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Theo wanted Eddie’s coffee.
He’d been watching the mug for the better part of a minute, which Eddie had initially chosen to ignore. Theo watched a lot of things. Bugs. Ceiling fans. Buck cooking. Once, for almost ten uninterrupted minutes, a piece of lint caught in the vent.
This, apparently, required action.
Theo slid down from his chair and padded around the kitchen island in dinosaur pajamas and one sock. He stopped beside Eddie, pointed directly at the mug in his hand, and said, “I want thathat.
Eddie looked down at the mug in his hand, then back at Theo, who was still pointing at it with the solemn determination of someone placing an order.
“This?”
Theo nodded. “Yeah.”
“You know this is coffee, right?”
“I know.”
Eddie waited, mostly because Theo was looking at him like that should have settled the matter.
“You don’t drink coffee.”
Theo’s hand dropped to his side. He thought about this—or at least gave a very convincing impression of thinking about it—before looking back at the mug.
“I can.”
There it was.
Eddie pressed his lips together. “No, you can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re four.”
Theo’s expression tightened immediately. “Four and three quarters.”
“Right. Sorry. Four and three quarters.” Eddie lifted the mug slightly. “Still not old enough for coffee.”
Theo watched him take another sip, eyes following the cup all the way up and back down again.
Then he said, very reasonably, “But you have it.”
“I’m an adult.”
“So is Buck.”
Eddie glanced toward the stove. “Debatable.”
“Hey,” Buck said, without turning around.
Theo ignored him. His attention had already settled back on Eddie’s coffee.
“I want yours.”
“You’re not having mine.”
“Just a little?”
“No.”
“A tiny little?”
Eddie had to look away for a second, because now Theo had pinched his thumb and forefinger together to demonstrate precisely how much coffee he believed he was entitled to.
When Eddie looked back, Theo was still holding them there.
“No coffee.”
Theo sighed, long and put-upon, like Eddie had failed him personally.
“Okay.”
It was far too easy.
Eddie narrowed his eyes.
Theo smiled at him.
There was a flaw somewhere in the logic. Eddie just wasn’t sure Theo knew what logic was.
He looked across the kitchen. Buck was at the stove with a spatula in one hand and his phone in the other, reading a recipe Eddie had watched him make often enough that he could probably recite it from memory. He was wearing the KISS THE COOK apron Maddie had bought him, because Maddie thought she was hilarious and Buck had apparently decided the best response was to wear it constantly.
“Buck.”
Buck made a vague sound in response, still looking down at his phone. The screen was propped against the salt shaker now, the recipe open even though Eddie had watched him make these eggs enough times to know there was absolutely nothing on that screen he didn’t already know.
“He’s been asking all week,” Buck said.
Eddie looked back at Theo, who had apparently decided this counted as useful testimony and was nodding along beside him.
“And you said?”
Buck finally set the phone down, though only so he could get a better grip on the spatula. “I said ask Eddie.”
He slid it under one of the eggs and flipped. The egg turned neatly this time, yolk intact, no emergency scrape required. Eddie had seen enough breakfast-related disasters in this kitchen over the last couple of months to appreciate the progress.
He still had other concerns.
“Why,” Eddie asked, watching Buck shuffle the eggs around the pan like this conversation had nothing whatsoever to do with him, “am I the deciding authority on whether your four-year-old gets coffee?”
Theo tugged lightly at the hem of Eddie’s shirt, “Four and three quarters.”
Eddie looked down at him. “That’s the part you took issue with?”
Theo nodded.
Across the kitchen, Buck laughed under his breath.
Eddie looked back over.
That was what finally got Buck to turn around. He leaned one hip against the counter, spatula still in hand, and looked at Eddie with the kind of pleased expression that suggested he had been waiting for this exact conversation to happen.
“What?” Eddie said.
Buck’s mouth twitched. "Nothing."
Eddie knew that mouth twitch. It usually meant Buck had either thought of something annoying or was trying very hard not to say something annoying, which was worse because then Eddie had to wait for it.
“You’re the one with all the rules,” Buck said.
For a second, Eddie just stared at him.
Then he glanced at Theo, who was still planted beside Eddie’s leg waiting for the verdict, and back at Buck.
“My rules?”
“Mm-hm.”
“What rules?”
Buck’s eyebrows went up. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.”
“You have rules about bedtime.”
“Because he needs sleep.”
“Shoes.”
“He has to wear them outside.”
“Dessert.”
“You gave him ice cream at nine-thirty.”
“It was a Friday.”
“He’s four.”
“Four and three quarters,” Theo corrected again.
Buck pointed the spatula at him. “Thank you.”
Eddie looked between the two of them and had the sudden, deeply inconvenient realization that they had apparently formed an alliance.
“When did this happen?”
“When did what happen?”
“This.” Eddie gestured between them. “Whatever this is.”
Buck grinned, and there was something so easy about it that Eddie lost the rest of whatever he had been about to say.
Not because the smile was particularly unusual. Buck smiled all the time. At Eddie, at Chris, at strangers in grocery stores, at dogs tied up outside coffee shops and at elderly couples holding hands.
This one just sat there for a second.
Then Buck turned back to the stove, “You like having rules,” he said.
