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The digital clock on the microwave glowed a sharp, accusing 2:07 PM, casting a pale, clinical blue across the quiet kitchen. The overhead fluorescent tubes didn't just illuminate the space; they hummed with a low, aggressive frequency that vibrated directly behind Chimney’s eyeballs. Chimney stood with his hand hovering over the counter, the shrill ring of his cell phone cutting through the heavy, low hum of the refrigerator like a blade through silk.
He stared down at the screen. Hen.
Suspicion already tightening a knot in his chest—a cold, dense weight pressing against his ribs—he swiped to answer on the fourth ring, bracing himself for whatever chaos had inevitably found them.
"Hey, Hen," he said, his voice dropping into that careful, guarded register reserved for emergencies and disasters.
"Chim!"
He yanked the phone away from his ear, wincing as her voice ricocheted off the walls—strangely buoyant, unnaturally loud, and dragged out at the edges like a vinyl record spinning just a fraction too slow through a thick syrup of cheap tequila.
"Are you okay?" he demanded, already pivoting toward the coffee maker as if it might offer counsel, the linoleum floor feeling uncomfortably soft beneath his boots, like walking on a damp mattress that tilted the entire room at a lazy four-degree angle toward the sink.
"I'm fantastic," Hen trilled, the words bubbling over one another with a breathless, dizzy kind of energy while her thumb rhythmically destroyed the seam of her pocket. "I'm having a great day."
"Hen, what happened?"
A muffled rustle crackled through the receiver—ceramic clinking against glass, followed by a breathless, snorting giggle that Hen tried and failed to swallow. Then, cutting cleanly through the background chaos, came Buck’s voice: rich with absolute, unshakeable gravity, his shoulder leaning heavily against the wall as he slowly slid down six inches before catching himself with a vague, unfocused blink.
"It's five o'clock somewhere."
Chimney closed his eyes, his forehead hitting the cool edge of the upper cabinets as a profound, bone-deep exhaustion settled over him, the cold laminate biting sharply into his skin. "Oh, no."
Hen lost it completely, her laughter dissolving into helpless, high-pitched wheezes that echoed loudly through the earpiece, her grip on the kitchen counter slipping entirely before she caught herself.
"Is Buck drunk?" Chimney asked, staring flatly at the wall clock, mentally calculating how many hours of shift were left to ruin.
A brief, deeply offended silence settled over the line, thick with the righteous indignation of a man whose brain was currently operating three seconds behind the rest of his skeletal structure.
"I am perfectly—capably—aware of where my sobriety is located, Chimney," Buck declared, enunciating every syllable with the bizarre, exaggerated precision of a man reading a legal subpoena while staring blankly at a fruit bowl as if it held the sacred geometry of the universe.
Chimney checked the digital display again. "It's two in the afternoon, Buck."
"Precisely," Buck shot back, his chin lifting in haughty defiance. "Which is a secure, well-ventilated time for beverages."
"That doesn't explain anything."
"It explains everything."
Chimney rubbed the aching space between his eyebrows, his index finger pressing hard against his skin as a migraine bloomed behind his eyes, sharp and bright. "Where are you?"
"Home," Buck said.
"Whose home?"
Another pause, agonizingly long, filled with the faint scratching sound of someone trying to remember basic geography and object permanence. "Hen's."
"Why are you at Hen's house?"
Silence. Then, a theatrical rustle as Buck cupped the phone, lowering his voice into a conspiratorial, stadium-volume whisper loud enough to wake the dead. "We can't tell you."
"Why?"
"It's a secret."
Chimney stared blankly at the stainless steel of the fridge. "Buck, are you and Hen drinking?"
"No," Buck blurted out instantly, his moral compass spinning wildly through a thick, cotton-candy fog of cheap alcohol and sheer panic.
Hen snorted loudly in the background, her eyes glazing over as she focused entirely on a single stray thread dangling from the cuff of her jacket, treating it like the only thing keeping the fabric of the universe from unraveling.
Buck immediately pivoted, his moral compass spinning into a frantic cartwheel across a minefield. To Buck, mathematically speaking, 'yes' and 'not that much' were not contradictory statements at all—they were two sides of a very sensible, highly sophisticated polygon. "Okay, yes." Buck’s left eye refused to track in the same direction as his right.
"How much?"
Hen swallowed hard, testing her consonants. "Not. That. Much."
"A normal amount," Buck tacked on a microsecond later, his voice jumping an octave higher than intended as he nodded with such violent agreement that his head almost unscrewed from his neck.
"Those are two different answers."
"They are scientifically identical if you factor in altitude," Buck whispered, his thumb aggressively shredding a loose thread on his cuff.
Chimney narrowed his eyes, tracking the millimeter-by-millimeter sway of Hen’s posture as she fought a losing battle against the laws of physics. "Hen, are you drunk?"
Hen didn't look up. She rested her forehead gently against the cool drywall and stayed there, absorbing the chill. "The wall is very supportive, Chimney."
"And Buck?"
Buck was currently trying—and failing—to stuff his phone into his shirt pocket instead of his pants, staring intensely at the fabric as if it were solving calculus. "I am a monument of absolute sobriety."
The line went completely dead for three whole seconds. The background hum swelled, a chaotic soup of distant traffic and heavy, wet breathing where Chimney couldn't tell if the static was the cheap hardware of his phone melting down or just the sound of two brains actively short-circuiting over a cellular connection.
When Buck spoke again, every drop of that defensive, artificial stiffness had evaporated, leaving behind a raw, unguarded slurry that felt uncomfortably fragile
"Because Eddie's there."
Chimney paused, the hard plastic of the receiver biting painfully into the cartilage of his ear as the words settled over him like a physical weight.
"Is he?"
"I don't know."
A heavy, alcoholic sigh drifted across the speaker from Hen’s direction, rustling against the tiny microphone membrane like dry autumn leaves scraping across concrete.
"That's why he wants to go," Hen muttered, her voice dragging lazily, vowels stretching out like taffy over the consonants.
"I do not," Buck argued, his pitch jumping an octave into a defensive, insulted shriek that rattled the earpiece.
"You've asked me six times where Eddie is," Hen pointed out, her tone dripping with a flat, unbothered weariness.
"Because he's my friend."
Hen let out another bubbling, uncontrolled laugh that hitched sharply in her chest. "Sure."
"Shut up."
Chimney dropped his hand from his ear, staring down at the glowing screen of his phone as if it had personally betrayed him. There was a cold, mathematical certainty to the futility of arguing with two functioning adults operating entirely on tequila, poor choices, and a complete detachment from physics. His thumb hovered over the red end-call button before he sighed, pulling the device back up.
"Fine. I'll meet you at the firehouse."
Twenty minutes later, the gravel outside the station crunched under the heavy, sagging suspension of a battered black cab. Chimney stood near the open bay doors, his arms crossed tightly across his chest to ward off the damp, autumn chill biting through his shirt. He watched the vehicle glide to a halt, its tyres hissing softly over the wet, oil-slicked asphalt, smelling faintly of hot rubber, exhaust, and stale upholstery.
The back door swung open with a rusty, protesting shriek.
Buck and Hen tumbled out onto the concrete.
Buck was not tipsy. He was not pleasantly buzzed. He was drunk—the kind of saturated, structural disaster where gravity feels less like a universal law and more like a deeply personal suggestion. His damp, sandy hair stuck out in frantic, greasy tufts plastered to his forehead; his cheeks were flushed a violent, feverish brick-red; and his shirt was half-untucked, spilling over his beltline like a deflated sail on a broken mast. He possessed the terrifying, unfocused gaze of a man whose conscious mind was trailing a full four seconds behind the physical reality of his skeleton. His eyes took an agonizingly long time to settle on Chimney, and when they finally did, a slow, beatific, glassy smile spread across his face, as though he had just unspooled the deep, cosmic secrets of the universe.
Hen was in an adjacent state of total geometric failure. She unspooled herself from the back seat with the awkward grace of a folding chair, planted her boots firmly on the asphalt, turned toward the weathered brick facade of the firehouse, and pointed a trembling index finger at it with the solemn, majestic gravity of an explorer claiming a newly discovered continent.
“We made it.”
Buck tilted his head back until his neck popped, the sharp little crack making Hen wince beside him. He stared up at the towering red doors of the firehouse with wide, unblinking eyes, as though they had somehow become the most impressive architectural achievement he'd ever witnessed. His cheeks were flushed from the alcohol and the cold air had turned the tip of his nose pink, but he looked ridiculously pleased with himself, swaying slightly on his feet as he admired the building they had somehow managed to reach. After several seconds of staring, he finally gave a slow, solemn nod, apparently satisfied that they had, in fact, arrived at their intended destination.
“We did.”
Hen nodded proudly beside him, her chin bobbing with unearned executive authority. She looked just as pleased with their accomplishment, despite the fact that she'd spent the last several minutes leaning heavily against the taxi whenever she thought nobody was watching. Her coat hung slightly crooked around her shoulders, and a few loose strands of hair had escaped around her face, but she carried herself with the confidence of someone who had personally orchestrated their successful return.
“You're welcome.”
Buck frowned, his brow furrowing as a knot of profound, staggering injustice tied itself behind his eyes. He slowly turned his head towards Hen, his expression becoming increasingly offended as he tried to understand exactly what she thought she had contributed to their journey. One hand emerged from his pocket and gestured vaguely between them, his finger wobbling slightly with the effort.
“I paid for the taxi.”
“I ordered the taxi.”
Buck blinked.
His mouth opened.
Closed.
Opened again.
He stared at Hen as though she'd just presented an argument he hadn't prepared for, his drunken brain visibly scrambling to find something—anything—that would restore the balance of credit. His shoulders rose as he drew himself up as straight as his alcohol-softened balance allowed.
“I supported you emotionally.”
Hen stared at him.
Buck stared back.
“You fell asleep.”
Buck's offended expression deepened. He straightened another fraction, as though dignity alone could compensate for the fact that his eyelids were beginning to droop.
“I was resting.”
