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Consciousness rolls over Eddie slowly, lapping at his body in the form of warmth and sluggishness; he’s bobbing gently in a liminal state of awareness, senses coming back to him in increments. A groan leaves his chest as he stretches his limbs, feet knocking into the arm of the couch. That gets him to slowly blink open his eyes, fighting the urge to keep them closed and succumb back to the vestiges of sleep. He scrubs a hand across his face, rubbing the remnants of his nap from his eyelashes before meeting the sight of his living room.
The sun is at its point in the evening where it’s a deep summer orange, a color that buzzes like cicadas at dusk and reveals the dust motes with its rays, moving through the room like the pappus of a dandelion. The space is cast in a peaceful glow, sunbeams of light swimming in through the curtains, the streams covering Eddie in brush strokes of warmth. He doesn’t make any move to get up yet, just lets himself bask in the moment of comfort and relaxation, contentment pouring over him without the burden of complete reality.
He’s woken to an atmosphere that floats around him like nostalgia. He almost feels like a kid again; eyes peeling open to the smell of spring, songs made up of high pitched tweets and low hoots coming from the birds perched on the blooming tree just outside his window, the sound of a clock ticking somewhere in the house – kitchen, he thinks – and the soft hum of a tune as his mom moves from room to room, her presence breathing something gentle and familiar into the air, creating a feeling of safety.
Except this time, when he tilts his head and tries to imagine that very thing, he’s met with something real – the creak of a chair and a quiet grumble, one that he’d recognize anywhere.
Buck.
The simple, quick thought of him shapes Eddie's lips with a smile and he’s struck with the softest desire to be closer, to surround himself in Buck’s everything and bury himself beneath the very things that Eddie can only think of as an extension of the man now, no matter the reality they hold outside of him. Like the fresh lilac scent of the laundry soap he’s used for years but could only associate a memory with when Buck finally implemented himself in the intricacies of Eddie’s routine and started mixing his clothes with Eddie’s in a blooming, beautiful way that tied their future and solidified the absence of separation.
Motivated from his thoughts, still languid and hazy, he pushes himself up into a sitting position, looking down at his lap when he feels a puff of weight land on it. His blanket. It’s a tattered, used green thing with frayed edges and growing holes, stains covering it. But it's Eddie’s favorite. It brings him comfort after a long and tiring shift, the kind that tattoos exhaustion into his joints and through each thicket of muscle. Or after a tear-inducing nightmare that leaves him shaking in the depths of a cold sweat, panic gripping his control and reasoning.
Of course, he thinks, bringing his hand down to it, rubbing the worn material between two fingers, of course Buck knows this.
Eddie stands up, wincing at the small pop in his knee, and pads his way towards the gentle sounds he knows are Buck’s because they’re purposefully quiet and caring in a way nobody's ever been for Eddie, not in the sense he’s always wished for but is now aware he has.
He finds Buck hunched over the kitchen table, one leg curled up on the chair, his bad one stretched out under the wooden surface. He’s arguing with a puzzle piece, turning it this way and that before he seemingly gives up on it and grabs the next suspect. Eddie stays silent, leaning against the archway so that he can paint this picture in the recesses of his mind, a spot carved just for Buck, overflowing with everything he could possibly stash away about the man and keep only for himself. However selfish that may be.
Finding it hard to keep his distance any longer, Eddie slides up behind him and his hand meets the warm skin of Buck’s nape, his baby curls tickling the tips of his fingers. Buck doesn't startle, It’s the opposite, actually; the bow of his spine relaxes back towards Eddie like a wave retreating back into the ocean, he pushes his head into Eddie’s loose grip, and then – bright and beautiful in his Buckness – he tilts his gaze back and up at Eddie, the softest smile as a greeting. Eddie's heart flutters in a familiar rhythm.
“Hi,” Bucks says, voice hoarse and warm. “Did you have a nice nap?”
“Mhm,” Eddie sounds, looking Buck in the eyes, drowning in the shine of them as he moves his hand away from his neck to the curve of his jaw. Buck nuzzles into it. Eddie can feel his smile on his palm and he’s suddenly stuck on that, wanting to remember the rare sensation of it; the barely there snag of his teeth paired with the huff of his breath, the way his cheek pushes against his skin, emphasizing his smile as it grows.
“What?” Buck mumbles, blush blooming on the high point of his cheeks.
Eddie develops a smile of his own. “Nothin’, just,” he shifts his hand against Buck’s face, tracing his index finder up to the sweet pink of Buck’s birthmark, coloring the shape of it with his touch. Looking down at him, Eddie’s overcome with adoration. “Wanted to be near you when I woke up. Always want to,” he finishes.
“Oh,” Buck breathes. He circles his fingers around the wrist framing his face and shuffles closer towards Eddie. “Uh. Me too. I mean – I always want to be with you, too,” he flushes. “Or near you, like you said. Whatever you want!” He laughs awkwardly – endearingly, Eddie thinks – and drops his grip from Eddie’s arm as he looks down, chewing on his lip.
Affection warming his chest, Eddie moves to sit in the chair next to Buck, scooting it as close as he can and turning sideways so they’re facing one another. He props his elbow on the table and glances down at the puzzle. “Is this the one I got you?”
“Yeah,” Buck says, nodding. He takes the out and starts to flip pieces over again. “I’ve been staring at it for too long. Everything looks the same,” he sighs.
Eddie smiles. He watches Buck grab two pieces. They don’t fit together the first try but then he turns them around and they snap right in place, the designs on them blending together seamlessly. It reminds Eddie of him and Buck, in a way. Of the things they’ve been through; stupid fights that he always hated every minute of, the scary episodes where they were threatened with having to live without the other. And then the moments after; the always making up at the end of the day because an argument couldn’t possibly change them, the days of recovery where they always took care of each other, had another warm body to reach out to.
