Work Text:
“Chris, you’ve got five minutes,” Eddie calls from down the hallway.
“He’ll be good,” Buck hollers back, scrunching his hand through Christopher’s hair one final time, then smoothing the sides down. He looks at him critically in the mirror, his eyes tracing over each individual curl. His heart constricts as he looks the kid over, painfully so; he wants this for himself so badly, to be a Diaz, and it feels so tangible lately that it’s all he can do not to reach out and grab it. All these little moments he gets just serve to further his conviction that he wants more, that he wants this to be his normal, his everyday.
“Am I handsome?” Chris asks, blinking up at him. His glasses have been pushed aside on the bathroom counter and the lack of them makes his eyes look bigger, makes his face more childlike.
“Definitely the most handsome Diaz I know,” Buck says, winking at him.
Chris’ face lights up. “More handsome than Dad?”
“Don’t tell him,” Buck stage-whispers, “but yes.” He sets the comb down on the counter and digs around in the bag he brought, pulling out a can of hairspray. “Final step,” he says, settling a hand over Christopher’s eyes and spraying. He stashes the it back in his bag, reaches for the glasses and places them gently on Chris’ face. “Perfect,” he says.
Chris reaches out and wraps his arms around Buck. “Thanks, Bucky,” he murmurs.
Buck rests his hand on the back of Christopher’s head and carefully, to avoid messing up the work he’d just done, bends down to press a kiss onto the top of his head. “You’re gonna be the cutest one at picture day,” he says quietly. “I better get a big one, right after your Dad and Abuela.”
“I’ll give one to you first,” Chris says, pulling away. “We don’t have to tell them. Can you button my shirt?”
Buck knows he should say no, that he should encourage independence, but he’s acutely aware that at nearly nine years old, Chris wouldn’t want help for much longer, and Buck’s always been the type to take what he can get and run with it. So he kneels down to button the shirt up without a word, taking care to brush all the wrinkles out with the palms of his hand afterwards.
Eddie’s sharp knock and warning to wrap it up pulls Buck out of his thoughts, and he stands to open the door. Eddie’s still out in the hallway, Christopher’s backpack slung over one shoulder, a muffin in each hand, and he whistles when they come out of the bathroom. “Looking sharp, mijo,” he says, handing a muffin to each of them. “I’ll admit, Buck’s much better with the hair than I am.”
Chris makes a noise of agreement and takes off down the hallway. “Come on, we can’t be late!”
Eddie rolls his eyes, and Buck grins at him before stuffing half the muffin into his mouth and stepping back into the bathroom to grab his work bag. “You’d think he was waiting on me all morning,” Eddie says. “You know he was so excited to get his hair done that he was up at six to wait for you? Six. On my day off.”
“Dad! Buck!”
The fondness in Eddie’s voice when he responds makes Buck’s heart ache. “I could have come over earlier,” Buck says through a mouthful of crumbs, following him down the hall, “or stayed over last night. You could have texted.”
“At this point you should just move in,” Eddie says, and even though he knows it’s a joke, Buck has to bite the agreement back on his tongue. “You know we need you here. Alright, everyone good? Out the door, vamos.”
His heartbeat thrums in his ears as he helps Chris into the truck, already replaying Eddie’s words in a loop, tumbling around his brain, we need you here a new, sweet refrain that blankets him in joy. Just when he thinks his morning is not possibly going to get better, Eddie stops him with a tight hug, squeezes his arm after he lets go, and says, “See you after work, Buck. Be safe.”
It takes Buck ten minutes for his brain to catch up to his heart and realize that he had never made plans to see them after work.
When Buck took the time to actually think about it, he realized that he had started falling in love with Eddie sometime around the tsunami. He thinks it’s probably only natural to love someone who hands you their whole world without blinking, who so willingly gives you the biggest piece of their heart and trusts you to keep it safe; only natural to fall for someone who is so good and so kind that they bring you into their family without any sort of fanfare or fuss, just a quiet assurance that you belong. And for the longest time, that had been what Buck was content with. He belonged with the Diaz boys, his place was there, he was not an outsider looking in. He was happy with how things were between them, and he could spend the rest of his life in that space with no complaints.
And then the world tilted on its axis: Eddie was dying under his feet, Buck’s heart had gone crashing right out of his body and into the ground, and it had never fully recovered.
Suddenly, Buck was not okay just being Eddie’s friend. He wasn’t okay listening to him wonder aloud about women, about dating. He wasn’t okay with leaving after movie night, or after dinner, or at the end of the weekend. He wasn’t okay with only being Christopher’s emergency contact, wasn’t okay with not being the one to kiss him goodnight.
Thirty feet of mud had crashed down onto Eddie, and Buck was the one hit with the realization that the only thing he would accept was being right by Eddie’s side for the rest of his life.
Buck’s day drags on. They have been lately, when he’s apart from Eddie and Chris. The space gives him too much time to think, too many opportunities to replay everything in his head, looking for meaning in what used to be ordinary. Buck is content when Eddie is there, and his absence feels significant these days.
It’s nearing the end of his shift when his phone buzzes with a text from Eddie, checking to see if he’s okay with tacos for dinner. This is also a recent development; their routine has shifted from one of them just showing up to a domestic negotiation of choices. He could scroll through his phone and see dozens of messages that highlighted this new part of their relationship: requests to pick things up from the store, wondering where a certain household item is, reminders of Christopher’s schedule.
Buck doesn’t let himself dwell on that—it’s not the clear signal he’s been looking for, the one that tells him that Eddie is ready for more, is ready for everything (though after that moving in comment, he thinks it might be coming soon)—just texts back that maybe he should be the one cooking, thank you very much, and laughs when Eddie sends him a gif of someone flipping off the camera in response.