Chimney closed the distance between them, his boots ringing sharp and judicial against the concrete as he approached. He had the expression of a man who had spent the entire taxi ride silently reconsidering every life choice that had led him to this exact moment. His eyes moved between Buck and Hen, taking in their flushed faces, unsteady postures and the unmistakable smell of tequila clinging to both of them.
“You're both banned from drinking.”
Buck's jaw dropped, his mouth forming a slack, insulted circle that leaked pale winter air. He stared at Chimney in genuine disbelief, as though the firefighter had just announced that gravity had been cancelled. His eyebrows climbed towards his hairline.
“You can't ban me.”
“I just did.”
Buck shook his head slowly.
Then faster.
“No.”
Chimney folded his arms across his chest.
Buck pointed at him, though his finger landed several inches to the side before he corrected course.
“That's not how friendship works.”
“It's how common sense works.”
Buck's mouth fell open again.
He looked personally betrayed.
Hen reached out, patting Buck heavily on the shoulder with a clumsy, dead-weight thud that nearly sent him careening into the side mirror of the cab. Buck stumbled sideways, arms briefly flailing before he caught himself against the taxi, blinking at it as though the vehicle had personally shoved him.
“Don't listen to him.”
Chimney shifted his glare to her.
“You're just as drunk.”
Hen paused.
She looked down at herself. Then back at Chimney. “No.” Her answer came with such absolute confidence that Chimney's expression flattened.
Hen nodded once, apparently considering the matter settled, before leaning back against the taxi again for support.
Buck, meanwhile, looked between them with the solemn concentration of someone attempting to mediate a serious diplomatic dispute. “I think she's right.”
Chimney closed his eyes briefly. “Of course you do.”
Buck nodded. Hen nodded too. Neither of them appeared to understand why Chimney looked so exhausted.
Hen smiled, entirely unbothered by the accusation, her eyelids drooping halfway down before she forced them back open with a visible, sluggish effort. "I know."
Buck threw a heavy, uncoordinated arm around her shoulders, his center of gravity instantly abandoning him. He stumbled sideways, dragging Hen down with him in a clumsy cascade of tangled limbs before catching himself with a loud, hollow thud against the station's exterior brick wall.
"Come on," Buck muttered, grinning idiotically at a stray piece of gravel. "Let's go see our friends."
Chimney lunged forward, catching Buck squarely by the elbow just before he could face-plant directly into the steel frame of the station door. "God help me."
Getting them up the metal stairwell turned into a grueling, multi-act physical comedy of errors. Buck got utterly waylaid by the communal vending machine on the landing, standing frozen in front of the reinforced glass for three full minutes. His pupils were blown wide, staring intensely at a row of salt-and-vinegar crisps with the concentrated, glazed intensity of a man trying to decode ancient launch codes.
Hen stopped dead halfway up the steps, her boots rooted to the ridged metal grate. She had completely lost the narrative thread of existence. The harsh, flickering fluorescent lights overhead washed her skin a pale, ghostly green as she gripped the rusted handrail with white-knuckled desperation, staring at Chimney with terrifying, unblinking focus.
When Chimney asked her what she was doing, she weighed the question for five whole seconds—her brain grinding through gears swimming in liquor—before announcing to the stairwell with absolute conviction, "I like stairs."
By the time they finally dragged themselves across the threshold of the upstairs kitchen, Chimney felt like he had aged four decades in twenty minutes.
Buck collapsed into a chair with an explosive, theatrical sigh that rattled the wooden table and sent a pen rolling across the laminate. Hen crumpled into the seat beside him an instant later, the wooden chair legs scraping loudly and violently against the linoleum.
Chimney didn't say a word. He walked stiffly to the sink, filled two heavy glass tumblers with cold tap water, and slammed them down with a sharp clack in front of both of them.
Buck stared down at the glass of water as though it had just insulted his lineage and challenged him to a duel. "What's that?"
"Water."
"Why?"
"Because you're drunk."
Buck looked personally, deeply aggrieved, squaring his slumped shoulders with a pathetic display of dignity. "I'm not drunk."
"You can barely sit upright."
"I'm sitting."
"Barely."
Hen picked up her glass with both shaking hands, cradling it like a fragile, sacred artifact in an earthquake. "I think he's doing great."
Chimney leveled a deadpan, murderous stare at her. "You nearly walked into the wall."
"The wall was in my way."
"The wall has been there all day."
Hen offered a slow, defensive shrug that nearly tipped her chair over backward. "Still rude."
Buck nodded solemnly, his head bobbing with dangerous, pendular momentum. "Very rude."
Chimney pointed a finger back and forth between them like a loaded weapon. "Drink your water."
Buck picked up the glass, his fingers trembling so violently the water sloshed over the rim. He brought the edge to his lips, took one microscopic, suspicious sip, and immediately grimaced as if his tongue had been set on fire by battery acid. "I don't like it."
"It's water."
"I know."
Beside him, Hen finally gave in, her eyelids fluttering shut as she tipped her head back with a soft, helpless hiss of surrender, taking a long, uncoordinated, spilling swallow from her own glass. A cold drop of water slipped past the corner of her trembling lip, tracing a wet, dark line down the front of her collar before soaking quietly into the cotton of her shirt.
Buck watched her for a second, his wide, glassy blue eyes tracking the trajectory of the droplet with absolute, hypnotic fascination before the thought dissolved completely, leaving him adrift in a vast, terrifying void. He turned his head—his neck stiff, unyielding, and operating on a deliberate, three-second delay—and began to scan the sterile perimeter of the station kitchen. It was too bright, too quiet, too agonizingly empty. His lower lip pushed out in a pathetic, involuntary wobble, the tragic, crumpled expression of a puppy left entirely alone by the front door while the rest of the world moved on without him.
"Where's Eddie?" The question dropped into the heavy air like a stone down a dry well.
Hen paused, her glass hovering halfway back to the scarred wooden tabletop, her alcohol-soaked brain grinding through the syllables like a rusty engine trying to turn over in sub-zero weather.
Chimney answered before she could manage it, his voice tight, flat, and dripping with the bone-deep exhaustion of a man who knew he was losing a war of attrition against two staggering forces of nature. "Out."
Buck’s brow knotted instantly, a web of deep, miserable lines pulling across his flushed forehead as the word echoed dully inside his skull. "With who?"
"Bobby."
"Where?"
"The store."
Buck’s broad shoulders slumped, his entire posture caving inward as a wave of profound, devastating abandonment washed over him. The world was vast, cold, and inexplicably full of grocery aisles he wasn't currently allowed to inhabit. "Why?"
"Because they needed groceries."
"What groceries?"
Chimney stared at him across the table, dead-eyed and unblinking, feeling his last remaining brain cells evaporating one by one into the fluorescent-lit air. He could feel a vein throbbing steadily in his temple. "The kind people buy at a grocery store, Buck."
"What kind?"
"Groceries, Buck."
Buck sat in the crushing silence, his mind visibly buckling under the terrifying, bottomless complexity of the question. He stared down at his thumb, tracing the condensation on the side of his water glass in lazy, obsessive circles, trying to build a conceptual bridge across a chasm of logic he couldn't quite see.
"Oh."
He picked up the glass with clumsy, trembling fingers, took another tiny sip of the tap water as if it might cure his existential despair, and set it back down with a dull, hollow clank against the wood.
Silence settled over the kitchen—a thick, suffocating vacuum of heavy breathing, the hum of the refrigerator, and the crushing weight of empty space.
It lasted for approximately ten agonizing seconds.Then Buck jerked upright, his gaze snapping back to the center of the room with the wide-eyed, frantic panic of someone realizing they’ve lost their anchor in the middle of a storm. "Where's Eddie?"
Hen started laughing, a high, bubbling, uncontrolled sound that burst violently out of her chest, rattling her shoulders and sending fresh ripples of water spilling over the rim of her glass.
Chimney shot her a look of pure, unadulterated venom before turning his heavy gaze back to Buck, his patience wearing as thin as tracing paper. "Still at the store," he told him, enunciating every single word with the exaggerated, careful precision of a hostage negotiator speaking to someone on a ledge.
"Oh."
Buck nodded, utterly satisfied for all of three seconds. Then his chin dropped to his chest, his eyes glazing over as he stared down at his own knuckles, turning his hands over and over like foreign objects he didn't quite recognize.
"Eddie's nice."
Hen smiled, her eyelids drooping halfway down her face before she forced them back open with visible effort. "He is."
"Really nice."
"He is." hen agreed again
"And funny."
"Very funny," Hen agreed, her head bobbing along with a heavy, dangerous pendulum swing that threatened to pitch her sideways out of her chair.
Buck nodded furiously, warming to the subject, a goofy, lovesick, utterly defenseless grin spreading across his flushed cheeks.
Then, abruptly, his expression hitched. A profound, hazy reverence settled over his features, his gaze turning inward as his brain stalled out entirely on a single, agonizingly detailed mental image.
He stared across the empty space of the kitchen, seeing the man who occupied an entirely disproportionate amount of space in his daily life. He thought about the exact, infuriating geometry of him. He thought about that one stubborn, soft dark piece of hair that always, without fail, broke free from the gel and fell right across his forehead, right between his eyebrows, defying gravity and hairspray alike. Buck’s hand twitched on the table, his fingers curling into a fist as a sudden, sharp ache rippled through his chest. He knew the exact angle of it. He had spent an unreasonable amount of hours across kitchen tables, truck cabs, and hospital waiting rooms staring right at it.
And then there was his face. Eddie had a face built for architectural precision, and Buck had spent a criminal amount of hours studying every millimeter of it. He knew the exact, perfect facial expression Eddie pulled in every situation—the slight, wry tilt of his chin when someone was being an idiot, the microscopic softening of the corners of his dark eyes when he looked at people he cared about, the deadpan, unimpressed blink that could dismantle a crisis faster than a firehose. Buck’s chest ached with a heavy, weeping, alcohol-soaked intensity, warring violently with the frantic, paranoid survival instinct whispering in the back of his tequila-soaked brain: Shut up. Don't look like an idiot.