Eddie scoffed. “I like keeping children alive.”
“Exactly.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“Sure.”
Eddie opened his mouth, ready with some version of that is not what I said, and then stopped.
There were too many directions the argument could go in, and Buck had that particular look on his face that meant he would happily follow every single one of them just to see how annoyed Eddie could get before breakfast. Eddie knew better than to give him the opportunity. Usually.
He took another drink instead, letting the coffee sit warm and bitter on his tongue while Buck turned back to the stove with the unmistakable air of someone who believed he had won something.
Which was when Theo tugged at Eddie’s shirt.
Theo was still standing exactly where Eddie had left him, one socked foot planted beside one bare one on the cool kitchen tile. His hair stuck up badly at the crown, flattened on one side from sleep, and the green dinosaur on the front of his pajamas had somehow acquired a dark smear of what looked suspiciously like jam across its face. He tipped his head back to look at Eddie, eyes wide and completely serious.
“So I can have coffee?”
Eddie stared at him.
Somewhere along the way, apparently, Theo had heard Buck say ask Eddie and interpreted the entire conversation since as an unusually long approval process.
“No,” Eddie said.
Theo’s face changed by degrees.
First confusion, because this was clearly not the answer he had been expecting. Then suspicion, like Eddie might have misunderstood the question. Finally, a faint crease appeared between his eyebrows as he looked past Eddie toward Buck, checking, presumably, whether there had been some procedural error.
“But Buck said ask you.”
“He did.”
Theo looked back at Eddie.
Eddie could practically watch him sorting through the problem.
“And I asked.”
“You did.”
There was another pause.
“And you said no.”
Eddie took a slow sip of coffee, mostly because smiling now would ruin everything. “I did say no.”
Theo stood there for a moment longer, visibly dissatisfied with the structure of the system.
Behind them came the soft scrape of Buck’s spatula against the pan. Eddie heard a plate slide across the counter, then the click of the stove being turned down. Buck hadn’t said a word in several seconds, which meant he was listening with all the subtlety of a man standing six feet away in a bright yellow apron.
Theo glanced toward him again.
“Buck lets me have chocolate.”
Eddie lowered his mug.
He looked down at Theo, “Does he?”
Theo nodded.
Eddie could see Buck’s shoulders lift slightly beneath the apron, the beginning of a laugh he was trying not particularly hard to hide.
“Is that supposed to help your case?” Eddie asked.
Theo took the question seriously. His mouth pressed into a small line while he thought about it, gaze dropping briefly to the floor.
Then he looked back up.
“Yeah.”
Buck laughed behind him, soft and unguarded, and Theo’s whole expression changed at the sound, pleased with himself in a way that made Eddie suspect he’d been playing to an audience all along.
Eddie turned his head toward the stove. “Don’t encourage him.”
Buck looked over his shoulder, still smiling, the kind of smile that started in one corner of his mouth and made it obvious he had absolutely no intention of being helpful.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re laughing.”
Buck glanced down at the pan as if that proved his innocence. He nudged one of the eggs with the edge of the spatula, unnecessarily careful about it now, shoulders still shaking once with the tail end of the laugh.
“I’m cooking.”
Eddie watched him for a second.
The apron strings were tied crooked at his back. One of his curls had fallen forward over his forehead.
“You can do two things at once,” Eddie said.
Buck looked back at him and grinned, “Thank you.”
The grin had gone softer now, but it was still there, sitting easy on his face in a way that made Eddie feel like he was being laughed at and included in the joke at the same time.
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“I know.”
Buck’s smile widened anyway, bright and completely unapologetic, and Eddie had to look away before he gave him the satisfaction of seeing his own mouth start to twitch.
Eddie felt Theo move beside him before he saw what he was doing.
There was a tiny shift against his leg, then the soft drag of a bare foot across the tile. Eddie looked down just in time to catch Theo leaning ever so slightly closer, all his attention fixed on the mug still resting in Eddie’s hand.
One small arm was already halfway up.
Eddie watched Theo's fingers inch toward the handle for another second before lifting the mug neatly out of range.
Theo’s hand closed around empty air.
He froze.
So did Eddie.
For a moment, Theo kept his fist exactly where the coffee had been, as though there was still some chance nobody had noticed what had just happened. Then he opened his fingers and stared at them.
His gaze travelled upward to the mug.
Then, very slowly, to Eddie’s face.
Eddie raised his eyebrows.
Theo blinked at him.
Eddie lifted the coffee another inch.
That seemed to settle it.
Theo drew his hand back against his chest, his expression becoming carefully innocent in a way that would have been more convincing if Eddie hadn’t just watched the entire crime happen in real time.
“I was looking.”
Eddie looked at him.
Then at the hand Theo was now trying to hide against the front of his pajamas.
“With your hand?”
Theo’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.
He glanced down at his own fingers as if they had acted independently and he was only now becoming aware of their involvement.
Eddie waited.
Theo thought about it long enough that Eddie could practically see him searching for another explanation, rejecting each one as it came.
Finally, he tucked both hands behind his back.
There.
Problem solved.
Theo rocked once onto his heels and looked up at Eddie with his best attempt at innocence.
Eddie had to press his lips together, and the said, “No coffee.”