The last hour passes with no calls, and Buck figures he’s clean enough to forgo a shower and just head straight to Eddie’s after getting dressed. To be fair, Eddie’s tacos are among the best things he makes, but he does have a tendency to over-season them and it’s in Buck’s (and Christopher’s) best interest to just do it himself.
Not that he’ll ever mind cooking for his family. Right now, taking care of them is the closest he can get to telling them how much he loves them.
He texts Eddie a quick on my way, do not start cooking without me, 17 eye emojis, and a gif of someone shaking their head no, then pulls his bag out of his locker and strips. The shirt he pulls out is sticky, and it takes him a moment to realize that the gel he used in Christopher’s hair that morning must not have been closed all the way, and nothing in his bag is wearable. He groans, puts his uniform back on, and sends Eddie an update, telling him not to expect him for at least another hour and to go ahead and start without him.
Almost immediately, he gets a reply: I’ll trade you some of my clothes for tomatoes. Chris says he’ll die without them.
Buck’s only human. There’s no way in hell he’s turning down that offer.
Every time Buck steps into Eddie’s house, after parking his Jeep in his spot and using his key, he allows himself ten seconds to imagine Eddie walking up and giving him a kiss, just a quick greeting before he continues whatever he was doing. It’s a nice fantasy, and the cherry on top is that in both his daydreams and reality, Christopher almost always tackles him as soon as he’s through the door, which always serves to make him feel wanted.
Today, he opens the door and is greeted with the sound of music and Christopher’s laughter. He makes his way to the kitchen, holding the grocery bag full of tomatoes and other snacks in his hand, and leans against the doorway to watch Eddie dance with his son in the kitchen. He’s so drawn to the natural flow of Eddie’s body that he misses Christopher catching a glimpse of him until he shouts “Buck’s home!” over the music, and Eddie twists around and smiles at him.
“Hey, Diaz boys,” he says, grinning as he sets the bags on the counter. He doesn’t intend to join them, but Chris moves around Eddie and tugs on his hand, which is how Buck finds himself dancing badly to music he doesn’t understand, one hand on Chris’ shoulder.
“You have to relax into it,” Eddie says after a few seconds. “You’re too stiff, Buck. You’re white boy dancing.”
Chris giggles and Buck can’t help but laugh. “I don’t dance,” he says, shrugging. Dancing—at least not any type he can do while a child is around—has never been his thing.
“You have to go like this,” Chris says, ducking out of Buck’s grasp, and Buck nods even though he’s not entirely sure what Chris is trying to show him. After a few seconds of trying to imitate, Chris rolls his eyes. “Show him, Dad.”
Eddie’s hand is on his hip before Buck understands what’s happening, and whatever shred of self-control he has remaining flies out the window as soon as he realizes that Eddie behind him, and the hand on his hip slides further around until Eddie’s fingertips almost dip into the gap between the buttons on his work shirt. He feels his heart rate increase and he fights to keep his breath normal, which works until Eddie closes the gap between them. Eddie’s arm tightens around him—an infinitesimal change, but Buck’s body is so attuned to Eddie’s that he feels every breath across his neck like a hurricane, every slight shift of his hips is like wave crashing over him, leaving him gasping for breath and still wanting more.
“Relax,” Eddie whispers. “Just pretend you’ve got a pretty girl with you, move to the beat.”
He can’t help the semi-hysterical giggle that escapes his lips; it’ll be a long time before Buck stops obsessively replaying this moment in his head.
“Usually I’m not the one in the front,” he manages to say, ignoring the comment about a pretty girl. If Eddie doesn’t realize that he’s the most beautiful person Buck’s ever seen, that’s really not something Buck is going to worry about right now, not when he’s busy cataloguing every twitch of Eddie’s fingers against his stomach, every scrape of his stubble against his ear.
He just barely has time to register the absence of Eddie’s solid warmth behind him before Eddie appears in front of him. He bites down on the tip of his tongue to keep any noises of protest in—he wants more, he always wants more, even if it makes his heart feel like it’s going to beat right out of his chest. But Eddie only smiles and says, “we can fix that,” before he’s turning around and pulling Buck’s hand towards his hip and Buck is mostly certain that he’s actually died.
This is not happening to him.
There is no way that the universe is bestowing this gift upon him.
But.
Eddie’s thin t-shirt does nothing to mask the heat of his body under Buck’s palm, and Buck hardly realizes his hand has moved before it’s splayed out across Eddie’s stomach, his fingertips flexing gently against the threadbare fabric. His feet move of their own accord, shuffling in closer until there’s no space between them, his body unconsciously matching the sway and dip of Eddie’s hips. He doesn’t realize his thumb is rubbing against Eddie’s shirt until it dips into the divot of his belly button, and before he knows what he’s doing, his fingers bunch in the fabric enough to lift it up to where his pinky slips underneath and rests on Eddie’s bare skin.
The music changes then, the sultry Caribbean beat turning into something loud with a heavy bass, and it startles Buck enough that he takes a step backwards, his hand slipping out from around Eddie’s waist.
“That was better,” is all Eddie says. Buck feels like he’s run a triathlon—his heart is pounding, he feels sweat beading on his temples, and he’s fairly certain that his legs are about to give out. He wants to touch Eddie again, pull at him until he can see his face, until he can see in the rise and fall of his chest that it affected him just as much. “Did you still want to shower and change before dinner?”
Buck nods; he can’t trust his voice, can’t trust that he won’t blurt out everything he’s feeling, can’t trust that he won’t beg and plead for what he wants.
