Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Buck could tell you the statistical estimate of the probability of meeting your soulmate. 

He’s done the research, read all the studies, watched countless firsthand encounters play out, and dove into one too many Reddit rabbit-holes. According to all of that, the chance of meeting your soulmate is about one in ten thousand, give or take. He could also list the many ways to tilt those odds in his favor — becoming more social, hitting up singles events, even signing up for dating apps — all things he’s tried in the past.

All things that have failed. Spectacularly, in some cases, but who’s keeping score.

It doesn’t stop him from thinking about it sometimes, though. Not the saccharine, fairy-tale version, but the subtler, stranger feeling of two lives drifting toward each other with an inevitability you only recognize in hindsight. 

Every time he ran the numbers, they handed him the same indifferent conclusion: Meeting the person who shifts your axis is improbable at best, delusional at worst. Very encouraging odds, he thinks. But every so often, some stubborn, irrational part of him leaned into the idea that maybe, just maybe, life sometimes engineers strange little collisions that rearrange trajectories in ways no algorithm can predict.

Buck’s always been a sucker for a good maybe. 

But on this particular morning, he’s focused on the far more pressing matter of balancing four coffees in his arms without dropping them, and getting to work on time so he doesn’t have to endure Bobby’s concerned, fatherly eyebrows. 

The coffee shop is packed and humid with steam, the hum of conversation forming this ceaseless vibration that makes Buck feel both overstimulated and oddly buoyant. He places the team’s order and steps aside to wait, already imagining himself triumphantly entering the firehouse with a carrier of cups, earning a round of begrudging appreciation. It’s stupid, but he wants the win. Wants to prove himself, show he’s not still that same immature kid from before. 

Besides, the bar for impressing Chimney is basically on the floor, so he’ll take what he can get.

Movement catches his eye through the window and he turns just in time to see a woman struggling, her purse caught in a tug-of-war with a man whose desperation is written across every jittery line of his body. And well, Buck has never been great when it comes to thinking before he acts. This is, historically and objectively, his worst quality. It is also, depending on who you ask, occasionally his best. One second he’s standing inside, and the next he’s sprinting across the pavement, the decision already made without his permission. 

Buck’s thoughts ricochet too fast to parse, everything pure adrenaline and instinct — not on my watch, she’s scared, I can help, I have to move, go, go — and he’s bursting through the door before a single one of those thoughts fully resolves.

He makes it to the woman just as the thief bolts into the street. What he does next is what Bobby would call reckless and what Buck would call necessary. Bobby’s not here, though, so — since restraint has never been his strong suit, and because he’s eternally convinced he can fix things with enough speed and enthusiasm, he follows without looking. 

Here’s a fun fact: the first thing they drill into your head the moment you’re old enough to cross the street without holding someone’s hand? You guessed it. Look both ways.

Every cartoon and after-school PSA, every overcautious elementary school teacher parrots it until it’s baked into your subconscious somewhere between don’t talk to strangers and eat your vegetables.

It is, by all metrics, one of the simplest survival instincts a person can have in the modern world. 

Buck really wishes that had occurred to him before he sprinted directly into traffic.

In his mind, though, he was already halfway through the heroics. Already had one hand gripping the guy’s shoulder, the other hoisting the purse aloft like some triumphant bystander vigilante. It’s a great visual. Very cinematic. Unfortunately, it gets cut short by a yell he hears a second too late, then a horn, then—

Then the deeply ungraceful experience of being hit by a car. 

Considerably less cinematic, as it turns out. An abrupt, graceless thud followed by the profoundly humiliating sensation of rolling across a car hood like a wind-up toy that’s lost its footing. His elbow smacks metal, his ribs catch the edge, then gravity wins and he hits the asphalt with a wheezing groan that reverberates through his bones.

His first coherent thought is a dead tie between well, that’s embarrassing and everything hurts, except, weirdly, my face?

Equally urgent, equally unhelpful. 

Suddenly the sun is eclipsed and someone steps into his field of vision, and whatever Buck was thinking about a second ago ceases to matter because — holy shit.

Crouched on the road beside Buck with concern etched into his features is the prettiest sun thief Buck has ever seen. 

He’s saying words — probably important, medical-sounding ones — and Buck cannot hear a single one of them. 

Something, something, proper name, place name, backstory stuff. 

The ringing in his ears probably should be concerning, considering he just got hit by a literal vehicle, but the sun thief is hot as fuck and that is so much more important than any broken bones he may or may not have. 

Look — he knows now isn’t the time to be thirsting over a complete stranger. His ribs are trying to relocate themselves and his dignity is bleeding into the asphalt and he’s concussed and prone and possibly dying, but all he can focus on is how devastatingly gorgeous this man is. Blindingly, almost offensively so. It feels manufactured, or rehearsed. Like the universe saw Buck sprawled out and dazed and thought, you know what would be funny?

Standing and turning away from Buck, the stranger shouts, “Everyone back up! Give him some space!” before dropping back down beside him. 

It takes a second and some very enthusiastic blinking, but Buck manages to clear his vision from a fuzzy haze to only sort of dizzy when he looks to the side. This, however, is a grave mistake.

Seeing the stranger clearly for the first time hits him harder than the car did, and the car had a real headstart. 

He looks like someone Michelangelo would have abandoned a commission to capture instead. Espresso-dark eyes and clean lines, a face that makes you forget your own name — which, granted, Buck might genuinely be forgetting right now, but that feels unimportant. 

Morning light sits on his shoulders like it chose to be there, spilling gold into the hollow of his throat. His hair is pushed back but losing its composure, a single strand falling against his forehead like a small, silent rebellion, dark against sun-soaked skin. It moves when he breathes — a tiny, hypnotic pendulum that Buck cannot look away from.

And somehow, the most basic sweatshirt and jeans on earth, worn like they were sewn onto him, every thread stitched out of sheer devotion. 

Yeah. Buck definitely has a concussion. 

“Hey,” the guy says, one hand sliding onto Buck’s shoulder with decisive, almost clinical certainty that still manages to feel intimate. “Can you hear me?”

Buck can hear him. He can also see him. That’s the bigger issue. 

He tries to nod. The world tilts on a bizarre axis, stomach flipping and head buzzing, but all of that becomes background noise to the grounding pressure of that hand, fingertips steady through the cotton of his shirt, thumb pressing in once near the dip in his collarbone.

“I’m good,” Buck lies, breath hitching on the words. His voice sounds like it’s ricocheting inside his skull.

“Sure you are,” the stranger replies, clearly unconvinced. “But humor me and stay down, yeah? You took a real hit.”

Buck is fairly certain he’s staring at him with embarrassing intensity. He wants to say words — you’re beautiful, please don’t stop touching me — or, failing all of that, literally any word in the English language, but nothing articulate makes it out. He only manages a breath, caught between awe and idiocy, before a barely audible repetition of, “I’m good.”

You absolute liar, he thinks, horrified. This man just watched you ricochet off of a minivan. Your shirt is probably torn. Your pride is wounded. Your body is wounded. 

The stranger gives him a look that lives somewhere between amused and disbelieving. “Uh-huh.”

The woman whose purse was stolen is watching anxiously. Buck tries to muster what remains of his competence. “The purse… did she…?”

“She has it,” the man says, his expression softening.

“Oh. Good.” Buck exhales, his whole body loosening as though that were the only detail that mattered in the entire ordeal. It wasn’t. He got hit by a car today. He also possibly met his soulmate.

The man’s face shifts, wry and a little incredulous. “Pretty sure recovering stolen property doesn’t repair whatever damage you did to your ribs.”

A solid point, sun thief. 

“I’m Eddie,” he adds.

Eddie. Hot stranger who is still touching him is named Eddie. It’s perfect. Of course it is. It’s fitting, really. That is absolutely the name you assign to the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen while you personally resemble a tragically misplaced crash-test dummy.

“Buck,” he croaks.

Eddie repeats it, and Buck feels it reverberate behind his (bruised) ribs — an echo that surprises him with its force. “Buck.” His tone is gentle, testing the sound of it.

Buck would very much like Eddie to keep saying it. Preferably forever, but he’s not picky. Ideally while still touching him.

“Are you a doctor?” Buck blurts before he can stop himself. Why not ask him if he’s single while he’s at it. Really commit to the humiliation. 

Eddie gives this soft huff of laughter that Buck wants to hear again immediately. “No. Army medic.”

Steady hands. Knows what he’s doing. Competent. Attractive. Too attractive. Buck’s heart does a weird skip and tumble. Oh, he’s in trouble. He is in so much trouble. 

Focus, Buck.

The sirens swell louder as the ambulance arrives. Buck tries to sit up — not because it’s smart, but because Eddie is looking at him, and he wants to appear capable — and Eddie stops him with a hand against his chest.

It’s a simple gesture, barely any pressure at all, but Buck feels it everywhere. The heat of that hand sinking in, his breath stuttering, the rest of the world dropping to a muffled murmur.

“Let them check you,” Eddie mutters, so close Buck can feel it vibrate against his skin. “For me.”

For him? For him? Buck’s fairly certain he’d get up and do an Irish jig if Eddie asked him to. He’d cartwheel down the block. He’d recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Anything for Eddie the Sun Thief. 

He nods. Too fast, he thinks. Too eager, too obvious.

The paramedics do their evaluation, but Buck’s attention keeps orbiting back to Eddie’s proximity, his steady gaze, his hand hovering nearby as though monitoring every tremor. Buck’s thoughts are looping in erratic cycles, ever unhelpful: don’t say anything idiotic, don’t faint, he can definitely tell you’re spiraling, stop looking at his mouth, do not flirt while bleeding.

When the paramedics recommend a hospital trip, Buck opens his mouth to argue. As if sensing it, Eddie steps closer, voice like honey poured over a very reasonable suggestion.

