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“What’s that?” Harry asks curiously, staring at Chim, who’s pulled out a little square of paper from inside his helmet.
It’s the end of their shift; they’d gone into overtime at a multi-alarm fire, rolling back into the station to find B-shift already settled and comfy. Getting out of their turnouts isn’t usually a group activity, but they’re stood in a ragged line by their respective turnout hooks, shucking them off before dumping them in the laundry cart.
“Hm?” Chim asks, smoothing out the edges of the paper carefully.
“What is that?” Harry asks again. “Lucky charm or something?”
Chim grins. “Something like that.”
He hands the piece of paper to Harry, who holds it gingerly between his fingers. Buck can see the creases from here, the careful way it’s been folded and repositioned countless times. He peers over Harry’s shoulder to get a better look.
Harry turns it over—it’s a photograph, of Maddie, Jee, and Baby Nash. All three of them are beaming at the camera, toothy and delighted. Buck feels his heart do that fond ba-thump thing it does when he sees his niece and nephew. Cutest kids in the world. Well, tied with Christopher. Even if he’s fifteen and not so much a kid anymore.
“Aw,” Harry says, smiling. “That’s adorable. Is it like—is it a thing? Do all of you keep pictures in your helmets?”
A murmur of general consensus ripples through their group. Harry, apparently delighted by this new knowledge, demands to see everyone’s secret photos.
“They’re kind of private,” Eddie says, crouched down to unlace his boots. He has a smudge of soot over his left cheek, and his hair has come loose from the gel, a lock of it curling over his brow. Buck likes him like this, just a little dishevelled.
“What do you mean?” Harry asks, making grabby hands for Hen’s helmet.
She obliges, revealing a folded photograph of Karen, one of Denny and Mara on what looks like their first day of school, and a tiny passport-sized photo of her mom.
“It’s just tradition,” Buck says, giving Eddie a funny look. “I mean, it’s personal, sure, but not private.”
Eddie gives him a look of betrayal in return. Buck cannot for the life of him think why. Maybe Eddie has a picture of Shannon in his helmet? And he doesn’t want anyone else to see? That’s fair enough, even if Buck doesn’t understand why Eddie’d be reticent to share.
“Can I see?” Harry asks Buck.
Buck hands his helmet over easily, letting Harry fiddle with it until he pulls out a creased photograph from one of Bobby’s barbeques, years ago.
Harry holds it very carefully. “Oh,” he says, “Bobby.”
Buck’s used to the way his heart physically aches at the reminder. “And all of you guys,” he adds.
They’re all there: Harry, about a foot shorter than he is right now; teenage May; Hen and Karen with their arms linked; Chim, Maddie, and baby Jee; Ravi, nervous at his first 118 family gathering; Bobby and Athena, looking at each other instead of the camera; and Eddie, Chris, and Buck, all mid-laugh about something that’s lost to time.
“Is it to remember them?” Harry asks softly. “Keep them with us?”
Hen nods. “It’s like a—like a physical reminder, you know? Who we’re fighting for and why we need to come back to them.”
Harry’s reached Ravi, who’s clutching his helmet to his chest. He takes a step back as Harry approaches.
“Um, I agree with Eddie,” Ravi says. “It’s private.”
“C’mon, it’s not like you’ve got a picture of my sister in there, right?” Harry jokes.
Ravi turns pale.
“Right?” Harry says again. “Oh, c’mon, man. You’ve barely been together five minutes!”
“Three months!” Ravi says defensively. “She’s important to me!”
Harry sighs, shoulders slumping. Buck can relate; he remembers getting used to the idea of Chim and Maddie when they’d first gotten together.
“Okay,” Harry relents. “It’s fine. I’m fine with it. C’mon, show us, then.”
Ravi’s warm brown skin flushes, his cheeks turning beet red. “Uh. It’s, uh, not the kind of photo I think you want to see.”
Harry bends over, pretending to dry heave as the rest of them snicker around him. Buck pats his back sympathetically—he’s familiar with the feeling.
And then Harry straightens up and reaches Eddie. Eddie, who is clutching his helmet to himself even more desperately than Ravi had been. Buck gives him a look, why are you bugging out right now. Eddie stares back beseechingly, so pleading that Buck genuinely considers grabbing his helmet from him and fleeing, just flat-out sprinting out of the station so Eddie can have his dead wife photo stay private.
“It’s the same as everyone else,” Eddie says to Harry. “People I love. People to come home to.”