Theo’s whole body seemed to deflate.
His shoulders dropped first, then his chin, and the sigh that came out of him was so long and weary that Eddie almost expected him to ask for a minute alone to process the setback.
For someone who had been denied approximately half an ounce of coffee, Theo was taking it remarkably hard.
Then he lifted his head again.
“What if it’s little little?”
Eddie already knew where this was going.
“No.”
Theo raised one hand and pinched his thumb and forefinger together, leaving barely any space between them.
“This much.”
Eddie looked at the tiny gap.
Then at Theo.
“That is still coffee.”
“But tiny coffee.”
Behind him, Buck made another strangled noise.
Eddie ignored him.
“There is no amount of coffee you can rename until I let you drink it.”
Theo kept his fingers pinched together for another second, as if Eddie might reconsider if he had sufficient visual reference.
Then, very slowly, he let his hand fall.
“Okay.”
The word came out soft and agreeable.
Two months ago, Buck had called him at eleven-forty at night.
Buck had signed the papers that afternoon. By eleven-forty he had a four-year-old asleep down the hall, a garbage bag of clothes spilling across his living room floor, a stuffed rabbit missing one ear propped against the couch, and absolutely no faith in his own ability to keep another human being alive until morning.
Is he supposed to breathe that loud when he sleeps?
Eddie had been pulling on jeans before Buck finished the question.
He’d stayed until almost two.
Then he’d come back the next morning.
After that, apparently, he’d just kept coming back.
Which was how he now found himself standing in Buck’s kitchen at seven on a Saturday morning, being consulted on the caffeine intake of a preschooler.
He’d seen versions of it on Christopher at four, five, six, seven—though Chris had generally preferred argument, negotiation, and, by the time he hit double digits, the devastating application of actual facts. Theo was still working with a much simpler system.
Want thing.
Ask for thing.
Receive thing.
Theo was still looking at the thing.
Not reaching for it anymore, which was something, but his eyes kept drifting back to it with the sort of long-suffering attention usually reserved for things unfairly withheld by the government.
Eddie took another drink and watched him over the rim.
Theo's mouth pulled down at one corner, not quite a pout but close enough to suggest he was considering one, and Eddie could already see the next argument forming somewhere behind his eyes.
“No,” Eddie said before he could start.
Theo blinked. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I wasn’t.”
Eddie lowered the mug and rested his hands on his hips without thinking about it, settling his weight onto one leg as he looked down at him. “You were.”
Theo stared up at him, entirely unbothered by the accusation.
There were days when Eddie forgot how young he actually was. Not because Theo seemed older, exactly. He didn’t. He was still small enough that the counter came up nearly to his shoulders and his pajama shirt had ridden crooked in the night, one side tucked accidentally into the waistband. But there was something about the way he committed to things. Whole body. Whole face. No hesitation. If Theo believed he had done nothing wrong, then as far as Theo was concerned, the matter was closed.
Eddie recognized that sort of stubbornness.
He chose not to examine why.
From behind him came the faint scrape of Buck moving the pan off the burner.
Eddie heard it, but he didn’t turn. Theo had narrowed his eyes slightly now, still studying him, and Eddie had the odd feeling he was being observed rather than argued with.
Then Theo shifted.
It was subtle at first.
One foot slid a little farther out on the tile. His shoulders straightened. His chin dipped.
And then both hands went to his hips.
Eddie’s gaze dropped.
Theo’s fingers were spread against the sides of his pajama bottoms, elbows jutting out with complete confidence. He shifted his weight onto one leg and looked back up at Eddie with an expression of mild, patient disapproval.
For a second, Eddie only stared.
There was something familiar about the posture.
Annoyingly familiar.
Eddie looked down at himself.
His own hands were still planted on his hips.
Buck began to laugh.
It wasn’t loud at first. More a breath than anything, the sound of somebody trying to keep it in and discovering too late that he had no intention of succeeding.
Eddie turned.
Buck had stopped cooking entirely. The spatula hung forgotten in one hand while he looked between Eddie and Theo, grin spreading wider by the second.
“What?” Eddie asked, though he already knew.
Buck shook his head once, like the answer was too obvious to require explanation.
“Nothing.”
Eddie gave him a look, which in turn only made Buck’s grin worse. Eddie could see the exact moment he gave up trying to behave.
“He’s doing you.”
Eddie looked back at Theo.
Theo had not moved.
Hands still on his hips. Weight still settled onto one leg. Eyebrows raised now, just slightly, as though Buck’s interruption had been noted and found unnecessary.
Eddie felt something in his chest go oddly light.
“He’s standing.”
Buck made a disbelieving sound. “Eddie.”
“He is.”
“No, he’s not. He’s standing like you.”
“There are only so many ways a person can stand.”
Buck pointed the spatula at Theo, delighted now. “That one. That is exactly how you stand.”
Eddie looked down again.
Theo looked back at him.
Then, as if he had decided Eddie’s version needed one final adjustment, he tucked his chin a little lower.
Eddie pressed his lips together.
He would not laugh.
Absolutely not.
Theo was already pleased enough with himself.
Then his eyes flicked very briefly toward Eddie’s hand.
Eddie followed the look.