“Go. You’ll be better off getting checked properly.”

Buck folds like a lawn chair. Really, can you blame him? He agrees, unsure of who he’s trying to impress anymore — Eddie or himself. He’s following orders. Bobby would be so proud. 

While the paramedics wrap his hands, Eddie glances at his phone. Something about the way he hesitates tells Buck he’s supposed to be somewhere else, but he doesn’t leave. He stays in Buck’s orbit, like he’s tethered there. 

Does he feel it, too? Buck wonders. Or is Buck maybe suffering from brain damage. The world may never know.

Eddie’s expression shifts as he pulls his phone out again. “Let me give you my number,” he says, tone casual but body language not casual in the slightest. “You know. Just in case you feel worse later. Or if you want to let me know you got home.”

So the verdict is — Buck almost certainly has brain damage, and Eddie might feel it, too. He’s choosing to call that a win.

Buck’s stomach performs a long, rolling somersault. A one-in-ten-thousand somersault, if he’s being specific. Every thought in his head dissolves into static and confetti. 

“Yeah,” he breathes finally. “Y-Yes. Definitely.”

He nods again before he can overthink it, fumbling for his phone with bandaged fingers. Eddie takes it, their fingertips brushing in the transfer, a tiny spark of contact that feels absurdly consequential for how fleeting it is.

Eddie steps back and gives him one final look that Buck will be replaying in sharp, intrusive detail for the foreseeable future.

“Take care of yourself, Buck.”

Buck watches him jog away, the crowd swallowing him up, the world feeling abruptly colder in his absence.

He’s still sitting on the bumper of the ambulance — bandaged, concussed, and hopelessly, catastrophically done for — when it crystallizes into one clear, spectacularly deranged thought.

I just got hit by a car, and that is somehow the second most overwhelming thing that happened to me today.

It takes him a few seconds to convince his legs to work again. Longer to convince the rest of him. By the time he signs a refusal of transport and starts walking, the adrenaline is wearing off, leaving everything a little too bright. The sidewalk tilts once, a small, embarrassing sway, and he steadies himself on a parking meter with what he hopes is an air of casual indifference. 

Spoiler alert, it is not.

He keeps replaying Eddie’s voice, take care of yourself, Buck.

Anyone else says that and it’s a pleasantry, a filler — forgettable. But Eddie said it like he might actually be bothered if Buck didn’t. 

Buck knows he’s reading too much into it, knows he’s concussed and compromised and possibly projecting, but he can’t stop turning it over. Searching for the version where Eddie actually cares what happens to him after this. 

He should text him. He absolutely should not text him. His stomach can’t pick a position. His ribs have no opinion on the matter. His ribs would like to cease to exist entirely. 

He walks the rest of the way in a daze, aware of every throb in his side and every ridiculous flutter in his chest, neither of which are helping him walk in a straight line.

By the time Buck stumbles into the firehouse, he’s half-convinced this morning was a psychotic break with a particularly handsome hallucination. He smells faintly of asphalt, his palms are a mess of raw pink gauze, and he’s still a little dizzy — either from mild blood loss or the sheer, impossible symmetry of Eddie’s face. He’s not sure which is more concerning. Probably the blood loss.

He hadn’t meant to be late, exactly. But in his defense, he’d left with plenty of time, a debit card, and the purest of intentions. Somewhere between the smell of fresh coffee and the sharp, terrifying feeling of a stranger’s hand pressing into his chest, time skidded sideways, much like he had across the pavement. 

Now he’s walking into work twenty-eight minutes late after not going to the hospital (sorry Eddie), slightly concussed, with the bone-deep certainty that he’s just met someone who’s going to ruin his entire life in the most beautiful way possible.

He’s halfway through the door when he realizes exactly how bad he must look, because Hen is the first to spot him and her eyebrows shoot so far up her forehead it’s a miracle they don’t leave her face.

“Oh,” she says, her specific inflection one she reserves for when Buck has clearly done something catastrophic but she wants to hear him explain himself first.

Chimney swivels in from where he was restocking the ambulance. “What happened to you?” He gestures at Buck’s whole body, then his face, then the bandages. “And where’s the coffee? Please tell me the coffee didn’t suffer whatever… that is.”

The coffee. Shit.

His gaze drops to his very empty hands as the sad realization blooms behind his eyes.

“Oh,” he says, blankly. “No. No coffee.”

Bobby appears in the doorway of his office, arms crossed, concern already etched in deep lines across his brow. “You’re late.”

Buck raises a hand, the gesture far too breezy for someone who’s seeing double. “Hey. Yeah. Yes.” He winces as his shoulder twinges. “That is true.”

“You don’t have the coffee.”

“Also true.”

“You’re covered in bandages.”

“I can see how this paints a picture,” Buck says, voice edging into desperate brightness. “But it’s misleading. The vibes are good.”

“The vibes?” Hen repeats. “You look like you crawled here.”

She’s not entirely wrong. He did consider it around block three. 

Buck squints, then winces. “So,” he starts, immediately deflecting, “I— uh— met someone.”

All three of them freeze.

“What?” Chimney asks.

Buck swallows, feeling heat crawl up his neck. “A guy. A really…” His eyes go unfocused for a second as Eddie’s voice resurfaces in his head — take care of yourself, Buck — and a stupid, devastating rush spreads through his chest. “A really cute guy.”

Chimney narrows his eyes in suspicion. “And this cute guy… stole our coffee?”

Buck waves a hand, dismissing the logic. “No, no, it wasn’t like that. We were talking and— well, technically, I wasn’t in a position to be holding anything because—” He pauses, tries to reorganize his thoughts, watches them scatter. “Anyway, we hit it off. There were sparks. Well, I mean, maybe not sparks, maybe a flicker? Or a small, emotionally destabilizing bonfire?”

Chimney holds up a hand. “Let me get this straight. You said you’d get coffee, and instead of returning with coffee, you’re late, bandaged, and dazed— because you met someone?”

Buck shrugs. “Love is unpredictable.”

“Love,” Chimney repeats flatly. 

“I said what I said.”

Hen raises an eyebrow. “Is love also violently physical? Because you look like you fell down a ravine.”

“Okay, in fairness,” Buck says, rubbing the back of his neck, “there was a minor, uh, vehicular incident.”

That earns him a visible flinch from Bobby. “What kind of incident?”

Buck exhales dramatically, then lets his head fall back. “Okay. So. I was at the coffee shop—”

“Where you were supposed to be getting coffee,” Chimney mutters.

Buck ignores that. “—and there was this woman getting her purse stolen, so I ran out to help her.”

“Oh God.”

“I chased the guy,” Buck continues, waving one of his bandaged hands, “and things got… a little crazy.”

“A little,” Chimney repeats. “Define a little.”

Buck shrugs again, which hurts, but he pretends it doesn’t. “Well, he ran into the street. And I followed. And then I got hit by a car.”

Absolute silence descends, so sudden and so complete that Buck briefly wonders if the accident has gifted him selective hearing loss. He blinks, waiting for someone to react, and in that suspended moment it becomes painfully clear just how catastrophically he’s misjudged the delivery of that information. Hen’s jaw hits the floor, Chimney’s entire expression buckles into horrified disbelief, and Bobby emits a sound so saturated with dismay Buck feels it vibrate in his teeth. 

At least that answers the hearing question.

“I’m sorry… what?” Chimney practically yelps.

Buck nods earnestly. “Yeah. Car. Direct impact. Well— medium impact? More of a bump… slide? There was definitely a slide. Not my best moment.”

Not his worst either, but he’s keeping that to himself.

“Buck,” Bobby says, stepping closer, “were you taken to the hospital?”

Buck opens his mouth and hears Eddie’s voice in his head whispering please let them check you and immediately experiences crushing guilt. He’d feel worse about it if Eddie’s voice wasn’t so distracting even as a memory. 

He forces a smile. “Define taken.”

“Did you go, or not?”

“Uh— sorta?”

“Sorta?” Chimney repeats. “How does someone sorta go to the hospital?”

“Well,” Buck says, trying to find the path of least incriminating resistance, “there were paramedics. They looked me over. Did the whole flashlight-in-the-eyes thing. And anyway, I’m fine. Fine-adjacent.” He gestures at himself. “Except for the road rash. And the headache. And the part where I maybe blacked out for a second.”

“Jesus Christ,” Hen breathes. “So no hospital.”

Buck knows, as a first responder, that he really should’ve gone to the hospital. But his mind so generously supplied him with the fact that he’s been fired before for reckless behavior, and he didn’t want to risk it. Plus, he literally has paramedics at his place of employment. Two birds with one stone, or whatever. “I figured showing up here with a ‘hey sorry I bailed again, I got laid and/or concussed’ wasn’t gonna go over great.”

Hen and Bobby give him a look, one he doesn’t think too long about because it looks alarmingly like pity.

“What’s his name?”

“Eddie,” Buck says, too fast. Then again, quieter, to hide his excitement. “Eddie.” As if saying it twice will prove Eddie exists. Like a coin he found on the ground, turning it over and over again to check if it’s real. He sounds smitten, which is ridiculous. 

“You get his number?” Chimney asks, tilting his head.

Buck nods, barely suppressing a smile. “Yeah. He gave it to me.”

“And you haven’t texted yet?”

Buck hesitates. “Wanted to wait.”

“Why?”

“Seemed… clingy. I dunno.” Buck shrugs.

That’s not what happened, exactly. What happened is that Buck tried to play the hero and then got hit by a sedan, just to add to his lateness by getting distracted by a hot guy, then spent twenty minutes wiping the remaining gravel out of his hands in a gas station bathroom because he didn’t want to show up late and bleeding. What happened is that he walked into the firehouse looking like roadkill with a pulse and somehow still felt more nervous about sounding unprofessional than explaining any of this.

