Archive of Our Own

Eddie liked to think he was an organised individual. Someone who was prepared for anything and everything. Someone who could face any problem head-on and come out the other side successful. Structure fires, gas leaks, a kid stuck in a storm drain — sure, fine, he’d run toward all of it without blinking. But there was a difference — he was starting to realise at six in the morning, with his coffee going cold on the counter — between being prepared for a crisis and being prepared for this.

This being one day alone with a four-year-old. A four-year-old who currently thought the moon was following their truck home every single time they drove anywhere, and who had, last week, informed Eddie with total sincerity that he was going to marry a dinosaur when he grew up.

This being Theo. 

Eddie set his mug down and looked around his kitchen like it might rat him out for how many times he’d already reorganised it that morning. 

The snacks were sorted in his kitchen by colour, which he was aware was insane, but he would take any feeling of composure he could get, no matter how crazy. Plus, Theo had opinions about crackers touching fruit, and Eddie would rather get shot again than deal with that meltdown before nine a.m. 

The band-aids — dinosaur-printed, purchased specifically for the occasion two days ago — sat in a neat row next to the first aid kit he already owned, because apparently regular band-aids didn't count anymore. The kid took after Buck and was accident-prone, and if his years as a first responder had taught him anything, Eddie needed to be prepared. 

And it wasn’t that Eddie didn’t know kids. He’d raised one. Christopher had taught him more about patience and chaos and how much a person’s heart could stretch more than anything else in his life. But there was something different about doing this for someone else’s kid — for Buck’s kid — that had Eddie up before his alarm, running through back-up plans like he was gearing up for an insane call instead of a Saturday morning. The stakes were higher.

Maybe it was that he wanted to get it right. Not just competent-right, where Theo was alive, and he called it a day. Right right. The kind of right where Buck came back at the end of his shift, and Theo was happy and fed and unharmed and had had fun. Where Buck looked at him with that easy, grateful smile that did something unfair to Eddie’s chest every single time, and said something like I knew I could count on you. 

Eddie was aware, in the recessed, guarded part of his brain he didn’t let himself visit too often, that this probably meant something. That a man didn’t restock his entire pantry and buy special bandaids for a friend’s kid out of pure friendship. That the flip in his stomach every time Buck said his name wasn’t just fondness. He was aware of it the way you’re aware of a storm on the horizon — present, undeniable, and something he had decided, for now, not to look at directly for fear of what he’d actually see. 

He busied himself instead. Wiped down a counter that was already clean. Pulled up a mental list of nearby parks in case they needed a change of scenery, then a second list of backup plans in case the first parks were too crowded, then, God help him, a third list of what to do if it rained, even though the sky outside was aggressively, cloudlessly blue. He was in L.A. for God’s sake. 

Luckily, his spiral was broken when his phone buzzed with a text from Buck. 

Buck: he’s excited lol. packed his own bag. there might be seventeen toy dinosaurs in there

Eddie huffed a laugh despite himself and typed back. 

Eddie: I’m excited too. 

We are going to have a lot of fun.

Buck: of course you will!

you’re the best!

Eddie stood there in his kitchen grinning at his phone like an idiot for a solid ten seconds before he caught himself and set it face-down on the counter, like that would stop whatever was happening in his chest.

He went through the house one more time. Cabinet locks on the ones low enough for curious four-year-old hands, even though Theo probably wouldn’t get into anything, but Eddie wasn’t taking chances. Scissors and anything sharp were relocated to the top shelf. The remote was hidden because last time, Theo had somehow ended up changing a setting neither Eddie nor Buck could figure out how to undo, and they ended up watching the news in Russian for weeks.

He was folding a blanket that didn’t need folding when he heard Buck’s truck pull up outside. Then footsteps. Then the muffled, delighted sound of a four-year-old already talking a mile a minute before they’d even reached the door.

Eddie smoothed down his shirt, took one breath, and told himself, again, that he was ready for this.

The knock came two seconds later.

And Eddie was prepared, have it known. He was prepared for small tantrums. Arguments over vegetables and watching cartoons. He was even prepared to deal with the debating around bedtime. 

What he had not prepared for was Buck standing at his door at 7 am with a sleepy Theo in one arm and a grey ball of something in the other. 

Eddie opened his mouth to say good morning and just... stopped. He blinked and then after his brain went back online he looked between Buck’s face — entirely too energetic for this hour — and the thing currently scratching at his forearm. 

“What’s that?”

“It’s a cat,” Buck said, like that settled anything, lifting the grey fluffball a few inches closer to Eddie’s face as if a closer look might explain everything.

Well, no shit. Eddie knew it was a cat. He knew what cats looked like, and he could — much to Hen’s ongoing disbelief — string two brain cells together and reach a logical conclusion on his own.

“I know it’s a cat, Buck,” Eddie said, exasperated, stepping back to let them all inside before the neighbours got a full show. “Where did you get it? And why is it here?”

“I rescued her.”

“You rescued her?”

“Yeah, are you okay?” Buck looked at him, a genuine question in his tone. “You’re acting weird.”

“Like, out of a tree?” It was too early for Eddie to deal with this. “I was under the impression we were supposed to give those back.”

Buck gave him a look. one that said you're an absolute dumbass, and also can you be serious for one second, an expression Eddie had personally been on the receiving end of more times than he could count and had, somewhere along the way, started to find unreasonably endearing.

“I rescued her from a shelter,” Buck said, patient in the way he only ever was with children, animals, and, apparently, Eddie at seven in the morning. He was scratching the cat behind the ears with one finger, careful not to jostle Theo, who’d gone back to using his shoulder as a pillow. “She needed a home.”

“And that home is my house?”

“Just for the day. Our place has got a leak, remember? The guy’s coming to fix the pipes this morning, and I wasn’t about to leave her there with a stranger walking in and out all day.” Buck shrugged, entirely unbothered, like this was the most reasonable chain of logic in the world. “Figured she could just hang with you guys.”

Eddie pinched the bridge of his nose. He had not braced himself for babysitting a small human and a rescue cat with zero notice, and yet here he was, already resigned to it, because it was Buck asking. The things he’d do for that man. 

“Okay, but I’m still not understanding why you rescued her.”