Somewhere in the last ten seconds, apparently without realizing it, he had put his hands back on his hips.
He dropped them again.
Theo did not.
It had been going on about two weeks, and he could date the start of it exactly, which was its own kind of humiliation.
Two Tuesdays ago, Buck had been late off shift and Eddie had picked Theo up from the preschool on Franklin, and one of the four-year-olds, a kid named Angus with a haircut like a tiny divorced man, had shoved Theo into the cubbies over a green plastic shovel. And Eddie had crouched down to Theo's eye level, put a hand on his shoulder, and said the thing he'd said to Christopher a hundred times.
"Hey. You don't have to be the biggest guy in the room. You just have to be the guy who doesn't quit."
Theo had stared at him. Really stared. The way you look at a mountain, or a fire truck, or a very large dog.
Eddie had thought: that landed. He'd felt pretty good about it, honestly.
He should have known. Chris had gone through this at five, six months of it, wanting a watch because Eddie had a watch, standing in the bathroom doorway with a butter knife on his cheek because Eddie was shaving. It was normal. It was developmental. There was probably a chapter about it in one of the six books Buck had bought and highlighted and stacked on the coffee table with sticky tabs sticking out like a porcupine.
The difference was that Chris was his.
Theo was Buck's, and Theo did everything in front of Buck, and Buck watched everything Theo did with the delirious attention of a man watching his own personality happen in miniature. Which meant that every single thing Eddie had ever done in his life was now being played back, at high volume, in a two-and-a-half-foot format, for an audience of one.
The list, in the order it arrived:
The coffee. Technically first, although Eddie hadn’t known enough to count it at the time.
The hands on the hips came next.
That one was harder to miss.
"Copy that," which came out copy dat, and which he applied to everything, including bath time, including a request to stop licking the window, including once, memorably, in response to Hen saying hello.
The neck thing, where Eddie rubbed the back of his neck when he was buying time. Theo did it with his whole hand, palm flat, wrist bent, like he was scrubbing a pan.
"It is what it is." Iz what iz. To his preschool teacher. About the weather.
And then the glasses.
Eddie had started needing readers over the summer, which was fine, that was a normal thing that happened to people, and if Harry wanted to make a whole bit out of it he could go ahead and make a whole bit out of it. Eddie kept a pair on the counter at home and a pair in his locker and he pushed them up his nose with one finger when he was reading a med chart, and apparently that gesture was the single most impressive thing a human being had ever done, because Buck came back from a Rite Aid run with a four-pack of toy glasses on a cardboard spinner rack and Theo lost his entire mind.
They were purple. There were no lenses in them. There was a small plastic stegosaurus riding the left arm.
Theo wore them to breakfast. He wore them in the car. He wore them upside down for one full day and refused all correction. And he pushed them up his nose with one finger, exactly, precisely, the same small unnecessary shove Eddie had never once known he was doing until he watched a preschooler do it back to him over a bowl of Cheerios.
"Oh my God," Buck had said, and had to put his forehead on the counter.
Eddie had laughed too. That was the thing. At that point it was still funny.
He would like the record to show that he had a system.
The system was: he had figured out how he felt about Buck sometime around the third day of the drive back from Nevada in June, when Buck had fallen asleep in the passenger seat with his mouth open and his hand curled up on the console like he was waiting for something to be put in it, and Eddie had looked over at a rest stop outside Baker with the sun coming up and had thought, with total calm, oh.
And then he had put it in a box. And the box went on a shelf. And nobody opened the box, because Eddie Diaz had spent nine years becoming a person who did not open boxes, and because Buck was three weeks into being someone's whole world and did not need a man having a feeling at him.
The system was working great. The system was airtight. Nobody knew. Not Hen, who watched him like a hawk with a hobby. Not Chris, who had stopped asking questions about it two years ago in a way Eddie refused to think about. Not Buck, obviously, because Buck noticed everything about Eddie except apparently whatever this was. Eddie could have lit himself on fire in that man’s kitchen and Buck would have asked if he was cold.
The system was: it doesn't count if nobody sees it.
Buck brought Theo by the station on a Thursday, mid-afternoon, dead shift, everybody restless.
He came in with Theo on his hip and a little dinosaur backpack hanging off one shoulder, the kind that somehow held three snacks, two toy cars, a packet of wipes and absolutely nothing anyone actually needed. Theo was wearing a child-sized 118 shirt Hen had gotten made, the purple glasses, and an expression of profound institutional authority.
"Oh," Hen said, standing up. "Oh, I'm getting my phone."
"He's been talking about it all week," Buck said, setting him down. "He asked to come."
Theo hit the floor of the loft, took one look around, and put his hands on his hips.
Chimney made a noise like he'd been shot.
"You see it," Hen said pointing at Chimney.
"I see it."
"Don't," Eddie said.
"That's you." Chim came around the table pointing. "That's you. That is you. Look at his little stance. Ravi. Ravi, come here, look at this."
Ravi looked. Ravi took it in for a long moment, and then said, with real reverence, "That's the strongest I've ever seen a four-year-old look."
Eddie was sitting on the couch with his phone. He did not move. He had learned, over the course of these two weeks, that the only defense was to become inert, like a rock, or a man who had died standing up.