“So can I see?” Harry demands. “I need inspo for who to put in mine.”
“It should be obvious,” Hen snorts. “Don’t overthink it, Harry.”
Harry is very insistently prying Eddie’s helmet out of his vice grip, though. He stumbles back as he succeeds, Eddie sighing in defeat when he does.
Harry pokes around inside it for a second before retrieving a single photograph.
“Aw,” he says. “Cute. What’s private about this? I could’ve guessed it in one go.”
Buck wants to see, even if the sight of Shannon and Chris will taste bittersweet. A family in the way he wishes he had, in the way everyone around him does have. Still, he wants to know everything about Eddie, especially this, something so clearly important to him. He plucks the photo from Harry’s hands, turning it over carefully.
It’s not Shannon and Chris.
It’s—
It’s Buck and Chris.
It’s a photograph of Buck and Chris, goofy grins in the capybara petting area of the zoo. Taken five years ago, maybe. Buck remembers his hands being sticky and gross with capybara spit, Chris demanding a photo with his favourite capybara—a gentle furry amputee named Three Leg Greg—and Eddie complying fondly. They’d gotten ice cream after and Chris was still young enough to fall asleep in the backseat on the way home. Eddie’d carried him to bed, and he and Buck had a couple beers on the back deck, watching the sun set on another LA summer.
Eddie snatches the photograph back, holding it protectively to himself.
Buck blinks. He’s caught off-guard, sure, but mostly he’s just—confused. Why would Eddie have a photograph of just him and Chris? He hears an echo of Eddie’s words: People I love. People to come home to. There are so many people in Eddie’s life who fit that bill. Buck would’ve been happy enough just to make the cut.
But—it’s not a long list. It’s not covering all bases with a group photo, or multiple photos. It is, in fact, a single photo of two people. Christopher and Buck. Eddie’s son and Eddie’s… best friend.
Eddie’s busying himself with carefully tucking the photograph back into the inside of his helmet. His face is a mask of indifference, but Buck knows him. The tips of his ears are bright pink and his jaw ticks, struggling to hold his nonchalant expression in place.
Buck wants to talk to him, even if he doesn’t know what he’s going to ask. But in the bustle of showering and getting dressed, he loses Eddie. When he jogs into the parking lot, duffel over his shoulder, Eddie’s truck is nowhere to be seen.
That’s fine. Buck makes the executive decision to essentially hunt his best friend down and torture-slash-annoy him into providing some clarity. He’s been complimented before—well, exasperatedly informed—on the fact that his verbal waterboarding skills are effective, if unwanted. The words “menace” and “pest” and “mouth destined for duct tape” have been thrown around before.
It’s less of a hunt and more he just drives to Eddie’s house, where Eddie’s truck is damningly in the driveway. Buck uses his key to get in, soft country music playing from the kitchen radio as he stalks through the hall, peering around for Eddie.
He finds him in the laundry room, humming along to the music and pouring detergent liberally into the tray.
“Eddie,” he says.
Eddie jumps half a foot, dribbling laundry detergent over his socked feet.
“Shit, sorry,” Buck says.
“S’fine,” Eddie says, bending down to peel off his sticky socks. He tosses them into the washing machine with the rest of the load. “Did we have plans?”
“Um, no,” Buck shakes his head.
“Okay,” Eddie says easily. “Wanna do something?”
“Like what?” Buck asks, immediately distracted by the prospect of spending his day off with Eddie. Who could blame him? Eddie’s always the best company.
“Help me clean the kitchen?” Eddie asks, cheeky sparkle in his eyes.
Buck huffs a laugh, and then huffs another one. When did household chores with his best friend become something he’d rather be doing than literally anything else in his free time?
“Sure,” he says. “But I want the pink gloves.”
“Yessir,” Eddie grins. “They match you anyway.”
He turns, heading to the kitchen, leaving Buck to follow, slightly confused.
“They match?” he asks, catching them out of the air when Eddie retrieves them from under the sink and chucks them at him.
“Y’know,” Eddie says, pulling out a bottle of all-purpose disinfectant. He pauses, turning to Buck and tapping his own eyebrow. “Pink. You match.”
Buck self-consciously raises a hand to his own face, fingers tracing the skin he knows his birthmark is splotched across. Eddie’s casual observation stokes something giddy in Buck’s gut, something he might classify as butterflies if it was literally anyone else, anyone but Eddie.