He doesn’t say any of that.

Here’s the thing, something Buck has learned through years of meticulous, exhausting trial and error: people keep you around when you make it easy on them. 

People stay when you don’t bleed on them, or need too much. When you don’t show up scraped raw and asking for grace. 

He’s watched enough people walk away from him to understand that love — or whatever this is, this trembling, infant thing — has a weight limit, and Buck has spent his entire life starving himself to make the cut. Scrubbing the gravel off in a gas station. Smiling through the headache. Insisting he’s fine until the word loses all meaning. 

Not because he believes the act, necessarily, but because he’s terrified of what happens when he stops pretending — when he lets someone see the mess and they decide it’s too much, that he’s too much, and they leave the way everyone else has. 

He can’t lose these people. They’re the closest he’s felt to having a family in a long time.

So instead, he clears his throat, looks down at his bandages like he’s only just remembered them, and shrugs. He’s good. He’s fine. He’ll keep being fine until it sticks. 

“So,” he says, aiming for casual and landing somewhere near exhausted, “do I still need to clean the rig, or does the trauma buy me a pass?”

They groan and Bobby turns and walks back to his office, but not before instructing Hen to take another look at Buck. 

Buck leans against the ambulance, chews the inside of his cheek, and lets the stillness settle around them. He probably should’ve sat down before now. His vision does that weird narrow thing for a second, like the room’s too bright or the air’s too thin or his body’s remembering he got hit by a car, but it passes.

Mostly.

The lights overhead tick louder than usual — or maybe that’s just his skull vibrating. Hard to say. His depth perception keeps doing this fun, unpredictable thing where the floor seems slightly closer than expected. Twice he has to pretend he meant to lean on the nearest surface because his body briefly considered folding in half like a cheap suit.

Hen opens her mouth like she’s about to ask something else, but Buck beats her to it.

“Do we have any Advil?”

Chim tosses a bottle at him without looking and Buck catches it one-handed, hissing audibly as he moves his arm.

“Alright, Romeo,” Hen says, stepping in to examine his hands, “let me look at you.”

Buck makes it all the way home before the adrenaline finally drains out of him with humiliating inevitability. He’d been (responsibly) dismissed by Bobby after Hen (traitorously) confirmed the concussion and benched him for the remainder of the shift. Their send-off had been along the lines of, “Go home, get some rest, text your knight in shining whatever.” 

Buck couldn’t even argue; the betrayal was too accurate. He’d be a liar of cosmic proportions if he pretended he hadn’t felt embarrassingly close to a damsel in distress this morning, sprawled on the asphalt while Eddie, blissfully unaware of the existential riptide he’d just induced, knelt over him like some heroic apparition. Maybe not on horseback — but unfairly life-changing nonetheless.

Buck prides himself on honesty, so he accepted his defeat (and his forced day off) without protest. He kicks off his boots, shrugs out of his jacket, and stands in the middle of his living room. He should shower. Eat. Possibly lie down before gravity decides to finish what the car started.

Instead, he lowers himself onto the edge of the couch and stares at his phone.

Eddie’s number sits there in his contacts — stark, harmless, a string of digits masquerading as ordinary when it is anything but. A little Venus flytrap disguised as a houseplant. Buck has the absurd urge to poke it just to see what happens.

Before he can apply any common sense, he taps the message field.

Then immediately taps out of it.

Then opens it again because what is he, twelve? The blank text screen stares back, patient and accusatory.

He types: hey! thanks again for helping me earlier. sorry i was such a mess lol

He reads it once, twice, then deletes it with a groan. Too self-deprecating. Too apologetic. Too please don’t remember me as the roadkill you scraped off the street.

And “lol”? Really, Buck? He's twenty-six years old. He runs into burning buildings for a living. He pays taxes. 

This man was an Army medic. He has almost certainly held actual human organs in place. He’s probably received commendations and saved lives under catastrophic conditions. Meanwhile Buck is out here texting with the energy of a teenage girl nursing her first crush. He hates it here. 

Focus, Buck. 

He tries again: just wanted to let you know I made it to work okay. really appreciate you staying with me.

He reads it back, it feels stiff, wooden — the textual equivalent of a firm handshake, and not in a good way. He might as well sign it “regards.” 

This is pathetic.

Next attempt:  hi eddie. (this is buck.) (from this morning.) (the car one.)

He blinks at it, horrified, deleting all of it before the walls of his loft can become sentient and judge him. His palms are getting sweaty against the bandages. This is an absolute, unprecedented disaster. 

He’s trying to think of what normal, functional people text their exceptionally gorgeous lifesaving meet-cutes, but all he can come up with are variations of:

• Are you single?
• Do you believe in destiny?
• Help.

He drops his head into his hands. Stellar options, all of them. Very charming, very sane. 

“Okay,” he mutters, breath fogging the space between his fingers. “Okay, Buck, breathe. Use English. Preferably in sentences.”

He picks the phone back up, which now seems to weigh the same as a cinder block, and reopens the text thread. 

The silence in his loft has become cavernous, each tiny sound amplified, from the subtle shift of the floorboards to the faint rasp of his own breathing. His mind is an unhelpful chorus of contradictory instincts.

Don’t be weird.

Be normal.

He’s going to think you’re an idiot.

Stop thinking about his hands on your chest, you unhinged creature. 

He inhales, exhales, and tries again with a message a functioning human being might plausibly send. 

hey. wanted to say thanks. and to let you know i’m fine.

He stares at it so long the screen dims.

He rewrites “fine” five times: fine → okay → all good → mostly intact → definitely not dying → back to fine. 

His thumb hovers over “send,” trembling faintly. His pulse hammers so hard he can feel it reverberate in his back molars. Eddie’s name at the top of the screen glows with enough gravitational pull to render him a lunatic.

He’s now spent more time on this text than he spent on the road this morning. Maybe he can fake his own death.

Before he can change his name and move to Albania, a reckless, feral impulse surges through him. Just call him. Pick up the phone and call him like it’s 1997 and he has no shame and a telephone with one of those little cords he can twirl around his finger.

Which is objectively the worst idea ever conceived. Catastrophic and ill-advised, and Buck is going to do it anyway. He’ll blame it on the brain damage. 

He hits “call” before he can talk himself out of it. 

The phone rings once, twice, three times. By the third ring his soul is so far outside his body he might as well be astral projecting.

Oh God oh God oh God what is he doing.

“Hello?” That voice. Fuck, that voice. Low and easy and a little puzzled. “Hello?” Eddie says again, “Is anyone th—“

Buck isn’t sure if it’s possible to hear a smile, but he’d bet his life on it right now. He’d swear that he can hear the moment Eddie’s mouth ticks up at the corners, he can feel the amusement through the phone. Just as Buck is gathering his footing, Eddie speaks again, effectively knocking any remaining air from Buck’s lungs. “...Buck? That you?”

Panic. Immediate, nuclear-grade panic.

Buck disconnects the call. 

He stares at the phone in horror, color climbing his cheeks in a hot, nauseating wave. He contemplates putting the phone in a drawer. Or flinging it out the window. Or walking into the Pacific Ocean.

But then it buzzes. With a text. From Eddie. The concussion is making him hallucinate, he’s sure of it. His stomach does a violent, alarming flip.

Eddie: If you’re gonna panic-call me, the least you could do is say hello. :)

Buck chokes on absolutely nothing and makes a strangled noise before another bubble appears.

Eddie: You okay, Buck?

Then two more follow, one after the other, like amused taps on a door Buck is obviously hiding behind. 

Eddie: This is Buck, right? Gonna be kind of embarrassing if not. 

Eddie: You’ve been overthinking this all day, haven’t you?

Buck lets out a sound that could generously be classified as a whimper, and is very grateful Eddie isn’t around to hear it. How did this man, this stranger, diagnose him with that level of accuracy? Who gave him the right? Buck didn’t consent to being perceived this clearly.

His fingers hover over the keyboard. His thoughts swirl, chaotic and affectionate and terrified all at once.

Buck: maybe

Immediately, another message comes through. 

Eddie: Relax. I’m glad I met you, despite the circumstances. You don’t have to get it perfect. Just talk to me.

Buck feels the tension coiled in his gut loosen. His ribs still ache, his head still throbs, but beneath all of it, threading through the chaos is this helpless, hopeless pull toward a man he barely knows. 

A dignified and normal start to a love story, he thinks. His mother will be so happy to hear he’s finally settling down. Well — no, she probably won’t care, but that’s a different issue. 

He types back, deletes it, types again. The second one isn’t good either, but Eddie did say he didn’t have to be perfect.

Buck: okay. hi. i’m talking. trying, at least.

He hits send before he can lose his nerve and instantly regrets it. His thumb is still hovering over the screen when the typing dots appear immediately, as if Eddie didn’t even hesitate. They blink once, vanish, blink again. Buck stares at them as though they’re broadcasting classified intel, his pulse climbing into a fast, embarrassed staccato. The dots are taunting him, mocking him, seducing him. Ensuring he forgets how to breathe. 

He leans forward without meaning to, phone cupped in both hands, breath tight in his chest. The room seems to narrow around him, compressing into the bright pinprick of the message window.

Finally, the dots still, one simple sentence taking their place.

Eddie: Hi, Buck. Keep going.

Buck tells himself he’s not pacing, even though he is absolutely pacing, because every few seconds he shifts three feet to the left as if the molecules of air over there might offer better emotional stability. He’s early — painfully early — and he keeps checking his phone with the faint, rising suspicion that maybe he hallucinated the time completely. By the eighth check, the screen stares back, judging him.

He tries to rehearse something nonchalant to say when Eddie arrives, something breezy and casual and preferably not indicative of the internal cardiac event he’s currently experiencing. A greeting that won’t make him sound concussed or chronically flustered. Something normal.