Theo walked over, slowly. Theo had recently learned that walking slowly made adults nervous, and he was harvesting that discovery for everything it was worth. He stopped in front of Eddie, pushed the glasses up his nose with one finger, and looked at him.
"Hi," Eddie said.
"You good?"
"I'm good, bud."
Theo nodded. Once. Down, up. Then he turned around and sat on the couch next to Eddie, so close their legs touched, folded his arms, and stared at the wall with an air of grim professional patience, and Eddie felt something in his chest go warm and stupid and had to look at the ceiling for a second.
"I'm making this my screensaver," Hen said.
"Hen."
Chimney sat down across from them and leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Theo. Buddy. What's Eddie do when Buck says something dumb?"
"Chim,” Eddie groaned.
Theo thought about it. Theo took it seriously; he tipped his head back and squinted, doing real cognitive labor, and then he turned to the room at large, dropped his chin, let his shoulders fall about an inch, and said, with a long-suffering exhale that came all the way up from his tiny diaphragm:
"Buck."
The loft went insane.
It was perfect. That was the horrifying part. It wasn't a kid saying a name. It had the whole shape of it: the little drop at the end, the fondness sanded down into exhaustion so nobody would notice the fondness. Eddie had been saying that man's name that exact way since 2019 and had never once heard it from the outside, and now it was coming out of a preschooler in a costume, in front of everyone he worked with.
Chimney was on the floor. Actually on the floor, on his side, one hand up. Hen had her phone out and was filming with the other hand pressed over her mouth. Ravi and Harry had turned around to face the wall out of what appeared to be genuine respect for the moment.
And Buck.
Buck was standing at the end of the couch with his hands on his hips and his head thrown back, laughing so hard he wasn't making noise, the way he did about twice a year, wheezing, wiping under his eye with the heel of his hand. He looked down at Eddie and tried to say something and couldn't, and just pointed at him, and then had to grab the back of the couch.
"He's got you down," Buck managed. "Eddie. He's got the whole— he does the sigh. Do you know you do the sigh?"
"I don't do a sigh."
"You do a huge sigh. You've done it at me twice today."
"Three times," Hen said, filming.
"Say it again, Theo," Chim said from the floor. "Say it again."
"Buck," said Theo, delighted now, playing to the firehouse.
Eddie stood up, took his coffee, and went downstairs to check the ambulance rig for supplies it did not need, and if he was smiling on the way down the stairs, that was between him and the stairs.
Here is what he thought about that night, lying in bed at one in the morning with the ceiling fan going.
He thought: it's just mannerisms. Kids collect them like rocks. Theo would move on. Sometime in the next few weeks he'd meet a garbage man or watch a movie about a dog and Eddie would be demoted and it would be over.
He thought: I should stop saying "copy that."
He tried this, actually, for about thirty hours. It was a disaster. Without "copy that" he had nothing. He heard himself say "understood" to Hen and she looked at him like he'd taken his pants off.
And then, some point after midnight, the thought he'd been walking around all week arrived and sat down on his chest like a cat.
If he's got all of that, what else has he got.
Because that was the arithmetic, wasn't it. The kid wasn't editing. The kid wasn't picking out the good parts. The kid was a mirror somebody had propped up in Buck's kitchen for two months, and Eddie had spent two months in that kitchen doing whatever it was he did, without watching himself, because there had never been any reason to watch himself.
He'd been careful for years. He'd been so careful. He'd built a whole personality out of being careful.
But you can't be careful at seven in the morning with the eggs going, and he had not been careful, not once, not in that kitchen.
He got up and got a glass of water and did not think about it any more that night, in the sense that he thought about it until four.
Sunday. Dinner at Buck’s, which had become a thing somewhere along the way, because Buck still couldn’t do bedtime alone without narrating his anxiety at the nearest available surface, and because Chris came with Eddie often enough now that nobody bothered pretending it required an invitation.
Chris was fifteen and had recently gotten funny in a way Eddie found personally threatening. He came in through the front door like he’d been doing it his whole life, set his crutches against the wall, took one look toward the kitchen and said, “It smells amazing in here, which means Buck cooked and my dad watched,” before sitting down in his usual place and immediately stealing a piece of whatever Buck had left within reach.
"I helped," Eddie said.
"He got the plates down," Buck called from the stove. "It was very helpful. It was a real contribution."
"Chris, get the— thank you."
Theo was in his seat at the end of the table with the glasses on, upside down, because they had entered a second upside-down era. He had a plastic fork in his fist and a paper towel tucked into his collar like a napkin, an innovation nobody had taught him and everybody was afraid to comment on in case he stopped.
Buck brought the pan over. He'd made the chicken thing with the lemons, which he'd learned from Bobby, and which he made when he was feeling something he didn't have a word for, and nobody at that table was ever going to say that out loud, but Eddie always ate two helpings and Buck always noticed.
"Theo," Buck said, "you want the pasta or the chicken?"
"Copy that," said Theo.
"That's not— okay, both."
"He says that to everything now," Chris said. "He said it to me about my shoes."
"He said it to a mailbox on Wednesday," Buck said.
"Iz what iz," said Theo.
Chris put his fork down and looked at his father with the flat, unhurried joy of a kid who has found something he's going to be able to use for the rest of his life. "Oh, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me."