It wasn’t even really a question about the cat, not entirely. Somewhere underneath it was another question, one Eddie wasn’t going to say out loud — why hadn’t Buck mentioned any of this to him? He hadn’t even mentioned he’d been thinking about a cat. And Buck told Eddie everything. That was practically Buck’s whole personality; the man narrated his own life in real time, whether anyone asked him to or not. Yet somehow he’d managed to keep an entire animal a secret until he was standing on Eddie’s doorstep with it. 

It wasn’t like they were married. Eddie didn’t get a vote; he knew that. He just would’ve liked, maybe, to have been let in on it before the fact instead of after, which was a stupid thing to be hung up on at seven in the morning, and he knew it, and he filed it away to not think about later, same as everything else.

Buck’s shoulders lifted in a shrug, entirely oblivious to any of that. Thank God.

“Theo’s been begging for a pet. Dogs are too much with the hours we work. Goldfish are boring. Hamsters always die in weird ways nobody is prepared for. My backyard’s too small for a horse, and a snake would just be a terrifying pet to have,” Buck said, ticking through an imaginary list as if he’d genuinely run the numbers on all of it, and this had been a real deliberative process and not just Buck being Buck. “So, cat.”

“Did you try saying no?”

“You try saying no to his puppy dog eyes, Eddie.” Buck reached over to smooth down a piece of Theo's hair. And it was a fair point. Those puppy eyes were lethal. “Plus, with everything he’s been through, it seemed like a good idea. Something that’s just his.”

That, Eddie, couldn’t really argue with either. Theo had had a rough couple of years by four-year-old standards, and if a scrawny shelter cat gave the kid something steady to hold onto, then fine. Eddie could work with a cat.

“So you got a cat.”

“I got a cat.”

She was kinda cute. Small and round and fluffy in that way that made a person want to scoop her up and shield her from the world. Her ears were too big for her body, her little nose twitching every time Buck’s voice rose or dropped, and her fur was such a soft, muted grey that she looked less like an animal and more like a dust bunny that had somehow come to life. 

“Her name is Smoky,” Buck told him with awe in his voice. “Because she’s grey like smoke.”

Eddie had to hold himself back from audibly awwing at the small creature with the most perfect name, but also he could not look after a cat. He had never in his life had to look after a cat. He didn’t want to ruin the adorable creature.

Eddie rubbed a hand over his face. “Buck,” he said, trying to sound stern and failing miserably, “you cannot just show up at my house with a cat without a warning.” 

Except apparently he absolutely could. And the truth was, Eddie wasn’t going to do a single thing about it because Buck was standing in his doorway at seven in the morning looking rumpled and a little sheepish and entirely too pleased with himself, and Eddie had never once, in all the years he’d known him, managed to actually stay annoyed at that face for longer than it took to say so. 

“You’re the one who offered to watch Theo while I was on shift. If it was too much, you should have said so,” Buck said, looking a little upset. And Eddie couldn’t have that. 

“No, it’s fine. I am happy to watch Theo anytime, you know that. It’s the least I could do.” And that was true. After everything Buck had done for Chris, it was only fair. Eddie would move mountains for Theo. For Buck. It wasn’t even a question. “But I don’t think I’m qualified for cat-sitting. I can’t even keep a plant alive, Buck .”

Buck’s face softened, just a little. “I didn’t mean to dump everything on you,” he said quietly. “I just… Theo really wanted to show you. And I thought—” 

“No, no, I’ll do it. I just—”

“She’s a real sweetheart, I promise.” Buck’s voice had that hopeful lilt to it. “Easy too.”

“Yeah, Eddie,” Theo chimed in from where he was playing with Buck’s hair. “She just poops and sleeps and purrs.”

He was then hit with three pairs of lethal puppy dog — kitty cat? — eyes. Eddie struggled to say no to Theo and Buck on a good day. This early in the morning, faced with both of them and a cat, he didn’t stand a chance. 

“Okay.” Eddie reached out and took the little cat from Buck’s arms, tucking her against his chest, where she immediately went boneless and started purring. “I’m sure Theo and I will manage.”

“Thank you, Eddie,” Buck said earnestly. “It means a lot. She’ll be an absolute angel I promise.”

Eddie had his doubts, judging the way the kitten was looking at him. She looked like she was anxiously awaiting the moment Buck leaves so she can destroy his entire house. But he kept that to himself. 

“Of course, anything for you.” And Eddie hadn’t meant to say that so lovingly, but oh well, he was a little distracted. There was a lot going on. 

“She already likes you,” Buck said, entirely oblivious, grinning down at the cat instead of at Eddie, which was probably for the best. “I just know.”

“Sure you do.” Eddie shifted the cat to one arm and held the other out, wiggling his fingers at Theo. “Come here, bud. Let’s make sure your Buck isn’t late for work. 

Theo went easily, arms looping around Eddie’s neck as he transferred over, tucking his face into Eddie’s shoulder with a sleepy little sigh. Eddie automatically shifted his weight to balance both of them — kid on one hip, cat in the crook of his other arm — and felt, for one absurd second, entirely too much like this was something he could get used to.

Buck watched the handoff with an expression Eddie didn’t have time to name before it smoothed back into something easier.

“Alright,” Buck said, clapping his hands together once. “I’ve gotta run or I’ll be late. Theo’s bag’s by the door, cat stuff’s in the tote — I promise, I didn’t forget anything — and my phone’s on the whole day if you need me.”

“We’ll be fine, Buck. Go.”

Buck lingered anyway, pressing a kiss to the top of Theo's head and scratching Smoky once behind the ears before he finally backed toward the door. Eddie ignored the flicker of disappointment his brain tried to shove at him when he noticed Buck hadn’t kissed him goodbye. And he shut it down fast. Because that would be ridiculous. 

“Bye, buddy. Be good for Eddie.” He waited a beat, then his eyes flicked up to meet Eddie’s. “Thank you. Really.”

“Of course.”

And then he was gone, and Eddie was left standing in his doorway at ten past seven with a sleepy kid, a suspicious cat, and the distinct feeling that he would do this — any of it, all of it — again and again, for as long as Buck kept asking.

— — —

The sleepy kid did not last.