God, does he want.
“Well, you know where everything is, just grab something that fits,” Eddie says, still turned away, opening the door of the refrigerator and rummaging through like this is every other night, like he hadn’t just lit Buck up like a firecracker in the middle of the kitchen, leaving him sparking at the edges. “Will you see if Chris is in his room? I didn’t see him leave.”
It takes all of his willpower to leave the kitchen without doing something stupid, but he manages.
Buck knows how Eddie looks at him. He wasn’t far into his 20’s when he realized how people reacted to his body, when he learned how to read the signs of attraction: a flush, a glance, a hand on his arm longer than necessary. He wonders if he would have picked up on it sooner if he hadn’t been so blind to his own feelings for so long, if he would have identified it as desire—the way Eddie’s always in his space, the way his bottom lip gets caught in his teeth as he watches Buck, the way his hands press gently into Buck’s arms, his neck, his thighs.
Sometimes he thinks about how it could have been, if he had seen it as an option when they first met; most of the time he knows it wouldn’t have made a difference. He knows that Eddie is interested, but he also knows that Eddie isn’t ready, and Buck won’t be the one to push him. He might have, when he was younger and more reckless, more willing to allow himself to cover his insecurities with loud words and overt sexuality, more willing to tumble headfirst into his impulsivity let the pieces scatter where they may. But this thing with Eddie—this demands his patience, his understanding, his acceptance of someone else’s pace. It’s too precious for him to screw up with his own overwhelming desire. This is it for him, this is the life he saw disappear in front of his eyes when sparks rained down on his head and unstable earth covered everything he had ever wanted; this is the life he saw rush back in when Eddie’s hand found his over and over again afterward.
That doesn’t mean Buck doesn’t do everything in his power to nudge Eddie in that direction. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t try to make his own feelings clear—the ones that say he’s in this for the long run, not the ones that betray how badly he wants to push Eddie up against the nearest wall and show him how good it could be—it doesn’t mean he can’t tease a little, can’t paint Eddie a picture of exactly what forever would look like.
So if the shirt he pulls out of Eddie’s drawer has Diaz pressed above the 118 shield on his chest, well, Eddie doesn’t have to know that he went looking for it specifically. He doesn’t need to know that Buck unfolded three black t-shirts before he found the right one, because Buck had carefully folded them up again and replaced them in the exact same order. He especially doesn’t need to know that the reason Buck is wearing this shirt is because he’s pretty certain that Eddie’s possessive streak runs a mile deep, and that Buck desperately wants to be caught up in it, wants to drown in the way Eddie’s jaw tenses and eyes lift from Buck’s chest to his mouth when he sees what he’s wearing.
He leans in the doorway for too long, his heartbeat stuttering as he watches the way Eddie’s lower lip pushes out as his eyes linger on Buck’s mouth, and Buck pretends to yawn and stretch to cover his gaze before Eddie knows he’s been caught. “Smells like you haven’t seasoned those enough,” he says finally, taking a step into the kitchen.
Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Last time you told me there was too much seasoning,” he says, flipping the wooden spoon in his hand and holding it out.
“Last time there was,” Buck says, taking it from him and using his hip to gently knock Eddie out of the way. “Both are true, Eds.”
“Can’t do anything right no matter how hard I try,” Eddie says, and Buck hears through the dramatic tone and accompanying sigh to the truth and emotion that Eddie is willing to share.
“That must be so difficult for you,” he responds, deflecting it with humor in the way Eddie normally does. It’s not that he doesn’t want to have this conversation; he’d let dinner burn a thousand times if he thought Eddie would actually listen to him talk about how great Buck thinks he is. But there’s no point in getting into it now, not when Eddie’s likely to brush it off anyway. “I can’t imagine the shame of having your only flaw be the inability to season something.”
“Only flaw, huh?” Eddie says, laughing, but the softness in his eyes gives him away.
“I said what I said,” Buck says, whacking him on the thigh with the spoon. “And your head is big enough already, I won’t be repeating it. Go make yourself useful and cut up the tomatoes so your kid doesn’t die.”
Eddie doesn’t argue, just moves around the kitchen in easy silence as they finish what little there is to do; it doesn’t matter the situation, they read each other’s body language and intention so well by now that neither of them need to ask for direction, and soon enough the table is set. Eddie tosses a flat foil-wrapped package at him as soon as the last plate is on the table. “From Abuela,” he says on the way out of the kitchen. “I’m gonna go get Chris.”
Buck wastes no time in tearing it open, moaning in anticipation when he sees the homemade tortillas. He turns back to the stove, intending to heat them up—the only way to eat them, truly—and stops when he sees Eddie leaning in the doorway.
Eddie’s cheeks are a little red, and he’s staring at Buck like he’s trying to talk himself into something. Buck waits him out, knows the best way to get Eddie to talk is to either goad him into it or shut up, and he doesn’t want to push right now. “I hope I didn’t cross a line earlier,” Eddie says carefully.
Buck feels like shaking him. “You didn’t,” he says. He wants to say so much more, wants to ask if Eddie feels like he crossed a line, wants to tell him that if he did, Buck has a hundred other lines he’d be willing to have crossed if only Eddie would put his hands on his body like that again. Eddie watches him for another moment, then nods, and Buck—he can’t leave it like this. “I might need another lesson,” he blurts out, and oh god what is he doing. “If that’s—if you’re willing.”
This is more blatant than any of his previous flirting—and definitely a lot less smooth; he may as well just beg Eddie to put his hands on him, because while Eddie might be a little oblivious, he’s definitely not stupid. Talk about crossing a line—Buck has always made sure that his flirting is only obvious if you’re looking for it, until now.