He comes up with nothing. The well is dry. They’re in a drought. Conserve water, shower together. 

When Eddie rounds the corner, all of that internal nonsense dissolves like it was never there. Buck wonders if everyone feels the same laying eyes on Eddie, but maybe it’s just Buck. Maybe it’s his chest caving inward at the sight of Eddie in a sweater the color of red wine, hands tucked into his pockets, hair swept back with that same strand falling loose. Streetlight catches the line of his body, illuminating him for Buck’s eager eyes, turning him into a piece of priceless art — gilded and impossible against the ordinary dusk. 

The moment Eddie sees Buck, his mouth lifts into this small, sure smile that Buck feels pulsing under his breastbone, like someone rearranging his insides with gentle hands.

“Hey,” Eddie says, stopping in front of him. “You made it.”

Buck laughs before he can stop himself. “Yeah, I— well. There’s really not—” He pauses, inhaling shakily. “There’s no place I'd rather be.”

Too much, Buck. Dial it back a little. Jesus.

Eddie tilts his head, amused. “You nervous?”

“That depends,” Buck says, gesturing at the calamity that is his entire body. “Does nervous look like… this?”

Eddie’s smile deepens. “It looks like you’re trying really hard to pretend you haven’t been pacing for the last ten minutes.”

Buck freezes. “You saw that?”

“I pieced it together,” Eddie says, stepping past him. “You ready to go in?”

“Please,” Buck mutters. “Before I make an even bigger fool of myself.”

Eddie prods him forward. “After you.”

Buck steps toward the entrance with fake confidence and immediately pushes the wrong side of the door.

“Uh,” he says.

“Pull,” Eddie supplies gently.

Buck pulls. “Right. Yep. I knew that.”

“I believe you,” Eddie says, which is the meanest, most devastating lie Buck’s ever heard, and it has him teetering on the edge of falling for someone he met less than a week ago. 

Inside, the restaurant has the kind of lighting that makes everyone look happy and rested, even Buck, who is very much neither. They’re seated almost immediately in a corner booth that somehow feels intentionally chosen for them, though Buck knows that makes no sense.

Once they sit, Buck tries to decide whether maintaining eye contact is too intense or not maintaining it is too weird. Eddie solves the dilemma for him by leaning forward slightly, resting an elbow on the table and giving Buck this patient, steady look that settles the restlessness spilling from his every pore. 

Witchcraft. Sorcery. Buck’s been cultivating that restlessness for years. He’d like it back now, please. 

“So,” Eddie says, relaxed. “How’s the head?”

“Oh, great. Fantastic. My skull is thriving.”

Thriving. My skull is… thriving. 

Eddie’s eyebrow lifts. “Thriving.”

“Yeah,” Buck says, committing unnecessarily. “Like… flourishing, even.”

Oh! Flourishing now. That’s— that’s lovely. Fantastic even. What’s next, photosynthesizing? Should he tell Eddie his cranium is in full bloom?

Eddie laughs under his breath, so gentle and fond that Buck has to remind himself to breathe. “Well, I’m glad you’re flourishing,” he says, then raises his glass. “So. How long did you last at the hospital before deciding you didn’t need to be there?”

Buck freezes with his fork halfway to his mouth. “I, uh— well, technically— before is an interesting word.”

Eddie smiles before the sentence is finished, far too familiar. “You didn’t go, did you?”

Buck tries to salvage his dignity. “I— went. Sorta.”

“Sorta,” Eddie echoes, amused. “Is that a medical term?”

“Probably, somewhere.”

Eddie hums, infuriatingly perceptive. “Let me guess. You told me you’d go so I wouldn’t worry, then signed the refusal of transport the second my back was turned.”

Buck sputters so violently he nearly inhales his water.

Oh my god. Not this again. Please don’t let me die on this date. Or—okay technically it worked out with Abby but this is absolutely not the moment to relive that particular humiliation. And Eddie would definitely know how to handle it, he probably knows how to do an emergency trach with a ballpoint pen or something, which—no. No, absolutely not, Buck, stop it. 

“I— look, I didn’t want to be dramatic.”

“You were hit by a car,” Eddie reminds him gently. “You’re allowed to be a little dramatic.”

Buck opens his mouth, closes it, then tries again. “I didn’t want to make anyone worry.”

Eddie’s expression softens, but not with pity or concern, deeper than that. A knowing that makes Buck feel exposed. “I knew you wouldn’t go,” he says, voice edging into fondness. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Buck blurts. “It’s very not okay. It’s the opposite of okay. It’s… aggressively stupid.”

Eddie laughs, it sounds like sunshine. “Sure,” he says. “But I figured you’d do the aggressively stupid thing. So I’m not mad.”

“You’re not?” Buck asks, incredulous.

Eddie shakes his head, still smiling. “Nope. Just confirming my suspicions.”

“That I’m… aggressively stupid..?” 

Eddie’s eyes sparkle. “Your words, not mine.” 

“I’m not stupid,” Buck tries again, quieter.

Eddie studies him for a moment, eyes lingering on him for a second longer than innocence allows. “No,” he concedes, “you’re not stupid.”

Relief washes through Buck briefly, premature and destined to be short-lived.

“But you do,” Eddie continues, heavier, more intimate, “have this talent for throwing yourself into danger without thinking it through.”

Buck swallows. “Talent?”

“Yeah,” Eddie hums, “I get this feeling there’s not a lot you can’t do.”

What does that mean. What does that MEAN. Sir, I am fragile. Explain yourself. No, don't. Yes, do.

From there, everything flows so seamlessly Buck almost doesn’t trust it. Every tangent he goes on, Eddie follows. Every joke that stumbles, Eddie rescues effortlessly. It feels a little like muscle memory — some choreography Buck must’ve learned ages ago but forgotten, only to have it return in a rush the second Eddie starts moving with him.

It should scare him, maybe, how easy this is. It does, a little. But he’s too busy being happy to care, and he can’t remember the last time that was true. 

“So why’d you become a firefighter?” Eddie asks at one point, chin propped on his hand. Buck can’t remember the last time someone asked him that and was actually interested in the answer.

“Uh, childhood hero complex? Inability to sit still? General preference for chaos? Take your pick.”

Eddie hums. “Or maybe you’re just good at taking care of people.”

“That feels too earnest for a first date.”

“I’m not great at pretending I don’t mean things,” Eddie says simply.

Buck swallows. “I— I kind of like that.”

Eddie smiles shyly, something that doesn’t match how confident he’s been the rest of the night, and the contrast feels like emotional whiplash, knocking Buck off his feet. Metaphorically, of course. He’s sitting down right now.

Later, Buck knocks over his water glass with so much enthusiasm he regrets having hands at all. 

“Oh my god,” he mutters, reaching for a napkin. “I swear I have motor skills. They exist. They’re real.” He had them this morning. He’s almost certain. As miniscule as they may be. 

Eddie catches the glass mid-tip, steady hand and steady voice. “Hey. It’s fine. Deep breath.”

Buck forces air into his lungs. “Sorry. I’m… uh, not usually this high-strung.” Massive lie. He’s been like this since birth.

“You’re human,” Eddie says simply, the gentleness of it throwing Buck completely off balance. He doesn’t know what to do with sincerity that isn’t wrapped in a joke first. He keeps reaching for the punchline and Eddie keeps handing him grace. It’s settling into his skin beside the bruises, indistinguishable from them, except this one he isn’t sure he wants to heal. 

After dinner, the night air is calm outside the restaurant, the city wrapped in a purposeful silence. Buck shoves his hands in his pockets, shrugging with a faux casualness that neither of them believe. “So, did you have a good time? Or were you counting down the minutes until you could fake a phone call?”

Eddie laughs under his breath. “I don’t fake calls.”

“Oh,” Buck says. “Cool. Cool cool cool.” That’s too many cools. 

“And,” Eddie continues, stepping a little closer, “I had a really good time.”

Buck feels heat prick behind his ears. “Yeah. Me too.”

Eddie studies him for a moment, thoughtful, lingering and eerily perceptive, then he leans in. The kiss is careful, like he’s giving Buck every opportunity to pull away. Buck doesn’t. Not even close. If anything, he has to remind himself not to lean in too fast and embarrass himself.

When they part, Eddie rests his forehead against Buck’s for a while but not nearly long enough. 

“Goodnight,” Eddie murmurs. “Text me when you’re home?”

Buck nods mutely.

“You okay?” Eddie asks, brushing his thumb once against Buck’s cheekbone.

Buck barely gets the word out. “Yeah. I’m— yeah.”

Eddie smiles as if he believes every part of that. “Good.”

He walks away with a calm, confident stride, leaving Buck standing in the doorway feeling cracked open and filled with light.

The days that follow acquire a strange, luminous momentum, the world subtly reorienting itself around the fact that Buck has kissed Eddie and survived the experience with all major organs intact, though he’s not entirely convinced about his heart. Part of him suspects it jumped ship the moment they met and now resides permanently in Eddie’s palm — held carefully, almost ceremonially, as if Eddie decided somewhere between the coffee shop and the restaurant booth that safeguarding Buck’s entire existence was now his responsibility.

It happens gradually, without dramatics or flare; things simply — brighten. Every morning carries a faint undercurrent of anticipation, a persistent buzz beneath Buck’s ribs that makes even routine calls feel slightly easier to breathe through. Everyone notices — he’s not very subtle, it would seem — Hen glancing over the lip of her coffee cup with that knowing glance; Chim pointing an accusatory finger at Buck’s stupid grin whenever he gets caught smiling at a text; Bobby giving him a look that suggests both approval and a silent plea for no more traffic-related heroics.