"What is?" Eddie asked.
"He's a tiny you. He's a tiny version of you and I get to watch."
There were several responses available to Eddie. Most of them would only make this worse, "Eat your food."
"Copy that," said Chris.
Buck laughed so hard he had to sit down, reaching over without looking to put a hand on Eddie’s shoulder to steady himself. He left it there for a second longer than he needed to, warm through Eddie’s shirt, before pulling it away.
Buck pulled his hand back at last, still laughing as he scrubbed it once over his face. “Sorry, sorry. No, we’re being nice.”
Eddie turned his head toward him, eyebrows lifting. “Are we?”
Buck’s grin went crooked. He leaned back in his chair, still trying to get himself under control. “We’re trying.”
And Eddie looked at him.
He didn't decide to. That was the point, he understood later, that was the entire point. He just did what he always did, which was to look at Buck when Buck laughed, because he had never in nine years managed to not.
Then he heard, from the end of the table, a small, unmistakable sigh.
He turned.
Theo had put down his fork. Theo had propped both elbows on the table and put his chin in his hands. The glasses were still upside down. And he was gazing at Buck.
Gazing. He was gazing at Buck. Head tipped about fifteen degrees to the left. Eyes soft and unblinking and enormous. A small helpless smile at one corner of his mouth, like something was happening in his chest that he didn't have the words for and had decided to just enjoy. He was completely still. He was radiating out of his entire face.
He held it for four seconds. Then Buck shifted, and Theo looked down at his plate very fast, and picked up his fork, and stabbed a piece of pasta with tremendous casual focus.
The silence had a texture to it.
Eddie's ears were ringing. Somewhere underneath the ringing he could hear his own voice going, very reasonably: that's nothing, that's a kid looking at his dad, kids look at their dads, that's completely normal, that means nothing, that's—
"Oh my god," said Chris.
It wasn't loud. It was worse than loud. It was quiet and slow and it came out on an exhale, and Eddie knew before he even turned his head that his son was not looking at Theo. His son was looking at him. With his mouth slightly open. With the expression of a person watching the last two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle slot together in front of him after nine years of walking past the table.
"Chris—"
"Oh my god," Chris said again.
And Theo, delighted, thrilled, always ready, lifted his head and turned back toward Buck. Chin in hands. Head tipped. Eyes gone huge and soft and molten. The little smile. The whole thing, the entire architecture of it, reproduced in perfect miniature by a four-year-old in upside-down purple dinosaur glasses.
"Oh my gawd," said Theo, lovingly.
Eddie thought, quite clearly: I could go over the fence.
Buck’s backyard fence wasn’t even that high. Eddie had climbed worse things at work, in heavier gear, under significantly more stressful circumstances—although at the moment he was struggling to think of one.
"Aw," Buck said. "Buddy."
Because Buck. Because of course. Because the man had the observational skills of a very kind lamp. He reached over and pushed Theo's hair off his forehead and said, "You want more chicken?"
"Copy that," said Theo, still gazing.
"He's so weird," Buck said fondly, and got up to get the pan, and Eddie watched him walk to the stove and had absolutely no idea what to do with his face, his hands, his body, his entire life.
Chris had not stopped staring at him.
“So,” Chris said.
Eddie pointed at him immediately.
One hand up, palm out, like he could physically stop the rest of the sentence from entering the room, “Don’t.”
Chris blinked at him, all innocence. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You said so.”
“I said so,” Chris agreed.
He reached for his water with infuriating calm, took a drink, and set the glass back down carefully.
Chris leaned back a little in his chair and glanced once toward Theo, then Buck, then back to Eddie.
“Interesting,” he said.
Eddie’s hand was still half-raised.
“Christopher.”
“Interesting dinner.”
Eddie stood so quickly his chair scraped hard against the floor.
“Okay. I’m gonna get the—”
He stopped.
His hand made a useless little circle in the air while his brain, apparently having abandoned him completely, searched for an object that might plausibly exist outside.
“The thing.”
Chris’s mouth twitched.
Eddie pointed toward the front door.
“In the truck.”
“There’s no thing in the truck, Dad.”
“There is.”
Eddie was already moving, one hand patting at his pockets for his keys even though he had absolutely no reason to need them.
Chris turned slightly in his chair to watch him go.
“What thing?”
Eddie reached the doorway and looked back, which was a mistake because Buck was visibly trying not to laugh and Theo was watching the whole exchange with intense interest.
“The thing,” Eddie repeated, with significantly less authority.
Then he left before anybody could ask him to elaborate.
The front door clicked shut behind him, and Eddie made it three steps down Buck’s porch before stopping with both hands on top of his head.
The night air was cooler than the kitchen had been. It did absolutely nothing to help.
He stood there breathing like he’d just carried somebody down four flights instead of walking away from a dinner conversation with his own son.
Two months. Every morning. Every bedtime. Every dumb argument about whether the recipe said two ounces or four. That kid had been sitting there in a seat at the table the whole time with his little rock collection, picking up everything, everything, and the thing he'd picked up most, the thing he'd taken and polished and put at the front of the shelf, was the way Eddie Diaz looked at Buck when Buck laughed.
