Archive of Our Own ^beta

one.

The truth is, Eddie doesn’t know Evan Buckley that well yet.

Somehow, that doesn’t seem to matter much to his nervous system, which lights up reliably every time Buck enters a room and sends his heart tumbling to a new and different kind of pulse. It’s not affectionate, exactly, so much as it’s just familiar. He liked Buck immediately, actually— even when he was trying to posture for some imaginary audience and forge competition with Eddie that Eddie wasn’t keen to engage in. There was still just something about him.

And then, the earthquake. When Eddie was finally able to get through to the school and found out that his baby was safe, Buck had taken one look at his adrenaline-trembling hands and offered to drive him. It wasn’t long after that when Buck followed him without question to the hospital and from then on, it was one thing after another. A domino effect of Buck’s open, generous heart. Anybody would be endeared, Eddie thinks.

Now, Eddie has only been with the 118 for a few months but he and Buck are entirely inseparable when they’re on-shift, and sometimes off-shift, too. Christopher is enamored with him, always asking when they’re going to see him again, and Eddie—

Well. Eddie feels settled. He likes LA; he loves the 118; and he’s really fucking glad that he found Buck.

Their friendship is new and blossoming, and he couldn’t tell you much about Buck on a deeper level— knows he’s from Pennsylvania, knows about Maddie, but knows nothing about their family or their upbringings. He does know Buck’s favorite color, but that comes with the territory of having a seven-year-old more than it has anything to do with his and Buck’s friendship.

Some other things he knows: that Buck never says no to pizza night; that there was a girlfriend and then there wasn’t; that there was a Buck 1.0; that he’s an adventurous eater but hates celery; that he has a waning attention span for much of anything longer than ten minutes; that he’s brave and sometimes reckless, but ultimately a really capable firefighter.

Some things that he doesn’t know: why on earth Buck would live in his ex-girlfriend’s place as long as he did; where he learned any of the hundreds of seemingly random facts he spouts off at any opportunity; if there are any other foods that Buck hates; what anyone is actually talking about when they make reference to Buck 1.0.

And—

“Guess who lost another percent of body fat?” Buck brags, waving his phone around haphazardly as he appears at the top of the stairs and emerges into the loft, a proud and smug expression on his face.

— why he does that. That’s something else that Eddie doesn’t know about Buck.

If he were being really honest with himself, he’d have to admit that another thing he doesn’t know is why it bothers him so much, but self-reflection isn’t something Eddie is exactly known for. He knows that this is probably pretty common in their line of work— he’d seen his fair share of muscle-obsessed, testosterone-fueled competition in the Army, too. There was a camaraderie about it, he guesses, and something to focus on besides the danger. Some of that applies here too, probably.

But Eddie doesn’t really know, has never been one to see the appeal. He works out, sure, gets plenty of exercise and does his best to make sure both he and Chris get their vegetables. But beyond that, he doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. Certainly nowhere near as much as Buck does.

“You, I’m sure,” Hen says drily from her place at the table without raising her head to look at Buck. “You know you don’t actually have to announce every single thing that happens to you, right?”

Buck rolls his eyes and flops down unceremoniously into the chair across from Eddie, who watches him lean back and stretch his arms and legs out, taking up space.

“But wouldn’t you?” he asks to the room at large. “If you also looked like this?”

Hen rolls her eyes at him, but Eddie takes a good look. Buck is a handsome guy, sure. Taller and broader than Eddie is, with a tapered waist that looks small and neat in his uniform. And Eddie knows that he’s strong, capable— he demonstrates as much in the field on every other call. They share a bunk room and a weight set: Eddie would be hard pressed to miss Buck’s physicality. And on the surface, he’s smiling winningly and dripping confidence. It’s just that—

Maybe he’s dripping a little too much confidence?

Eddie studies him, and he would swear he could see a flicker of something behind the bravado. It’s the kind of thing that tugs at his heartstrings a little. Maybe it’s the Mexican half of his heritage, the half that centers food around community and views it as a form of healing. Maybe it’s the Dad in him, something formed by caring about a child whose view of himself was both malleable and acutely dependent on Eddie’s example.

Either way, he can’t help himself.

“Why do you bother with all that?” he asks, surprising himself a little with the directness and apparently doing the same to Buck, because he looks over with a flicker of uncertainty on his face.

“Uh,” he laughs cautiously. “With what?”

Eddie gestures to his phone, the screen now darkened and no longer displaying a disturbingly intricate scan of Buck’s muscles in colorful, easy to visualize fashion.

“The whole body fat thing,” he clarifies.

Buck frowns, gaze flickering uncertainly. ”What?” he asks. “You don’t?”

“No,” Eddie scoffs, leaning back in his own chair and shrugging his shoulders. “And you don’t need to, either.”

“Well,” Buck counters, looking a little caught-off guard. “I mean, I like to stay lean. Fit, you know. For the job.”

Eddie nods. He’s weighing his options. He and Buck are friends, definitely. But close enough friends for your obsession with your muscle mass and shaving down every ounce of fat on your body is pretty concerning, man? Maybe not.

“Fit, sure,” Eddie says, rolling easily into the conversation with careful lightness. “I mean, me too. Just don’t get the focus on the details, that’s all.”

Buck is looking at him like this has never occurred to him before, and Eddie considers that maybe it hasn’t. He wonders, not exactly for the first time, what kind of house Buck grew up in. He thinks about that kind of thing a lot, especially since he became a single parent to a special needs child. It’s something of an obsession for Eddie, if he’s honest— his determination to be the best parent he can possibly be for Christopher leading him to spend a lot of time contemplating what parents do for their children, the ways they shape them and how it follows them into adulthood.

He knows that he is worse for wear because of choices his parents had made, things they had said that stuck with him. He wonders if it’s the same for Buck. And maybe the fact that it makes his heart ache a little to think about it is also the Dad in him. The dad and the friend, maybe. The body is a fragile topic, one that can be hard and complicated. He just thinks that Buck— who is big-hearted and kind, if occasionally manic and possibly a little bit insane— deserves better than that.

“You really never did this?” Buck asks now, and Eddie shakes his head.