Eddie had maybe eleven minutes of peace — long enough to set Smoky down with a bowel of water and get one full sip of reheated coffee — before Theo woke up the rest of the way all at once, like someone had flipped a switch from asleep to feral with no stops in between. One second, he was a soft, drowsy weight against Eddie’s shoulder. The next he was on the floor, sprinting the length of the living room in his socks, arms out like an airplane, shrieking with a joy so pure it was almost violent.

“Smoky! Smoky, come look, I’m flying!”

Smoky did not come look. Smoky had already vanished behind the couch.

That set the tone for the next several hours. Eddie, a man who had once talked a civilian through a partial building collapse without raising his voice, found himself entirely unequipped for the combined chaos of one four-year-old with endless energy and one small grey menace with zero respect for boundaries. 

Theo turned the hallway into a racetrack. He turned the picture books into a fort, which Eddie let slide because the fort was, admittedly, quite impressive for a four-year-old. He narrated an elaborate, ongoing saga about Smoky secretly being a dragon in disguise, which escalated considerably once Smoky, entirely unhelpfully, knocked Eddie’s only potted plant clean off the windowsill and sent dirt scattering across the floor. 

Theo, obviously, thought that was the funniest thing he had ever witnessed in his short life. 

“Eddie, she’s a dragon, I told you,” he wheezed, doubled over, hands on his knees. 

“She’s a menace, is what she is,” Eddie muttered, on his knees with a dustpan, while Smoky sat three feet away licking one paw with a serene, unbothered expression. 

It didn’t stop there. She got into the pantry — Eddie still wasn’t sure how, he’d have to check that latch — and left a single paw print in a bag of flour he hadn't even realised he owned. She got up onto the bookshelf and knocked a picture frame down, though thankfully the glass didn’t break. She found the box of dinosaur band-aids and, for reasons known only to her, decided the box itself was the single most fascinating object in the house, batting it off the coffee table over and over while Theo cackled every single time.

“Again! Do it again, Smoky!”

“I don’t think she can understand you, bud. She’s not like a—” Eddie started, then gave up, because Smoky, on cue, did it again.

By early afternoon, Eddie had mostly made peace with the fact that this was simply how his day was going to go now — that his house had been, in the span of a few hours, thoroughly Theo-and-Smoky’d, and that resistance was pointless. He’d gotten them both fed. He’d gotten Theo through a moderately catastrophic broccoli negotiation that he considered, honestly, a personal win. He’d even started to relax a little, right up until the moment everything went sideways.

It happened fast. Theo wanted to show Smoky the backyard — just for a second, he swore, just to see if she liked grass — and Eddie, distracted for as long as it took to grab a juice box from the fridge, turned around to find the back door cracked open, Theo standing in the doorway looking stricken, and no cat in sight.

“She got out,” Theo said, his voice wobbling like he might start to cry. “Eddie, she got out, I didn’t mean to, she was just there, and then she wasn’t—”

Eddie’s stomach dropped somewhere around his shoes.

Okay. Okay. This was fine. This was manageable. He had, in his professional life, located missing persons in burning buildings, in overturned cars, in rubble. He could locate one four-pound cat in a fenced backyard. This was not a crisis. This was not a crisis, except it absolutely felt like one, because somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice that wasn’t very helpful stirred up every worst-case scenario there was. 

Buck’s cat, gone, on your watch. You had one job, just the one. And you failed. How am I supposed to tell him I lost her? He trusted me with this. He trusted me and I fucked up. Buck’ll never speak to me again.

“She didn’t go far, bud, I promise.” His voice came out steady. He was mildly impressed with himself for that. “Stay right here on the step, okay? Don’t move. I’m going to find her.”

He was down on his hands and knees in the flower bed within seconds, peering under the porch, doing frantic mental math on how many places a small, fast, uncooperative animal could hide in a yard this size. The number was a lot higher than he’d hoped. 

He checked behind the grill. He checked under the deck chairs. He checked everywhere and was two seconds away from calling 911 — which was probably a little dramatic and not at all how emergency services should be used — when a small, telltale rustle came from the hedge along the back fence. 

He froze and approached slowly so as not to spook her. Because there she was. Smoky. Sitting smug and entirely unbothered in the middle of the hedge, one leaf stuck to her ear, looking for all the world like she’d simply been enjoying the scenery and had no idea what the fuss was about. 

Eddie let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

“You,” he said, scooping her up and holding her firmly against his chest, “are never doing that again.”

Smoky blinked at him and started to purr, not a care in the world for the panic she had put him through. 

Back at the step, Theo’s face went from crumpled to radiant in the space of a heartbeat, and he threw both arms around Eddie’s leg. “You found her! You found her, you’re the best—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Eddie ruffled his hair, willing his heart rate to come down from wherever it had spiked to. “Nobody tells Buck about this part, deal?”

“Deal,” Theo said solemnly, already grinning again, entirely unaware of the ten years he'd just taken off Eddie’s life. 

By late afternoon, the chaos had mostly burned itself out. Theo’s flying-airplane energy had gradually downgraded to something more like a low, contented hum. Even Smoky seemed to have exhausted her capacity for mischief for the day, having apparently decided the flour bag, the picture frame, and one unauthorised backyard excursion were quite enough excitement for a Saturday. 

Eddie got them both settled on the couch with some picture books and started reading through them in whatever order Theo pointed at. 

Theo had curled into his side, one small hand fisted in the front of Eddie’s shirt. And Smoky, after a long, deliberate assessment of her options, climbed up and folded herself into the gap between Theo’s and Eddie’s legs, purring happily

Eddie read aloud. His voice dropped without him quite meaning for it to, slowing down the way it used to do when Chris was small and fighting sleep. Theo’s eyelids were losing the battle within a few pages. By the third book, Eddie was mostly reading to a kid who wasn’t really listening anymore, just watching the pictures blur past under heavy lashes, and by the fourth, Theo had gone fully limp against him, out cold. 

Eddie should have gotten up then. Should've moved Theo to the actual bed, texted Buck an update, cleaned up the flour he still hadn’t gotten fully off of the pantry floor. He thought about all of it.

But the couch was warm and he really didn’t want to move. The book was still open on his knee. Theo’s breathing was slow and even against his side, a small, solid weight he’d somehow gotten completely used to having there. Smoky had shifted at some point to drape herself half across his leg, purring in that low, hypnotic rhythm that he could sink into. 