Eddie nods, looking at Buck thoughtfully, and Buck may have to rescind his previous assessment of Eddie as ‘not stupid’ because he’s pretty sure every one of his emotions is written on his face and if Eddie can’t see that—“Pepa asked if she could take Chris to visit his cousins in Bakersfield this weekend,” Eddie says. “I wasn’t going to send him but—I could. You could come over Friday.”
Buck’s heart has stopped. He has to force his body not to respond, not to cross the kitchen and yank Eddie against him. “For dancing,” he says. He should clarify further, needs to know if he’s being asked out or being propositioned after that moment in the kitchen; it’s not like he would say no either way, but if it’s just a proposition—
Eddie’s hand is on the back of his neck and in the few seconds it takes him to respond, Buck realizes that he’s nervous. “Maybe we could get dinner, first?”
He can’t help the smile that breaks out, so wide it makes his cheeks ache, and apparently that’s an answer enough for Eddie because he grins back and pushes off the door frame, rapping his knuckles on it once before he disappears down the hallway, whistling. Buck takes a moment to breathe deep and calm his shaking hands before starting to warm the thin tortillas on the stove, trying to wipe the stupid grin off his face before Christopher comes in and demands to know why he looks like he’s won the lottery.
Dinner flies by, as it usually does; Chris seems to notice that both of them are in exceptionally good moods and tries to parlay that into an impromptu movie marathon, which Eddie cheerfully shuts down on account of being a school night, but does agree to let Chris stay up an extra half hour to play a few rounds of Uno. “Diaz game night!” Chris cheers, and Buck sticks his tongue out at him.
“Guess I have to leave,” he teases, popping out his lower lip out into an exaggerated pout.
Chris just laughs. “You do not! You’re a Diaz tonight,” he says, pointing at the shirt that Buck had honestly forgotten he was wearing. “Come on, let’s let Dad clean up and you can help me find the cards.”
“Not so fast,” Eddie says, pausing from where he was stacking up plates. “If Buck’s a Diaz, that means it’s his night to clean the kitchen—unless you want to take that honor, Chris.”
Chris looks at Buck for a moment, then shrugs apologetically. “Sorry, Bucky,” he says. “Dad cleaned last night.”
“I have never felt so betrayed,” Buck moans. “You better not have all the fun without me.”
He’s talking to Chris, but it’s Eddie that answers, knocking his shoulder into Buck’s as he passes by. “It’s never as fun without you,” he says, and though his tone might be teasing, his eyes are serious. He reaches out with his free hand and takes the stack of bowls that Buck is holding. “Go with the kid, Buck, I was just teasing you. You cooked, you don’t need to clean.”
Buck shrugs. “Hey, if it’s on the Diaz chore chart,” he says, winking. “That’s sacred, man.”
Eddie shakes his head as he laughs. “The chore chart is just Chris trying to get out of doing any actual chores and me being a sucker,” he says. “Go hang with Chris, I got this.”
The cards don’t take long to find, and Chris and Buck are set up in the living room when Eddie comes back in with a bag of chips and the guacamole that Buck loves and despite just having finished dinner, Buck digs in, smiling back when Eddie looks at him fondly. It’s in the middle of their third round when Chris puts down his cards and says “Hey Buck,” with such a practiced air of indifference that Eddie must immediately understand what’s happening, because he says Christopher’s name as a warning and gives him a look, which Christopher resolutely ignores. “Are you busy on Thursday night?”
Buck looks between them, unsure how to answer. It wouldn’t be the first time that Chris invited him somewhere without permission, but it is the first time he’s seen Eddie react negatively when it happens.
Chris must take his silence as an invitation to proceed, because he continues with, “there’s a bake sale at my school and I want you to come.”
Oh. Buck’s never attended a school function with them before, and he wonders briefly if this is a thing Eddie wants to keep just between himself and his son, but as soon as the idea comes into his head he dismisses it. He’s been invited to the school before; the science fair, the art show—just had to work each time, something he may have been more disappointed about than Chris. “I’m off in the afternoon,” he says, glancing towards Eddie, trying to figure out how he should be responding. “But if this is just something your dad wants to do with you-”
“That’s not it,” Eddie interrupts. The look he gives Buck is somewhere between fond and exasperated, and he levels it at his son next. “We were always going to invite you, I just asked Chris to wait until Wednesday. I guess he got a little excited about it and jumped the gun.”
Buck grins, pleased. “I’d love to come,” he says. “I’m gonna buy so many cookies.”
“Dad bought lemon bars,” Chris blurts out.
“Christopher,” Eddie says, the sharpness of his tone surprising Buck. He’s clearly missing something about this situation, but he can’t figure out what and it makes him uneasy—not a feeling he often has in Eddie’s home.
He watches the silent conversation they have, the way Chris’ eyes get wide and Eddie’s narrow, the wordless way Eddie’s jaw tightens. “I like lemon bars,” he offers, trying to break the tension. “I’m sure someone will buy them, buddy.”
“It’s supposed to be homemade,” Chris says, and Buck is suddenly well aware of what’s about to happen and is still unable to guard himself against the guilt when Chris sticks his bottom lip out.
“Abeula said she’d make Mexican wedding cookies with you, and you turned her down,” Eddie says. The patience in his voice almost hides the irritation on his face, which Buck knows Chris is not missing.
“I hate those,” Chris says. “I want Buck to help me make chocolate chip cookies.”
“Time to clean up,” Eddie says, standing up abruptly before reaching over and sweeping the discard pile towards himself. “I already told you not to bring it up; you don’t get to ignore me just because you know Buck would say yes.”