Which meant Eddie had done it enough for a four-year-old to learn it by heart.
Which meant it wasn't occasional. It wasn't rare. It wasn't a thing that happened once in a while when Eddie's guard was down. It was a behavior. It was a hallmark. It was the single most identifiable thing about him, apparently, more identifiable than the hands on hips, more identifiable than the coffee, and everyone had seen it, everyone, for years, and the box had never been on a shelf, the box had never been closed, the box had never even been a box, he'd been walking around holding the thing in his open hands like an idiot with a lantern.
A minute later, the front door opened behind him.
Chris came out onto the porch, easing the door shut with one hand while balancing carefully on his crutches. He crossed the short stretch between them at an unhurried pace, the rubber tips making soft, familiar taps against the boards, and settled near the railing beside Eddie.
For a while, neither of them said anything.
Eddie kept staring out at the street.
Chris stayed beside him, one crutch tucked close against his side, quiet in that particular way that usually meant he was thinking far too much.
"How long have you known?" Eddie said finally.
"About you?"
"Yeah."
Chris made a considering noise. "That depends what we mean by known."
"Christopher."
"Like, known known? June-ish." He tipped his head. "But if you mean the thing where I stopped mentioning it because you'd get weird? That's been a while."
"Great."
"You want the honest answer?"
"No."
“There was a birthday when I was, like, eleven,” Chris said. “You looked at him across the table and I thought, huh.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know what it was yet. I just knew.”
Eddie put his back against the wall and slid down about three inches and stayed there. "I need you to know that I've been extremely careful."
"Dad."
"I've been so careful."
"A four-year-old learned it in eight weeks," Chris said. "He can't put his own shoes on."
"Okay."
"He wears his glasses upside down."
"Okay."
"He looked at Buck like that in front of everyone and Buck offered him chicken."
And Eddie laughed. He didn't plan to. It came up out of him sideways and turned into him rubbing both hands down his face and saying, into his palms, "What am I supposed to do."
And his son, who was fifteen, and smarter than him, and funnier than him, and kinder than he had any right to be, said, "I think you have to say it out loud, or he's literally never going to figure it out."
The door opened again.
"Hey," Buck said. "Theo's asking where Eddie went, he's very— what are you guys doing out here?"
"Nothing," Eddie said.
"Dad's having a moment," Chris said, and went inside, and pulled the door most of the way shut behind him with the specific mercy of a kid who had decided this was not his to hold.
Buck stood there with a dish towel over his shoulder.
"You good?" he said.
Eddie let his head fall back against the wall. "You know he gets that from me."
"I know." Buck came and leaned on the wall opposite, arms folded. "He gets everything from you. Do you know he tried to make his bed this morning? He's four. He made a terrible bed. He was so proud of it."
"Yeah."
"Chris said something to me in the kitchen."
Eddie's whole body went still. "Did he?"
"He said—" Buck stopped. He was looking at the floor, and then at the window, and then, finally, at Eddie, and his face was doing something Eddie had never seen it do before, which was to be frightened of nothing at all. "He said Theo's copying you. With the— he does this thing where he stares at me. Puts his chin in his hands. He's been doing it for like a week and I thought it was just, you know, a kid thing."
"Buck."
"And Chris said he's copying you."
The porch light buzzed.
"Is he?" Buck said.
There was a version of this where Eddie said no. He could feel it there, fully formed, easy, the door standing open and the box on the shelf and nine years of practice at walking straight past it. It would take one syllable. Buck would believe him. Buck had believed him about everything for nine years, which was the single most damning piece of evidence in the whole case.
Inside the house, a chair scraped, and a small voice said "Copy that" to nobody.
"Yeah," Eddie said. "He is."
Buck didn't move for a second. Then he made a sound, half a laugh, and put his hand over his mouth, and looked up at the ceiling with his eyes shining, and said, "Eddie."
Same drop at the end. Same fondness, not sanded down at all.
"Don't make it a thing," Eddie said.
"It's a thing."
"It doesn't have to be a thing tonight."
"It's so much of a thing," Buck said, and he was grinning now, the whole face, the eyes gone to slits, and he pushed off the wall and stood in front of Eddie close enough that Eddie had to decide where to put his hands. "Nine years."
"Don't count."
"I'm counting later. I'm gonna count so much later."
"Buck—"
The door swung open the rest of the way.
Theo stood in it in his dinosaur pajamas with one sock, purple glasses upside down on his face, paper towel still tucked into his collar. He took in the porch. He took in the two of them standing there. He pushed the glasses up his nose with one finger, folded his arms high on his chest, and looked from Buck to Eddie and back.
"Hey, bud," Buck said, not moving, not looking away from Eddie. "We'll be right in."
Theo held the fold one beat longer. Then he nodded. Once. Down, up.
“Copy that,” Theo said, and headed back inside.
The door swung shut behind him with a soft click.
Eddie stared at it.
Great.
Excellent.
A four-year-old had just exposed him on Buck’s front porch and then dismissed himself from the conversation.
For several seconds, neither of them moved.
Eddie could hear Chris saying something from somewhere inside the house, too muffled to make out, followed by Theo’s much louder answer. Normal sounds. Dinner sounds. Sounds that suggested Eddie’s entire life had not just rearranged itself under a porch light while everybody else carried on without him.