Eddie only meant to close his eyes for a second. Just a second. Long enough to let the adrenaline of the day finally drain all the way out of him, long enough to enjoy, just for a moment, how quiet and warm and good the house felt with the two new additions in it.

He was asleep before he finished the thought.

— — —

When Chris got home, he already knew to expect Theo as his dad had mentioned the babysitting duties the night before. During that moment, Chris had had to work hard, to hold his tongue and not point out that it wasn’t really babysitting if you were also, functionally, the other parent. But that observation would’ve opened up a whole other can of worms he did not have the emotional bandwidth for. 

One of these days, he was going to get his Dad out of the closet. And then he was going to shove him back into it, with Buck, and force them to talk their weird 8-year homoerotic situationship out. 

“Dad!” he shouted into the silence of the house. “I’m home.”

“Shhhh,” Theo whisper‑shouted at him as he appeared from around the corner, tiny finger pressed to his lips.

Chris blinked. “Why do I have to shhh? It’s four in the afternoon.”

“Eddie is sleeping,” Theo whispered dramatically, “with Smoky.”

Chris froze. “My dad is sleeping, and something is smoking?”

Chris was going to die prematurely at this rate. Surely his firefighter-of-a-father wouldn’t fall asleep and leave the house to burn down. He wasn’t that clueless.

…Right?

Theo looked at him like he was the dumbest person alive. “Not smoking. Smoky.” 

Theo tugged on his sleeve. “Come see,” he whispered, already tiptoeing away like he was guiding Chris into a crime scene. And knowing Theo it very well could have been. 

Chris followed, bracing himself for whatever fresh chaos had been introduced into their lives this time. 

He did not expect to find his father passed out on the couch, head tilted back, mouth slightly open, one arm around Theo’s abandoned blanket… and a tiny grey cat curled on his chest.

Theo beamed. “See? They’re sleeping.” 

“When did we get a cat?”

“Buck got her. Eddie didn’t think she was cute, and then they became best friends,” Theo explained matter‑of‑factly, like this was a normal day and not the beginning of Chris’s early descent into stress‑induced grey hair at the age of fifteen.

Chris snorted. “Yeah, seems likely.”

Theo beamed. “They’re best friends now.” 

Chris didn’t think Buck would be all that thrilled to hear the cat was taking his mantle as his dad’s best friend. Buck was territorial about that particular title. He’d resorted to actual physical maiming once, allegedly, back when he’d genuinely feared he was being replaced. Good riddance to Tommy Kinard, honestly.

But maybe — Chris thought, looking at his dad, dead asleep, one hand curled protectively around a cat he definitely hadn’t wanted twelve hours ago — maybe this was exactly the push Buck needed.

Maybe Smoky curling up on his dad’s chest, purring like she’d found her forever home on the first try, would finally snap something loose in Buck’s brain.

God knew something needed to.

Chris would honestly prefer it if the two of them got their act together and got married before he had kids of his own. He was losing hope on that front, frankly. At this rate, he was going to be thirty years old, introducing his fiancé to his dad and Buck, and the two of them would still be standing there insisting they were “just really close friends,” while somehow also sharing a mortgage, a cat, and a second kid.

The cat was cute, though. He’d give them that much.

Without thinking too hard about it, Chris lifted his phone and snapped a photo — his dad out cold, Theo tucked against his side, Smoky sprawled across his chest. Then, because he owed it to his sacred duty as a good son to embarrass his father at every available opportunity, he opened the extended 118 family group chat and sent it

118 and co. 

Chris: [image attachment]

Dad’s with the pet they said they didn’t want lol

Denny: Nah fr

Chim: When did you get a cat?

Karen: OMG that is the cutest cat I have ever seen!!!!

Chris: It’s Bucks

Maddie: Evan Buckley, why didn’t you tell anyone you were getting a cat?

Chim: Ohh, someone’s in trouble.

Maddie: Howard. 

Chim: Shutting up

Bobby: That is a very cute cat - Bobby Nash

Chris: Her name is Smoky

Ravi: I would like you all to know that Buck has stopped working

Like he genuinely lost all function at the sight of the photo

Harry: I can confirm

Maddie: Buck, are you alive?

Bobby: Give him a break. Some of us have hearts big enough to short out over cute animals - Bobby Nash

Chim: Cap you’re not helping his case

Karen: Do you guys normally deal with this?

Ravi: unfortunately yes

Buck: 👍

Chim: THAT’S IT? that’s all we get after all that??

Maddie: the man has spoken

Hen: speechless. actually speechless. never thought I’d see the day

Ravi: thoughts and prayers to Chris, who has to deal with whatever shit Buck and Eddie have going on everyday

Chris: The thoughts are welcome, 

but I’m pretty sure the prayers are part of the problem

Hen emphasised a message

Chris was still grinning at his phone, scrolling back up to watch the chaos he’d started, when he decided enough was enough and it was time to actually wake his father up. He nudged his foot with his own, gentle at first, then a little less gentle when that didn’t work.

“Dad. Dad, wake up.”

His dad surfaced slowly, blinking against the late-afternoon light coming through the blinds, one hand automatically coming up to steady Smoky before he was even fully conscious, like some instinct had kicked in ahead of his brain. “What — hey, bud. What time is it?”

“After four.” Chris dropped onto the arm of the couch, entirely too pleased with himself. “So… when did we get a cat?”

His dad blinked down at the warm weight still curled on his chest like he’d genuinely forgotten she was there, then rubbed a hand over his face. “We didn’t get a cat. Buck got a cat.”

“Same thing.”

“No,” Eddie argued, because apparently he was a loser like that, “it’s not. The cat is Buck’s. We’re just watching her today.”

“What happened to the whole ‘what’s mine is yours’ thing you two have going on?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s only relevant in marriages, kid.” Eddie ruffled his hair, entirely missing what he was getting at, which, Chris thought, was really just the story of his life at this point.

“Yeah,” Chris said, deadpan, because that really was the whole point. “Exactly.”

Eddie looked confused for a moment before sighing, the way he always did right before he tried to explain something he thought was obvious. “Chris. Buck and I aren’t married. Therefore, we do not have shared custody of the cat.”