“Nope,” he affirms, reaching for the bag of potato chips that’s been left open on the table for communal grazing this afternoon and puts one in his mouth. Dusting off his fingers, he shrugs his shoulders and adds, “I know a lot of people who do. I guess it’s pretty normal, but— nah. Not for me.”

Buck looks down at the table, uncharacteristically quiet, and Eddie can’t help thinking that his instincts about this situation may have been right. In the space between the start of the conversation and this moment, Hen and Chim have drifted away and only Eddie and Buck remain in the loft, sitting across from each other at the quiet table.

Eddie gives it a minute, just to see if Buck will venture any further. When he doesn’t, Eddie puts his hand on the bag and nudges it in Buck’s direction, the material crinkling as he slides it across the wood toward him.

“Have some,” he says. He thinks his voice is coming out softer than he meant it to, softer than it usually is, but he doesn’t have it in him to try to muster up something else. He feels soft. And perhaps more than that, he finds that he wants to feel that way. It feels a little bit like he’s getting away with something, but he indulges in it anyway. This feeling— he may not entirely have a name for it, but he still enjoys its warmth and the way it spreads across the plane of his chest, reminding Eddie of a sweeping desert breeze. Something soft.

Buck hesitates, but he reaches for the chips. Eddie nods encouragingly, pushing them a little closer as something sparks behind the wall of his ribs. Maybe he doesn’t quite know Buck well enough— yet— to say anything, but he can do chips. And if, after that day, he pays a little more attention to Buck’s plate when they all eat— if sometimes he pulls him away from a workout set that’s gone on a little too long, or brings in the leftovers of whatever treat Christopher wanted to try and makes sure that some of it ends up with Buck—

Well. That’s Eddie’s, and Eddie’s alone.

two.

Eddie knows Buck.

He knows Buck now. Sometimes he knows Buck so well that it scares him— when he can predict what he’s going to say before he says it; when he could practically mouth along to a sentence as it comes out of Buck’s mouth; when he can anticipate which direction Buck will take on a call and work seamlessly to take the opposite one. If he’s spotting him on the weights, Eddie knows to the second when Buck is going to move. In the bunk room, Eddie can take one glance at the rise and fall of Buck’s chest and know whether he’s really asleep. When he’s around Chris, Eddie could set a timer to the moment he’s going to say, hey Chris, did you know—

The point is, Eddie knows Buck. And as such, he knows when something is wrong with Buck.

And recently— something has been wrong with Buck.

Most of the time, he’s been his normal self— enthusiastic to a fault; generous; giant-hearted and equally funny; committed to flirting with the line between brave and reckless. But there have been moments, just in the last couple of days, in which he’s watched Buck falter. Moments in which Eddie misjudged what expression was going to flash across his face and when he thought Buck would bounce back but he didn’t. Yesterday, he was so spaced out that he hadn’t even heard Chimney when he was telling them something about whales that Eddie knew wasn’t correct because Buck had previously told him otherwise. Then this morning he caught Buck sitting on the edge of the bunk: he hadn’t known that Eddie was standing around the corner, that he wasn’t alone in the shadowy half-light of the bunk room. And he’d been leaning forward with one forearm bracing himself on his knee, and the other hand rubbing absently at his ankle. Eddie knows Buck, and he knows that the barely there furrow of his eyebrows means pain.

That had been more than concerning enough— and then, this afternoon, he had watched Buck take one look at a plate of his favorite cookies on the counter—the ones Bobby makes with chunks of chocolate instead of chips, which both he and Buck swear are better— and turned away from them without so much as a shred of hesitation.

That is the moment that Eddie puts his plan into place. It’s a no-brainer, really: Buck is his best friend, and Eddie knows what Buck needs and he knows he can help, and so he just does. It’s what they do for each other.

He fires off a text to Carla and arranges for her to pick Chris up from school and keep him for the evening. Normally, Eddie would be reluctant to give up any time with Chris but he knows that if his son is around Buck will be far too enamored with him to give any attention to Eddie or himself. It’s not that Buck would do it on purpose, using the kid as a shield. It’s just that if Christopher is present, he’s the thing Buck thinks about. Eddie gets it: his kid is everything to him, too. Sometimes he thinks he and Buck are on more equal ground in that regard than either of them have ever said out loud.

Buck is slamming the door of his locker by the time Eddie steps back into the room, already dressed in street clothes himself with his bag slung over his shoulder.

“Hey,” he says— casual, light. Waits for Buck to look up and smiles easily when he does. It’s the kind of thing Eddie knows he has to be careful about.

“Hey,” Buck answers. “You good?”

It does something to Eddie’s heart. He knows what’s going on with Buck now, and somehow it isn’t surprising in the slightest that he’s asking after Eddie and meaning it.

“Yeah, good,” Eddie confirms. “You wanna come over?”

The hesitation is a split second and sharp, but it’s there. Eddie doesn’t let it get to him, and there’s no time anyway because Buck ultimately nods and runs a hand through his hair.

“Sure, yeah,” he agrees. Eddie counts it a success, at least as far as the parking lot when Buck takes a step toward the Jeep and Eddie’s thoughts trip over his words to a degree that has him reaching out without thinking and tugging Buck back with a hand to his elbow.

He glances back, puzzled. “What?” he asks. “Forget something?”

“No,” Eddie admits. “I was just thinking we could take the truck.”

Buck frowns. “What about the Jeep?” he asks.

Eddie shrugs. “You’re gonna end up staying the night anyway,” he offers. “We’re both on shift tomorrow.”

Buck looks admittedly a little thrown off but ultimately he nods his head with a look back at his car before he shifts his eyes to Eddie again.

“Alright,” he says. “You hate driving.”

What Eddie really hates is knowing that if Buck gets behind the wheel, it’ll cramp his leg further and the furrow of pain will appear between his eyebrows and deepen along every turn between the station and Eddie’s street.

He just rolls his eyes and says, “It’s my house, Buck, I would have been driving either way.”

Technically true, but if Buck realizes it’s not the point he doesn’t show it. He follows Eddie to the truck and gets in, so Eddie doesn’t get a chance to observe his gait until he walks a pace ahead from Eddie’s driveway into his house: as he’d anticipated, there’s the slightest grinding hitch in each step that makes Eddie wince as if it’s him flaring an old injury.