"And pretty," Buck murmured, the word slipping past his lips like a secret he hadn't realized he was pushing out into the open air.
Hen glanced sideways, her eyes drifting slowly over to Chimney to see if he was going to handle it or if she was going to have to watch the explosion.
Chimney pressed his lips together so hard they turned stark white, his jaw clenching until the muscle jumped beneath his skin.
Buck didn't notice the sudden, heavy pivot in the room's atmosphere. He was entirely consumed by the blinding, divine truth of the universe, leaning forward over the table like a man sharing state secrets he had no business keeping. "Eddie is objectively pretty," he declared, nodding with a solemn, courtroom-ready gravity that defied all laws of biology and drunkenness. A dangerous hint of proprietary fondness leaked into his tone. "He has... that piece. You know. The hair. It just... it does what it wants."
Hen blinked, her eyebrows ticking upward a fraction of an inch, chalking it up to Buck's standard, chaotic brand of over-the-top affection for his best friend. She nodded right along with him, her chin nearly hitting the wood. "Objectively."
"And his face does things. Good things. You don't even know."
Abort, a distant, panicked corner of Buck's brain screamed. You're sounding weird. Dial it back.
"Buck," Chimney warned, a low, dangerous rumble rising from the bottom of his lungs, the sound of a man standing at the edge of a very steep cliff and seeing someone reach out to shove him. "You're getting weird."
"I'm not weird," Buck protested, his voice pitching upward into an indignant, wounded squeak. "He has nice eyes."
"Buck."
"What?"
"Drink your water."
Buck blinked slowly, his brow furrowing as he tried to bridge the gap between the instruction and his physical reality. He looked down at his own hands, empty and resting flat on the table, completely forgetting he had just put the glass down. "I am."
"You're holding it."
Buck blinked again, letting the information sink at half-speed through layers of tequila, a wave of intense relief washing over him that Chimney had completely missed how dangerously close he just sailed to the sun. "Oh."
He reached out blindly, his fingers fumbling against the smoth glass before wrapping around it, and took another sip. Then he whipped his head up, pointing a wobbly, accusing finger straight at Chimney’s nose to re-establish dominance. "You keep distracting me."
"From what?"
"Eddie."
Chimney let out a long, shuddering sigh, dragging both palms down his face and pulling his skin downward until his eyes crossed, completely oblivious to the real reason Buck was sweating bullets. "No one is distracting you from Eddie, Buck."
"Good." Buck puts the glass down with exaggerated, painstaking care, his fingers hovering over the rim for three extra seconds to ensure it hasn't betrayed him. "I love Eddie."
Hen goes entirely quiet. The laughter drains out of her posture like water from a punctured canteen, her shoulders freezing mid-sag, her spine going board-straight as the air leaves her lungs in a tiny, silent hitch.
Chimney stops moving altogether. He looks at him—really looks at him—his brain violently reversing over the last five minutes of conversation, trying to recalculate the math on a trajectory that has suddenly turned straight up into a brick wall. A cold, prickling sensation crawls up the back of his neck, prickling under his collar.
"Wait," Chimney finally chokes out, his voice cracking slightly on the syllable as he forces his arms to uncross, letting his hands drop uselessly to his sides. "Say that again. Slowly. Without the tequila talking."
"I didn't say it was the tequila," Buck mutters, his tongue feeling thick and unruly against the roof of his mouth. He shifts his weight in the chair, the wooden legs screeching a high, protesting groan against the linoleum beneath him. He stares up at the fluorescent grid on the ceiling as if reading the teleprompter of his own soul. "The tequila just made it... louder."
"Louder is an understatement, Evan," Hen says, her voice dropping an octave as she tries to anchor him. "That wasn't louder. That was a broadcast to the entire western seaboard."
Buck blinks slowly, his heavy eyelids fluttering as he tries to process the geometry of her sentence. "He's my best friend."
Hen nods slowly, her movements stiff, trying to safely navigate the sudden, terrifying shift in barometric pressure within the room. "He is, Buck. We know that. You tell us that every single Tuesday."
"And he's..." Buck pauses. His eyebrows draw together into a tight, miserable knot of profound concentration as he searches for the right word through the cluttered, alcohol-fogged filing cabinet of his brain, his fingers tracing the edge of the empty glass. "Eddie."
Hen offers a small, tight, deeply strained smile, her eyes darting nervously toward Chimney across the table. "That's not really an explanation, Buck. That's just his name."
"It explains everything," Buck insists, his voice rising in sudden, indignant defense. He looks at her as though she should understand the divine, geometric truth of it. "I don't know. He's just... Eddie."
Hen reaches over across the scarred wood of the table, her hand landing with a heavy, grounding thud to pat his arm. "You're very drunk."
"I know."
"And you're rambling."
"I know."
"Maybe don't make any major life decisions right now, okay? Let's get some water down you, maybe a piece of dry toast, and we can revisit the structural integrity of your emotional vocabulary tomorrow morning when the sun is up."
Buck frowns, his lower lip pushing out in a stubborn, affronted pout as he glares viciously at the salt shaker sitting near the center of the table. "I already made one."
Chimney’s gaze snaps back up, his eyes narrowing sharply, a sudden, heavy dread settling like a lead weight in his stomach. "What decision?" he demands, stepping forward until he's leaning over the back of an empty chair. "Buck. What decision did you make?"
Buck answers immediately, zero hesitation, his voice flat, absolute, and utterly devoid of self-preservation. "I love him."
The kitchen goes instantly, violently quiet. The low, rhythmic hum of the refrigerator feels deafening, vibrating right through the soles of their shoes and up into their bones.
"You mean as a friend," Chimney prompts immediately, his voice pitching up into a desperate, pleading octave that sounds halfway to a squeak. "Right? As a brotherly, ride-or-die, firefighter-bond kind of thing. Like how you love me. Or how you love Hen."
Even Hen stops smiling for a moment, her breath catching in her throat as her hand stays frozen on Buck's sleeve. She watches Buck's face carefully, waiting for him to take the escape hatch Chimney just so generously propped open.
Buck looks between them, his expression shockingly open, entirely unguarded in a way Chimney isn't used to seeing. The alcohol has softened all the places where Buck usually hides, burning off the panic and leaving only the raw, weeping core beneath. He doesn't take the hatch.
"No," Buck whispers, the word slipping out of him like a secret he's kept locked in his chest for years. "Not like that. I think I loved him before I knew I loved him."
Hen's expression softens, her eyes turning heavy with a sudden, aching realization as the puzzle pieces click together with a sickening, undeniable clarity. "Buck..."
"He's the person I want to tell everything to," Buck continues, his voice dropping lower, pulling them both into the intimate, suffocating orbit of his confession. "When something happens, I look for him in a crowded room first. When something's funny, I wanna turn around and tell him before anyone else even gets the joke. When something's bad, when the world is actually ending, I wanna call him."
He rubs his eyes with both hands, his palms dragging rough and hard over his flushed skin, pressing deep into his eye sockets as if he could physically push the words back inside where they belong. "And when I wake up in the middle of the night, before I even remember what day it is, I wanna know where he is. I wanna know he's breathing."
Hen watches him carefully, her voice dropping into a quiet, protective register, heavy with profound pity. "That's pretty serious, buddy."
"I know," Buck breathes, his hands falling away from his face to reveal a look of utter, devastating devotion touching the corners of his mouth. "I think he's my person, Hen. I think he's been my person for a really long time, and I was just too stupid to read the manual."
Chimney's expression softens despite himself, the sudden spike of panic in his chest giving way to a strange, heavy ache that settles right behind his ribs. He's heard Buck talk about Eddie before. Everyone has. Usually it is disguised as a joke, buried beneath some ridiculous metaphor or delivered with the same careless enthusiasm Buck gives to everything he loves—from stray dogs to new power tools.
“Eddie bought this blender, Chim, it’s basically an engineering marvel—”
“Eddie said my posture looks like a question mark, can you believe him?”
“Eddie’s taking Christopher to the zoo, I’m gonna go carry the bag of peanuts.”
Always Eddie. Everywhere Eddie.
"Buck," Chimney says gently, breaking the suffocating vacuum of the room, his tone losing its frantic edge and settling into something older and kinder, "maybe you should tell him all that when you're sober."
Buck frowns, his brow furrowing deeply, his defensive walls flickering back to life just enough to show his stubborn streak. "Why?"
"So you know you mean it. So he knows you mean it."
"I always mean it."
"I know you do, buddy, but alcohol makes everything sound like a country song. You want to look him in the eye when you drop a bomb like that."
"I do mean it," Buck repeats, his voice cracking slightly on the vowels. He shifts restlessly in his seat, his gaze darting toward the swing doors that lead to the locker rooms and the downstairs bay. "Where is he anyway?"
"Still out," Hen reminds him gently, watching him with hawk-like vigilance, tracking every micro-expression. "He's wrapping up his shift tasks, Buck. You know how he is about the logbooks."
"I miss him."
"You saw him this morning," Chimney points out, leaning his weight against the stainless-steel counter again, crossing his arms more loosely this time.
"That was too long ago."
"It's been four hours, Buck. Four."
"Exactly. An eternity."
Hen lets out a sudden, involuntary huff of breath that sounds dangerously close to a laugh, though her eyes remain entirely sympathetic.
Buck drops his forehead onto the scarred laminate table with a quiet, hollow thud, his shoulders caving completely under the weight of his own longing. "I want Eddie."
Hen reaches over, her hand rubbing soothing circles into his back, feeling the tension locked in his spine. "I know, sweetie."
"I really want Eddie."
"I know."
Buck lifts his head, his wide blue eyes blinking through the haze of tequila with sudden, inspired determination. "I want his hoodie."
Chimney immediately shakes his head, crossing his arms tighter once more. "No."
Buck blinks at him, entirely offended by the veto, his eyebrows shooting up toward his hairline. "No?"