“Right.” Chris pressed on, determined to knock something loose in his dad’s head if it was the last thing he did. “So the custody thing’s just for kids, then.”

His dad went quiet at that, which Chris took as his cue to keep going.

“Because you and Buck have basically had shared custody over me for eight years. And Theo, since he came into the picture. And a house, too, if you think about it. And now, apparently, a cat.” Chris ticked it all off, watching his dad’s face very closely. “That’s a lot of joint property for two guys who aren’t married.”

“Chris—”

“I’m just saying. If it walks like a marriage, and it does the grocery shopping like a marriage—”

“We are not doing this right now.”

“When are we doing this, though? Because I’ve been waiting eight years, Dad. Eight. I did the math. I was seven the first time you brought Buck home and told me he was your ‘friend from the fire station,’ and I’m fifteen now, and you two are still doing the thing where you act like a couple and refuse to talk about it.” Chris’s voice had climbed, the joking edge slipping out from under it without his permission. “I love Theo. I do. He’s basically my brother already, whether or not either of you has said that out loud yet, which, by the way, you haven’t. And I love Buck. I like him a lot. I don’t even remember what it was like before he was just always here. So why won’t you just—”

“Chris.” His dad’s voice was quieter than usual. 

“You love him,” Chris said flatly, with no question mark, because it wasn’t one anymore. “You love Buck. You’ve loved him for years, probably since before I even noticed, and everyone else already knows it, and you’re the only person who’s still pretending you don’t. Except for maybe Buck. And you should marry him. Like, actually marry him, not just — not just keep doing this thing where you build a whole life with someone and call it close friends because you’re too scared to say something.”

He was breathing a little hard by the end of it, and his dad hadn’t said anything, hadn’t moved, so Chris just kept going, because apparently, once the dam broke, there was no stopping it. 

“And I want to keep the cat. I want to keep her, because she’s cute, and because I’ve literally never had a pet in my life, not once, and I really want one.”

Silence.

Even Smoky seemed to sense the shift, lifting her head off her paws to blink between the two of them like she, too, was waiting for an answer.

His dad sat there, very still, Chris’s entire unfiltered heart just laid out in their living room, and for a long moment, he didn't say anything at all.

"Where did that come from?" he said finally, focusing his attention back on Chris, voice quieter than Chris had heard it in a while. 

Chris crossed his arms, some of the heat from a second ago still sitting in his shoulders, though it was starting to look more like nerves now than anger. “Where did — Dad, it didn’t come from anywhere. I’ve been sitting on it for years. I’ve just never really found the time to say anything.”

“And you picked right now. In the middle of—” his dad gestured vaguely, helplessly, at the visual chaos of the day. Chris really wanted to know what had gone down, but this was more important. 

“I picked now because you fell asleep on the couch with his cat on your chest, and I looked at you and just — I don’t know. I got tired of waiting for a better moment. There isn;t gonna be a perfect one, Dad. There’s just gonna be you, still not saying anything, for another eight years, unless somebody says something first.” Chris’s voice cracked slightly on the last part. “I don’t want to keep watching you almost have this whole life and then act like it isn’t right there. I just want you to be happy.”

His dad opened his mouth. Closed it again and Chris just about gave up. 

— — —

So… Eddie was in love with Buck. 

Crazy, what revelations a person could have once they finally cracked open the box they’d spent years shoving further and further behind everything else in their head.

Because once he let himself actually look at the whole ‘in love with Buck’ thing, it wasn’t subtle. In fact, it had never been subtle.

It was every Sunday morning, Buck showed up unannounced with groceries and just started cooking in Eddie’s kitchen like it was his own. It was the two of them at Christopher’s school events, standing shoulder to shoulder, and the way other parents had started addressing questions to both of them at once without either of them correcting the assumption. It was falling asleep on the phone with Buck more nights than not, some rambling story about a call or a video game or nothing at all trailing off into silence, neither of them ever bothered to end. It was the time Buck had shown up at the hospital when Eddie had gotten injured, like there wasn’t anywhere else on earth he would have been. It was matching mugs Eddie hadn’t consciously bought as a set, but somehow had. It was Buck’s toothbrush, still sitting in the cup by Eddie’s sink from all the nights he stayed over.

It was a cat, showing up at seven in the morning with no warning, because Buck simply trusted that Eddie would say yes. Because Buck built his whole life around the assumption that Eddie would always say yes.

He would. God, he would say yes to anything.

“Oh my God,” Eddie said, his life suddenly making so much more sense. “I’m in love with Buck.”

“Yes Dad. The sky is blue, grass is green and you’re in love with Buck,” Chris said, and Eddie really didn’t know where he got that level of sass from. “We already knew that.”

“Who’s we?” Eddie asked. “I only just worked this out.”

“Which is kinda pathetic when you think about it.”

“Chris.”

“What?” Chris asked, giving Eddie a huge grin. 

“Oh my God,” Eddie said again because it needed repeating. “I’m in love with Buck.”

“Dad, seriously, I am so proud of you for working it out, but what are you going to do about it,” Chris said. “Because I don’t think we can keep this kind of news secret. You aren’t great at keeping things from him.”

“Okay, you’re right,” Eddie said. “I guess I’m going to tell him.”

Chris blinked. “Tell him what — wait, actually tell him? Like, use-your-words tell him?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve had eight years, Dad. Forgive me for not celebrating too early.”

“I mean it, Chris.” And he did — it surprised him, honestly, how much he did, how solid it felt saying it out loud instead of just turning it over silently in his own head the way he’d somewhat unknowingly done for years. “I’m going to tell him. When I see him later, I’m going to say something.” 

Chris’s smile started to grow.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, half a laugh escaping despite himself. “If not for the two of us, then just for me. I'm tired of it, too, kid. I’m tired of denying myself happiness and Buck… Buck makes me happy. I just didn’t know how much until about five minutes ago.”

“I’m still not fully convinced, for the record. You’ve said ‘soon’ about stuff before,” Chris said around his growing smile.

“Fair.”

“But okay. I’m proud of you.”

Eddie huffed out something that was almost a laugh, shaking his head, and glanced around the living room, noticeably missing something. “Where’s Theo, by the way? It's too quiet.”