He tries not to think about that night. It’s hard though: the way Buck screamed in agony from the pavement with his hand clasped tightly to Eddie’s and his leg crushed beneath an engine isn’t something he thinks anyone would be able to forget easily.

He lets Buck into the house and steps around him, pulling out of his shoes with deliberate ease and stepping through the living room to the kitchen as he leaves Buck to do the same, his voice calling out to Eddie where he’s now standing at the counter.

“What time does Chris get home?”

“Not till late,” Eddie answers, raising his voice to be heard in the other room. “Go sit down.”

Buck doesn’t, though— of course he doesn’t. Instead, he appears in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen with a confused frown painted over his features and just his socks on his feet. He’s half-leaned against the door frame and cast in the afternoon light that crawls over the kitchen toward him in long, sweet shafts.

“What do you mean?” he asks. “School lets out in a few minutes.”

Eddie smiles a little, his back still turned, and then glances over his shoulder at Buck. “I know,” he answers, in a normal volume now that they’re in the same room. “Carla has him this afternoon.”

Buck hesitates, looking a little bit like he’s been caught in some kind of trap. It’s not like that. Eddie isn’t trying to trap him. If anything, he guesses what he’s really trying to do is free him. He knows that Buck feels the weight of expectations that are placed on him— that he feels he has to be okay all the time, a thing that’s particularly true since the injury and the subsequent lawsuit. Buck seems to think he has something to prove— loyalty, or resilience, or something equally ridiculous because everyone already knows that Buck possesses these things in spades and then some.

“Go sit down,” Eddie repeats. He glances back and watches as Buck shifts his weight a little, visibly weighs his options, and ultimately steps back toward the couch with tangible reluctance rolling in waves off of him. Eddie shakes his head a little bit and calls after him, “You hungry?”

“Uh,” Buck answers. “No, not really.”

Eddie hums, sort of unimpressed but managing to sound neutral. He reaches into the bag that he’s slung on the countertop and extracts the Ziploc bag of chocolate chunk cookies he’d outright taken from the station on his way out. He pulls a plate clean from the dishwasher, checks that it’s dry, and dumps the whole bag unceremoniously onto it before carrying it into the living room and setting it wordlessly down on the coffee table in front of Buck. He looks at it for a moment, and then turns to Eddie.

“What are you doing with those?” he asks.

“Uh, eating them?” Eddie answers, shrugging his shoulders and flopping down on the couch next to Buck. “They’re good, I wasn’t going to leave them for B shift to steal them.”

Buck makes that face with one eyebrow furrowed inward, the one that hides his amusement behind a challenge. “I’m pretty sure you’re the one stealing them,” he points out.

Eddie shrugs again and reaches for a cookie. He breaks it deliberately in half and holds one section out to Buck.

“Since when do you care about stealing from B shift?” he asks rhetorically.

“I don’t,” Buck says evenly. He still hasn’t taken the cookie, so Eddie holds it out closer to him.

The thing is— they’re closer now. They’ve spent years saving each other’s lives and fighting and making up and practically raising Eddie’s kid together and there’s very little left that Eddie doesn’t feel like he can say to Buck. He doesn’t think he has a more secure relationship than this one, and if they were ever the kind of friends who could not be blunt with one another, that time has long passed now.

So he holds out the half of a chocolate chunk cookie and says, frankly:

“I know what you’re doing, Buck.”

There’s no judgement in his voice. He says it evenly and softly, and when Buck looks up he offers a half smile and another push of the cookie in his direction.

“What?” Buck asks.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Do you think I don’t see you favoring that leg?”

Something fragile flashes over Buck’s face, strange and quick and hard to read. Or— it would be, Eddie guesses, if it were anyone else.

Buck reaches for the cookie. “I said I wasn’t hungry,” he says.

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees amiably. “You say a lot of things. Put your ankle up, here.” He scooches back along the plane of the couch, leaving space between them as Buck frowns at him.

“I’m fine,” he says, though Eddie suspects even someone who doesn’t know Buck the way he does would be able to hear how untrue it sounds right now.

“I didn’t say you were dying or something,” Eddie deflects, lending lightness to the moment for Buck’s sake. “Stop being stubborn.”

“You’re being really bossy right now,” Buck huffs, but shifts on the couch anyway. Eddie counts that a victory, snark and all.

It turns out that there isn’t quite enough space— Buck is tall and his legs are long and when he gives in and does what Eddie’s asking, he doesn’t have the room to stretch his leg out. Eddie moves without thinking, before Buck can speak, and within the blink of an eye Buck winds up with one socked foot in Eddie’s lap. The elastic at the ankle of his sweatpants has ridden up slightly, exposing the joint.

“You’re fine,” Eddie says as he lays his fingers over the warm skin between Buck’s pants and his sock, before Buck can try to pull away. “You’re fine, Buck.”

He thinks the words come out sounding heavier than he meant for them to, weighed down with meaning. He can’t really regret that, though, because while he’s intentionally not looking at Buck in the quiet so as not to make this anything more than it needs to be, Buck brings the cookie to his mouth and nibbles at the edge of it.

It’s softly quiet for several long moments, the afternoon light flooding the room and picking up the sparkle of the dust particles that float through the air, something gentle and homey.

“So that’s why you brought me here?” Buck asks eventually, breaking the quiet.

“What do you mean?” Eddie asks back, and Buck sighs, inclining his head toward the ankle in Eddie’s lap.

“This,” he answers. Frustration bleeds into the syllables.

Eddie shakes his head. “I didn’t bring you here for anything, Buck,” he answers. “But you know, you could say something.”

Buck looks at him for a moment; his blue eyes flash with something Eddie doesn’t know the name for as he looks up and meets them, and then he shrugs his shoulders.

“Apparently,” he huffs, “I don’t have to.”

Eddie smiles a little at that. It’s true, he guesses. He could encourage Buck to speak up, but the end result would have been the same if he had. He’d still be here on Eddie’s couch either way.

“Still,” Eddie says, softer. He rubs his thumb lightly over Buck’s ankle, digs in lightly and tests the tension. “You can tell me.”

Buck lets out a breath.

“I know,” he relents. His voice is softer too, now. “Sorry.”

Eddie shakes his head. “Not my point,” he chides.

