and just refused to look at it?)
Anyway.
The point is that, by the time he gets back home to Eddie’s with a slightly glitterier child than he left with, Buck is feeling much more settled. Talking to Maddie does that, most of the time.
Theo darts inside as soon as Buck has the door open, and when he comes through Buck sees that he’s immediately gone to the couch to wriggle into Chris’s lap where he’s set up playing a video game.
“Hey, bud,” Chris says, lifting his arm to accommodate Theo. “You have fun with Jee?”
“Yeah!” says Theo. “Can I watch you play?”
“Of course,” says Chris.
When Buck tears his eyes away from the boys, he isn’t surprised to find that Eddie is leaning against the archway into the dining room, watching them fondly as well.
He crosses the room in a few long strides.
“Hey,” Eddie says softly, turning away from the kids to look at Buck. “Good talk with Maddie?”
“Good, yeah,” says Buck. “Clarifying.”
“Good,” says Eddie.
“Can we,” Buck says, then stops himself. He doesn’t have to do this now, they don’t have to do this now, they don’t have to do this ever –
“Yeah, of course we can,” Eddie says quickly.
He catches Buck’s wrist and pulls him toward the kitchen. They don’t usually do that. Usually, Eddie leads and Buck follows and there’s no contact between them but an invisible rope tying them together anyway.
But today, Eddie’s holding on. His grip around Buck’s wrist is loose, light, but grounding.
Buck kicks the kitchen door shut behind them.
For a moment, they stare at each other in silence.
“I’m in love with you,” Buck blurts after a beat. “I’m in love with you. And I know, I know that this changes things, and I’m not expecting you to reciprocate, but I feel like if I try to keep it in I’m going to explode, so I just – I just –“
“Buck,” Eddie interrupts.
“I’m sorry,” Buck continues, because he cannot fucking stop, “I’m sorry, I didn’t – I wasn’t going to –“
“Buck!” Eddie cuts in again. He’s still holding onto Buck’s wrist, but his free hand comes to rest on Buck’s shoulder, squeezing gently.
“I’m sorry,” Buck says again.
“Buck,” Eddie says, “no. No, don’t be sorry.”
“No?”
“What have I done that makes you think this is a bad thing?” Eddie asks, his brow furrowed. He sounds genuinely worried.
Buck lets out a strained laugh. “Ed. You’re straight. Of course it’s a bad thing. I know it’s weird, and I tried really hard not to be that guy –“
“That guy?” Eddie echoes. “What do you mean?”
“You know,” says Buck, waving vaguely. “The – the queer guy with a crush on his straight best friend.”
“Okay,” says Eddie. “What if you’re a queer guy who’s got feelings for his queer best friend?”
“What?” says Buck.
“Oh,” Eddie says, “that is not how I meant to start that conversation.”
“You can try again. If you want,” Buck says.
Eddie laughs. “Yeah, alright.”
Buck gives him a little go ahead gesture.
“Hey, Buck, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” Eddie says, performatively casual.
“Oh, yeah?” says Buck. He tries to think of what he’d say, if that had been the start of this conversation and not the unbelievable middle of it. “Well, the kids are busy, if you want to talk now.”
“Great,” says Eddie. “You know, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, lately.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
Eddie shoves him playfully with the hand that had been on his shoulder. “Dick. This is serious! I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, lately, and I don’t think I’m straight. And you’re the first person I’ve wanted to tell, because you’re my best friend and my person, and I want you to know all of me.”
“Eddie!” Buck says, sliding forward to pull him into a hug. “That’s – that’s amazing. I’m so proud of you.”
“Thanks,” Eddie murmurs into his shoulder.
Stepping back, Buck says, “So, uh, is now a good time to tell you that I’m in love with you?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Eddie says, grinning. “I’ll even pretend that’s the first time I’ve heard it, and you didn’t blurt it out in a panicked ramble a few minutes ago.”
“Eddie,” says Buck.
“Right,” says Eddie. “I love you, too. Probably the whole time, give or take. It’s hard to know when it’s – it’s almost too big to look at, sometimes, you know?”
“Yeah,” says Buck, “I know.”
“Great,” Eddie says. “You gonna kiss me, or?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, when did that become my responsibility?” Buck says, but he’s already drifting closer again. “You just turned my whole worldview upside down, the least you could do is kiss me.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Eddie says, stepping fully into Buck’s space. “I love you so much.”
Buck is laughing when they finally close the space between them. In the end, it’s hard to say which of them initiates the kiss, or if either of them could really take credit for it when they’d both been moving in at the same time the whole time. It’s an awkward kiss, maybe, for the fact that Buck is still chuckling when it starts and the fact that Eddie has never kissed anybody taller than him before, but it’s also real and familiar and perfect.
There’s a crash from the living room, followed by Chris’s exasperated voice saying, “Theo!” and they separate, grinning.
“Life goes on,” says Buck.
“Life goes on,” Eddie agrees. He’s so beautiful this close up. Buck hopes he gets to see him this close for the rest of his life.
“Do you want to get married?” he says, before he can think better of it.
Eddie laughs. “What, now?”
“It’s after five, and a weekend,” Buck says. “I don’t think we could swing that. But maybe soon. Is that a yes?”
“Yes, obviously,” says Eddie. “What, you think I’ve spent the last eight years finding ways to legally tie us together to say no when you finally asked me to marry you?”
“Are you – Eddie.”
There’s another thunk and then a clatter from the living room.
Eddie leans over to press another brief kiss to Buck’s stunned face. “Wedding planning later. Find out what your kid is doing to my living room now.”
Eddie doesn’t wait for Buck to pull himself together, after that, just turns and walks out of the room. Buck trails after him helplessly, having a hard time believing this is his real life.
Eddie scoops Theo up as he comes into the living room, swinging him up over his head to win some of those sweet little giggles of his, as Chris looks on from the couch, laughing too. Buck hangs back for a moment, watching his three favorite people in the world laugh together. It’s domestic and easy and perfect, perfect, perfect.
He doesn’t shy away from the thought this time. He can have this. It’s allowed.
“Why are you just standing over there like a weirdo, Buck?” Chris says.
“Yeah,” Eddie says, turning to look over his shoulder at him, “come join the family.”
So Buck flops onto the couch next to Chris and lets this perfect moment wash over him from up close.
It’s the start of something new, sort of, but at the same time not at all. A continuation of the family that he and Eddie have been building for years. He can’t wait to see where life takes them next.