And it all clicks into place for Eddie – they're the puzzle pieces. They always drift back together, no matter how hard gravity tries to change their orbit. They’re always going to be forever.
“I think,” Eddie begins as Buck tries to find another piece, “that If I tried to get on one knee so soon after waking up, I wouldn’t get back up again.”
Buck pauses, turning his head towards Eddie very slowly. He blinks. Then blinks again, processing. “W–what?”
“Buck,” Eddie says softly – but confident – as he hooks his ankle around Bucks under the coffee table and leans in close to murmur, “will you marry me?”
Star eyed and breathless, Buck stares. This stare doesn’t scare Eddie because it’s not something that looks like it means any form of rejection – Eddie is sure of this. He understands Buck, knows that he has to sit with questions sometimes until they wrap around his head in a complete circle. But with him, he doesn’t have to search to find any truth on Eddie’s face; it’s completely bare, ready for the taking.
“Oh my god,” Buck breathes. Very quickly, tears rise in his eyes, ready to cascade down his cheeks, in the dip above his upper lip. It’s all broken down love on his face, realization of the rare gift that is reality, of the question that Eddie’s pushing gently into his hands. “Eddie.”
“I want,” Eddie begins, for the first time in his life not thinking about what he is going to say, just letting his thoughts flow as surely as they deserve from heart to mouth, “to wake up to you doing puzzles for the rest of my life. I want to keep doing our laundry together forever. I – ”
“Eddie, stop. Please – holy shit.”
Buck’s crying. Those tears are now following their written path down his face, meeting their end at the edge of his jaw before more take their place. “You – oh my god, are you – you’re serious.”
Eddie moves to the edge of his chair, getting as close to Buck as he can with their positions. He grabs each side of Buck's face, caresses the half moons under his eyes as he leans their foreheads together. “I am, bud.”
“Eddie. Ed’s, I need you to tell me this is real, that if It starts it won’t end,” he sniffs. It’s not distrust on his face as much as it’s disbelief. Buck; the one always to stay only to be left behind in the end, the one to commit the entirety of who he is to a single person only to be given the barest of bare minimum in return.
He’s taken away to somewhere dampened and heavy for a moment. The knowledge that there are truly people out there that have made Buck feel such a way, have made it possible for him to put together a sentence like that and really believe it is the most distasteful knowledge that Eddie has ever obtained. But he still holds it dearly within him because who would ever want to get rid of a piece of Buck?
Eddie pulls his head back, looking into the wet eyes that fall on him with overwhelming adoration born from a shock that is the complete opposite of disappointment. His hands stay where they are – cradling the curved area of Buck’s jaw, the soft space behind his ears – but his grip becomes something of innate certainty. “I love you, Buck. I want it all; everything every day in every way possible.”
He almost wishes there were other ways to encompass what a person feels inside; sometimes words don't feel like enough. He wants to give Buck all of him, to let him hold all that resides behind the barriers of his skin – that being the vulnerable parts of his body's dependability but also the part that is spiritual, something that couldn’t been seen by the day to day eye but by the one who is with you past that.
Suddenly, Buck is nodding fervently. The skin around his red eyelashes has slowly begun to go puffy from emotion and there is a delicate quiver to his chin. And just above that, from the pair of lips colored baby pink comes the lovely three letters, something that strikes up the purest excitement Eddie’s ever had the privilege to experience. “Yes.”
Buck's arms twine around the back of his neck and he’s pulling Eddie into an embrace tight enough to wring out everything else that isn’t this kitchen, this puzzle, this hazy afternoon, this pink and orange moment, this delicacy of a man currently clinging to him with shaking shoulders and wet breaths. “Eddie – yes, of course I will marry you.”
Eddie ignores the awkward angle and revels in returning the hug, arms circling Buck’s twisted waist, his sweater bunching up under his limbs. Eddie smiles. He can feel the largeness of it, how it pushes the apple of his cheek into his under eyes, the stretch of it making the expression toeing the line of pain if he doesn’t relax his face soon.
He nuzzles the side of his face against Buck’s – his fiance’s, apparently. “Yeah?”
In response, Buck turns his head so their nose against nose, breath meeting breath, and he leans in. Their first kiss is with the taste of tears but that just adds to it, Eddie thinks. There isn’t anything better in this world than tasting Evan Buckley’s vulnerability, his wonderful emotions as a result of a few words uttered from Eddie’s own mouth. Now, he never wants to see Buck cry but he can’t find anything wrong in the context of this very moment. Like he said, he wants it all and that includes their first kiss being broken by a hiccuping sob, by Buck pulling away just far enough to murmur against Eddie’s lips, to brush them with a spoken promise. “I love you, Eddie. I always have.”
“I know, bud. I woke up with my favorite blanket on me.”
Buck tucks back into his shoulder, understanding what the silly statement means in between its syllables. They can’t stay like this for much longer, all tangled and blending into one another, because soon enough it’s going to be a creaky process of moving, the one symptom of aging that they haven’t been able to avoid since reaching double digits that begin with three.
But there’s a difference that lingers in the inevitabilities of getting older. He has someone to do it with now. And it’s not that he didn’t have Buck before but things like aggravated bones and worsening eyesight never meant anything but irritation to Eddie. But as he develops more of those symptoms called life, he can look back and remember that old knees after a nap is what led him to his future, what created best friends to husbands and engraved immense happiness into the rest of his life.
He peeks back at the puzzle, wondering if he’s going to have to get a custom frame for its size, and breathes in the lilac from Buck’s sweater as he holds onto their position for just a while longer, once again letting himself bask in a bubble of peace. And this time, instead of wishing away reality he welcomes it gratefully, wishing for more.