Buck huffs a frustrated sigh. “It gets in my way.”

Eddie resists the urge to point out that if Buck went a little easier on it, it would probably ease up sooner. He knows it wouldn’t help anything, that Buck knows; that it’s deeper than that. Inadequacy is often immune to logic. Eddie gets it.

“I know,” he says instead: simple, understanding. “Still hurting?”

Buck still hesitates, but ultimately nods. “Yeah. The rain yesterday.”

“Mm,” Eddie hums softly. He moves his fingers along the back of Buck’s ankle and presses gently into the tendon that connects his heel to his calf, listening for his breath. He lets out a soft, barely there sound that would be inaudible in a less quiet room, and Eddie glances up at his face. “Okay?” he checks.

Buck nods. His cheeks are pink, but there’s no furrow of pain between his eyebrows. “How did you know which— where—”

Eddie nods, a flickering, bittersweet smile on his features. He brushes his fingers over the faintly raised skin of a scar along the line of Buck’s lower calf.

“Did you know that Christopher’s last surgery was a lengthened tendon?” he asks.

Buck blinks. “No,” he admits.

“Mhm,” Eddie hums. Taps his fingers to the bone of Buck’s ankle. “Same leg, too,” he adds lightly. “He needed it to be able to keep walking as he grew, try to even it up with the other leg. It’s the only one I was home for.”

Buck is quiet for a long moment, but the tension of earlier has faded.

There are a lot of things neither of them say, but Eddie rubs mindlessly at the warm skin around the joint of Buck’s ankle and the soft flesh and muscle of the calf above it.

And Buck, relaxing inch by inch, takes a bite of his cookie.

three.

Eddie has seen Buck in various states of undress.

It’s kind of an occupational hazard, really. They share locker rooms and bunks at the firehouse; cross paths in and out of the showers; attend summer barbecues together; strip their shirts off for weight sets; go swimming, sometimes. It’s nothing new.

So when Eddie shows up at Buck’s place a little early to meet him so they can drive together to the very secret location Eddie has arranged for them to go, and Buck opens the door with his shirt off, it’s nothing new.

Except that maybe it sort of is.

Eddie couldn’t say why, exactly, but he blinks hard at the sight of him. It’s been a minute, he realizes belatedly, since he actually did see Buck with his shirt off. Summer is long gone— they haven’t been swimming in ages, and it’s actually managed to get close to something like cold this season. Not cold cold, the kind Buck is used to growing up in Pennsylvania, but Los Angeles cold, which is to say mild at least.

Sometime in between the last time Eddie had been paying attention and this moment on the other side of Buck’s threshold, a couple of things have changed.

“Hey,” Buck says, smiling broadly and easily like it’s nothing. Then, he seems to catch Eddie’s stillness and the way he’s staring, and looks down at his own chest. “Oh,” he adds. “Cool, huh?”

Across the skin over Buck’s shoulder and creeping down over his chest, spreading out and faded pink, there’s a web of scarring that looks— well, remarkably like lightning.

“Cool?” Eddie echoes, scoffing lightly.

“Yeah,” Buck laughs. He steps back from the door and lets Eddie inside, and Eddie follows sort of numbly into the loft. He’s done it a hundred times, had just done it with Christopher a matter of two days ago in fact, but somehow feels strange and different doing it now. The sight of the scars on Buck’s chest has set him off center, made him feel a little untethered for reasons he can’t quite name.

“Doc says they’ll fade,” Buck is saying conversationally as he moves back into the kitchen where he’d been before Eddie arrived. “Actually,” he adds with a glance down at his own bare skin, “they already have a lot. They were more red before.”

“Do they hurt?” Eddie asks, before he can stop himself. He watches Buck sort of soften as he shakes his head.

“Nah,” he answers. “I’m good.”

There’s a half-eaten peach on the counter, and Eddie watches as Buck goes back to it and picks it up, altogether dwarfing it in his hand as he brings it to his mouth and bites into the soft orange of the flesh. A drop of the juice rolls down over his wrist and Eddie smiles a little, shakes his head.

“Hey,” Buck objects, pointing at him. “Don’t start. I’m eating this without my shirt on for a reason.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Eddie answers, raising his hands in mock surrender.

“You were thinking it,” Buck shrugs. Eddie grins, natural and easy. It always is with Buck. “You’re the one taking me to some secret fancy thing, you can wait for me to finish my peach.”

There are several things for Eddie to reflect on there. Firstly, he actually wasn’t thinking it, regardless of what he might be willing to let Buck believe. He was thinking about the peach in Buck’s hand and the scars across his chest.

Which leads him to his second reflection— he’d worried, a little, in that quiet way at the back of his mind, that the lightning strike might set Buck back in the mental sense. He remembers how hard it had been for Buck to be out of work— and he also knows that it was hard this time, too. He’s not diminishing that.

But Buck seems better. Okay. And safe, most importantly. Eddie can’t help but notice when he munches happily on whole handfuls of popcorn over Christopher’s math homework or that he’s now leaning over the counter dripping peach juice over his fingers and looking—

Happy. He looks happy. Relaxed and comfortable, flicking his tongue over the peach pit as Eddie rolls his eyes and unbuttons his jacket.

“Are you ready?” he asks. “We’re going to be late.”

“Impatient,” Buck says casually as he turns on the tap, runs his fingers under the water to clean them of peach, and then flicks his wet fingers in Eddie’s direction, splattering tiny drops of water over his muted plaid jacket as he scowls.

“Hey,” he hisses, but can’t keep it up when Buck laughs, bright and clear and easy.

“Relax,” Buck advises as he crosses the space between them and picks up a black button-down from where it’s hanging over the back of one of his dining chairs. “I am practically ready.”

Eddie watches as he slips it over his shoulders. For the first time, he really looks at Buck. And—

He looks different. Broader; softer; bigger. He’s not sure how exactly he missed it when Buck’s shoulders broadened and bulked up, or when his waist turned proportionately, gently, softer. He watches as Buck tucks the tails of his shirt neatly into the waist of his pants and adjusts the fabric, where it pulls at the bulk of his arms and settles neatly over the web of scarring.