He takes the disinfectant Eddie passes him and they slip into a familiar routine, wiping down surfaces and scrubbing the stains out of the stovetop. Buck is cleaning out the bottom shelf of the fridge, not thinking about the photograph or the fact that Eddie’s first thought of the pink rubber gloves Buck’s currently wearing was that they match Buck, match his pink birthmark, and does Eddie think of things like that often? But Buck’s not thinking about it. He’s not.
Eddie clears his throat, louder than the country music that’s still playing. “You okay?”
“Mm?” Buck says, head still mostly inside the fridge. “Yeah, why?”
“You’ve been suspiciously quiet for the last twenty minutes.”
Buck tries to stand up so suddenly he bangs his head on the upper shelf of the fridge, falling backwards on his ass.
“You good?” Eddie asks, voice brimming with amusement.
Yes, is what Buck intends to say. “Why don’t you have a photo of Shannon in your helmet?” is what comes out of his mouth instead.
Eddie blinks, looking caught completely off-guard. “What?”
Buck gets up, not as gracefully as he’d like. He’s got too much leg. “Your helmet. It just had a photo of Chris and—and me. Why—how come you don’t have one of Shannon and Chris instead? Or, or even Pepa, or your sisters.”
Eddie looks at a spot just to the left of Buck for a long time, jaw ticking. Buck is tempted to break the silence, but before he can open his mouth, Eddie’s saying, “S’what I said to Harry. People I love. People to come home to.”
Buck shakes his head. He finds he can’t approach the people I love statement—he knows, logically, that of course Eddie loves him. Even if they’ve never said it before. They’re best friends. But he can’t look directly at it right now, at Buck being included in Eddie’s people I love as easily as taking a breath. Especially since right now that club houses only two members: Chris and Buck. “I mean, Shannon fits right into that category. And Pepa and Isabel and your sisters.”
Eddie takes a step back, leaning against the kitchen counter. His gaze is trained on a random spot on the floor again. He doesn’t look at Buck when he says, “I’ll always love Shannon. But she isn’t the person I’m fighting to come home to.”
Buck desperately searches Eddie’s face, trying to figure out the expression Eddie’s trying so hard to conceal.
Eddie meets Buck’s eyes, finally. “She isn’t the person I’m fighting to come home with.”
Buck doesn’t remember getting struck by lightning, but it must have felt something like this. Lightning, and maybe being hit round the head with a two-by-four.
But Eddie can’t mean anything by it, right? He would’ve told Buck if there was more. He would’ve, wouldn’t he? Buck swallows. Maybe not. Or maybe this is all Buck’s wishful thinking—something he doesn’t even get to indulge in, he thinks pathetically—and Eddie just means this in a friend-way.
Looking at Eddie’s knuckles, white where they’re curled around the counter edge, Buck thinks, suddenly, it’s not in a friend-way. But Eddie’s making no move to say anything else, his posture completely closed off, and try as he might to mask it, his face looks scared.
Buck doesn’t know if he’s got it in him to be the brave one. Potentially the stupid, wanting, friendship-ruining one. “What do you mean?” he asks weakly. It sounds flimsy even to his ears.
Eddie sighs, his face organising itself into something plastic. “It doesn’t matter, Buck. It’s not a big deal. You have me in your helmet, I have you.”
“You have just me,” Buck says, somewhat astonished at Eddie’s attempt to justify through comparison. “You have just me and Chris. I have the whole 118.”
Eddie’s jaw ticks again. Buck idly worries that Eddie’s been grinding his teeth in his sleep. That feels like something Eddie would do without even noticing.
“I don’t want a thousand photographs jammed in my fucking helmet, Buck,” Eddie snaps. “I have what I want. What I need.”
“I’m what you want?” Buck asks in surprise, filter not even attempting to coach a respectable response from him.
Eddie sighs once more, running a weary hand across his face. He’s still wearing rubber gloves and seems to regret the movement immediately, wrinkling his nose at the smell of bleach.
“Look,” he says after a moment, “you know that Chris is always gonna be number one.”
Buck nods; duh. To him, too.
“You’re—you’re next, though. Right up there with him, basically. I—I think of my family and I think of Chris. And then I think of you.”
Buck has been punched in the solar plexus before; this eclipses that. He struggles to inhale fully, turning to shut the fridge door behind him. “Yeah,” he says roughly, adjusting a magnet on the fridge to keep his hands occupied so he doesn’t try and grab Eddie in a fit of euphoria. “You guys are my family, too.”
“I know,” Eddie says softly behind him.