“Kitchen. Colouring.” Chris said easily, already standing, halfway done with the conversation now that he’d gotten what he came for. “He’s been at it for like twenty minutes.”

Eddie eased himself up off the couch, careful not to jostle Smoky too much as he got to his feet, and padded into the kitchen to find Theo exactly where Chris said he’d be — cross-legged on a chair that was too tall for him, tongue poking out in concentration, a fan of crayons scattered across the table and one sheet of paper held down flat under both small hands.

“Hey, bud. Whatcha making?”

Theo didn’t look up right away, too absorbed in whatever finishing touch he was adding. “A picture.”

“I can see that.” Eddie leaned over his shoulder to look properly, and something in his chest squeezed all over again.

It was four figures, drawn in the confident, wobbly scrawl of a four-year-old who hadn’t yet learned to worry about proportions. A tall one and a taller one, standing close together, holding hands. A smaller one next to them, and another smaller one beside that, presumably Chris, based on the careful attempt at glasses scribbled onto his face. And down near the bottom, off to one side, a small grey blob with triangle ears that could only be Smoky.

“That’s you,” Theo said, pointing with a purple crayon, entirely matter-of-fact, “and that’s my Buck. And that’s Chris. And that’s me. And that’s Smoky.”

“It’s really good, bud.” Eddie’s voice came out rougher than he meant it to.

“It’s my family.”

Eddie didn’t trust himself to say anything right away. He just nodded, throat tight, and reached out to smooth down a piece of Theo’s hair, the same automatic gesture he’d watched Buck do a hundred times.

He was going to tell Buck. He meant it more now than he had thirty seconds ago in the living room — meant it standing in his kitchen looking at four stick figures and a cat that a four-year-old had already, without a single doubt in his small body, decided was a family.

Soon. He was going to tell him soon.

— — —

That resolve lasted approximately ten minutes before it curdled into something closer to full-blown panic.

Because soon was easy to say. Soon sounded brave and decisive as he stood in the kitchen, a crayon drawing still clutched in his hand. Soon did not, however, come with instructions, and the second Eddie actually sat down to think through what telling Buck was supposed to look like, his brain short-circuited entirely.

What if he said it wrong? What if he led with something too casual, and Buck brushed it off as a joke?

What if he was too intense about it and scared him off? What if Buck didn’t — Eddie’s stomach dropped just forming the thought — what if Buck didn’t feel the same way, and eight years of easy, effortless closeness turned into something neither of them knew how to be around anymore?

He was pacing a groove into his own living room floor within the hour, phone in one hand, the other dragging through his hair, when Chris found him mid-spiral.

“Okay, this is worse than I expected,” Chris said, dropping onto the couch and surveying his father with the weary patience of someone who had, apparently, seen this coming. “You look like you’re about to be shipped off to war again.”

“I don’t know what to say to him, Chris.”

“You said you’d tell him the truth. So, tell him. ‘Buck, I love you.’ It’s only four words. Very manageable.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It’s exactly that simple, that’s the whole point—”

“What if I say it wrong? What if the timing’s off, or I make it weird, or—” Eddie stopped pacing long enough to drag both hands down his face. “I’ve never done this. Not like this. Not with — with Buck. He matters too much.”

Chris opened his mouth, probably to point out that this was, in fact, still very solvable with four words, but he was cut off by the sound of small feet thundering down the hallway. Theo skidded into the living room, clutching his drawing in one fist and Smoky trailing loosely behind him like she’d been dragged into this against her will, which, to be fair, she probably had.

“Are we planning something?” Theo asked, eyes lighting up.

“We are not planning anything,” Eddie said.

“We are absolutely planning something,” Chris said, at the exact same time, already pulling out a notebook from his backpack. “Dad needs help telling Buck he loves him, and apparently, doing it with actual words is too scary, so we’re doing this the fun way.”

“I did not agree to this.”

“You didn’t disagree fast enough,” Chris said, already writing at the top of a blank page, in handwriting far too neat for how fast he was moving.

And that, as it turned out, was that. Eddie tried, weakly, to object twice more, and was overruled both times — once by Chris, and once by Theo, who had climbed up onto the couch beside him and declared with total confidence that, “Buck likes surprises,” as though that settled the entire debate. Even Smoky seemed to be in on it, hopping up onto the coffee table and planting herself directly in the middle of the notebook page like she had her own opinions. 

What followed was forty-five increasingly unhinged minutes of planning. Chris wanted something dramatic — candles, a speech, possibly a song, an idea Eddie shut down so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. 

Theo wanted Smoky involved “because she’s part of the family too,” which nobody had the heart to argue with, so a small handwritten sign reading ‘Eddie loves Buck’ got seriously considered for approximately five minutes before Eddie vetoed it on the grounds that he would like to be the one to actually say the words, thank you very much. 

They debated location — Buck’s place for convenience; the firehouse, too public, too many witnesses, too much potential for Chimney to somehow mess it up; Eddie’s own back porch, familiar, quiet, theirs, probably the best option.

They debated timing, whether to loop Maddie in for backup intel on whether Buck already suspected anything, whether the cat should be present for the actual moment or was better deployed as a distraction beforehand. 

By the end of it, the plan — scrawled across two full pages in Chris’s increasingly excited handwriting, annotated in one corner with a slightly lopsided drawing of Smoky that Theo had insisted on adding himself — was, in Eddie’s professional opinion, entirely too elaborate for four words and a nervous heartbeat. 

He looked at it anyway. At his son, invested and grinning. At Theo, clutching his family drawing still. At the cat, still sitting proprietarily on top of the notebook as if she’d personally orchestrated the whole thing.

“Okay,” Eddie said, and this time it didn’t feel like panic at all. It felt, terrifyingly, like the beginning of something.

“Okay,” Chris echoed, grinning. “So. Step one.”

Step one, as it turned out, was flowers, which was how Eddie ended up outside in his own backyard twenty minutes later, kneeling in the same flower bed he’d frantically searched for a runaway cat in that morning, cutting whatever was blooming with a pair of kitchen scissors because he did not, apparently, own actual gardening shears. It wasn’t much of a bouquet — some hydrangeas, a few stems of something purple he couldn’t name, one slightly crooked sunflower Theo had insisted on — but it was real, and it was his, and something about that felt like it mattered more than anything store-bought would have. 