Funnily enough, like this, you’d never know. You’d never know he was dead for three minutes and seventeen seconds. That the world got a little dimmer when Eddie tilted his head back and watched in horror as Buck dangled limply above them. He still sees it when he closes his eyes, and nobody would know that from looking at him, either.

“Nice enough for you?” Buck asks, dragging him back into the present moment. Eddie blinks and realizes that Buck has shrugged a burgundy velvet jacket over his shoulders over the black shirt, and admittedly he looks—

Eddie swallows and shrugs his shoulders.

“Too bad you can’t see the scars,” he remarks.

Buck smiles. “Because they’re cool?”

“No,” Eddie answers. “Because they match your jacket. Let’s go.”

Buck laughs, and it feels like sun. It always does— Buck is just like that, Eddie thinks, the kind of person whose presence everyone basks in. It’s only more true now— the more of Buck there is, the more alive he remains, the brighter he is.

If you’re asking Eddie, lightning has nothing on that.

four.

It’s a beautiful day.

A joyful day, for all of them. The weight of a medal is hanging around Eddie’s neck and this time around he actually sort of feels like he deserves it. At the very least, there’s the fact that it’s a shared honor with people he considers family. It’s common knowledge that a shared burden is easier to bear— but for Eddie, it applies here, too. Maybe even more so, in some ways. It’s what had drawn him to the LAFD in the first place, after all: a desire for camaraderie that really spoke more to a deeper desire, the one for a family.

A family he’s found at the 118, one that includes every kind of joy and heartache he can imagine. Today, it’s mostly the good things— including Christopher at home here amongst people he’s practically grown up with, giggling at something with Denny even as Eddie thinks about it. It leaves him feeling warm, relaxed. Here, on a day like today, it’s easy. That’s the main thing, the thing that’s so often evasive for Eddie. It’s easy to be here, like this.

He leaves Christopher at the table and goes in search of more cake; because he’s wearing a new medal, and he’s with his family, and it’s easy. And so maybe he deserves more cake. It’s sweet and moist and lingers on his tongue, and he wants it. Today, at least, it can be that simple.

He’s in the middle of serving himself a piece, swiping the plastic knife against the side of the plate, when something catches his ear and he turns, without really thinking about it, to catch what’s being said behind him.

In doing so, he catches a glimpse of Hen and Karen standing shoulder to shoulder facing Tommy. This is, admittedly, furthermore intriguing to Eddie and he’s listening properly in time to catch the gist of what’s being said when Karen says:

“We mean, where are you going with Buck?”

Eddie takes a half-step backwards. He doesn’t mean to. But maybe there’s a part of him that wants to hear the answer, too.

“Oh,” Tommy says drily. “He’s not having any cake. He’s in ketosis.”

Something in Eddie’s chest flips unpleasantly— at the words, and at the lightly flippant way that Tommy delivers them. Like they weigh nothing.

He listens to the next bit—

Tommy asks, “Are we still talking about cake?”

And then— “We’re talking about your intentions,” Hen clarifies, and Karen interjects, “Are they honorable?”

So Tommy says, “I’m wearing a medal,” like it’s supposed to be funny, and Eddie feels like he’s heard more than enough. He remembers that he used to really like Tommy, but all of a sudden he can’t really recall why. And then he sets that aside, too, because Tommy isn’t actually the point here.

In the years he’s known Buck, Eddie has learned a number of things about him. What he’d once thought was a relatively normal habit for a fit guy of calorie tracking or abstaining from certain foods has turned out to be something decidedly less normal for Buck.

He’s learned that it directly correlates to the things going on in Buck’s life— the way he sees himself, his body, his worth. It’s not something they’ve talked about in any direct sense, but it’s something Eddie knows about Buck, as intrinsically as he knows so many other things about him.

And perhaps most importantly, it’s a behavior that Eddie hasn’t seen him partake in for quite a long time, now. The fact that he’s doing that again isn’t meaningless, even if Tommy doesn’t seem to realize that. Glancing back at where Tommy is still caught up with Karen and Hen, he quickly switches out his used fork for a clean one and grabs a fresh paper napkin before weaving between tables back to where he’d started— only that this time, he converges on the neighboring table after a quick glance to make sure that Christopher is still plenty occupied.

When he’s sure that he is, Eddie turns his attention to Buck. He’s sitting back in the chair— not wearing his medal anymore, oddly enough— and gazing off into the room. Looking at him, most people would probably assume he’s people-watching, taking in the atmosphere around him. Eddie glances at his face and knows that he’s more or less looking at nothing, lost in thought or distance. He slides into the chair next to him, and when Buck doesn’t look over, taps his knee lightly to get his attention without startling him too badly.

Buck still jumps lightly as he looks around, but it takes less than seconds for his face to clear at the sight of Eddie. He smiles, the warm kind.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” Eddie answers, offering a smile of his own that’s a little bit sheepish. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

“No,” Buck answers immediately. “I’m good. What’s up?”

Eddie shakes his head and sets the plate of cake down on the table, nudging it slightly with his fingers in Buck’s direction.

“Cake,” he says simply. “I saw you hadn’t had any.”

He watches Buck’s face as he says it, and catches the faint shuttering of his expression.

“Ah, yeah,” Buck says, shaking his head slightly. Like he thinks Eddie won’t notice the shift in his expression and his posture. “I’m good. Thanks.”

Eddie pauses to consider exactly how blunt he should be. In the end, he goes with very.

“I heard Tommy telling Karen and Hen you were in ketosis,” he says.

Buck’s blue eyes flash up to meet Eddie’s, a caught expression flickering over his face.

“Oh,” he says, offering a half-shrug. “I was— just joking.”

Eddie sighs. Then he pushes the cake in Buck’s direction again. It’s a not unfamiliar dance that they’ve performed together off and on for years now, a thing that flicks on and off across the landscape of their friendship.

Buck looks at the cake and hesitates. When he speaks, his voice is softer, relenting. “I’m okay, Eddie, really.”

Eddie’s concern, at this moment, is that today is a beautiful and joyful day. Most of the times when he’s noticed this being a problem for Buck, it’s been because of something external that Eddie could pinpoint. Whether it was stress, chronic pain, a bad call— Eddie could look at Buck and understand what was bothering him, shifting his perspective of himself or sending him grappling for some kind of control.