Something occurs to Buck. “Is that why you wanted to keep it private? Did you think the others would, uh, misinterpret that?”
“I think they interpreted it quite clearly,” Eddie laughs, this self-deprecating thing Buck wants to peel off him. He turns back to face him. The mask of indifference has slipped, and something like regret flashes across his face, like he didn’t mean to say that. He doesn’t follow up with a clarification, leaving Buck to frown at him from three feet away.
“What do you mean?” he asks again.
Eddie looks like he’d rather have his teeth removed with pliers than have this conversation. “I have what I want,” he says again, shrugging one shoulder. “I have what I need. What else is there?” He says it so definitively, like there’s not a doubt in his mind.
Buck should leave it. He’s already been given so much: knowing deep in the core of him that he’s indisputably family to Eddie, family in the way only Chris is. Family in the way that Eddie fights to get back to him, fights to get back to Buck. He’s lucky beyond his wildest dreams. But the way Eddie won’t meet his eyes, the way he was so reluctant to share the photo at the station, like it was damning proof of something—and it was, wasn’t it? Proof that Buck belongs to a family, belongs to Eddie and Chris in the same way he’s belonged to them in his heart all along.
With the way Eddie looks like a cornered animal right now, Buck almost feels bad for pushing. But he knows Eddie, knows he’ll just wall this off in his mind so thoroughly Buck will probably need a machete to get back to it. And while Buck is pretty sure he could give an 80s machine-gun-wielding Arnold Schwarzenegger a run for his money, he’d rather skip the hostile vegetation of Eddie’s mind and cut straight through to this now.
“I’m what you want?” he asks again. He takes a step toward Eddie; Eddie takes a halting step back, hip knocking against the countertop. “To be part of your family?”
“You already are,” Eddie grumbles, still with a panicked glint in his eye.
Buck swallows. “In the way your sisters are? O-Or in the way Shannon was?”
Eddie shuts his eyes; it feels like an admission of something, but Buck doesn’t know what.
“Neither,” Eddie says after a second. “You’re family in the way only you are.”
Buck feels like he’s standing on the window ledge at the top floor of a very tall building. Unsteady, stomach swooping, no harness. “E-Eddie. I need you to—what does that mean? Who does that make me, to you?”
Maybe clocking the wobble in Buck’s voice, Eddie opens his eyes. “You’re—you’re Buck. You’re my—you’re Buck.”
Almost like he’s unaware of it, Eddie lifts a hand to clasp Buck’s shoulder, thumb finding its usual place right over his collarbone. It’s a tether-point, it’s safety, but Buck feels like someone has carbonated his blood, fizzing inside him helplessly.
“Who does that make me to you?” he asks again, a little desperate this time.
Eddie studies him for a long minute. He sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face again—instant regret, and he shucks his gloves, tossing them in the sink. “Family,” he says, making deliberate eye contact with Buck. “Whatever that looks like to you.”
“What it looks like to me?” Buck laughs. On brand of Eddie to not ask for what he wants, instead trying to spike the ball into Buck’s court. “Eddie. I need to know what it looks like to you.”
“Like this!” Eddie says, gesturing around at the mostly-clean kitchen.
“Helping you clean?” Buck frowns.
“No! Yes!” Eddie lurches away from the counter, running a hand through his hair. An errant tuft of it sticks up straight and Buck squeezes both hands into fists inside his pink rubber gloves to stop himself from reaching out to smooth it down. “Cleaning together, and—and cooking, and weekends with Chris, and grocery shopping, or beach days, and just—shooting the shit after work, you know?”
Buck considers that. It’s pretty domestic, he supposes. “Are we in, like, a queer-platonic relationship?” he asks. He’s been doing his Pride month reading.
“Queer-plato—” Eddie blinks at him, trailing off. “What the fuck is that?”
“Uh. So, from what I’ve read, it’s like, um, a really deeply committed but non-romantic partnership? That, like, goes beyond the things you’d do in a traditional friendship. So, like, the kind of, um, domesticity, I guess, that we have in our friendship—the cleaning and cooking and shit—that you might expect in a romantic relationship, but this is—platonic. Friends-plus.”
Eddie is looking at him with a furrowed brow, so Buck adds, “Friends-plus, like, friends but there’s all this other stuff we do together too.”
The laugh wrenched from Eddie’s chest is just as self-deprecatory as before. “Friends-plus.”
Buck nods. “Is that—is that what we’re doing?”