Step two was muffins, which was, in retrospect, an ambitious addition to a plan that already had flowers, a note, and — against Eddie’s continued objections — a sign. Buck’s favourite was blueberry, something Eddie knew with a kind of certainty that should probably have told him everything eight years ago.

He stood at the counter with Chris, reading instructions off his phone while Eddie tried to remember whether baking powder and baking soda were, in fact, the same thing. They were not. He found this out the hard way, halfway through, and had to start over with Theo perched on a stool, ‘helping’ by dumping blueberries directly into his mouth roughly as often as he dumped them into the bowl. The first batch came out slightly too dark on the bottom. The second batch was, against all odds, edible. Eddie decided that was good enough. 

“You should write that note,” Chris said, licking batter off a spoon while the second batch baked, entirely too pleased with the chaos he’d created. “In case the words thing doesn’t work out live.”

“I thought the whole point was saying it.”

“Backup plan, Dad. It’s a fire department thing, you should be onto these things by now.”

Eddie couldn’t really argue with that logic, so he sat down at the kitchen table with a notepad and stared at it for a solid five minutes before writing anything at all, crossing out three separate openings before he landed on something that felt honest instead of rehearsed. He folded it small and tucked it into his pocket, where it sat like a stone the rest of the afternoon.

Theo, meanwhile, had been given the extremely important job of making a sign — a job Eddie had tried, weakly, to talk him out of, on the grounds that he still didn’t fully love the idea of a literal announcement, but Theo had looked so devastated at the possibility of being cut from the operation that Eddie caved within about three seconds.

What Theo produced, after twenty minutes of intense focus and at least one crayon casualty, was a piece of poster board in wobbly, oversized letters that read EDDIE LOVES BUCK with a lopsided heart drawn beside it and, for reasons known only to Theo, a small addition of Smoky in the corner wearing what appeared to be a tiny crown.

“It’s good, right?” Theo asked, holding it up proudly.

It was terrifying, that’s what it was.

“Yeah, bud, it’s great.”

By the time the muffins had cooled and the flowers were sitting in a mason jar on the counter because Eddie didn’t own a vase, the sign was propped — mercifully, at Eddie’s insistence — out of immediate sightline from the front door, and the note was still burning a small hole in his pocket, Eddie had moved on to the final and, in his opinion, most important phase: rehearsing. 

“Okay. Okay, one more time.” Eddie was pacing the length of the living room again, Chris sprawled on the couch, watching him with long-suffering patience. “Buck. I need to tell you something, and I need you to just — let me get through it, okay, because if you interrupt me I will absolutely lose my nerve—”

“You’re overexplaining already,” Chris said. “Cut the preamble.”

“How do you know what a preamble is?”

Chris shot him a look. “Nobody needs context for ‘I love you,’ Dad, that’s the whole—”

“Just let me finish practising.”

“Buck, I love you,” Chris said flatly, cutting straight through it, arms crossed. “See? Four words. Ten seconds. Done.”

“It needs more than that, it needs to actually mean something, it needs—”

“It already means something. That’s the problem, you’re trying to overcomplicate things.”

“Chris—”

“Sure,” Chris said, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “What do I know?”

Eddie was seconds away from telling him that he didn’t need relationship advice from his teenage son when Buck’s voice rang out throughout the house. 

“Hey!”

Both of them froze.

Buck was standing in the doorway — the actual, real Buck, not a rehearsal Buck, not the version Eddie had been practicing on in his head for the last twenty minutes — keys still in one hand, the door swinging shut behind him, wearing the easy, unbothered grin of a man who had, simply let himself in without knocking, because he’d stopped needing to knock a long time ago and neither of them had ever thought to stop him.

Eddie’s heart rate skyrocketed.

— — —

Buck’s shift had run long, the kind of day that started with a multi-car pileup on the 101 and somehow only got busier from there, and by the time he’d finally clocked out, all he’d wanted was a shower, food, and his kid. Somewhere around hour nine, he’d started low-key worrying about the cat situation — not that he doubted Eddie, exactly. Eddie was the single most competent person Buck knew, but Smoky had chaos in her bones, and Theo had chaos in his, and Buck had left the two of them together with a man who was probably not prepared for that. 

So when he pulled up outside, and everything looked intact — house standing, no smoke, no sirens, nothing on fire — he’d allowed himself a full breath of relief before letting himself in.

What he walked into was Eddie mid-pace, and Chris sprawled on the couch looking like he’d just watched a car crash in slow motion, both of them freezing the second Buck stepped through the door like he’d caught them doing something wrong. 

“Hey,” Buck said slowly, glancing between them. “Everything okay? Did Smoky break something? Did Theo? Somebody talk to me.”

“Everything’s fine,” Eddie said, too fast, in a tone that suggested everything was, in fact, not fine.

“You’re acting weird." Buck set his keys down on the counter, eyes narrowing slightly as he took in the room properly — the mason jar of slightly wilted flowers he definitely hadn’t noticed before, the faint smell of something baked hanging in the air. “Both of you are acting weird. Did something happen? Is Theo okay?”

“Theo’s fine. He’s colouring.” Eddie’s hands found their way into his pockets, and Buck watched him press against something there — a folded piece of paper, maybe, though Buck couldn’t be sure — before pulling them back out again. “I just, um. I wanted to say something. To you. About today. About — about us, actually.”

Buck blinked. “About us?”

“Yeah. Just — the whole day. You showing up with a cat, and Theo, and—” Eddie exhaled, hard, like he was trying to steady something. “I keep doing this thing where I don’t say things, and I think it’s time I stopped doing that. Because you make my house feel less empty just by walking into it, and I really like spending time with you—”

Buck tilted his head, genuinely trying to follow. “Okay... so, you’re saying you liked having us over? That’s sweet, man, we can do this way more often, I know Theo would love—”

Behind him, Chris made a sound like something had physically injured him and dropped his head into both hands.

“That is not what he’s saying,” Chris mumbled into his palms. “You are so far off the mark it’s actually impressive.”