Today, he doesn’t know what it is.

“Buck,” he says. It comes out gentle and imploring, and he knows that it’s reaching him by the way he averts his gaze. “It’s just cake,” Eddie insists.

“No, I know,” Buck replies. “It’s just—”

He breaks off. Eddie glances over and ensures that Tommy is still caught up in conversation— though Hen and Karen seem to have left him alone, he hasn’t made it very far before someone else had apparently snagged his attention.

“Just?” Eddie prods gently, looking back at Buck, ducking his head and searching for his eyes. “Just what? Is it— did Tommy—”

Buck looks up, but he doesn’t get as far as answering and Eddie doesn’t get as far as finishing the thread of his question.

Before either of them can, Christopher appears between them, leaning in from the other table and into their mutual space. Eddie watches as Buck’s whole demeanor shifts to accommodate his presence. It’s a sight he’s used to, and also one that he doesn’t really ever tire of. There’s something that warms in his chest at the sight of Buck with Christopher. He can’t think about it too hard, or at least he hasn’t— it just feels like too much, somehow.

He watches closely, though. He always does. Watches as Chris leans into Buck, watches as Buck wraps an arm around Christoper’s waist like it’s nothing when Eddie happens to know that it’s steadying. He does it himself, all the time, like second nature. He should be used to seeing that nature on Buck after all these years, but sometimes it still catches him off guard and sends him spiraling in a way that feels good, somehow. Free, in a way.

“Hey, Chris,” Buck grins.

“Hey, Buck,” Christopher answers, with that soft laugh coloring his voice. It used to be like that all the time, but lately it’s fewer and farther between that Eddie hears it, a sign that Chris is creeping further into the teenage years. He smiles at the sound of it now, some of the tension of the earlier moment melting off of him by sheer proximity to the two of them and their combined sense of joy.

“What about me?” Eddie teases.

Christopher doesn’t even justify this with a response, but instead looks down at the table and the whole piece of cake sitting in front of Buck. His eyebrows furrow a little and he tilts his head to look at Buck’s face.

“Is that your cake?” he asks.

Eddie seizes the moment before Buck can open his mouth to respond and says, “He hasn’t had any yet.”

It does the trick, just like he knew it would, and he can’t help feeling a glow of satisfaction in his chest as Christopher turns with childlike shock to Buck again.

“You didn’t?” he asks. “But you love cake.”

Buck glances at Eddie, but he smiles for Christopher anyway. “Yeah,” he admits. His voice is audibly softer, sweeter. And as Eddie watches, he brings a hand up to gently ruffle Christopher’s curls. “I do. You wanna split it with me?”

Christopher nods eagerly and Eddie gets up so that Chris can take his chair next to Buck, and in minutes they’re both tucking into the slice of cake. Christopher insists on dividing it evenly before they start, and Eddie watches with his arms crossed over his chest as Buck takes easy bites off of his half.

Tommy is still hung up somewhere else, and for the moment it’s just Eddie watching and Christopher and Buck sharing cake, and they;re chattering through mouthfuls of frosting about some Shark Week documentary that Eddie can’t imagine why either one of them would want to watch.

And that’s enough, all in all, but then Buck looks up at him through his lashes, mouth full of cake. And he smiles a little— a soft, secretive, quiet thing complete with faintly pink cheeks that says something like thank you without ever saying anything at all. And Eddie smiles back, full and open, just to see it reflected back in Buck’s blue eyes over Christopher’s head.

And that— well. It’s kind of everything.

five.

Buck tastes sweet.

Eddie shouldn’t be surprised. It’s the kind of thing that makes perfect sense that when he presses his mouth to Buck’s, he yields beneath the touch and opens his mouth and on Eddie’s tongue, there’s sweetness.

Tonight, some of it could be chalked up to the caramel brownie he was eating at Bobby and Athena’s not twenty minutes ago before Eddie made some bullshit excuse and got them both out of there so that they could be here, doing this, instead. But some of it is just Buck. Eddie knows because they’ve kissed a handful of times now— or, he guesses, there had been many kisses on a handful of occasions, since they threw caution to the wind and became more than what they’d always been. It feels remarkably the same, except for the kissing and that first frantic time in the bedroom of this very house: a house which belongs to Buck, or Eddie, or both.

He’s just not used to it yet— the taste of Buck beneath his mouth, the thrill of exhilaration that runs over his nervous system straight to his heart from every point of contact between them. Eddie has always known that there was something special about the way he felt when he was around Buck. He just hadn’t known until now how special it could be, when he stripped everything else away and let himself be himself, the version that exists with Buck pressed between him and the wall of the hallway between Christopher’s room and the one they share now.

Everything about it is still sparkling and brand-new, the kind of thing that shines so brightly that Eddie sometimes can’t stand to look at it. Except that he can’t take his eyes off of it, either. He wants to be looking at Buck all the time, still a little convinced that he might disappear if he isn’t watching closely.

Eddie has done a lot of work to get to the point where he can allow himself this, give himself the grace to have it and not to feel like he doesn’t deserve it at all. He’s better than that now— since Texas, since mending his relationship with his son, since letting himself admit to wanting Buck.

Buck, who tastes like a caramel brownie and who is kissing him back with enthusiasm. Buck, whose hands are on him and whose curls are soft beneath the touch of Eddie’s fingers. Buck, who’s broad and beautiful and yielding and soft, the kind of soft that Eddie couldn’t have imagined before he touched him.

He’s pressing his fingers into the soft spot beneath Buck’s ribs as the kiss deepens, his thumb brushing over his belly gently, when something changes.

He knows Buck, okay? Long before they ever kissed for the first time, long before Eddie would have admitted to it, he was in tune with all of the little nuances of Buck. There was a time when he’d told himself that it was a facet of his role as Buck’s partner— something he needed in order to keep him safe. Eddie had been quick to discount the rest of the equation— the pink flutter of butterflies and the flush of his skin in their proximity; the brush of their shoulders made intentional over the years; the soft intake of breath that he couldn’t help noticing and the way it was reflected back in his own lungs like they might be irrevocably tethered.

He’s more aware now.

And so he’s aware too, when there’s tension in that tether; as there is now, with Buck panting against the wall and turning his posture inward just slightly as the most minute space appears between his mouth and Buck’s.