It looks like Eddie kind of—gives up. Which is strange of Buck to think, because Eddie is not a quitter. But it looks like he just kind of—stops.
“That’s not what we’re doing,” he says quietly, stepping back to lean against the counter again. “Queer-plat—there’s nothing platonic about the way I want you.”
If Buck thought it felt like being struck by lightning before—he doesn’t have the adequate vocabulary to articulate this.
“W-What?” he asks. “Are you—are you for real right now?”
It’s less that he hasn’t ever thought about it and more than he very strictly has not let himself think about it. The sky is blue, LA is hot, his best friend is straight. Except that he’s not?
“Are you coming out to me?” is what he asks next. One detail at a time.
Eddie snorts. “Sure, I guess? Though I figure it’s less coming out and more coming on to you.”
“You’re coming on to me,” Buck nods, dazed.
“Trying to,” Eddie offers.
Buck nods again, feeling a little delirious. “Since, uh, since when?”
Eddie frowns, arms crossed over his chest. “Honestly, a while, probably? I only figured it out after the, um, Firefighter Games, but, like. Way before that. I just didn’t realise.”
Buck nods a third time. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know if he can say anything. His best friend is actively coming on to him. Eddie is actively coming on to him. His entire brain feels like it’s being rewired. He should—oh, he should respond. He should reciprocate, right? Enthusiastically? Because he feels enthusiastic about it. He’s just also—buffering while his brain absorbs this new information.
Eddie, on the other hand, looks like the weight of the world has been lifted off his shoulders. Like just telling Buck how he feels has left him light, buoyant in his confession. His posture relaxes and he leans back against the counter again, the lines on his face smoothing out.
“So you’re queer,” Buck says slowly. Eddie nods once in confirmation. “And I’m queer. And this thing we’re doing is… not platonic?”
“Not to me,” Eddie says. “But if you don’t—this doesn’t have to change a th—”
“If you say this doesn’t change a thing I’m going to throw myself through your kitchen window,” Buck says, stepping forward. There’s nowhere for Eddie to retreat. Buck feels a little of that easy charm, that part of him that’s good at flirting and touching and seducing, spark to life. It’s surprising to him that it’s not an unfamiliar feeling to approach Eddie with—have they been doing this dance this whole time? “This changes things. This changes a lot of things.”
“It does?” Eddie says, breathes, really.
“Definitely,” Buck nods, stepping closer again. The tips of his socked toes nudge Eddie’s bare feet.
Eddie’s arms uncross, hands tentatively hovering over Buck’s hips. Buck grabs his wrists and moves them to press against his body, makes Eddie clutch at him.
“You gonna show me how?” Eddie asks.
“Yeah,” Buck says, closing the distance, his top lip sticking damply to Eddie’s cupid’s bow as he pauses. “I am.”
Kissing Eddie is—well, Buck hasn’t let himself think about it even in his wildest dreams. So kissing Eddie is new, all of it. The way he’s breathing hard through his nose, unwilling to separate from Buck even to take a full breath. The way his body is solid against Buck’s, smelling like the last ten years of bulk-purchased children’s apple-scented no-tears shampoo and sun-dried laundry. His hands, one curled around the back of Buck’s neck, holding him close, the other fisted in Buck’s t-shirt.
It feels like arriving, somehow. Like Buck opened the front door and walked into something permanent.
Eddie kisses with more fervour than Buck might have expected, if he’d ever thought about it. Still, his vehement dedication to the act of trying to climb inside Buck using primarily his mouth is flattering, if unexpected. Buck loves some sloppy kissing. Buck loves sloppy kissing Eddie. Buck just straight up loves Eddie.
He tries to mumble it against Eddie’s lips, equally unwilling to separate from him.
“What?” Eddie asks, laughing when Buck seizes the opportunity to lick into him.
“L’ve you,” Buck mumbles again, sucking on Eddie’s lower lip for a second.
Eddie presses a palm flat to Buck’s chest, pushing gently. They break apart, teasing line of spit connecting their mouths for a second before snapping. “Say that again?”
“Love you,” Buck says, eyes shut with how big this feels. “Like a best friend. But importantly also not like a best friend.”
“Importantly,” Eddie nods sagely, hands skating down Buck’s sides before he squeezes a meaty handful of Buck’s ass.
Buck’s hips stutter, crotch pressed flush against Eddie’s. He does not grind forward. He does not.