"No. You're not going downstairs to scavenge through his locker like a raccoon at three in the morning."
"But I want Eddie's hoodie."
"I heard you the first time, and my answer is still a hard, unmoving negative."
"Then you get it for me."
"Absolutely not. I value my life and our working relationship."
Buck stares at him, his expression hardening into a stubborn glare that could melt steel. "Why?"
"Because you're drunk, and if you go down there wearing his clothes smelling like tequila and existential dread, he is going to ask questions you aren't equipped to answer at three-fifteen a.m."
"I know where it is. Top shelf, right next to the spare boots."
"That isn't the problem, Buck!"
"I can walk perfectly fine."
"You nearly fell sideways getting out of the chair five minutes ago."
"The chair moved," Buck insists, pointing an accusing finger at the innocent piece of furniture. "It shifted its weight."
Hen nods solemnly, playing along with the logic of a sleep-deprived toddler with a straight face. "It did. I saw it shift."
Chimney shoots her an incredulous look, his mouth dropping open. "The chair did not move, Hen! It is bolted to the floor of our reality!"
"It looked like it moved from my angle," Buck adds, pointing a wobbly, accusatory finger straight at Hen for backup.
"Exactly," Hen agrees, nodding sagely.
Chimney looks between the two of them, feeling a migraine building right behind his eyes with the force of a freight train. "You are both impossible. Absolutely impossible. I am surrounded by lunatics."
Buck folds his arms across his chest, sinking lower into his seat like a petulant child denied candy. "But I need his hoodie."
"Why? You have a jacket. You have three jackets in your locker."
Buck looks at him as though the answer should be written in giant neon letters across the kitchen ceiling. "Because it smells like him, Chim. Have you ever hugged a jacket? No. You hug people. But I can't hug him right now because he's doing logbooks, so the hoodie is legislative proxy."
Hen's expression immediately melts, all her professional detachment dissolving into fond, helpless exasperation. "Oh," she breathes, her heart breaking just a little bit for the disaster sitting across from her.
She turns her head toward Chimney, her eyes wide with appeal, dropping her voice to a whisper. "He needs the hoodie, Chim."
"He does not need the hoodie."
"He absolutely needs the hoodie. Look at him! He's wilting like a neglected houseplant."
"Why should I enable this?"
Hen leans closer across the table, lowering her voice like she's sharing state secrets of national importance. "Because he's in love, and if we don't give him the damn fleece, he might actually climb down the laundry chute."
Buck nods furiously, pointing at her with a lopsided, triumphant grin. "Exactly. The laundry chute is a viable option."
Chimney lets out a long, shuddering sigh that rattles the air in his lungs, dragging a hand down his face as if he could physically wipe the exhaustion away. "Fine. Whatever. You can have it when Eddie gets back upstairs."
"But I want it now."
"No."
Buck's lower lip pushes out into a tragic, trembling pout that has historically weaponized every woman over forty within a three-mile radius.
Hen notices instantly, her eyes widening as she catches the shift in his expression. "Oh, no. Look at him. He's doing the face."
"What face?" Chimney asks, tensing up defensively, bracing himself for impact.
"The face, Chim. The big blue eyes. The tragic puppy dog routine."
"There is no face. I am a serious firefighter."
Buck looks between them, his eyebrows knitting together in deeply offended denial. "I'm not doing a face. This is just my face. This is how my face is constructed."
"You're absolutely doing a face," Hen tells him, biting the inside of her cheek so hard to keep from laughing out loud that she almost tastes copper. "I can see the gears turning in your head. You're weaponizing your bone structure."
"I am not."
"You are."
Buck folds his arms tighter, his chin digging into his chest, looking away in a huff. "I want Eddie's hoodie."
Chimney shakes his head firmly, staring down stubbornly at the linoleum. "No, Buck."
Buck turns his head with slow, agonizing, deliberate precision—every joint in his neck popping softly in the quiet kitchen—away from Chimney's line of fire, shifting his heavy, broad shoulders until his bloodshot gaze lands entirely on Ravi. The rookie has been sitting as still as possible at the far, shadowed end of the laminate table, desperately trying to dissolve into the wood paneling while nursing a lukewarm cup of chamomile tea like it's a religious artifact or a bulletproof vest.
"Ravi."
The name hangs in the air, heavy and loaded. Ravi blinks once, twice, slowly lowering his mug an inch as the silence stretches for a beat too long. He hazards a cautious, fearful glance across the scarred, graffiti-etched wood, weighing his odds of survival.
"Yeah, Buck?"
"Get me Eddie's hoodie."
Before Ravi can even draw enough breath to form a syllable of denial, Chimney's hand shoots out across the table like a striking viper, pointing a rigid, trembling, accusing finger straight into Buck's face. "Don't you dare, young man! Do not engage with the hostage taker! You are looking at a localized hazardous waste zone of pure, unadulterated nonsense!"
Ravi’s head whips back and forth between them like he’s trapped ringside at a tennis match—caught between Buck’s wide, glowing, dangerously hopeful blue eyes, Hen’s encouraging, conspiratorial grin, and Chimney’s vein-throbbing, apocalyptic panic. He is trapped firmly in the crossfire of 118 station politics, and he knows he's about to be court-martialed either way.
"Wait," Ravi stammers, blinking rapidly through his glasses, his voice cracking slightly. "Which... which hoodie?"
"The grey one," Buck says instantly, his voice dropping into a tone of absolute, authoritative, connoisseur-level expertise.
"The really soft one," Hen adds helpfully, leaning forward with her elbows planted hard on the table, completely abandoning all neutrality. "The one he bought in Austin when they went to visit his parents two winters ago."
"The one with the deep front pockets," Buck continues, nodding vigorously, his hair falling into his eyes.
"The one he wears all the time when he's pretending he isn't freezing his ass off on night calls," Hen finishes with a sage, approving nod.
Ravi turns his head slowly toward Chimney, seeking sanctuary, legality, and the voice of adult reason.
Chimney closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose so hard his knuckles turn white as a groan rumbles deep, dark, and despairing in his chest. "Do not encourage them, Ravi. If you bring that sweatshirt up these stairs, you are officially an accessory to whatever psychological trainwreck is currently careening off the tracks in real time."
Ravi looks back down at Buck, who has completely abandoned every remaining shred of his dignity, staring at him with enormous, glistening, impossibly hopeful eyes—the exact spiritual frequency of a golden retriever that has just been told it's a very good boy.
Ravi’s resolve crumbles like cheap drywall under a sledgehammer. He lets out a defeated, whistling sigh that smells faintly of chamomile.
"I'll get it," Ravi murmurs, slowly pushing his chair back.
Hen throws both hands triumphantly into the air, a bright, barking laugh breaking the tension of the room. "Yes!"
Buck breaks into a blinding, triumphant grin that crinkles the corners of his eyes and lights up his entire face. "Yes!"
Chimney spins on his heel, glaring daggers at the younger firefighter. "You're making this worse, Ravi! You are actively pouring jet fuel on an oil fire!"
"I know," Ravi admits entirely without remorse, already backing away toward the exit like a man escaping a sinking ship. "Self-preservation, Chim. Buck looks like he might actually weep if I say no, and I don't want that kind of spiritual karma on my conscience."
Buck points a wobbly, triumphant finger at Ravi’s retreating back. "Ravi's my favourite."
Hen snorts, rolling her eyes as she crosses her arms tightly over her chest. "Excuse me? Who drove you home from the bar last month when you tried to fight a parking meter? Who covered your shift reports when you had food poisoning?"
Buck turns his head, his expression shifting seamlessly into one of mild, reasonable, judicial negotiation. "You're my second favourite."
Hen pauses, her amusement instantly winning out as she weighs the brutal metrics of the station hierarchy. She nods slowly, a wicked, knowing smirk playing on the corners of her lips. "I'll accept it. Second place behind the kid fetching illegal contraband from the locker room is entirely respectable."
Chimney drops his hands to his sides, shaking his head with a profound, bone-deep disbelief. "Unbelievable. You've all lost your collective minds. This is mass hysteria. I'm working with a psychiatric ward."
Ravi slips past the heavy swing doors and disappears down the stairwell into the cool, dark, echoing silence of the apparatus bay.
Buck watches the doors swing shut behind him with the absolute satisfaction of a conquering medieval king. Then he turns his head slowly back toward Chimney, flashing a small, sickeningly smug, entirely unearned smile.
"I won."
Chimney scoffs, crossing his arms tighter over his chest as he glares at the wall. "You didn't win anything, Buck. You manipulated a rookie through sheer psychological warfare."
"I got my hoodie."
"Ravi is getting your hoodie. You are sitting on your ass doing zero manual labor."
"Same thing."
"It is categorically, legally, and morally not the same thing."
Hen scoots her chair closer across the linoleum, leaning her head affectionately against Buck's solid, warm shoulder. "Let him have this, Chim. Honestly? I think he won, buddy."
Buck pats her hand gently where it rests on his arm, glowing with absolute, unearned validation. "Thank you, Hen. You're a true friend. A pillar of the community."
"You're welcome, sweetie."
Buck goes quiet for a long, heavy, suffocating moment. The ambient, chaotic noise of the firehouse seems to drift away around them like smoke—the low hum of the vending machines downstairs, the distant, mournful whistle of the wind against the massive garage doors, and the rhythmic, comforting rattle of the overhead air-conditioning vent. The rest of the world outside the kitchen walls suddenly feels a million miles away.
Then, softly, brokenly, into the quiet, he whispers, "I miss Eddie."
Hen nods sympathetically, her thumb lightly, soothingly stroking his sleeve. "I know, Buck."
"I really miss him."
"I know."
"He's been gone forever."
Chimney, leaning back against the cold stainless-steel counter, lets out a dry, profoundly exasperated huff. "He's been gone twenty minutes, Buck. Exactly twenty minutes by that glowing red LED clock you claim gives you ocular migraines."
Buck slowly rotates his head, fixing Chimney with a flat, glassy, utterly unwavering stare. "Exactly."