He blinks his eyes open and zeroes in on a tightness in Buck’s expression that had not been there before, when they’d crashed through the door together in golden dim light and Buck’s face had been blissfully soft and relaxed. It sends Eddie into alert immediately, shattering the haze of BuckBuckBuck he’d been languishing in just a moment ago.

“Hey?” he asks, feather soft as his hand goes still on Buck’s waist. “You okay?”

Buck nods— too quick, too sure, overcorrecting. “Fine,” he pants. “I’m good.”

His hand moves to pull Eddie in closer again, insistent. But Eddie resists, tilting his head gently back against the pressure of Buck’s palm and holding himself in place. At this resistance, Buck’s expression flickers into unmistakable hurt.

Eddie could spiral— this is the moment when he might have. But he won’t. He doesn’t need to, he reminds himself. It’s just one small, easy step at a time. It’s just Buck. He tilts his head, leaning into curiosity and away from panic, and to assure both Buck and himself, he brings one hand up from Buck’s chest to place it on his cheek instead, feeling the warmth of his blushing pink skin beneath his fingertips.

“Eddie—” Buck starts, and his voice comes out sort of small.

“What’s wrong?” Eddie presses, voice soft.

“Nothing, I’m—”

“Buck,” Eddie whispers, brushing his thumb over the plane of his cheekbone. “It’s okay. Tell me what’s wrong, okay?”

Buck hesitates, and then sighs. There’s something deflating in his posture, but Eddie holds fast and Buck leans his head back against the wall baring his throat to him. It strikes Eddie then, a display of utmost intimacy and trust even in the throes of tension that has strung up between them tautly.

He waits. He can be patient, for Buck.

Eventually, Buck looks down at the space between their bodies and shakes his head a little bit. “I just— um. I don’t know if—”

Eddie lets the pause stretch, and only pushes when he’s sure. “If?”

“Maybe I can just— just focus on you, tonight.”

There’s nothing wrong with the statement itself. But Eddie knows better. Knows the ridges of Buck’s voice and the landscape of each word well enough to know that the way it comes out— small and uncertain— isn’t right. Not for Buck.

He must hesitate for a second too long, because Buck launches into a fit of words before Eddie has a chance to say anything.

“I mean— I’m not saying— I just want to keep doing this and you got us out of there with actually really impressive speed and I know you want this and I do, too, while Chris is at Hen’s tonight and it’s just us; I don’t want you to think that I don’t want you to touch me, it’s just that I wasn’t thinking about it when I was eating that brownie and— I think I’m really fucking this up—”

“Oh,” Eddie breathes, the sound slipping past his lips out of his control as the realization clicks in his head all at once.

How had he not thought of this? It’s just that it had been so long— but of course, it all makes sense now as he stands in front of Buck in the hallway and thinks back to all those moments. Buck is generally so much more confident now— the genuine, strong, real kind that isn’t a front for anything. But of course, he has his moments. And it makes sense, now that Eddie’s thinking about it, that it might come up now. Their first time together had been a release of years worth of pining they’d only half-known they were doing. Eddie himself had been practically delirious with the sheer euphoria of it and he thinks Buck was much the same.

And now, they’ve settled. There’s more space to think, to feel something more complex.

At the sound of his breath of realization Buck freezes entirely and falls deathly quiet. When Eddie looks up, his blue eyes are wide and wild and scared, and Eddie feels something tighten in his chest.

“Oh, Buck, baby,” he whispers, shaking his head and moving his hand up to softly push his curls back off of his warm forehead, grazing the pad of his thumb over his birthmark in the process. “Hey. You’re okay.”

Buck looks as if he might splinter. “I’m—”

“Don’t, don’t,” Eddie interrupts. “You don’t need to be sorry. Okay? Take a breath for me. We’re okay.”

Buck does as he’s asked, and Eddie watches his chest shudder.

“Okay,” he hums, tilting his head. “You want to go sit down?”

Buck flushes, shaking his head. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

“Oh, but we do,” Eddie answers firmly. He leans in, presses his lips to Buck’s cheek, and feels how tense he is in the process. He rubs gently at the junction between Buck’s neck and shoulder and says, “Come here.”

Which is how they end up in the soft light of the living room the same way they have so many times before— late nights spent talking or just being in one another’s presence after Christopher had gone to bed, moments that Eddie can’t believe in hindsight that either of them ever chalked up to anything less than sweetly romantic interludes to their friendship. It had been there, all along, waiting for either of them to look up and see it.

Eddie pushes Buck gently into the cushion on his side of the couch and leans in over his shoulders, buries his face into the crown of Buck’s head and leaves a kiss nestled in his curls.

Buck relaxes ever so slightly beneath him, and Eddie lets go long enough to circle around and take his own place, closer now than before. He studies Buck for a moment in the lamplight.

“Hey,” he says, drawing Buck’s attention to him. Blue eyes meet his and he can feel his own features softening. “You know I didn’t put a stop to this because I don’t want you, right?”

Buck’s expression flickers, but he nods cautiously.

“I know,” he whispers. “I just—” He lets out a harsh, frustrated sigh and shakes his head. “I kinda thought I was over feeling like this, but I had— I guess, body issues, kind of?”

Eddie nods a little. “Yeah,” he breathes. “I know.”

Buck looks up in visible surprise. “What?” he asks, frowning uncertainly. “What do you mean, you know?”

Eddie smiles a little. “I know you,” he says softly. He thinks back, weighs his options. “I’ve known that for a long time. It’s okay.”

It feels good, admittedly, after years of watching from the shadows and doing what he could to help, to be in the position to say it outright. As for Buck, he’s looking back at Eddie with glassy eyes and a conflicted expression written into the lines of his face, brows furrowed in a way that makes Eddie ache.

“Baby, come here,” he murmurs.

Seconds later, Buck’s larger frame is tucked easily into Eddie on the couch; it’s messy and tangled but the weight of him against Eddie’s chest is comforting and perfect and Eddie puts one hand on the back of Buck’s head and runs the other soothingly up and down his side, over his ribs and waist down to his hip in rhythmic back and forth strokes.

They’re quiet for a long few moments, as Buck settles into him and relaxes bit by bit.