There are so many questions that Buck wants to ask—of course he would have said yes to Chris, it’s not like making cookies is a hardship—but there’s a set to Eddie’s expression that he rarely sees in regards to his kid and it fascinates Buck. He’s never met a father like Eddie; one that’s made mistakes and tries every day to rectify them, one that apologizes to their child, one that tries so hard. He’s in awe of Eddie’s parenting skills, the easy way he balances promoting Christopher’s independence with loving him with every part of himself, and he’s aware that Eddie doesn’t see it that way. Eddie gets stuck on his failures, but Buck would have killed for a father like him when he was young.
He’s expecting that to be the end of it; for Chris to pout a little but listen as he usually does, however, in a rare show of defiance, Chris turns to Buck and says, “you’ll come over Wednesday and make them with me, right?”
Buck has never had to say no to Christopher before. He’s never wanted to say no—still doesn’t, if he’s honest, but even though he’s not sure why Eddie doesn’t want it happening, that’s enough of a reason for him to shake his head. “Buddy,” he starts, trying to phrase it carefully because the last thing he wants is to shift the blame to Eddie, “you know I would like to, but I’m not okay with you breaking your dad’s rules, so I’m gonna have to say no.”
The look on Chris’s face hurts more than he thought it would, but it’s the look on Eddie’s that makes him take a deep breath to get his emotions under control; his irritation has softened slightly and he’s looking at Buck with gratitude.
“That’s not fair,” Chris says, and doesn’t look at either of them as he gets up from the floor. “Everyone’s going to laugh at me.”
Buck wants to take back his answer immediately, and from the look on Eddie’s face, he’s feeling the same way. They stay silent until Christopher disappears down the hallways and Eddie lets out his breath in a rush, looks at the ground. “Thanks for backing me up, Buck,” he says quietly, and Buck just nods, unsure what to do.
He watches Eddie shuffle the cards back into the box, drop it on the table, and carry the bag of chips and empty bowl back into the kitchen before he gets up and follows him. Eddie’s standing over the sink, hands clenched around the countertop, tension evident in his shoulders.
Buck’s invited himself into Eddie’s struggles with Christopher before—the skateboarding incident, the few weeks at the beginning of the year when homework had been a nightly battle, discussions over what sort of therapy would be best—but those struggles hadn’t involved him, and he’s not sure how to handle it now; he knows they blur the boundaries when it comes to Chris, knows that his involvement far surpasses that of a friend at times, and he’s careful to take cues from Eddie, careful to not get as involved as he wants to be, careful to never go as far as considering his opinion as equal to Eddie’s.
Eddie’s not giving him any cues now, though, so he settles on addressing what would bother him most if this was a story he was being told the next day instead of living it. “They’re not going to make fun of him, you know,” he says, making an aborted motion with his hand to reach out. It feels different, now that they’ve taken a step beyond friendship, and he’s uncertain how to navigate it.
Eddie’s shoulders drop and a moment later he turns around, leaning back against the counter, arms crossed—protectively, Buck thinks, though what he’s guarding himself against, he’s not sure. “You don’t think they’ll notice they’re store bought?”
It’s always amazed Buck that Eddie welcomes his advice, that he seeks it out and listens despite Buck not having children. He’s not sure he’ll ever get used to the value Eddie places on his opinion. “I know you worry,” Buck says, “but they’ll probably be too busy begging their parents for sugar to know the difference.” The second it’s out of his mouth, Buck has a moment of clarity—this isn’t just about Christopher potentially getting laughed at.
This is about Eddie potentially being judged as less than by other parents.
There’s a sudden rush of anger that flares up in his chest at these invisible people who dare to judge Eddie, who turn their nose up and think they know better, could do better, and Buck blames that as the catalyst for what comes out of his mouth next. “We could make some cookies,” he says. His hands long to reach out for Eddie, to soothe him, so he shoves them in the pockets of his borrowed sweatpants as he rocks up on his toes. “You know, you and me. Then they’re homemade, but you still stuck to what you told Chris.”
“That’s—you don’t have to do that, Buck.”
“I know I don’t have to,” Buck says, “I want to. And honestly Eddie, you kinda, I don’t know, owe me, because I could have made them with Chris and it’s like you’re punishing me for something he did.” He forces himself to move away from Eddie and starts digging through the cabinets; he’s made cookies with Chris a few times and he should have everything he needs, but he never knows when it comes to Eddie and his typically sparse pantry.
Eddie laughs, lets his arms fall to his sides and pushes himself off the counter, and Buck feels looser, like it’s easier to breathe. “I only told him no because he was rude to Abuela when she offered,” he says. “You heard him, he doesn’t like Mexican wedding cookies—yes, I know how you feel about them, no need to make that noise—I didn’t think rewarding him with Buck time was the right way to deal with the situation.”
“Rude,” Buck says, straightening up with an armful of ingredients and dumping them on the counter to Eddie’s left. “Are you just going to stand there, Eds, or are you going to get the mixing bowl?”
“We’re actually doing this? Isn’t it a little late?”
It is, but only because Buck offered to cover half a shift before his own and has to be at work in eight hours, not that he has any intention of telling Eddie that. “We can just make the dough tonight,” he says, “and I can take it back to my place and bake them later.” Eddie presses close to his side as he sets the mixing bowl down in front of Buck, and the desire to wrap an arm around him is so overwhelming that Buck nearly gives in, but settles for simply leaning into him. “I can start if you want to get Chris in bed,” he offers. He reaches for his phone, abandoned on the counter since before dinner, and turns his music onto shuffle.