Honestly, Buck doesn’t even try to hide it. He’s happy. Stupidly, unabashedly happy in a way that feels almost juvenile and yet unbelievably grounded. Eddie texts him good morning with a photo of his coffee and a delicious looking breakfast; Buck responds with a dramatic selfie of him suffering through a boring call in the heat. Eddie sends a dry commentary about LA traffic; Buck sends a voice note he instantly regrets after hearing how he sounds. Eddie likes his messages so fast it borders on telepathic.

Their connection settles into a rhythm, generous enough to lean into, surprising enough to keep Buck’s thoughts orbiting around it whenever he has a free second. He catches himself checking his phone the minute he gets off a call, the instant he steps out of the shower, every time the door opens, half-expecting Eddie to materialize out of thin air, summoned by the sheer intensity of how much Buck has been thinking of him.

He tells himself to reel it in, pump the brakes, pretend he’s someone who actually follows reasonable dating guidelines — but then Eddie sends a photo of the sky over his backyard, captioned thought you’d like this, and any attempt at emotional regulation dissolves into static.

The days feel strangely suspended, charged with the growing certainty that this — whatever it is, whatever it’s becoming — has already embedded itself too deep to pry out cleanly.

Buck doesn’t want it pried out at all.

Their second date is allegedly casual. Eddie phrases it that way over text: Nothing fancy. Just the beach. Buck reads those three words over and over, because anything with Eddie feels like a red carpet experience at this point, and understating that fact feels dishonest. Being around Eddie makes Buck’s chest feel overfull, as if he’s storing more light than his original design specifications allowed. 

They meet just before sunset, the sky in that bruised interval between orange and blue, the water turning slate with a glossy sheen that chases every passing wave. The sand is softer than Buck expects under his feet, the air flavored with salt and the faint tang of fried food from a boardwalk stand. Eddie is already there when he arrives, hands tucked into the pockets of an oversized, worn sweatshirt that Buck immediately wants to steal, hood down, hair slightly mussed by the wind. When he turns at Buck’s approach, that small, devastating smile appears again, and Buck has the fleeting, deranged thought that if he could bottle the sensation of being on the receiving end of that look, he’d never need another coping mechanism for anything ever again.

They walk. That’s all. It should be boring, but it isn’t. Their shoulders drift closer until they occasionally brush; the first time it happens, Buck’s pulse spikes so dramatically he wonders if Eddie can see it through the skin of his neck. The topic jumps from food preferences to childhood injuries to the worst calls he’s been on. He doesn’t go into graphic detail, only giving the outline, enough to sketch the shape of their lives without dragging shadows all over the sand. At one point Eddie mentions the fire academy with this offhanded steadiness, as if the grueling training and endless drills are an errand he’s been running. Buck listens too closely, memorizing every detail with quiet fascination.

“Did you always want to be a firefighter?” Eddie asks.

Buck pauses for a second, kicking lightly through the sand. “No,” he admits. “I didn’t have some grand plan. I wasn’t one of those kids who pointed at a fire truck and announced my destiny.” He shrugs, the motion loose and honest. “I left home as soon as I could and kind of… drifted. Tried different things. Different cities, different versions of myself. Nothing stuck.” He glances at the water, then back at Eddie. “Firefighting wasn’t some lifelong dream, it was the first thing that made my life feel— purposeful.”

Eddie’s expression shifts, a thoughtfulness settling across his face. “That makes sense,” he says, “You strike me as someone who needs work that gives back more than it takes.”

Buck laughs under his breath. “Sometimes it takes plenty.”

“Yeah,” Eddie concedes, a small smile tugging at his mouth. “But you make it look worthwhile.”

Buck stares at him for a while, awed at how wholly Eddie knows him in such little time. How right this all feels after less than a month of knowing Eddie.

Eddie smirks, then nudges a small shell toward Buck’s shoe with his toe. “And the car thing? That in the job description, too?”

Buck groans. “You’re never letting that go, are you?”

“Not a chance,” Eddie answers, but it’s affectionate. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“You?” Buck says. “I was the one airborne.”

“That’s what scared me.” Eddie’s gaze slides toward him, more serious for a second. “You were grinning when they sat you up. I remember thinking, this idiot’s going to walk it off just to prove he can.”

Buck chews the inside of his cheek, heat creeping up his neck at being seen so accurately. “You stayed,” he says quietly. “You didn’t have to.”

Eddie shrugs. “Didn’t want to leave you alone,” he says simply. “Besides, you’re terrible at pretending you’re fine. Someone had to make sure you didn’t immediately throw yourself in front of a bus to save a pigeon or something.”

“Very judgmental. You know, you’re not making a great impression here,” Buck mutters, but he’s smiling, and the ease of it startles him. He isn’t performing, isn’t bending himself around someone’s expectations. He’s just walking on damp sand next to a man who watched him get hit by a car and decided, apparently, that this disaster was still worthy of a second date.

It all feels bigger than he knows how to describe, like standing in the Sistine Chapel and trying to describe the ceiling. 

The waves break in a chorus, foam tracing the last of the light. At some point, Eddie’s hand brushes his again, fingers sliding along his knuckles, lingering for a heartbeat longer than necessary. Buck doesn’t breathe. Eddie’s hand slips away, then returns with more intention, their fingers slotting together without fanfare. Buck looks down at their joined hands, then up at Eddie, who is watching him with that same patient, slightly entertained expression, as though he already knows what Buck is thinking and finds every part of it worth witnessing.

“This okay?” Eddie asks.

Buck swallows, his answer crawling up from somewhere deeper than his throat. “Yeah,” his voice sounds rougher than he’d hoped. “More than.”

They keep walking until the sky fully darkens and the boardwalk lights flick on, haloing Eddie every time they pass beneath a lamp, as if the universe can’t help but illuminate him. Buck doesn’t trust himself to articulate how content he feels; the word feels insufficient, too small for the sensation of finally stepping into a life that fits.

Everything about this has the presence of a gift he didn’t earn — beautiful and whole and suspiciously without a single sharp edge. He keeps waiting for the flaw, the fracture, the catch. Turning it over with weary hands, inspecting it, testing to see if it will hold. 

It does, every time, and Buck wants so desperately to stop checking that he almost forgets to wonder why he started. 

The third date is somehow both more domestic and more destabilizing. Eddie texts him an address one afternoon with minimal context: You free tonight? I’ll cook. There’s a little knife and pan emoji that Buck stares at for an embarrassingly long time, a smile tugging at his mouth.

He stands outside Eddie’s house that evening with a bottle of wine he panicked-purchased because he has no idea what pairs with whatever “I’ll cook” entails. He doesn’t even like wine, but Maddie always told him to never show up to someone's house empty-handed. His hand hovers before he knocks, nerves thrumming, then the door swings open and whatever composure he thought he’d assembled remains out on the porch.

Eddie in the soft light of his living room is a detail Buck hadn’t prepared for. The house smells of garlic and tomatoes, a richness layered under that, a fragrance that wraps around Buck with such immediate comfort he wants to stand in the doorway and inhale for a full minute. Eddie wears a worn t-shirt and joggers, bare feet, hair curling faintly at the ends from steam. The version of him that patched Buck up in the street and the one in front of him now exist on a continuum, but this incarnation feels more intimate, curated for fewer witnesses.

“You brought wine,” Eddie says, sounding genuinely pleased rather than politely impressed.

“I panicked,” Buck admits, holding the bottle out. “I googled ‘safe wine for people you want to impress’ and the guy at the store started asking questions about flavor notes, so I blacked out and bought this.”

Eddie laughs, taking it from him, fingers brushing Buck’s wrist, sending a spark down his spine. “I’m sure it’s great,” he says. “Come in.”

The living room feels homey, cluttered slightly, suggesting an actual life rather than a staged catalogue spread. A throw blanket is folded haphazardly on the back of the couch; a book lies facedown on the coffee table; a plant occupies the corner, thriving so vibrantly Buck can’t help but feel a little envious. A framed photo sits on a shelf — Eddie with a boy on his hip, both mid-laugh, sun bright behind them. Buck’s gaze snags there, curiosity sparking, but he doesn’t ask yet. Eddie had mentioned small things about Christopher in passing, but never anything that suggested he wanted Buck to pry, so he decides to wait for Eddie to bring him up.

It’s easy, this patience. It’s easy and it surprises him — he’s never been patient before, never been someone who could sit with an unanswered question and let it breathe. But with Eddie, he finds himself willing to wait, willing to trust that the answers will come when they’re supposed to. 

It should feel strange, how naturally this comes to him. It doesn’t. And maybe that should feel strange, too. 

Dinner is a simple pasta, but it tastes absurdly good, each bite a reminder that Eddie does not half-commit to things. He isn’t showy about it, doesn’t narrate the effort that went into the meal, moving around the kitchen with practised economy while Buck perches on a stool and tries not to stare.

It’s the choreography again, returning swiftly now that Eddie is beside him. Eddie reaches for a pan at the exact moment it’s needed, salt is measured by instinct. Everything in this house seems to know where it belongs. 

Including, somehow, Buck. 

After they eat, they migrate to the couch. The plant in the corner occupies Buck’s peripheral vision for a moment, its leaves glossy and smooth. He has a brief recollection of telling himself he’d buy something similar for his own place, then can’t remember ever following through. The thought drifts, unfinished, the way they sometimes do when the present is too comfortable to leave as Eddie drops down next to him, thigh pressed against his, his shoulder an anchoring line of heat.

They put on a movie, though Buck couldn’t describe the plot later if his life depended on it. Eddie stretches out, their knees touching, and at some point his hand finds Buck’s on the cushion between them, fingers slotting together with unconscious confidence. Buck watches their joined hands instead of the movie, tracing the contrast — strong knuckles, calloused palms, a faint scar along Eddie’s thumb that he wants the story for. His heart performs a long, aching somersault, which Buck is recognizing as his new normal when Eddie’s around.