Hen smiles softly, reaching up to pat his flushed cheek with platonic, fiercely protective sisterly fondness. "You're very in love, you know that?"
Buck's mouth curves slowly into a dopey, unfiltered, lovesick smile that reaches all the way to the crinkles by his eyes. "Yeah. Yeah, I am."
He goes quiet again, staring down blankly at the scarred laminate surface of the table before his eyebrows knit together in sudden, intense concentration. He tilts his head, looking over at Hen with wide, curious eyes.
"Do you think he knows?"
Hen freezes. She slowly, cautiously turns her head to stare at him, her eyes widening behind her frames. "Buck."
"What?"
"You've been talking about him out loud to the room for, like, forty minutes straight. You practically wrote a manifesto and submitted it for peer review."
"That's not what I asked."
Hen squints at him, her expression an incredible mix of fond disbelief, secondhand embarrassment, and sheer, unadulterated terror. "Do I think Eddie knows you're desperately, catastrophically in love with him?"
"Yeah."
"Yes, Buck. I think if a completely deaf person walked into this kitchen right now, they would read your aura, smell the yearning, and know you're in love with him."
Buck smiles, looking entirely, blissfully pleased with himself. "Good."
Then, without missing a single beat, without a single microsecond of hesitation, he shifts his gaze toward the swing doors leading to the stairs, his voice dropping into a tone of terrifying, absolute, prophetic certainty.
"I'm gonna marry him."
Hen's eyes instantly double in size, a sharp, choked gasp escaping her throat. "Oh—yes!"
Chimney nearly chokes on his own saliva, his head snapping up so fast he violently gives himself whiplash, clutching his neck. "No! Absolutely not! You cannot propose marriage at three-twenty in the morning in a station kitchen while you're half-blind on cheap tequila!"
Buck slowly rotates his head back to glare at Chimney, his expression shifting into one of deep, wounded, tragic personal offense. "Why not?"
"Because you're drunk!" Chimney shouts, throwing both hands up in utter despair at the heavens. "That is the primary, foundational reason why not!"
Hen shakes her head calmly, giving Buck's shoulder another reassuring pat. "That's not a legally binding reason, Chim. People elope in Vegas every day under much worse circumstances."
"It absolutely is a reason!" Chimney sputters, pacing a tight, angry circle by the industrial sink. "He's hallucinating domestic bliss in real time!"
Buck looks back down at his hands, folding them together on the table, his voice dropping into a quiet, devastatingly, heartbreakingly sincere register. "I love him."
Hen rests her head heavier against his shoulder, her voice softening into a murmur. "I know, honey."
"I really love him."
"I know."
"And he's my boyfriend."
Hen suppresses a massive, barking grin, her eyes dancing with wicked amusement. "Your very pretty, very dense boyfriend."
Buck nods happily, entirely missing the critical qualifier. "Yeah."
Chimney sighs, aggressively rubbing his temples as a full-blown migraine blooms behind his eyes. "Buck, listen to me very carefully. Eddie is not your boyfriend. You two are just... whatever bizarre, codependent, chaotic vortex you are."
Buck slowly turns his head again, his eyelids drooping slightly, giving Chimney a look of supreme, pitying condescension.
"Not with that attitude."
Hen bursts into an explosive, loud laugh, slapping the scarred wooden table hard with her palm.
Buck looks exceedingly, smugly pleased with himself, turning his gaze back to Hen for validation. "See?"
"See what?" Chimney asks, his voice cracking with utter defeat and exhaustion.
"He understands."
"Who understands?"
"Eddie."
"Eddie isn't even in the room!"
Buck tilts his head, staring blankly toward the dark stairs as if he can see right through the concrete floor and solid steel. "He'll be back soon. He always comes back."
Chimney shakes his head slowly, walking over to the coffee maker and staring blankly into the empty glass carafe as if contemplating throwing himself headfirst into it. "You are completely, utterly, irredeemably gone."
Buck smiles softly into the dark, quiet, glowing space of the kitchen, his broad shoulders finally relaxing completely against the back of the chair.
"I know," he whispers, a profound, heavy peace settling over him. "And I wouldn't have it any other way."
A few minutes later, the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs caught Buck's attention. His head lifted almost immediately, although he had to blink a couple of times before his eyes properly focused on the doorway. Ravi appeared at the top of the stairs, holding the familiar grey hoodie in one hand, and the moment Buck recognised it, his entire face brightened with such sudden excitement that Hen followed his gaze to see what had caught his attention. "There!" Buck exclaimed, pointing towards the hoodie with an unsteady finger, his voice carrying the same delighted urgency someone might have used if Ravi had just returned with something far more important than a piece of clothing.
Ravi laughed quietly as he crossed the room and held the hoodie out to him. "Yeah, I found it." Buck reached for it immediately, leaning forward so quickly that he nearly tipped himself off the edge of the sofa before catching his balance against the cushions. He giggled at his own clumsiness, seemingly finding the whole thing much funnier than anyone else did, before finally getting both hands around the soft grey fabric. "Thank you," he said, dragging the hoodie against his chest as though he had been waiting for its return all night.
He held it there for a moment, rubbing his fingers slowly over the material before bringing the collar up towards his face. Buck pressed his nose into the fabric and took a long, deep breath, his eyes falling closed as the familiar scent reached him. There was the clean smell of laundry detergent, a faint trace of Eddie's aftershave and something warmer underneath it that Buck could never quite identify but would have recognised anywhere. His shoulders relaxed almost instantly, his grip loosening as he breathed in again, and a soft, satisfied sound escaped him before he murmured, "Oh."
Hen watched him with an increasingly fond smile, her own drunkenness making her much less inclined to hide how amused she was by him. "Does it smell like him?" she asked, leaning closer as though this was an extremely important question that required confirmation. Buck nodded without lifting his face from the hoodie, his nose still buried against the collar. "Yeah," he answered, drawing the word out slightly as another smile spread across his face. "It smells exactly like him." Hen's expression softened immediately, and she gave a quiet, tipsy sigh. "Aww."
Across the room, Chimney looked between them with the tired expression of someone who already knew he was going to regret getting involved. "You're encouraging this?" he asked, staring pointedly at Hen. Hen slowly turned her head towards him, blinking as though the question required considerably more processing than it should have. "He's in love," she said eventually, as if that explained everything. Chimney opened his mouth to argue, but Hen continued before he could get the words out. "It smells like Eddie," she added, her tone carrying the sort of drunken certainty that suggested there was absolutely no further discussion to be had. Chimney stared at her for a second before rubbing his forehead. "That's not an argument." Hen shrugged, looking completely unconcerned. "It is to me."
Buck barely seemed to notice the conversation. He was too busy trying to put the hoodie on, although his alcohol-blurred coordination made the process considerably more difficult than it should have been. He managed to get his arms through the sleeves and pull the body of the hoodie over his shoulders, but when he tugged the hood up, it slipped straight over his face. Buck froze, sitting perfectly still beneath the grey fabric as he apparently tried to work out why the entire room had suddenly disappeared.
"Hen," he called, his voice slightly muffled by the material. Hen turned towards him and immediately started laughing when she realised what had happened. "What?" she managed between giggles. "I can't see," Buck complained, sounding genuinely confused by the situation. Hen wiped at the corner of one eye as she laughed harder. "Buck, you put the hood over your face." There was a brief silence before Buck answered, completely seriously, "I know." Hen shook her head, still laughing. "Then move it." Buck remained motionless beneath the hood. "I can't." "Why not?" she asked, now laughing so hard that she had to brace herself against the sofa. Buck sighed from underneath the fabric. "Because I can't see."
Ravi finally stepped forward before Hen's laughter became completely useless to him. "Okay, buddy, I've got you." He reached out and caught the edge of the hood, carefully pulling it backwards until Buck's face appeared again. Buck blinked several times at the room, his hair sticking up slightly where the hood had caught it, and looked around as though he had just returned from somewhere much farther away than the inside of his own hoodie. "Oh," he said quietly, and Ravi laughed. "There you go." Buck nodded solemnly, as though Ravi had performed an impressive feat of rescue, before looking down at himself.
The hoodie was slightly too big for him, hanging loosely from his shoulders and covering his hands almost completely. Buck seemed to love that immediately. He pulled the sleeves farther down over his fingers and flexed his hands beneath the soft fabric, watching them disappear before curling himself further into the oversized hoodie. His smile returned, slow and sleepy, and when he looked back towards Hen, there was an almost childlike satisfaction in his expression. "Now I have Eddie," he announced.
Chimney rolled his eyes, although there was the faintest hint of a smile threatening the corner of his mouth. "You have Eddie's hoodie." Buck looked at him with complete seriousness, his brow furrowing as though Chimney had just made a statement that required correcting. "Same thing." Hen immediately nodded beside him, apparently willing to support this argument without question. "Basically." Chimney pointed at her, shaking his head. "Stop encouraging him." Hen simply smiled. "No." Buck's grin widened, and he leaned slightly towards her. "She understands me." Hen nodded proudly, her head bobbing a little too enthusiastically because of the alcohol. "I do." Buck's smile became even softer. "You're my favourite." Hen beamed at him. "I know."
Buck settled back into the sofa, pulling his knees closer to his chest while the hoodie swallowed him. He looked warm and comfortable now, surrounded by Eddie's scent and the familiar softness of the fabric, and for several moments he simply sat there with his fingers hidden inside the sleeves. Then his eyes drifted towards the stairs again, his smile fading into something quieter as he stared at the doorway.
"When is he coming back?" he asked.
Ravi glanced towards the staircase before looking back at him. "Soon." Buck nodded slowly, accepting the answer, although there was something hopeful in the way his eyes remained fixed on the stairs. "Okay," he murmured. Hen shifted closer until her arm rested around his shoulders, giving him a gentle squeeze. "We'll wait," she promised, her voice soft and slightly slurred. Buck leaned into her without hesitation, resting his head against her shoulder as a sleepy smile returned to his face. "Okay."