Buck shifted beside him.
Eddie immediately became aware of approximately seventeen things at once.
The dish towel still hanging over Buck’s shoulder. The way he kept worrying one corner of it between his fingers. The fact that they were standing close enough that Eddie could see the faint crease between his eyebrows.
Apparently, there was nowhere safe to look anymore.
He let his gaze drop anyway, first to the porch boards, then to Buck’s hand hanging loose at his side, before finally giving in and looking back up.
Buck was already watching him.
There was a small, uncertain smile on his face, softer than the one from before, like he wanted to be happy about this but hadn’t quite decided whether he was allowed yet.
That did something unpleasantly effective to Eddie’s chest.
“So Theo really is copying you,” Buck said.
“We’ve established that.”
“Right.”
Buck nodded and looked down.
Eddie followed his gaze before he could stop himself.
Their hands were hanging between them, they weren't touching, but they were close.
“And the looking thing,” Buck said.
Eddie rubbed a hand over the back of his neck.
“The looking thing,” Eddie repeated.
“Yeah.”
“You’re really gonna make me say this.”
“I’m trying very hard not to.”
“You’re doing a terrible job.”
“I know.”
Buck’s fingers tightened around the dish towel.
Eddie watched them do it.
Then Buck seemed to realize he was still holding the thing at all and pulled it off his shoulder, folded it once for no apparent reason, unfolded it, and finally shoved it over the porch railing.
Eddie stared at him.
Buck’s smile faded at the edges.
“Eddie.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you?” Buck asked, then immediately shook his head. “I mean—do you want this? Me, I mean. This. Us.”
There were probably easier ways to ask the question, but Eddie was suddenly grateful Buck hadn’t found one. It meant Eddie could stay where he was for another second, looking at him properly now, really looking, because apparently the secret was dead anyway and there wasn’t much point pretending otherwise. Buck was right there under the porch light, close enough that Eddie could see the little tension still caught between his brows, close enough that looking away now would probably be more obvious than just letting himself have it.
“Yeah,” he said.
Buck inhaled sharply.
Then his hand moved. His fingers brushed the side of Eddie’s first, light enough that Eddie could have pretended it was an accident if Buck hadn’t immediately gone still.
Eddie looked down.
Buck’s little finger had caught against his.
Neither of them moved.
Nine years.
Gunshots. Tsunamis. Wells. Hospital rooms. Kitchens at two in the morning. Buck asleep on Eddie’s couch. Eddie asleep in Buck’s hospital room.
And apparently this was what was going to kill him.
One finger.
Buck glanced up. “Is this—”
Eddie turned his hand over.
Their knuckles knocked together awkwardly.
Buck made a small, embarrassed sound and started to pull back, but Eddie caught his fingers before he could get far. That stopped both of them. Buck’s palm settled against his, warm and a little awkward at first, until their hands shifted into something that actually fit, and then Buck’s thumb moved once over Eddie’s knuckle. Eddie looked down at the motion before he could stop himself, watched it happen a second time, and when he lifted his head again Buck was closer than he had been a moment ago. Eddie had no idea which one of them had moved. Probably both. There was barely any space left between them now, just enough that Buck leaned in a fraction and Eddie met him without thinking, until they both seemed to realize at the same time what was about to happen and stopped with only inches between them.
For one ridiculous second they just stood there, noses almost touching, two grown men who had faced down burning buildings together apparently defeated by the final three inches.
Buck breathed out a nervous laugh. “This is weird.”
“It’s only weird because you said it’s weird.”
“I didn’t mean bad weird.”
“Buck.”
“Right.”
His free hand lifted, hovered uselessly near Eddie’s shoulder, dropped, then came back up and settled against the side of Eddie’s neck.
Buck’s thumb brushed just under his jaw.
That was it.
Eddie was done.
“Come here.”
He pulled Buck in by their joined hands and kissed him.
Buck went still for half a heartbeat.
Then his fingers tightened around Eddie’s and his mouth softened against Eddie’s, and every thought Eddie had been carrying around for the last however long simply stopped.
The kiss wasn’t smooth.
Their noses bumped once. Buck smiled halfway through it, which made Eddie smile, which ruined whatever coordination they’d had left.
Eddie didn’t care.
He kissed him again.
Buck’s hand slid around the back of his neck, fingers catching lightly in his hair, and Eddie grabbed at Buck’s waist with his free hand because apparently that was where it had wanted to be for years and nobody had bothered telling him.
Buck laughed softly against his mouth.
Eddie kissed the laugh right out of him.
When they finally pulled apart, they didn’t go far.
Buck rested his forehead against Eddie’s, both of them still a little breathless, their hands still tangled together between them. Eddie’s thumb moved over Buck’s knuckle once, then again, small and absent-minded, and Buck glanced down at the motion before looking back up. Something softened in his face then, that same smile appearing again—the one Eddie had apparently been helpless against from the beginning, the one Theo had learned well enough to give him away.
“Oh,” Buck said quietly.
“Oh,” Eddie agreed, because there really wasn’t anything else left to say. He kissed Buck once more, slow and smiling this time, then kept hold of his hand as they went back inside.