“Hey,” Eddie murmurs midway through the film. “You okay?”

Buck glances at him, finds those attentive eyes waiting. “Thinking,” he says, and decides, for once, not to dress it up with a joke. “This is good. I’m happy.”

Eddie exhales, his body relaxing. “Yeah?” he asks. “You sure you’re not concussed again?”

“Maybe a little,” Buck says. “But that started the first time I saw you, so I don’t think we can blame the car anymore.”

Eddie chuckles lightly, then leans in and kisses him, with nothing to prove and everything to confirm. Buck melts into it, his hand tightening reflexively around Eddie’s, and there it is again — that sensation of his life tilting into place. Like a compass needle finally settling after years of spinning around, lost to what direction is the right one. 

When they eventually pull apart, Eddie doesn’t move far, resting his forehead against Buck’s temple for a moment, breath brushing his ear. Buck looks around the room, his gaze finding the photo, and the plant again, the way the lamplight outlines each leaf in pale light, and thinks randomly that the whole room feels curated toward comfort. 

As if someone placed every object with care, anticipating exactly who would be sitting here tonight and what would make him feel most at home. As if the room itself had been waiting for him, rehearsing its welcome long before he arrived. 

It’s a strange thought. A beautiful one. He lets it pass, because Eddie’s hand is still in his and the night is still young and the room is still glowing, and Buck has spent too much of his life questioning good things until they fell apart. He’s not doing it this time. He’s going to let this be enough and not ask why it feels so easy, why it fits so perfectly, why every corner of this house already feels like his. 

He’s going to trust it — trust Eddie. Even if he can’t quite shake the feeling that he’s been lucky before, and luck has a habit of running out. 

It’s the first day of their seventy-two off when Eddie meets the team, and Buck spends the better part of the morning assembling a mental slideshow of possible catastrophes, most of which star him dying of secondhand embarrassment.

They pick a diner near the station — neutral ground, no emotional landmines, excellent pancakes, if he does say so himself. Buck gets there early because he is constitutionally incapable of doing anything else when nervous, bouncing his knee so aggressively that Hen smacks him with her menu as soon as she sits down.

“You’re vibrating,” she observes. “Should we sedate you before your boyfriend gets here?”

“He’s not—” Buck begins, then immediately derails, stumbling over the word. Not yet, his brain offers helpfully. Not officially. But yes please, universe, whenever you’re ready. His stomach flips at the thought, a ridiculous, buoyant swoop he tries very hard to suppress. “We’ve— we’ve only been on a few dates,” he finishes lamely.

“A few?” Chimney repeats. “You’ve been grinning at your phone for two weeks straight. That’s not ‘a few.’ That’s the preamble to some rom-com level shit.”

Bobby chuckles but gives him a gentler smile, “We’re happy for you,” he says softly.

Before Buck can launch into a rebuttal, the bell above the door chimes, and there he is. Eddie. He finds Buck immediately, as if Buck is the only person in the room worth looking at, and his mouth curves into that same smile he seems to reserve for Buck.

Buck stands. Automatically. Like a puppet yanked up by his strings, his body levitates itself upward and into his new preferred gravity.

“Hey,” Eddie says, resting a hand briefly at the small of Buck’s back — the most ruinous touch on earth. “Hope I’m not late.”

“You’re perfect,” Buck blurts.

Oh my God. Shut the fuck up.

“On time. You’re on time. That’s— perfect.”

Smoooooth, Buckley.

Buck shoots Hen a glare as she smirks over her glass. 

To Buck’s immense shock — and marginal disappointment, because where is the chaos he meticulously prepared for? — introductions go smoothly. Eddie shakes Bobby’s hand with solid, respectful confidence. He answers Hen’s questions about his medic years without posturing or minimizing. He lets Chim ramble about that one ludicrous EMS call involving a clown, a python, and an unsecured trampoline with genuine interest. 

Every interaction seamless, every transition effortless, Eddie fitting into Buck’s family like he was designed for the space next to him.

Buck watches the pillars of his world absorb the presence of the man who has become the axis of his off-shift hours, and feels — not relief, exactly. More like recognition. Hinges dropping into place one by one. A lock he’d been fumbling with for ages, finally coming unclasped in his hands. 

By the time the plates are being cleared, Eddie has coaxed a story out of Hen about the time Buck ran directly into the yellow incident tape at their first scene together.

“You didn’t duck,” she says. “You attempted some sort of tactical limbo maneuver under a stationary barrier.”

“I misjudged the tensile strength,” Buck protests, but he’s laughing, eyes crinkling, the whole humiliating incident now retroactively charming.

He doesn't miss Hen’s expression softening at Eddie’s repeated, unconscious use of we when talking about future plans — we should all go out sometime, we were thinking of trying that new taco place. An implication, unforced and startling, that Eddie already sees Buck wrapped into his life, not an accessory to be removed but a fixture to build around.

Later, outside in the cool night air, Hen leans in close. “He’s good,” she murmurs, “Don’t screw this up.”

“I’m trying very hard not to,” Buck whispers back.

Hen pats his shoulder. “Then stop flinging yourself into moving traffic,” she says. “Baby steps.”

“In my defense, I never would’ve met him if I didn’t do exactly that.”

Eddie stands by Buck’s Jeep, hands in his pockets, looking at him fondly as Buck crosses the distance, heart inexplicably enormous inside his chest — too big for the moment, too big for his body, too big for anything other than Eddie.

“So,” Buck says. “They didn’t chase you away. Excellent news.”

“Hen asked for my number,” Eddie says. “Felt like a test.”

“Did you give it to her?”

“Of course. I like her. She’s terrifying.”

“Yeah,” Buck says, smiling helplessly. “Me too.”

The question comes a few days later as Eddie lies stretched out along Buck’s couch, one arm behind his head, the other resting on Buck’s stomach where he’s slotted between Eddie’s legs, back against his chest. A movie plays unwatched, its dialogue a distant echo. Buck can feel Eddie’s heartbeat against his spine, radiant and resolute, an anchor he hadn’t known he needed until it was there. His own pulse syncs to it, settling gradually, worries that usually plague his mind releasing their grip one by one until the silence between them feels less like absence and more like shelter. 

“You’re quiet,” Eddie says, words rumbling through Buck’s back.

“Thinking,” Buck replies, tracing an idle pattern on Eddie’s arm where it rests across his torso. “Dangerous pastime, I know.”

“What about?”

Buck hesitates, then answers honestly. “You. Us. The fact that I’m— stupidly happy.”

The words taste foreign on his tongue, language that he’d been taught but never spoken aloud. He’s been happy before, sure, in flashes. Fragments, borrowed moments that expired the second he acknowledged them. This is different. This bears a density that suggests it tends to stay, and Buck is terrified of it, a little, because he knows what it costs to lose it.

Silence follows and Eddie’s fingers flex slightly against Buck’s t-shirt, as though bracing. “Yeah?” he asks. “This working for you?”

Buck lets out an incredulous breath. “Working for me? Eddie, I got hit by a car and still consider that morning one of my top ten life experiences because it ended with your number in my phone. I’m so in over my head it’s embarrassing.”

He regrets the admission as soon as it’s out, but Eddie lets his hand slide up, palm splaying over Buck’s chest, thumb pressing lightly where his heart thuds. The gesture is grounding rather than claustrophobic, as if Eddie already understands where the line is between holding Buck together and holding him too tight. 

“Good,” Eddie murmurs. “Because I’ve been wanting to ask you something, and I’d hate for it to come out of nowhere.”

Buck twists slightly to look at him, trying not to jostle the comfortable pretzel they’ve constructed. Eddie’s face is open and sincere and Buck can’t help but notice the unfamiliarity of this particular expression — worry, maybe?

“Okay,” Buck says, heart picking up anyway. “You’re scaring me a little.”

“Don’t be scared,” Eddie says. “It’s just— I’ve been divorced. I’m a dad. My life isn’t exactly a clean slate. I don’t do casual very well. Or rather, I can, but I don’t want that here.” He takes a slow breath. “I like you, Buck. A lot. You’ve probably noticed I’m not great at pretending otherwise.”

“I’ve noticed,” Buck whispers.

“So.” Eddie’s hand moves, sliding from Buck’s chest to his cheek, thumb sweeping over his skin. “Will you be my boyfriend?”

Buck feels the words ripple out through every uncertain part of him, filling gaps he’d long assumed were permanent. Boyfriend. An actual label, an explicit claim. Not something implied or halfway or contingent on good behavior, but offered plainly, held out like Eddie has already decided and is just informing Buck of the change. 

Emotion surges up so quickly Buck nearly chokes on it. He’s spent so long bracing for the version of this conversation that ends with but. I like you, but. You’re great, but. 

He’s rehearsed his graceful acceptance of that but so many times it’s now a reflex. But now — Eddie, looking at him with no but in sight, no fine print or asterisk, and Buck doesn’t know what to do with his hands because they were already positioned for the catch. 

“Yeah,” he says, and then stronger, steadier, “Yes. God, yes. I— yeah. Of course.”

Eddie’s smile blooms into something radiant. “You sure?” he asks. “Last chance to escape before the full dad-package experience.”

“I don’t want to escape,” Buck says. “I want all of it. The full… package.” He winces. “That sounded better in my head.”

“Too late,” Eddie murmurs, cupping the back of his neck and pulling him in for a kiss that feels different from the others — weighted with new clarity, saturated with intent. Buck fists one hand in Eddie’s shirt, his entire body shaking with happiness he’s always suspected existed but rarely sustained.

When they break apart, foreheads touching, Buck breathes, “I’m really happy.”

“I can tell,” Eddie says, thumb smoothing along his jaw. “Me too.”