For a while, the room settled into a comfortable quiet. Hen absentmindedly played with the edge of Buck's sleeve while Buck continued rubbing the fabric between his fingers, occasionally lifting the collar towards his face to breathe in Eddie's scent again. Neither of them noticed the footsteps approaching from downstairs, too wrapped up in their own little world to pay attention to anything beyond the hoodie and the promise that Eddie would be back soon.
Chimney noticed first.
His head turned towards the doorway, his expression changing as the footsteps grew louder. Ravi followed his gaze a moment later, straightening slightly when he realised who was approaching. Buck remained completely oblivious, still curled into the corner of the sofa with Eddie's hoodie pulled tightly around him, while Hen leaned comfortably against his side.
Bobby appeared in the doorway carrying two grocery bags, the plastic handles pulled tightly against his fingers and leaving faint red marks across his skin. He paused when he saw the scene in front of him, his eyes moving from Hen, to Buck, to the unmistakably familiar grey hoodie that belonged to Eddie. For a second, he simply stared, taking in the flushed faces, the tipsy smiles and the general atmosphere of barely contained chaos upstairs.
Then Bobby raised an eyebrow, shifting the grocery bags in his hands as he looked around at them. "Why does it sound like a party up here?"
Behind Bobby, another figure appeared in the threshold, and the moment Buck caught sight of him, everything else in the kitchen seemed to disappear. The noise of the station, the low hum of the refrigerator, the quiet conversation between Hen and Chimney, even the faint rustling of grocery bags seemed to fade into the background as Buck's entire attention locked onto the man standing in the doorway.
Eddie.
He had one hand still wrapped tightly around the handle of the grocery bag Bobby had handed him downstairs in the cooler air of the bay, his attention initially fixed on the conversation echoing up the stairwell rather than any particular person. He had been halfway through saying something to Bobby—a casual debrief about the second MVA call—with a faint, tired smile still lingering on his face, the kind that came naturally after a long shift when he was finally back somewhere familiar and surrounded by people he trusted. There was still a trace of the cool night air clinging to his clothes, the sleeves of his station shirt slightly rumpled from the day's work, and his hair had fallen messily across his forehead.
But the words died instantly before they could leave his mouth when his dark eyes found Buck.
There was something almost comical about how quickly Buck's entire expression transformed. Only seconds earlier, he had been curled into the corner of the table, flushed from the tequila and practically swallowed alive by Eddie's grey hoodie, his head slightly bowed and his attention wandering lazily between the people around him. But now his head had snapped up, his blue eyes wide and bright, all sleepy drunkenness replaced by an unmistakable, radiant surge of recognition. It was as though somebody had flipped a switch inside him; suddenly, every ounce of his attention was focused on Eddie, and the sheer happiness written across his face was impossible to miss.
"Eddie!"
Buck's voice came out louder than necessary, ringing off the stainless-steel counters with such immediate, unbridled excitement that everyone in the room instinctively turned toward him. There was no embarrassment in the way he called Eddie's name, no attempt to lower his voice or pretend he wasn't completely delighted to see him. It carried through the kitchen with the same enthusiasm of a child spotting their favourite person after being separated from them for far too long.
Eddie barely had time to react.
The grocery bag had not even made it properly onto the counter before Buck was already shoving himself upright. He pushed off the chair with considerably more confidence than coordination, his long legs wobbling slightly beneath him as his brain tried and failed to calculate basic physics. His balance was clearly somewhere several drinks behind the rest of him, and he had to briefly steady himself against the edge of the table before straightening. Hen instinctively reached a hand out toward him, ready to grab his arm if he started to tip, but Buck had already locked onto his target and apparently had no intention of allowing anything—least of all his own severe intoxication—to stop him.
"Whoa—Buck."
Eddie dropped the grocery bag securely onto the laminate surface and spun around just as Buck stumbled blindly forward. His voice held that familiar mixture of amusement and concern, because Eddie knew Buck well enough to know that the taller man was currently operating under the very dangerous assumption that he was significantly more coordinated than he actually was. Eddie's hands were already coming up before Buck could reach him, instinctively preparing to catch him if necessary.
Buck's first two steps were surprisingly, deceptively steady. Then his right foot caught awkwardly against the toe of his left boot, and his entire frame lurched sideways like a listing ship. His hand shot out, slapping hard against the counter to break his momentum, and for one brief, bewildered second, he simply stood there, blinking down at his own footwear as though deeply offended by their betrayal. He looked genuinely confused, as though the boots had personally decided to sabotage him.
Ravi bit down hard on his knuckles to swallow a laugh.
Hen didn't even bother trying. A drunken laugh escaped her almost immediately, and she leaned slightly against the table as she watched Buck regain his dignity—or what remained of it.
Buck looked up at them, apparently noticing their amusement, and gave them a drunkenly indignant, narrow-eyed glare before aggressively shoving himself away from the counter. His cheeks were already pink from the alcohol, but the expression made him look even more offended, especially when he straightened his shoulders as though determined to prove that he was perfectly capable of walking across a room without assistance.
"I'm fine," he announced to nobody in particular, even though not a single person had asked.
"I can see that," Eddie replied, dry amusement already creeping into his voice as he watched Buck navigate the final stretch of linoleum. His mouth twitched as he fought the urge to laugh, though the warmth in his eyes made it obvious he wasn't remotely judging him.
Buck grinned, his face lighting up from the inside out. The irritation vanished almost immediately, replaced by that same bright excitement now that Eddie was close enough for him to see properly.
Then he kept walking.
Eddie barely had time to open his arms before Buck reached him. Buck practically threw himself forward with zero self-preservation, both arms looping securely around Eddie's neck with enough force that Eddie had to widen his stance to keep them both upright. Eddie's hands immediately flew around Buck's waist, catching him dead-to-rights and pulling him flush against his chest before Buck's unsteady legs could send them both crashing into the floor. The force of the impact made Eddie take half a step backwards, but his grip never loosened, one hand firm at Buck's lower back while the other settled against his side.
The change in Buck was instantaneous and absolute.
All that restless, jittery energy drained right out of him the second Eddie had a hold of him. His shoulders dropped an inch, his whole body melting completely against Eddie's torso, and he instinctively tucked his face into the warm, familiar space between Eddie's neck and shoulder. It was the posture of a man who had finally stopped running a marathon, landing right where he was always supposed to be. The tension that had been sitting in his shoulders seemed to disappear as soon as Eddie's arms closed around him, and Buck's fingers curled loosely into the back of Eddie's shirt as though he needed the physical reassurance that Eddie really was there.
Eddie could feel the intense heat of Buck's flushed skin radiating right through the thin fabric of his shirt. When Buck inhaled a massive, shuddering breath, Eddie felt the soft, trembling sigh that followed right against his pulse point. Buck smelled unmistakably of tequila, but underneath it Eddie could still catch the familiar scent of his own hoodie, laundry detergent and the faint trace of Buck's shampoo. It was oddly comforting, despite the circumstances.
"You're here," Buck murmured into his collar.
There was something so achingly soft, so stripped of all his usual bravado, that Eddie's expression shifted, all lingering irritation evaporating into thin air. Buck sounded almost relieved, as though Eddie's return had been something he had been waiting for rather than simply the end of another shift. Eddie knew Buck had been drinking, knew that alcohol made him more openly affectionate, but there was still something painfully genuine beneath it.
"I'm here," Eddie promised, his voice dropping into a low, grounding murmur. He gave Buck's back a slow, reassuring rub, his palm moving over the fabric of the hoodie in a steady rhythm.
Buck squeezed him tighter, his fingers clenching into the fabric at the small of Eddie's back. He seemed completely, utterly unbothered by the fact that three of their closest coworkers were staring right at them with varying degrees of shock. In Buck's current chemical reality, the rest of the universe ranked somewhere far below the glorious, undeniable fact that Eddie Diaz had finally walked back through that door. Nothing else seemed particularly important anymore.
Eddie smiled, resting his cheek briefly against Buck's messy curls. He could smell the tequila on him now that they were this close, mingling richly with the familiar, lived-in scent of his own grey hoodie and whatever citrus body wash Buck had used that morning. Eddie pulled back just an inch so he could look down at him, his hands remaining firm and unyielding around Buck's waist because he knew better than to trust Buck's balance right now. His gaze moved slowly over Buck's face, checking him almost instinctively for any sign that he was feeling sick or unwell beneath the drunken happiness.
Up close, the evidence of Buck's afternoon escapades was impossible to miss. His cheekbones were high and flushed pink, his bright blue eyes were slightly glassy around the edges, and his damp curls were sticking up in three different directions where the hood had shoved them. The sleeves of Eddie's favorite sweatshirt were pulled entirely past his knuckles, hiding his hands completely like a kid wearing his older brother's clothes. There was something almost absurdly endearing about the sight, especially when Buck looked up at him with such complete trust.
Eddie couldn't help the fond, helpless laugh that slipped out. "You look cute in my hoodie, baby."
Buck's face softened into something ridiculously mushy. He leaned heavily back into Eddie, pressing his cheek against Eddie's shoulder while his arms stayed looped loosely around his neck. The compliment seemed to settle over him like a warm blanket, and his smile became softer, almost shy despite the fact that he was too drunk to hide anything properly.
"I missed you."
Eddie let out a quiet huff of laughter, his palm moving in slow, rhythmic circles across Buck's back. "You literally saw me this morning before shift change, Buck."
Buck lifted his head off Eddie's shoulder. His dark eyebrows drew together instantly, puckering into a deep crease as though Eddie had just proposed that the sky was painted neon green. He looked genuinely baffled by the suggestion that a few hours wasn't a significant amount of time to spend apart.
"That was hours ago."
The sheer, unadulterated sincerity in his voice made Eddie laugh out loud again, shaking his head as his thumb brushed back and forth over the soft cotton of the hoodie. There was no arguing with drunk Buck once he had decided something, and Eddie knew that from experience.
"How much have you actually had to drink today?"