He’s mashing the butter and sugar together when Eddie comes back in, several minutes deep into resolving to buy a hand mixer, and directs Eddie to start measuring out the dry ingredients.
“I liked this better when I thought you were going to do all the work,” Eddie says, eyeing the bag of flour like it had personally offended him, and Buck laughs.
“What were you going to do, enjoy the view?”
He wants to take it back almost as soon as he says it, still wary of upsetting the balance, but Eddie just quirks a smile at him and says, “that’s what I planned on,” a blush creeping up his cheeks. By the time Eddie has the flour measured out, Buck’s untamed heart has already signed Evan Diaz onto a mortgage and adoption papers, and the silence has stretched out long enough that Eddie is clearly uncomfortable the next time Buck looks at him.
It’s like Eddie is waiting for the hurt that will inevitably come, bracing himself for it by the look on his face, and Buck’s words are still too tangled up in his idealization of the future to say anything that make sense, so he falls back on what they’ve always done and he reaches across Eddie, pinches a bit of flour, and flicks it in his face.
The look on Eddie’s face changes rapidly; he blinks several times before narrowing his eyes at Buck. “That’s what you get for objectifying me,” Buck says, raising an eyebrow, like he hasn’t spent the last several months desperately wishing that Eddie would do just that. In hindsight, the fistful of flour that hits his face a second later, dusting his eyebrows and finding its way inside his mouth is not a surprise, but in the moment it catches him, makes him splutter and cough out a cloud of dust.
Eddie just grins at him. “Must have slipped,” he says, shrugging. “Wow, sorry about that, Buck. You’ve got it all over your face, let me help.”
He lets Eddie get close, pretends to be annoyed with the way Eddie’s fingers gently brush flour off his shoulders, succeeding in very little other than smearing it everywhere. It’s not until Eddie’s shoulders are shaking with laughter that Buck steps forward and pivots them to the side, trapping Eddie between himself and the counter, very carefully ignoring his own body’s reaction at their proximity; the need for revenge is too strong to give in to that particular feeling. He leans in, gripping the cold tile with one, feeling around for what he wants with the other. “You wanna play dirty, Diaz?” he says, pitching his voice low intentionally, his lips so close that he feels Eddie’s skin beneath them when he talks.
Anyone who says Buck has no self-restraint should see him now, he thinks, because Eddie swallows audibly, and the way his breath catches when he says, “depends on what you have in mind” sends Buck into a tailspin of longing, and the desire that hits him hard is almost enough for him to give the thought of revenge up.
Almost.
He pulls back, bringing the hand holding the mixing bowl over Eddie’s head, and dumps it on him. The flour billows up and surrounds Eddie like an aura, cascades down onto the floor around him when he shakes his head, stunned. He’s covered it in; his hair is mostly white, streaks all over his black shirt, settling into his exposed skin.
Buck’s not entirely sure of everything that happens next; one second he’s bent over with laughter, clutching his stomach, and the next they’re on the floor, flinging whatever handfuls of flour they can scoop up while they wrestle around. He’s pretty sure he’s caked in flour, can feel the sting in his eyes, the grit on his skin, tastes it on his tongue as he tries to pin Eddie’s arms behind him. They’re both breathless with laughter, scrambling around on the kitchen floor, shouting half-protests and playful curses, and it’s not until Eddie has Buck pinned, his entire body stretched out on top of him, that Buck stops fighting it.
“You win,” he pants, turning his face away from Eddie’s and surveying the damage to the kitchen. Eddie slides off him and for a moment, Buck thinks about pulling him back. “Damn, this is going to take forever to clean,” he says instead, accepting the hand Eddie offers him and letting himself be pulled to standing.
“How about I clean and you start again,” Eddie says. He pulls his shirt away from his body and makes a face as flour puffs out. “We’re going to need some new clothes, I think.”
It takes all of four seconds for Buck’s mouth to go dry as he watches Eddie strip his shirt off, and rather than be caught staring, he starts brushing himself off best he can. His shirt and arms have taken the brunt of the damage and he tries to get as much flour off as possible before he sighs and pulls the shirt over his head and tosses it at Eddie as he’s leaving the room. He feels bad stepping over the mess on the floor, but if he wants any sleep at all he’s going to have to finish up pretty quickly, so he gets to work, wiping the dust off his phone screen and mixing the dry ingredients together.
He’s got the bag of chocolate chips in his hand, ready to dump them in—despite a precise measurement on the bag, Buck firmly believes that the correct amount is all of them—when Eddie walks back in the kitchen, folded shirt in hand. Buck watches, stirring the chocolate chips into the dough, as Eddie shakes the shirt out and holds it out, coming to a stop next to him.
In the time it takes to pull on, Buck realizes two things: one, that this shirt hadn’t been anywhere near the top of Eddie’s drawer when he’d gone digging for the Diaz shirt he had foolishly gotten flour all over, and two—two, it smells like Eddie, which means it wasn’t in the drawer at all, because Eddie had worn it recently.
Eddie’s watching him closely, something Buck would welcome at any other time but feels uncomfortable with now; he’s sure he’s attributing more motive, a deeper meaning to this than Eddie had intended, but it feels significant, and he doesn’t have enough time to talk himself down while Eddie is watching him like that. “Thanks,” he says, and almost cringes at the way his voice comes out, rough and unsteady.
“Buck—” Eddie looks away, tongue pushing his lower lip out like he does when he’s thinking, when he’s about to make a decision that Buck doesn’t like.