Buck leans back against him again, feeling content and a little like this might be too good to be true. His life has been a series of jagged starts and abrupt halts, attempts at connection that never quite settled into permanence. Here, now, with Eddie’s breath against his neck and that single word still reverberating through his bones, everything feels improbably, gloriously aligned.

Buck has spent the entire week oscillating between giddy anticipation and stomach-clenching terror, because there are crushes and there are boyfriends and then there is meeting your boyfriend’s kid, which is its own type of emotional vertigo.

Eddie texts him in the morning: You still good to come over later? 

Buck stares at the screen for a full thirty seconds before typing, deleting, retyping, then finally sending: yeah absolutely. I wouldn't miss it. 

He adds a smiley face, deletes it, adds a different one, deletes that too. Ends up sending the bare text and immediately regrets not adding something friendlier. His heart does a weird double-step when Eddie replies almost instantly: Chris is excited to meet you. 

No pressure or anything. 

By the time Buck is standing on Eddie’s porch, he’s rehearsed at least six different greetings and fifty ways this could go wrong. He has a board game tucked under one arm (Hen’s suggestion: “Kids like games, right?”) and a container of cookies he picked up from a bakery on the way over. 

The door opens before he knocks a second time. “Hey,” Eddie says, warm and soft and very much not helping Buck’s heart rate. 

“You okay?” 

Eddie laughs nervously. “Yeah. Big step.” 

Buck blue-screens. Eddie’s nervous? He’s not allowed to be nervous. That’s Buck’s job. Buck has the monopoly on nervous, patent pending. 

“We can reschedule,” Buck offers immediately. “Or postpone indefinitely. Or wait until Chris is an adult with a fully developed frontal lobe—” 

“Buck,” Eddie interrupts fondly. “Get inside.”

It happens gradually, same as the weather changing without anyone noticing. At first, Buck only spends the night at Eddie’s place when shifts line up or when dinner runs late or when kissing him goodnight at the door turns into kissing him against the door, which then turns into not leaving at all. One night becomes two, two become a weekend, and somewhere in the middle of all that, Eddie points toward an empty drawer.

“You can put some stuff in here,” he says, opening it with a smooth slide. “So you don’t have to keep bringing a bag.”

Buck pretends this is all very normal and not at all the verbal equivalent of Eddie handing Buck a key after a month and a half together. 

He places a single pair of sweatpants inside, like a small, confused woodland creature testing a trap.

Eddie watches him with mild amusement, leaning against the dresser. “You can put more than that.”

Buck nods. “Yeah. Totally. Absolutely. I will definitely— do that.”

No I won’t. I will place one object in this drawer and leave the rest of my belongings scattered across two zippered pouches like a transient raccoon.

The next week, after a long shift and an accidental nap on Eddie’s couch, he tucks a t-shirt into the drawer.

Then socks.

Then an entire hoodie he forgot to take home.

It snowballs from there.

Eddie never points it out. He never asks, simply making space. Slides his boots to the side of the entryway, clears half the bathroom counter, moves a stack of academy textbooks off the nightstand Buck ends up using.

One morning Buck wakes up to find his shampoo in Eddie’s shower instead of his travel-size bottle and nearly yelps.

Who put that here? Me? Did I do that in a fugue state? Is Eddie reorganizing my DNA without telling me?

By month three, the drawer has become two drawers, and Buck starts bringing over laundry “because it’s easier,” which is a lie he tells himself with complete sincerity. Eddie adds another pillow to the bed without comment. Buck definitely does not have a key yet, but he also doesn’t exactly need one, because Eddie’s always home when he shows up, or Buck is with him already, or the door magically seems to open before Buck even knocks.

Then, one afternoon, it hits him.

He’s standing in Eddie’s bedroom, barefoot, hair wet from the shower, wearing a t-shirt he swears used to live at his loft but now appears permanently stationed here. Eddie’s in the kitchen making breakfast, singing under his breath. The place smells like coffee and toasted bread and infuriating safety.

Buck opens the dresser to grab socks and freezes.

Every single item in the drawer is his.

Not just the socks. Or the emergency sweatshirt. All of it.

Three pairs of jeans. Two stacks of shirts. His favorite flannel. The hoodie he thought he lost. The sweatpants with the ripped knee. Even the stupid novelty boxers Hen gave him as a gag that he forgot he owned.

He stares at the drawer, throat tightening, stomach swooping.

Oh. Oh God. I live here. I live here. When did that happen? Who authorized this? I didn’t sign anything. Did I sleepwalk my belongings over in the night? Did Eddie trick me into domesticity? Is this entrapment? 

His heart kicks, rapid and nonsensical. “Eddie?” he calls, voice cracking embarrassingly.

“Yeah?” comes Eddie’s voice from the kitchen.

“Did you, uh, move my stuff?”

There’s a pause, a beat of silence, then footsteps.

Eddie appears in the doorway, holding a spatula, looking far too composed for someone who has apparently kidnapped Buck (not that he’s complaining. He doesn’t think he is, at least).

“I mean,” Eddie says, eyes flicking toward the dresser, “you kept leaving things everywhere. I figured they should go somewhere.”

Buck opens his mouth. Nothing, absolutely nothing comes out.

Say words. Use language. Preferably not a panicked honking noise.

“So, you— you folded them?” Buck manages.

Eddie shrugs. “Seemed rude not to.”

Buck is distantly aware that he’s blinking too fast. “I don’t— did I move in? Without noticing?”

Eddie leans a shoulder against the doorframe, fighting a teasing smirk. “Pretty much.”

Buck’s brain explodes in dignified, sequential bursts. 

How did I miss moving into a relationship milestone? Who forgets cohabitation? Am I okay? Am I having an allergic reaction to happiness? Is there an EpiPen for this? There should be an EpiPen for this.

“I haven’t been home in a week,” Buck whispers, mortified.

“Two,” Eddie corrects lightly. “Your mailbox is probably bursting at the seams.”

Buck drags both hands over his face. “Oh my god.”

Eddie steps closer, nudging Buck’s hands down so he can see his face. “Hey,” he whispers. “You good?”

“No,” Buck says immediately. “Yes. Maybe. I just— I didn’t plan this.”

“Did you need to?” Eddie asks. “You’ve been here almost every night. I like you here.”

“I didn’t want to— y'know. Assume.”

Hand sliding to his neck, Eddie’s thumb brushes the edge of his jaw. “You didn’t assume. You showed up. You stayed. That’s all.”

Buck lets out a shaky exhale.

Okay. Breathing. That’s good. Do that. Don’t pass out during an emotionally significant conversation, Buck. That would be on brand but also deeply unhelpful.

“So,” Eddie asks, gentler now, “you want to keep your stuff here? Officially?”

Buck nods before he can overthink it. “Yeah. I— yeah.”

“Good. Because I already cleared space in the closet.”

Buck chokes. “You what?”

Eddie kisses him quickly, trying to be reassuring and only partially succeeding. “Relax. We’re already doing it.”

Buck stands there, floored, heart thundering, and realizes Eddie's right. They’re doing this. Buck lives here. With Eddie. And somehow didn’t notice because it felt so right. This is either the healthiest thing that’s ever happened to him or the most elaborate trap in romantic history, and he genuinely cannot tell the difference. 

He exhales, a disbelieving laugh sliding out of him. “Okay,” he says. “Yeah. I’m— I’m good.”

Eddie squeezes his hip. “Breakfast is getting cold.”

Buck follows him into the kitchen, wearing his own clothes in someone else’s home — no, his home now — and decides not to panic. Or, at least, to panic less dramatically.

Because apparently, without meaning to, he built a life here. And Eddie made space for every part of it — cleared the drawer, moved the boots, added the pillow — certain hands never letting Buck’s presence be temporary. 

Buck, who has been temporary in so many places, for so many people, lets the permanence of it wash over him. Rising up past his ankles and his knees, making its way to his shoulders. He doesn’t fight it, he lets it pull him under. 

He has never been so grateful to drown. 

They fall back into the pillows in a tangle of limbs and shared breath, Eddie’s chest rises and falls under Buck’s cheek, smelling faintly of detergent and sweat and the expensive shampoo Buck started buying for both of them months ago that Eddie insists is a waste of money but secretly loves. His hand is resting on Eddie’s stomach, claiming space without trying to. Eddie’s grip on his bicep is loose, a circle of touch that always lingers longer than Buck expects even after being together for so long.

Night presses against the windows. Streetlight slips through the blinds in narrow blue strips, giving everything a muted, dreamy glow. Chris is at Abuela’s for the weekend, and the house holds its emptier, more intimate shape.

Buck shifts a little, tracing his fingers along Eddie’s skin. He’s not thinking about saying anything big; he’s not thinking at all, really. His brain is loose and stupid from being loved like this. He presses a lazy kiss to Eddie’s shoulder, a brief gesture, careless in a way only deep contentment allows, and murmurs, “Hard to believe I get to do this for the rest of my life.”

Eddie’s breath hitches, although Buck is too sated to notice.

Drifting off to sleep, Buck keeps going. “I should probably warn people ahead of time about how annoying I’m gonna be. You know. For when I start introducing you as my husband someday.”

Buck may be half-awake, but the flex Eddie does from his fingers to his toes would be hard to miss even if he was unconscious. Buck feels it immediately, the rest of him catching up a second later. 

Oh no.

Oh shit.

Okay, Buck, breathe. You’ve been together for months. Months! But what if Eddie heard it as pressure, what if he thinks Buck’s hinting, what if Buck just bucked up the entire night? Breathe. Don’t panic. Don’t visibly panic. God, do not make a sound.

“Eds?” Buck asks softly, lifting his head a fraction, studying Eddie’s profile. “You good?”

Eddie doesn’t answer. Instead, he reaches across Buck, opens the bedside drawer, and begins sifting through the clutter.