Buck's eyes drifted away from Eddie's face, wandering vaguely toward the coffee maker. He clearly needed a moment to process the timeline. His lips moved silently for a few seconds as he tried to mentally reconstruct the sequence of events, and when his gaze finally snapped back to Eddie, it was with a small, deeply pleased, unapologetic smile. He looked as though he had successfully completed a complicated mathematical equation.
"Enough."
Eddie stared down at him, his eyebrows shooting up. "That doesn't tell me a single useful metric, Evan."
Buck just offered a lazy, frictionless shoulder shrug, looking entirely satisfied with his evasion. Then his drifting attention snapped toward Hen, who was still lounging comfortably on the bench seat with one leg tucked beneath her and a glass loosely balanced between her fingers. Her cheeks were almost as flushed as Buck's, and there was a relaxed looseness to her posture that told Eddie she wasn't exactly sober enough to lecture anyone.
"I had Hen."
Hen immediately raised her hand in a casual salute, her grin wide. "We had each other, for the record."
Eddie slowly shifted his gaze over to her.
The look on his face landed somewhere directly between profound amusement and exhausted disbelief as he took in Hen's pink cheeks and equally glazed expression. It suddenly made considerably more sense why nobody had intervened when Buck started drinking tequila.
"I can see that."
Hen just beamed.
Buck, meanwhile, had apparently decided that Eddie's eyes had wandered away from him for entirely too long. He gave a gentle, insistent tug at the back of Eddie's shirt until Eddie was forced to look right back down at his face. The tiny movement was almost needy, though there was nothing unpleasant about it; Buck simply wanted Eddie's attention and saw no reason why he shouldn't have it.
"You're so pretty."
The words were dropped out into the quiet kitchen with such simple, brutal earnestness that Eddie's smile softened around the edges, turning something in his chest completely to liquid. There was no teasing behind it, no drunken attempt to flirt for a reaction. Buck simply looked at him and apparently saw the most beautiful person he'd ever known.
"Thank you."
Buck studied him for another heartbeat, his gaze swimming with pure, unfiltered adoration. Then a lightbulb seemed to flicker on behind his eyes as he smiled like he had just remembered a Nobel Prize-winning fact.
"My boyfriend is pretty."
The kitchen fell dead silent.
It was the kind of heavy, absolute stillness that stretched far beyond its actual seconds, the ambient hum of the refrigerator suddenly sounding deafeningly loud. Even the small clink of something shifting inside one of the grocery bags seemed impossibly noticeable.
Buck didn't notice the drop in atmospheric pressure. He was far too busy staring up at Eddie with stars in his eyes.
Eddie, however, noticed immediately. His dark eyes moved slowly, deliberately across the room.
Chimney had frozen mid-motion, his eyebrows launched so high up his forehead they were practically disappearing into his hairline. Hen's jaw had dropped an inch, her drunken haze instantly pierced by a bolt of pure, unadulterated shock. Ravi was ping-ponging his gaze frantically between Buck and Eddie, looking like he wanted to crawl under the linoleum, and Bobby stood stock-still near the counter, one hand gripping the edge of the grocery bag like it was a lifeline. Nobody seemed quite sure whether they should speak or simply wait for Eddie to explain what they had just heard.
For a second, nobody breathed.
Eddie slowly looked back down at Buck. There was not a single ounce of panic on Buck's face—no hesitation, no sudden backtracking, no nervous laughter. He just looked happy. Completely, openly, unapologetically happy. And looking at him, Eddie felt a sudden, fierce warmth flood straight through his veins.
They had spent six long, careful months keeping this hidden. Six months of stolen, breathless kisses in darkened apparatus bays when the station was empty, quiet mornings tangled in the sheets of Eddie's bed, late-night phone calls that always dissolved into whispered secrets. Six months of meticulously erecting a firewall between what belonged to just the two of them and what belonged to the rest of the world. Six months of learning how to exist as a couple in all the tiny spaces nobody else could see, of exchanging looks across the station and pretending they meant nothing, of Eddie reaching for Buck's hand under tables and Buck smiling whenever Eddie thought nobody was watching.
And now Buck—three sheets to the wind, wearing a stolen hoodie—had just detonated the secret right in the middle of the station kitchen like it was the most natural announcement in human history.
Eddie couldn't even summon the energy to panic. He couldn't even feel embarrassed.
He just looked down at the man in his arms, his chest aching with how much he loved him. There was something almost painfully sweet about the fact that Buck hadn't revealed them because he wanted attention or because he'd decided they should stop hiding. He'd simply forgotten, for a moment, that they were supposed to be hiding at all.
"Yeah," Eddie said softly, his voice dropping into a register meant only for the two of them.
Buck blinked, his fuzzy brain catching up. "Yeah?"
Eddie's smile widened just a fraction, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "Yeah."
Buck's entire face lit up like Times Square on New Year's Eve. "You're my boyfriend."
"I am."
The simple confirmation hit Buck like a winning lottery ticket. He let out a breathless, giddy laugh, his forehead dropping heavily against Eddie's collarbone for a second before he popped right back up. His hands tightened around Eddie's shirt, and the grin on his face was so enormous that Hen couldn't help smiling despite her shock.
"Good."
Then, apparently remembering that there were other living souls inhabiting the room, Buck twisted slightly in Eddie's grip, keeping one arm firmly anchored around Eddie's waist while gesturing vaguely toward the rest of the crew.
"See?"
Chimney finally found the capacity to restart his respiratory system. "See what, Buck?"
Buck glared at him as though Chimney were intentionally failing a very basic geometry test. "My boyfriend."
Hen's eyebrows shot so high they nearly met her hairline.
Bobby slowly blinked, looking back and forth between the two men, still trying to boot up the software. "Boyfriend?"
Buck nodded with explosive enthusiasm, the violent movement making his damp curls bounce against his forehead. "Eddie."
Bobby blinked once more, slow and deliberate. "I gathered that part."
Buck offered a proud, triumphant little smile before immediately turning his attention back to Eddie, acting as though Bobby's entire life review had been successfully completed. He lifted his hands—still mostly swallowed by the oversized, grey fleece cuffs—and planted them flat against Eddie's chest, right over his heart.
"You're my boyfriend."
Eddie looked down at him with an expression so devastatingly, visibly soft that Hen looked like she might actually combust from secondhand emotion. "I know, Evan."
Buck's eyes rounded into perfect blue saucers. "You know?"
"I've known for a while now."
Buck let out a high, melodic giggle—a quiet, breathy sound that vibrated right against Eddie—and let his forehead drop back down against Eddie's shoulder. Their noses bumped awkwardly, and Eddie instinctively tightened his grip around Buck's hips when he felt him sway.
"Good."
For a long, quiet moment, they just stayed frozen like that. Buck's weight was pressed entirely against Eddie, his breathing turning slow and heavy, while Eddie's hands remained warm, broad, and fiercely protective against his back. The rest of the kitchen was staring holes into them, but neither man seemed to care about the audience anymore. The secret had already been spoken aloud, and somehow, instead of feeling terrifying, it felt strangely freeing.
Buck slowly fluttered his eyelids back open. "I love you."
Eddie's smile melted into something almost fragile. "I love you too, idiot."
Chimney stared at them with wide eyes.
Then he slowly turned his head to look at Hen.
Then at Ravi.
Then over at Bobby.
Finally, his gaze snapped right back to Eddie, his face twisting into pure confusion.
"Wait."
Eddie glanced sideways at him, keeping Buck tucked firmly against his side. "What, Chim?"
"You two are actually dating?"
Buck looked genuinely, deeply offended by the question, his eyebrows knitting into a fierce scowl as he craned his neck to glare at Chimney. "Obviously."
Chimney threw his hands up, pointing an accusing finger right between them. "Since when?!"
Buck opened his mouth, ready to offer some wildly unhelpful metric like since the third Tuesday of last November, but Eddie cut him off smoothly.
"About six months."
Hen's jaw hit the floor, a sharp, choked gasp escaping her throat. "Six months?!"
Eddie just offered a calm, unbothered nod. "Yeah."
Chimney looked like he was about to swallow his own tongue. "Six months? You've been secretly dating for half a year?!"
Buck nodded vigorously, looking immensely pleased with himself. "We're very good at secrets."
Hen stared between them, her mind actively short-circuiting. "You've been dating Buck for six months and nobody noticed a single thing?!"
Eddie gave her a small, unapologetic shrug. He didn't even bother pretending to look guilty; if anything, he was quietly, profoundly proud of the iron-clad opsec they'd maintained under the very noses of the most gossiping firehouse in Los Angeles.
"Apparently not."
Bobby finally let out a long breath, setting the second grocery bag down on the counter and crossing his arms loosely over his chest. He was smiling now, though his eyes still held a heavy layer of utter astonishment.
"Well. I have several follow-up questions."
Buck tilted his head back, blinking sleepily up at the captain. He seemed to weigh the bureaucratic burden of the request very carefully before leaning his cheek back against Eddie's chest.
"Can we answer them tomorrow?"
Bobby let out a sudden, rich laugh, shaking his head. "I think that might be the wisest decision made in this kitchen tonight."
Chimney, however, was still trapped entirely in the past tense. "Six months, Eddie. Six."
"Yes, Chimney, math checks out."
"And not a peep? Not a hint?"
Eddie raised a single eyebrow, his lips twitching. "That's generally what the word secret implies, yes."
Hen pointed a shaky, accusing finger directly at their tangled forms, her eyes wide with disbelief. "You're literally standing in the middle of the station kitchen cuddling right now!"
Buck glanced down at his own arms wrapped around Eddie's waist, then back up at Hen with supreme, unbothered logic. "We're drunk."
Eddie looked down at him then, narrowing his eyes with a classic, fond exasperation, his lips pursed. "You mean you are, Evan. Some of us still have to finish a 24-hour shift because we drew the absolute short straw today."
He leaned in close, his mouth practically brushing the shell of Buck's ear, his voice dropping into a low, rumbling tease. Buck let out a soft, wet laugh, his knees buckling slightly under him as his words completely failed him. Honestly, if Eddie's strong arms hadn't been locked like a vice around his waist right then, Buck would have slid straight down the cabinets into a heap on the floor.