His thoughts are racing; he hears regret in Eddie’s voice, a hesitancy he doesn’t like, and he runs through a dozen reasons in his mind for it, trying desperately not to land on the idea of their upcoming date and failing miserably. He knows Eddie, knows it might be any one of a hundred things giving him pause, and he’s not sure what to do other than reach out blindly, slide his hand down from Eddie’s forearm to his wrist and blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. “Dance with me,” he says, tugging Eddie closer. It’s a slow song playing, something he recognizes but can’t place, but it hardly registers when he feels Eddie’s free hand settle onto his waist after a moment of hesitation.
He thinks it probably counts less as dancing and more as swaying; he lets go of Eddie’s wrist long enough to take his hand, loosely joining their fingers together, and wraps his other arm around his shoulders, leaning his head in until they’re cheek to cheek. He feels the warmth of Eddie’s palms against his back, slight pressure where he’s holding tighter, and he takes a moment to breathe in and believe that everything is going to work out.
His hand is resting on Eddie’s shoulder and he pulls his arm back a little so he can flatten it against the warm skin of Eddie’s neck, cupping it gently and rubbing his thumb across the stubble on his jaw. “You can tell me,” he says. “I’ll hear whatever you have to say, Eddie.”
He feels Eddie nod against him, but he doesn’t say anything and Buck doesn’t push it; they just stand there, swaying to the music. Buck feels the tension leaving his body the longer, tries to calm his anxious mind with the knowledge that Eddie wouldn’t be pressed up against him if he was having second thoughts, and that even if he was, they could fall back on the strength of their friendship and everything would work out. Buck’s faith in Eddie and in their relationship, whatever it looks like, is unshakeable, resolute, and he’s not going to start doubting it now.
“My therapist wants me to work on expressing emotions and being direct with what I want,” Eddie says eventually. His voice is quiet in Buck’s ear, but steady, devoid of the earlier uncertainty that sent Buck’s internal monologue into a tailspin. “Apparently I hide behind humor and sarcasm.” Buck stays quiet except for a hum of acknowledgement, but can’t help the smile that spreads across his face, because it’s a perfect description of how Eddie normally deals with his feelings. Eddie talks about therapy so rarely that Buck is wary of saying anything about it, doesn’t want a careless comment or joke to be the reason he stops bringing it up, the reason he stops working on himself. After a moment, he feels Eddie’s hands tighten on his waist, and his chest expands against Buck’s as he breathes deep. “So about Friday—”
It’s a curious sensation, reminding himself that he needs to breathe, telling himself not to allow his hands to shake against Eddie’s neck. All the things his body can do automatically are failing him right now as he waits for Eddie’s words.
“I want more with you, Buck. I want Friday to be a date, and I’m not sure if I can go through with it if it’s not.”
“Eddie,” he breathes out, relief hitting him harder than he thought it would. He rubs his thumb against Eddie’s jaw again, drops his face to bury in the curve of Eddie’s neck. “You don’t need to worry about that, I want everything with you.”
The sweetest sound Buck has heard all day is Eddie’s soft chuckle in his ear. “Everything, that’s—that’s a lot, Buck. I think you might be a little ahead of me there, but I’m glad to hear it.”
“I’m always ahead of you, but what else is new,” Buck says. He pulls his head up and puts more space in between them so he can look at Eddie before leaning in again and pressing their foreheads together. “You’ll get there, don’t worry.”
“Don’t doubt it,” Eddie says. They stay that way, still swaying, and when Eddie starts rubbing his hand up and down Buck’s back, Buck shifts and kisses his cheek, twice, tries to move his head towards Eddie’s lips only to have his arm slide off Eddie’s shoulder as he pulls away. Buck frowns, and watches as the corners of Eddie’s eyes crinkle up with his smile. “I don’t kiss before the first date,” Eddie says. “Gotta have something to look forward to.”
Buck thinks about scooping up some of the scattered flour on the countertop, certain that Eddie would absolutely deserve to have it thrown in his face for that, until Eddie presses a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, and he forgets about everything but the feel of Eddie’s body against his, the perfect weight of Eddie’s lips on his skin.
He’s never going to make it until Friday.
Between his extra shifts, regular shifts, and baking as many chocolate chip cookies as he possibly could in what little time he has off, the next few days pass quickly. Making the dough at the station isn’t an issue, but given that he can’t control the alarms he doesn’t dare bake them on shift. He ends up with around three hundred, which Eddie empathically insists is too many for the bake sale and spreads a few dozen out on the table with a sign that says please take some, Buck is an overachiever.
Hen helps him package them up in cellophane and Eddie wraps them with ribbon, Bobby assures him that a button down and jeans is a perfectly fine outfit for a bake sale despite Chim laughing at Buck’s nervous energy, and it’s finally Thursday and Buck is standing in the entrance of Christopher’s school, box of cookies in hand. There’s a table set up down the hall and colorful signs with arrows pointing towards it, so he makes his way down the hallway and gives the women sitting there his most charming smile. He’s unsure what, if anything, Eddie had told the school about him coming, and he hadn’t even thought of it until this moment.
They both smile back at him, warm and genuine. “Hey hon. What’s your name?”
“Buck,” he says, “I’m here for Christopher Diaz.”
“Oh, Christopher is just the sweetest little thing,” one of them says. “I’m Ashley Hernandez, Christopher is in my music class. You must be so proud of him, you and your partner have done a great job.”
He hesitates, unsure of what to say; it’s one thing to allow people he’ll never see again to think he has that sort of role in Christopher’s life—in Eddie’s—and another thing entirely to allow someone they interact with frequently to make the assumption. But the other woman is sliding over a nametag that’s got Buck Diaz written on it and he ends up just thanking her before pressing it onto his shirt.