Chris pushed himself up off the couch, shaking his head, already halfway to the hallway before he turned back around just long enough to add, “This is a train wreck. I’m out. Good luck, both of you,” before disappearing down the hall entirely, leaving the two of them alone in a silence that felt, suddenly, enormous. 

Buck looked at Eddie. Eddie looked anywhere but at Buck — at the flowers, at his own hands, at a spot on the carpet that had apparently become extremely interesting.

“Okay,” Buck said slowly, some of the earlier confusion starting to give way to something more careful. “Eddie. What is actually going on?”

Eddie took a breath. Then another one. It took him a long moment to actually get moving, like he was physically hauling the words up from somewhere buried deep, but when he finally started, it came out steadier than Buck expected. 

“I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this all day, and I had this whole plan, and it’s completely fallen apart already so I’m just gonna—” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Buck, you have been the best part of my life for longer than I think either of us has actually admitted. Not just today. Not just the cat, or Theo, or any other thing. All of it. Every day you show up here like it’s your house too. Every time you’ve shown up for Chris like he’s yours. I don’t — I don’t want to keep pretending that’s just friendship, because I don’t think it’s been just friendship in a really long time, and I—”

There was a scuffling sound near the hallway.

Both of them turned.

Smoky came trotting into the living room, dragging behind her a large piece of poster board considerably bigger than she was, scraping loudly against the floor with every step. She deposited it in the middle of the room with what could only be described as immense satisfaction, sat down beside it, and looked up at both of them expectantly.

Buck stared down at it.

EDDIE LOVES BUCK, in enormous, wobbly, unmistakably four-year-old handwriting, a lopsided heart beside it, and, in the corner, a small crayon rendering of Smoky wearing what was very clearly meant to be a crown.

The room went very quiet.

“...Okay,” Buck said, voice cracking slightly on the word, staring at the sign like it might disappear if he looked away from it. “Okay, that’s — that’s something.”

Internally, Buck was freaking out. He had waited years for those words to be true.

“Theo made it,” Eddie said weakly, like that explained anything, like that was somehow the part that needed clarifying. “I told him he didn’t have to, I really did try to stop that particular part of the plan—”

“Eddie.” Buck’s whole body was lighting up. “Is that true?”

“...Yeah.” Eddie’s voice barely made it above a whisper. “Yeah, it’s true.”

Buck let out a sound that was half laugh, half something closer to a gasp, both hands coming up to scrub over his face like he needed a second to actually process it. Because there was no way this was happening.

Buck lowered his hands from his face, still catching his breath, and looked at Eddie like he was seeing him for the first time — which, in a way, he kind of was. 

“Finish it,” Buck said. “Whatever you were saying before. Finish it.”

Eddie swallowed. Took the last step that closed the distance between them, close enough now that he didn't have to raise his voice at all. “I love you, Buck. I have for a long time, longer than I let myself admit, and I don’t want to keep pretending otherwise. Not to you, not to Chris, not to anybody. I want this — all of it, the mess and the chaos and the cat you didn’t warn me about and Theo’s terrible, wonderful drawings. I want you.”

For a second, Buck didn’t say anything at all. He just looked at Eddie, still in disbelief. It was like eight years had finally caught up with both of them in the space of one afternoon. 

“I want you too,” Buck finally said.

He then took a moment to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming, before he closed the last few inches between them and kissed Eddie. 

It was soft, at first — careful, like they were both testing whether this was real, whether it might dissolve if either of them moved too fast. Then Eddie’s hand came up to the back of Buck’s neck, and something in the kiss deepened and turned certain. It was sweet in a way that made Buck’s chest ache, better than every half-formed daydream he’d never quite let himself finish, warm and easy and finally, real.

He only pulled back because something sharp swatted at his leg.

Buck blinked down, startled, to find Smoky sitting directly at their feet, tail flicking with clear and pointed displeasure, one paw still raised mid-swat like she was prepared to do it again if necessary.

“...Did she just—”

“Ignore her,” Eddie murmured, already leaning back in.

Buck, not one to argue with that logic, went right back in for another kiss — and got swatted again, sharper this time, a genuine claws-adjacent warning shot against his ankle that made him yelp and jump back a full step.

“Okay, she definitely just did that on purpose.”

Eddie was laughing now, watching Smoky plant herself firmly on Eddie’s feet and start purring. “I think she’s jealous.”

“She’s jealous? She’s my cat.” Buck stared down at Smoky with genuine, wounded betrayal, one hand pressed to his chest like he’d been personally wronged. “I rescued her. I gave her a home. And she’s gonna stand here and stop me from kissing my—” He stopped short, the sentence catching in his throat, eyes going wide like he’d only just heard himself.

Eddie raised an eyebrow, clearly enjoying this far too much.

“We haven’t — we didn’t actually—” Buck’s hands came up, gesturing vaguely between the two of them, panic and delight tangled together on his face. “We didn’t clarify what this is. Are we — is this boyfriends? Are we boyfriends now? I don’t want to assume, I just kissed you, and there was a whole sign and a cat attack, and I feel like we might have skipped a step—”

“Husband,” Eddie said, entirely nonchalant, like he was commenting on the weather, already crouching down to scoop Smoky up into his arms. “You’re going to be my husband.”

Buck's jaw dropped. Actually dropped, mouth open, no sound coming out for a solid three seconds.

“I— what— Eddie—”

Buck was pretty sure you were supposed to ask someone that. Not that he’d ever say no, but still. 

Eddie was already turning away, cat tucked against his chest, heading toward the kitchen.

“Muffins are on the counter,” he called back over his shoulder, like he hadn’t just upended Buck’s entire nervous system. “Blueberry. Your favourite.”

Buck stood frozen in the middle of the living room, staring after him, one hand still pressed uselessly to his chest, and somewhere down the hall, faint but unmistakable, came the sound of Chris groaning, “Oh my god, they’re both insane,” followed immediately by Theo’s delighted, oblivious little voice asking, “Can we eat the muffins now?”

Did Buck’s cat just steal his boyfriend? Wait, no husband? But there wasn’t a wedding yet…right? So fiancé? Maybe—

“Eddie,” Buck yelled after him. “Did we just get engaged?”

“From what I hear,” Eddie yelled back, “we are already married.”

And well… Buck had no valid arguments for that.