“I’m sorry,” Buck whispers eventually.

“Ah,” Eddie chides. “Told you not to say that.”

“I am, though,” Buck insists. His voice is muffled in Eddie’s collar. “I don’t know why I froze up like that.”

“Hm,” Eddie hums. “You don’t have to be sorry for that, Buck. I want you to be honest with me about how you feel.”

Buck lets out a sharp breath, and Eddie can tell he’s thinking about something so he stays quiet and waits, his hand on Buck’s waist rubbing mindless circles against the softness beneath the hem of his t-shirt.

“I think,” Buck says eventually, “I used to do this for— for, like, my body.”

Eddie runs over what he knows about Buck’s history with sex and nods slightly.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” he says gently.

Buck sighs again. His fingers trail over the fabric of Eddie’s shirt, over his heart, and Eddie just lets him think.

“I guess I just—“ he starts, “I don’t know. I don’t really do that anymore, and— and I’m not saying I want to, but I just started thinking about how I-I don’t really look like I did then, and—“

“No,” Eddie says softly. “Buck, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to look any specific way.”

“Yeah, but I don’t—”

“Hey,” Eddie interrupts, before he gets a chance to wind himself up again. “Buck. Look at me.”

Buck does, tilting his head back until Eddie can make out every one of his features. It takes the breath right out of his lungs. How had he looked at him for so long, Eddie wonders, and not known what this felt like, what it meant? How had he looked at Buck’s blue eyes and the strawberry splash of his birthmark, and not realized he was looking at the love of his life?

“You’re perfect,” he whispers, hushed the way it deserves. The way he deserves.

Buck looks back at him, all wide eyed and soft in the same light Eddie has seen him cast in a thousand times over going on a decade now. And he’s beautiful and soft and his. And he’s perfect.

“Show me?” he asks, so quiet that Eddie might have missed it if he hadn’t been looking so closely at his face.

Eddie reaches up, brushes through his curls.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

Buck looks up and the answer is on his face, shining with clarity and gentle sureness. He nods anyway, drives home the point for Eddie’s sake.

And Eddie— now that he has the opportunity— would never deny him anything he wanted.

+ one.

Sunlight streams into the kitchen of what is now known, affectionately, as the Buckley-Diaz house.

It covers the room, splashing onto the floor and the countertops in bright patches of summer brightness, turning everything gold. Eddie is sitting at the table with a fresh, steaming cup of coffee in front of him and Christopher is next to him, and the whole room is warm with the promise of a long and stretched out Saturday in June.

Buck bursts through the back door, all smiles, arms full of fresh oranges.

Eddie tilts his head back and smiles— it’s the kind of smile that he feels on his face all the time these days. Not so long ago, it wasn’t like that. Lately, it’s all light.

“Good morning,” Buck beams. He drops his oranges unceremoniously onto the countertop and lets them roll everywhere, spreading out over the surface, and moves around the table to Eddie. Broad palms settle on his shoulders, Buck’s thumbs brushing gently over his collarbones as he leans in and noses through the strands of Eddie’s sleep-ruffled dark hair. Eddie brings his own hand up, fingertips warm from the hot ceramic of his World’s Best Dad mug, and brushes his touch lightly over Buck’s wrist.

“Morning, baby,” he murmurs back to Buck, his voice still scratchy with sleep. He feels Buck press a kiss to his scalp, buried in his hair and lingering.

“Gross,” Christopher deadpans from his place without ever looking up, entirely unaffected. Eddie feels rather than sees Buck’s laugh, and can’t help the smile that etches a dimple into his cheek at the sound.

“Watch it, kid,” Buck says as he lifts his head but keeps his hand on Eddie, rubbing his shoulder absently. “I could withhold waffles.”

“You could,” Christopher agrees. “You won’t.”

Eddie tilts his head back, grinning, and looks at Buck upside-down. “He’s got you there, man.”

Buck rolls his eyes, flicking Eddie on the cheek gently. “Shut up. At least my reputation is good cop.”

“Like you both wouldn’t give me whatever I wanted,” Christopher interjects. Eddie has half a mind to argue— but then he looks up and Christopher is looking back at him, smiling brightly. And maybe the kid has a point, because when he’s looking that young and sweet and happy, Eddie does find it hard to deny him anything.

“Okay,” Buck relents, finally pulling away from Eddie. “For that, you get to juice the oranges.”

Christopher doesn’t complain— he never does for Buck, which Eddie can’t find it in himself to be anything but besotted about. So Buck halves each of the oranges, still warm from the sun that had been shining on the tree, and then hands them over with the juicer for Christopher to work through while he starts extracting ingredients for waffles. In a matter of moments, as Eddie watches, the kitchen comes to life with the fresh scent of citrus hanging heavy in the air and undercut by the richness of sizzling bacon as Buck lays careful strips of it out in a hot pan.

It’s funny, Eddie thinks as he watches his soon-to-be-husband move easily around the kitchen that they share with their son— this is just life now, and it’s hard to imagine that it was ever anything else. That there were ever Saturdays not spent like this, or meals they ate apart. As it is, he listens to Chris telling Buck about his science paper and Buck offering his opinion while he pours batter onto a hot iron and adds the sweet layer of waffles over the intermingling scents in the room. And it’s just what they do.

There’s a version of Eddie who had once worried about Buck’s body fat percentage and whether he was getting enough to eat. And then there’s this version, who tangles his ankles with Buck’s beneath their kitchen table as Buck beams around a bite of butter and maple syrup soaking into fresh golden batter, his broad shoulders filling the kitchen chair and then some. This version eats breakfast made for him by the love of his life, and after they’ve all eaten and drank the orange juice and Chris disappears to his room— Eddie captures Buck with a hand to his hip and wraps his arms around his waist from behind, smooths his hand over the soft dip of his waist, and feels Buck relax into his touch like it’s nothing.

“Thank you for breakfast,” Eddie mumbles against his shoulder, lips pressing against warm skin through the thin athletic fabric of Buck’s t-shirt.

Buck grins, twisting to look at him. “You’re welcome,” he says easily. “Someone has to feed you.”

Eddie smiles, and leans in closer. Holds him tighter. And doesn’t feel like he has to worry at all.