“I was so happy to hear from Chris that you were volunteering tonight, and this does count towards parental involvement hours, so if you just want to head into the gym and find Clarissa—she’s the one in the PTA shirt, big yellow bow in her hair, you can’t miss her—she can show you where to set those and give you your assignment,” Ashley says.
Volunteering? He hopes the confusion doesn’t show on his face, tries to just keep smiling as he picks the cookies back up and thanks them again. By the time he’s found Clarissa and gotten his assignment, he’s gone from wanting to kill Christopher for signing him up for this without asking to being pleased that Christopher wants him participating in his schooling. He spends the next twenty minutes carrying all sorts of treats from various classrooms to the gym. He’s in the middle of fixing a sign that’s fallen halfway down when he hears Christopher’s voice echo across the room.
He hops off the ladder in time to pick Chris up, hugging him tight. “Superman!” he says. “It’s been a hundred years.”
“It’s been two days, Bucky,” Chris says, laughing. “Dad showed me your cookies, they look really good. Thank you.”
Buck squeezes him again, pressing his face into the soft curls on the top of Chris’ head. “Anything for my favorite kid,” he responds. “Maybe next time we’ll be able to bake them together.”
Chris nods. “I said sorry to Abuela.”
“That’s good. We all need to be on Abuela’s side or she might decide to stop feeding us.”
“And then Dad will have to cook,” Chris says, shuddering. “Bucky, last night he tried putting mustard on the broccoli.”
Buck makes a face, turning towards Eddie. “Seriously? Eds, that’s—that’s bad, even for you.”
“I used a recipe,” Eddie says, rolling his eyes. “That Bobby gave me, before you decide to say anything else. Come on, Chris saw some rice crispy treats over near the basketball hoop and I’m pretty sure he’s been drooling since then.”
Buck lets Chris slide down, pressing a kiss to his cheek as he does. “You guys go on, I still have a half hour to help out. I’ll find you when I’m done if you’re still here. But here, Chris—” he pulls the twenty dollar bill he got from the ATM on his drive over out of his pocket and slips it into Chris’ hand, “go crazy, kid.” He turns to find Clarissa again for more instructions, but Eddie’s hand on his arm stops him.
He can’t decipher the look on Eddie’s face; his eyes are slightly narrowed but the corner of his mouth is quirked upwards in a funny half-smile. “What do you mean you have a half hour left?”
He shrugs, tries not to feel like he’s imposing on Eddie’s parenting territory as he explains. “I guess Chris signed me up to volunteer? But they said it counts for your hours so it’s fine, man, I don’t mind.”
He claps Eddie on the shoulder and leaves, but not before hearing Eddie say, “does your nametag say Diaz?” in a confused voice.
He loses himself in menial tasks: moving tables from a storage closet into the gym when they run out of space, running the cash box to the office, and taking over at the coffee station when the parent there needs a break. Eddie and Chris come up while he’s there and Buck grins when he sees that Eddie has no fewer than six bags of treats in his hand.
“I think we have enough sugar for the next several months,” Eddie says, patting Chris on the shoulder when he excitedly points out a friend and takes off. “How many of these do you think I can sneak to the station?”
“None, that kid has a sharp eye,” Buck says, and Eddie groans. “Want some coffee?”
Eddie accepts the cup he’s holding out and Buck watches as his eyes linger on the spot he’s placed the nametag. “I appreciate you doing this, Buck,” he says, quieter. “Your hour up yet?”
Buck nods and lets Eddie grab him by the hand and pull him away, over to a quiet corner in the courtyard where they can watch Chris play. There’s a minute where they don’t talk, just sit there, pressed up against each other, and Buck allows himself to feel content. He almost can’t believe that it was only three days ago that he was helping Chris style his hair and wishing he could be a Diaz and now here he is, volunteering at his school and wearing a nametag that proclaimed him part of the family.
Which he should probably clear up with Eddie.
“I told the teachers that my name was Buck,” he says. “They added Diaz, I probably should have said something. I’m sorry if I made anything uncomfortable for you, or for Chris.”
Eddie laughs. “Chris—that’s not a problem for him, Buck.”
“Is it for you?”
Eddie’s quiet for a moment, and Buck looks over to see him watching Chris. “Three different people told me how kind my partner was tonight, how nice it was to see you helping out at a school function,” he says eventually. Buck feels his face heat up and he ducks his head down, hopes Eddie can’t see him blush. He probably should have said something, gotten a correct nametag, not let this happen when he knew perfectly well that Eddie had said he wasn’t there yet. “I didn’t correct any of them, because—you are kind, Buck. And I appreciate you taking some of this responsibility for me more than you know. But the truth is, it felt good to think about you—about us—like that, knowing that you felt that same way.”
His chest burns at the words, the warm feeling in his heart threatening to spill over, melt him at all his edges and make him fall apart at the seams. He reaches over and takes Eddie’s hand, threads their fingers together, and breathes in the moment. They observe Chris together for a long time, watch the way he runs back and forth with the other boys in his grade, kicking a soccer ball along the grassy area next to the play equipment. Eventually, Eddie says his name and when he looks over, Eddie leans in and kisses him chaste and soft.
“What happened to the first date?” Buck asks when he pulls back, aware that he’s smiling like a fool and not caring a single bit.
Eddie smiles at him, slow and warm. “I think we’re a few months past the first date,” he says.
He leans in again and Buck meets him halfway, letting go of Eddie’s hand and bringing it up to his cheek, cupping it slightly before sliding it around to the back of Eddie’s neck while Eddie kisses him, soft and as sweet as the cookies he’s spent all week baking. “Still ahead of you?”
“Nah,” Eddie says, barely moving away, his lips still brushing against Buck’s. “I’m all caught up.”