Buck’s heart drops into some subterranean void. What is he doing? Oh my God. Did he hear me and decide he needs to get earplugs? Actually, that would be fair. Proportionate response. 

No. No, that’s insane. People don’t propose after sex, right? Or they do? Actually people do everything after sex, humans are lawless—

Eddie rummages for a second, fingers pushing past receipts, chapstick, some pens Buck kept stealing and returning so often that Eddie had to hide them. Then he pulls out something small and dark… square… velvet…

Buck’s breath catches, everything in him stills. Holy shit. Holy shit. Oh God, this is happening. No, don’t assume. Don’t jump ahead. It could be earrings. Eddie does not own earrings. It could be a… tiny… tool? It’s a ring box, Buck, Jesus.

Eddie holds the box with a strange sort of ease, as though it has lived in his drawer for longer than Buck has known him. He doesn’t change positions, doesn’t sit up straighter, doesn’t make any ceremonial move toward theatrics. He meets Buck’s eyes for a second, something raw and decided flickering through him.

“Buck,” he says, barely above a whisper. “Look at me.”

Buck turns over, facing Eddie straight-on and trying to appear calm. He is the opposite of calm, though, if anyone was wondering. He is experiencing every emotion the human body is capable of experiencing simultaneously and several probably invented specifically for this moment.

Eyes drifting down, Eddie’s eyes remain glued to the small box in his hands. “You say things like that with no hesitation. Like the future is already settled. Like you don’t realize what it does to me.”

Buck’s pulse pounds through him, his chest tightening at Eddie’s words, though not with panic this time — with anticipation. The sacred feeling of standing at the edge of the rest of his life.

Eddie turns onto his side, lifting himself just enough to face him head-on. “I spent years convinced I’d burned through my chances at something good. That whatever I got in life would be a thing I survived, not something I wanted.”

Buck feels his heartbeat trip hard against his ribs, that flicker of awe he still hasn’t learned to control. Eddie really believes that. He really lived inside that kind of scarcity, thinking love was an accident he wasn’t allowed to touch twice.

Buck wants to reach back through every year of Eddie’s life and shake every person that made him feel that way. Wants to find every closed door and kick it open. Wants to stand in every room Eddie was ever in alone, and refuse to leave.

Eddie continues, “Then you showed up, and suddenly everything felt— possible.” 

Possible. It sinks into Buck with an inward force, not a strike but a bloom, changing him from the inside out. No one has ever said that about Buck. They’ve said he’s impulsive or exhausting or too much or not enough, but no one — not once, not ever, has said that he changed the shape of their future with eyes alight instead of full of regret. His hand tightens on the sheets, afraid that if he speaks, the moment will crash down around them.

Eddie pauses, almost imperceptibly. “You make the hard hours bearable. The good ones better. I don’t have to ration myself with you. I don’t have to hold the door shut on any part of me.”

Buck feels himself relax, the tension he’s been carrying in his shoulders, his neck, the stubborn corners of his heart that always expect disappointment.

It unravels under Eddie like a thread pulled from a spool, and what’s left is something Buck barely recognizes — the version of himself that believes he’s worthy of being loved, exactly as he is. 

Glancing down again at the velvet box, Eddie exhales once to ground himself, then opens it. A ring rests inside — a plain gold band, no ornamentation, an unpretentious promise.

He looks back at Buck and says, simply, “Marry me.”

For a second, Buck can’t speak. He can’t even blink. He feels the answer slam through every part of him all at once — yes yes yes God yes — but his mouth won’t move.

I never thought I’d have this. I never thought anyone would want me for this long. I never thought forever was something I could say without conditions. Holy shit this is real. Eddie wants me. Eddie wants me this much.

Buck finally exhales, his hands coming up to cup Eddie’s face, overwhelmed and shaking and so fucking in love with this man he met by complete chance. 

“Yes,” he says. “God, Eddie. Yes.”

Eddie smiles at him, and it’s like watching the sunrise happen on a single human face — light arriving everywhere at once, filling every line and every shadow. Buck did that, he put that there, and he’s going to spend the rest of his life trying to do it again, and again, and again.

They lie like that for a long time, forehead to forehead, breath mingling in the restfulness of the room — their room, in their house, built out of routines and laughter and the accumulation of days neither of them ever planned for but both leaned into all the same. Eddie’s hand finds Buck’s without ceremony as he slips the ring onto his finger with utter certainty before settling back into the pillows, tugging Buck into the curve of his body like it’s instinct, not choice.

Laying there as the darkness cascades around them, he lifts his hand just enough for the ring to catch the thin, silver spill of moonlight through the window. It glows against his skin, and Buck stares at it until his vision blurs. He lets himself breathe, he lets himself have this.

A life he never let himself dream of, resting solidly in the palm of his hand.

It’s a morning like countless others — or, at least, it starts like one. 

Buck is crossing the living room with a mug of coffee, still half-asleep, Eddie singing along to the radio drifting in from the other room, when his eyes snag on the plant in the corner. 

He’s seen it a thousand times. It’s been there since his first night in this house, dark green, overly leafy, tucked into that same ceramic pot near the window. He’s walked past it, watered it once when Eddie forgot, brushed against it when reaching for the blinds. 

It’s a plant. It’s always been a plant. 

Today, though, it stops him in his tracks. 

Mug suspended, he stands there staring. The soil is damp, recently watered. The leaves are vibrant and lush, lit from the window the way healthy leaves should be. It looks like a plant. It looks immaculately like a plant would look.

It just — it doesn’t feel like one. 

A perfection so thorough it crosses some nonexistent threshold into uncanny, a painting of fruit so beautiful and technically flawless that your mouth understands before your mind that it will never be food. 

He sets his coffee down and crosses the room, shrinking down next to it. The leaves are the right color, in his experience, the right shape, veined and tapered as leaves should be. The stem is the right thickness, the soil shifts inside the pot when Buck moves it, everything about it is normal. Standard plant behavior. 

The correctness, in itself, is what’s wrong. Real things carry the evidence of their own becoming, the scars of weather and growth, the asymmetry of having existed in a world that changes everything it touches. 

Buck reaches out and touches a leaf, curiosity killing this ever curious cat, and his hand recoils before he understands why. 

The texture — he reaches out and rubs the leaf between his thumb and forefinger, trying to figure it out — it’s too even. It has a give to it, resistance, the press of something organic. But underneath that sits a smoothness that his body rejects on instinct, a wrongness that sends shivers through every part of him. 

It’s like a word pronounced perfectly by someone who learned it phonetically, but never once in a conversation. Close — impossibly close, just missing whatever invisible thing separates a copy from the original. 

He lets the leaf go and his hands are tingling, discomfort climbing through his like a splinter lodged too deep to reach. He looks around the room and everything is where it should be, but his pulse is climbing anyway, rising against the evidence laid out in front of him. 

He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. 

It’s Eddie’s plant, the same one that’s been sitting in this corner since Buck first stepped through the door. Forcing himself to stand, he presses his palms flat against his thighs to stop the trembling, but the discomfort doesn’t go away — it migrates, settling into the space between his shoulder blades, spreading across his sternum like a hand pressing down. 

He’s done this before. Found the fracture in an otherwise perfect thing and worked his fingers into it until the whole thing crumbled. He knows this about himself the same way he knows his blood type — clinical, indisputable, permanent. 

His damage. His pattern. His inheritance from a lifetime of being left. 

He rolls his shoulders, trying to shake the feeling loose. It clings to him, sticky and formless, the residue of a dream you can’t remember but hovers at the edge of conscious thought. A sense of having glimpsed something you weren’t supposed to see, a curtain pulled back for a fraction of a second before being smoothed into place again. 

Buck turns away, picking up his coffee and walking toward the kitchen where Eddie is plating eggs and existing with the unconscious grace Buck has built his entire life around. 

Eddie’s back is to him, muscles moving beneath his shirt, feet dancing on the tile to some tuneless melody. Buck watches him from the doorway, letting the sight of him press the unease back down. 

Eddie is real. Buck can feel the gravitational certainty of him from across the room, and it loosens the fist around his lungs enough to breathe through. 

“You good?” Eddie asks without looking up. 

“Yeah,” Buck says. “I’m good.”

He crosses to where Eddie is standing and presses himself against Eddie’s back, arms circling his waist, face buried in the back of his neck. Eddie leans into it without hesitation, one hand coming to rest over both of Buck’s where they’re clasped against his stomach, tracing an absent line across Buck’s knuckles. Buck breathes him in and holds on, grounding himself in the tangible, undeniable fact of this. 

He doesn’t look at the plant again. 

He feels it, though. Even pressed against Eddie, listening to his heartbeat, that prickling awareness creeps in at the periphery of his vision, delicate and persistent, a single off-key note in an otherwise perfect chord.

Taking a deep breath, he decides that he’s done thinking about it. There’s nothing wrong with his life, and he is going to let this go.

Still, somewhere beneath the comfort and the sound of Eddie’s breathing, a question is curling through him like smoke through a cracked window, persistent and suffocating, impossible to ignore. 

Why does everything feel so perfect? 

He holds on a little tighter and squeezes his eyes shut, begging his brain to forget about it. Eddie chose him, and Buck chose him back. They built this life together out of ordinary days and ordinary nights and a love so concrete it became the ground Buck walks on. 

He is not going to ruin this. Not this time. He’s going to breathe and trust the life he’s been given, because it’s good, and it’s his. Because there’s no safer place in the world than this. 

He believes it. He needs to believe it. 

He almost does. 

The question finds him again anyway, following him through every door he closed and slipping past every lock he turned, leeching into the marrow of his bones with terrifying patience, waiting for him to listen. 

Why does everything feel so perfect, and what will be left of him when it stops?