While Buck is being strong and responsible, Eddie is trying to haul Buck toward him by the literal seat of his pants. He doesn’t seem to understand Buck’s hesitation. Which is fair enough, because Buck doesn’t understand Buck’s hesitation.
“Will you just come here,” Eddie says impatiently, pulling Buck to him.
So Buck goes, nose bumping Eddie’s as he presses him to the kitchen counter, pinned by Buck’s body weight. They kiss like that for long enough that the light changes, bright morning turning into fat slats of golden afternoon sun pouring through the windows.
When their mouths are swollen red enough to hurt, they make it to the couch. Eddie’s legs find themselves in Buck’s lap immediately, Real Housewives rerun on the TV.
While Eddie spends the next hour making snarky comments about the people on-screen, Buck has a mission. A finding-the-perfect-photograph-of-his-best-friend-and-Chris-to-put-in-his-helmet mission—the stakes are pretty high. He scrolls through his camera roll, something warm washing over him when he realises just how many photos he has of them.
Here: Christopher and Eddie smiling at Buck’s phone camera, sunlight in their faces and ice cream dripping down their knuckles.
And here: Eddie, his hair sticking up from running his hands through it in frustration, Chris laughing out loud while the board game on the coffee table between them makes a victim of Eddie.
And here: Chris and Eddie in the backyard, both holding up fistfuls of carrots by the stalk—the only vegetable that survived Eddie’s black thumb (likely thanks to Chris’ gentle touch).
Buck thinks this might be the one: a birthday, three years ago. Buck’s birthday. He’d been off work with a bad cold, feeling deeply sorry for himself. They’d shown up at the loft when A-shift was over, box behind Eddie’s back, and demanded Buck go sit on the couch while they set up.
When he was allowed to look, he’d been greeted by a lopsided, badly-iced birthday cake, bright blue with what was possibly an entire jar of sprinkles on top, strewn over the surprisingly neatly piped Happy Birthday Buck!
As the resident baker in their friend group, Buck usually makes his own cake. But this photo, this memory—Eddie and Chris beam at Buck from the other side of the kitchen island. Eddie’s hands are stained blue and Buck remembers how bright the pigment was that day, how Eddie sheepishly tried to wipe his stained fingerprints off Buck’s pale couch, how the buttercream tasted when he sucked it off his thumb. This photo of Eddie and Chris and this little cake—Buck loves and is loved. In more ways than he ever thought possible.
He leaves Eddie snoring on the couch and fires up his ancient printer—it’s seriously so old Buck thinks it might be one of the first printers ever made. He doesn’t even know why Eddie has a printer in the first place—Buck knows he’s not dealing with WiFi and Bluetooth and whatever million plug-in extensions this cranky hunk of technology demands. Whatever. He owns one and Buck needs to use it. He smacks the side of the machine a few times in encouragement, and eventually, with extremely vocal complaints, it whirs and clanks and slowly, so slowly, pushes out a small colour picture. The blue is vibrant, on the cake, on Eddie’s hands.
He hears the soft drag of Eddie’s feet as he comes up behind Buck, hooking his chin over Buck’s shoulder to peer at the picture.
“Buck,” Eddie says, amused and fond when he sees what it is. “You already—”
“I know I already,” Buck cuts him off. “But, well, you know. People I love, people to come home to. What I want and what I need, right?”
“Right,” Eddie says, and then presses a chaste kiss to Buck’s shoulder. “People to come home with.”
“Sure,” Buck says. “That too?”
Eddie hides a yawn in Buck’s shoulder blade. “I just think it would cut out a lot of work for us if we were just cleaning one kitchen and just buying groceries for one household.”
Buck whips around so fast he accidentally crumples his printout and also manages to elbow Eddie in the face.
“Oof,” Eddie blinks, staggering back.
“Sorry, sorry,” Buck says. “Did you just ask me to move in?”
“Subjectively, it makes sense,” Eddie shrugs. “And objectively, I love you, too.”
“Oh,” Buck says. “Did you get those mixed up?”
“No,” Eddie loops his arms around Buck’s neck. The printout between them gets more crushed. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Both things are true,” Eddie says. “So just come home.”
“Okay,” Buck says. He doesn’t quite melt into Eddie, but it’s close. “Okay.”
If Eddie drives them to the station twenty minutes early for their next shift, well, it’s because Buck has a shiny photograph that belongs tucked safely into his helmet. And a shiny love of his life to kiss in the supply closet before breakfast. And then he’s with the people he loves. The people he’ll forever fight to come home to.