Hen stared at them for another beat before throwing her head back and barking out a loud, genuine laugh. "That still doesn't explain how you hid six months of a relationship from us!"
Buck just offered a lazy, supreme shrug, entirely satisfied that the logic had bulletproof integrity. Eddie laughed softly, tightening his grip protectively as Buck swayed again on his feet.
Chimney dragged both hands down his face, groaning aloud. "I cannot believe this. I refuse to believe this."
Buck peered around Eddie's shoulder, blinking through his heavy lashes. "Why not?"
"Because you didn't tell us!"
Buck's expression instantly morphed into wounded, defensive indignation. "I didn't lie!"
"You kept it a secret!"
"That's literally different."
"It really, really isn't, Buck!"
Buck looked back toward Eddie, the tiny, anxious crease reappearing between his eyebrows. The untouchable confidence he'd carried a moment ago flickered out, replaced by a sudden, soft vulnerability as he murmured quietly,
"Are we in trouble?"
Eddie's entire demeanor melted instantly. His thumb swept soothingly across the small of Buck's back. "No, baby. You aren't in trouble at all."
Buck visibly deflated, his shoulders dropping two inches as relief washed over him. "Good."
He immediately re-anchored his face against Eddie's shoulder, his arms tightening back around him until Eddie was practically part of his support system.
Bobby watched them quietly, a warm, fond light in his eyes. There was something profoundly different about seeing Buck like this—not just loose from the tequila, but stripped of every single defense mechanism he usually carried. There was no deflection, no nervous over-explaining, no masking behind a joke. Buck looked entirely, beautifully safe wrapped up in Eddie's arms, and Eddie looked just as content holding the world away.
Bobby smiled softly, shaking his head. "Well. I suppose formal congratulations are in order, then."
Buck lifted his head right back off the shoulder, his eyes bright. "Thank you, Cap."
Bobby's smile widened. "Although, for the record, I'd still love to know why you decided that three-thirty in the morning while completely sloshed was the optimal time for this press conference."
Buck stared at him for a long, quiet second, processing the question with the gravity of a Supreme Court hearing. Then his gaze drifted lazily back up to Eddie's face, and he raised a single, sleepy finger to point at him.
"Because I missed my boyfriend."
Eddie's smile grew so soft it was almost a physical thing. "Yeah," he murmured, his hand resuming its slow, grounding path up and down Buck's spine. "I missed you too."
Buck settled right back down against him with a contented sigh. "I told them I love you."
"I heard."
Buck blinked open one eye. "You did?"
Eddie chuckled, the vibration rumbling right through Buck's chest. "You were yelling it across the room, Evan. The whole station probably heard."
Buck's face brightened with absolute pride. "Good."
He gave a tiny, decisive nod into the cotton of Eddie's shirt, entirely satisfied that his romantic intentions had been communicated with adequate legal volume. Then, a massive, jaw-cracking yawn overtook him, his whole face scrunching up as he tried and failed to suppress it.
Eddie smiled down at him, his thumb brushing over his shoulder blade. "You ready to go sit down now?"
Buck mumbled straight into his collar, "No."
Eddie raised an eyebrow, his lips twitching. "Why not?"
Buck's answer came with absolute zero hesitation, thick with sleep and absolute devotion. "Because you're here."
Something deep inside Eddie's chest hitched, tightening into a knot of pure affection. "I'm not going anywhere, I promise."
Buck stared up at him through heavy, drooping lids for a beat. "Promise?"
"Promise."
Buck gave a slow, sluggish nod. "Okay."
And then he didn't move an inch.
Eddie waited.
Buck remained welded exactly where he was, his breathing evening out against Eddie's collarbone.
Eventually, Eddie let out a low, breathy laugh under his breath. "You're still not sitting down, bud."
"I know."
"Why?"
Buck's arms gave an involuntary, cozy squeeze around his waist. "Because you're here."
Eddie shook his head, utterly defeated by the sheer physics of Buck's logic, and pressed a long, tender kiss right into the crown of Buck's messy curls. "Okay, baby. Stay right here."
Across the kitchen, Chimney had been tracking the entire exchange with an expression that suggested his brain cells were slowly dying one by one.
He finally threw his hands up and turned to Hen. "You knew?"
Hen shook her head rapidly, holding up her palms. "No! I swear I didn't!"
"You didn't even suspect?"
Hen paused, her brow furrowing as she mentally skimmed backward through the last six months of shared shifts, stolen glances, and how aggressively Eddie always defended Buck in the loft. "I mean... I suspected something was going on."
Chimney stared at her in betrayal. "And you didn't tell me?!"
"I wasn't sure! And honestly? Look at them!"
She flicked her chin toward the center of the kitchen. Buck was practically vertical dead-weight against Eddie now, his eyes fully closed, his weight leaning entirely into Eddie's frame. The grey hoodie was bunched haphazardly around his broad shoulders, the long sleeves still swallowed over his hands, and Eddie had one large palm spread protectively across the small of his back, his thumb tracing slow, absent circles through the soft fleece.
"Six months," Chimney muttered to the empty air, shaking his head. "Unbelievable."
Hen just smiled softly, resting her chin on her hand. "Apparently so."
Ravi shook his head, a bright, genuine grin breaking across his face as he looked between them. "Honestly? Good for them. At least the tension in the station is finally resolved."
Chimney pointed a finger at him. "You stay out of this, rookie. You're an accomplice."
Hen laughed, leaning sideways until her shoulder bumped comfortably against the table. "He really is his boyfriend."
Buck's eyelids were slammed shut, but somehow his radar still picked up her voice. A soft, dopey, utterly smug smile drifted across his face. "I told you so."
Hen chuckled, her chest shaking. "You did, buddy. You really did."
Buck looked far too proud of himself for someone who was currently operating on four percent battery and pure tequila. "I always tell the truth."
Chimney raised an eyebrow sharply. "You told us the station kitchen chair walked away by itself earlier this week."
Buck's left eye flicked open just a fraction. He considered the accusation with solemn judicial weight. "...It did."
Hen immediately nodded in solidarity. "It definitely moved, Chim."
Chimney stared at both of them like they had lost their minds, before letting out a dramatic, groaning sigh. "You are both completely, irredeemably impossible."
Hen burst into laughter again, while Buck simply smiled sleepily into the warm hollow of Eddie's neck, entirely at peace with the universe.
Bobby finished unpacking the last of the plastic bags, neatly lining up the containers on the counter before turning back to survey his crew with a fond, knowing smile. "Well, somebody should probably make sure our two drunk firefighters actually eat something before they pass out on my floor."
Buck's head snapped up instantly at the magic word, his blue eyes blinking open. "I want pizza."
Eddie looked down at him with a dry look. "Evan, you always want pizza."
Buck blinked slowly, considering the statement. He seemed to deliberate whether that counted as a valid counterargument against his desires.
Then he just smiled, triumphant. "Because you're my boyfriend."
Eddie let out a loud, helpless laugh, his chest shaking against Buck's. "That doesn't actually answer the question."
Buck looked completely, unshakably convinced that it covered every possible base. "It answers literally every question in the universe."
Eddie's laughter warmed the space between them, and he had to tighten his grip around Buck's hips when Buck's knees gave a sympathetic little wobble.
Chimney groaned from across the room, rubbing his temples. "I am never, ever letting you drink tequila again as long as you live, Buck."
Buck slowly extracted one hand from inside the oversized grey sleeve and pointed a lazy, accusatory finger in Chimney's general direction, though his eyes never drifted away from Eddie's face. "You're just... you're just jealous."
Chimney dropped his hand, offended. "Of what, exactly?"
Buck smiled dreamily, his thumb brushing accidentally against Eddie's shirt. "My boyfriend."
Chimney stared at him, utterly struck dumb.
For one breathless second, the kitchen was completely silent.
Then Hen started laughing.
She laughed so hard and so suddenly that she had to put her glass down on the table to keep from spilling it, and Ravi clapped a hand over his mouth, his shoulders shaking as he tried to contain a snort. Even Bobby was laughing now, shaking his head with a wide grin as he wiped his hands on a paper towel.
Eddie laughed too—a deep, rich sound that vibrated right through Buck, his arm tightening securely around Buck's waist while his free hand came up to cup the back of Buck's neck, pulling him in just a fraction closer.
Buck looked immensely, ridiculously pleased with himself.
He had no idea why everyone was laughing at him.
And honestly? He didn't care in the slightest.
He had Eddie.
His boyfriend.
The man he had spent six months loving quietly, carefully, and entirely in the shadows was standing right here in front of God and the entire 118, holding him like he was the only thing that mattered in Los Angeles. And for once in his life, Buck was far too wonderfully, happily drunk to remember that they were ever supposed to keep it a secret.
Eventually, the laughter around the kitchen began to settle, fading into the comfortable, low-frequency hum of the firehouse at night—the distant rattle of the AC vent, the soft shuffle of Bobby putting away supplies, and Hen still occasionally snorting into her chamomile tea.
Buck remained tucked securely against Eddie's chest, his breathing growing heavier and slower with every single passing second. Eddie kept one strong arm locked around his waist and continued his steady, rhythmic pattern of rubbing Buck's back, his thumb smoothing soothingly over the soft fleece of the grey hoodie as though reassuring himself that Buck was really right here, safe and real.
Buck's forehead settled heavily beneath Eddie's chin.
His eyes slipped shut.
For all the absolute chaos of the afternoon—the tequila, the hoodie heist, the accidental station-wide confession—there was something deeply, beautifully peaceful about the way he finally let go.
And somewhere between Hen smiling, Chimney shaking his head, Ravi grinning, Bobby cleaning up the counter, and Eddie holding him like he hung the stars, Buck decided without a single doubt that this was, hands down, the best day of his entire life.
Because Eddie was right here.
His boyfriend was right here.
And for the first time in six months, Buck didn't have to pretend otherwise for a single second.