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In the end, moving in with Buck is surprisingly easy.
It still breaks Eddie’s brain a little to think about it like that. This is his house, has been his house for years, the best years of his life, probably. This is where Christopher grew up, the place they both call home still. And sure, Eddie’s been renting it all this time, so it might not technically be his, but it’s close enough, right?
Close enough, except he moved all his belongings into a Uhaul and then into El fucking Paso, into what was supposed to be a fixer-upper and turned out to be some sort of haunted husk of a house with more problems than Eddie has hairs on his head, and now it’s not really home anymore, hasn’t been home for a while, except it also kind of never stopped.
It helps, probably, that he never fully lost South Bedford Street. After all, he’d still been getting glimpses of it every day, through his Facetime calls with Buck.
He’d still seen his living room, and his kitchen, and his bedroom, and sometimes even his bathroom.
(They’d both gotten into the habit of Facetiming whenever, wherever. Buck had no qualms about picking up Eddie’s calls when he’s shaving, or brushing his teeth, or styling his hair, which is fine. Eddie did the same, sometimes.
Buck also picked up when he was either about to take a shower or just hopped out of one. He’d angle the screen high enough that Eddie couldn’t see much of anything, but it still had Eddie’s cheeks flushing like there’s no tomorrow.
Eddie hadn’t quite been bold enough to initiate that particular type of call, himself.)
Still, seeing his home through a screen is nothing compared to the real thing. When he steps through the front door for the first time in what feels like forever, it feels like a weight is lifted off his back, and he’s not just talking about the duffel bag that Buck slides off his shoulder and deposits on the couch.
Buck’s couch, that is, not Eddie’s. That one is still in the Uhaul, waiting to be unpacked.
“We’ll have to figure out the furniture situation,” Eddie muses, nodding as Christopher tugs his suitcase into his bedroom and tells him that he’s going to unpack. “We’ve got two of everything, now.”
“I wouldn’t mind having your dining table back here,” Buck admits. “Mine’s too big, I keep bumping into it.”
“Sounds good.” Eddie’s eyes flicker from the couch to Buck. “We should reorganise the living room, though. We can probably fit both of our couches in, if we try hard enough.”
“No way,” Buck says immediately, shaking his head so wildly, his hair bounces with it. Fuck, his hair is long enough to bounce now. Like, yeah, there’s been more movement ever since he stopped gelling it down and brushing the curls out – one of the best decisions he’s ever made, in Eddie’s humble opinion – but this is something else entirely. Eddie’s really missed a lot, hasn’t he?
“We’re getting rid of this one,” Buck continues. Eddie has to drag his eyes away from Buck’s hair and back to Buck’s face. He doesn’t want to risk Buck thinking that he’s staring because there’s something wrong with his hair and deciding to shave it all off or whatever. Just because Eddie had a buzzcut that one time, that doesn’t mean that Buck has to get one too. He likes Buck’s hair too much. He’d never forgive himself for inspiring that.
“It’s a perfectly fine couch,” Eddie finally says. He decides to just look at the couch in question. It’s safer for everyone involved, really.
“Is it?” Buck doesn’t sound convinced. Eddie gets it. It’s not a great couch. Sure, it looks nice, all brown leather and smooth edges, but it’s not the most comfortable. There’s a reason for the fact that, even when Christopher was still in El Paso, Buck often crashed on Eddie’s couch instead of Eddie curling up on Buck’s.
“You don’t think it is?” Eddie asks.
“Someone gave birth on that couch.”
“And you had it cleaned professionally afterwards.” Eddie still isn’t quite sure how Buck managed that. All he knows is that one day, he’s complaining about having to buy a new couch, and the next, it was good as new. When he’d asked Buck about it, all he said was Athena knows a guy. Eddie had been so relieved not to have to go through another couch-shopping debacle with Buck, existential crisis included, that he decided not to ask.
“Tommy slept on it when I dislocated my shoulder, and he complained about it all night.”
“Let’s get rid of it,” Eddie immediately agrees. He decides not to think too much about the fact that he was fine with the childbirth and not with the ex.
It hasn’t been cleaned since then, he tells himself. That’s the difference. It’s not that deep.
“Great.” Buck grins. “I’ve got a set of extra blankets for it in the linen closet, since I wasn’t sure if you’d be bringing yours back with you. Oh, and I changed the sheets on the bed this morning, so you’re good to go.”
“What do you mean, I’m good to go? It’s your bed, isn’t it?”
This, unfortunately, is the one thing they have yet to figure out. Christopher has his room, of course, and Eddie knows for a fact that Buck hasn’t touched it, so they should be good to just move the furniture back into it, but there’s only one other bedroom. It used to be Eddie’s, but he’d stripped it of all the furniture – not that there had been much to begin with, anyway – and Buck had replaced it with his own. Eddie knows this for a fact, too. He’s spent countless Facetime sessions with Buck in his bed, a familiar wall behind his sleepy face.
Buck’s bed always looked much, much more comfortable than Eddie’s own. Eddie has made the executive decision not to dwell on that too much.
“It is,” Buck says, ducking his head, “but it’s your house, you know? I’m not gonna make you sleep on the couch.”
Eddie blinks.
That’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.
“Buck, that’s ridiculous,” he says. “There’s no way I’m kicking you out of your bed. It’s your house too, you know. It became yours when you gave up the loft for me and Chris.”
That’s not true, a little voice in the back of Eddie’s head chimes in. And yeah, the little voice, annoying as it might be, is right. It’s not true.
South Bedford Street became Buck’s home well before Buck gave up the loft. It’s been his home for months, years, maybe forever, maybe since the first time he set foot through the door and sat down on the couch, stretching his legs out like he owned the place. Something slid into place that day, the puzzle pieces that make up the universe realigning until it clicked, even if Eddie couldn’t quite see the picture they made up.
He still can’t see it, not really, but lately, he’s been wondering if that’s because it’s hidden, or because he doesn’t let himself open his eyes.
Still, whether it’s true or not, Buck waves his statement away.
“I used to crash on that couch all the time,” he says easily, “honestly, I’ve kind of missed it. You wouldn’t want to interrupt our big reunion, would you?”
“Your back is going to hate you for this,” Eddie warns.
Buck shrugs, seemingly unbothered by this. Eddie knows better than to buy into it, though. Buck has spent countless nights on this couch before, and though he’d never complain out loud, Eddie has seen him stretch and wince in the mornings. The couch is great for movie nights, for sprawling out on for a few hours when you’re not feeling well. It holds up for the occasional nap or impromptu, one-night sleepover.
It does not hold up for weeks, maybe months, on end.
But Buck doesn’t seem to care, and isn’t budging, so when night falls, Buck pulls the sheets out of the cupboard, right where they’ve always been, and makes himself comfortable right there on the couch, while Eddie is watching him from a corner of the room.
“Go to bed, Eddie,” he says, face smushed into the pillow and voice muffled because of it. “I’m all good out here.”
“Okay,” Eddie finally says. He turns around, flicks the light switch. “Good night, Buck.”
“Sleep well,” Buck says, already yawning.
Eddie, worn out from a long day of driving and unpacking, the emotional rollercoaster that comes with coming home, plans on doing just that. He’s slept in Buck’s bed before, after all, when they shared during the pandemic and on those rare occasions when he’d stay the night at the loft instead of Buck being at the Diaz home. He knows how comfortable Buck’s mattress is, how soft his sheets are, just the right weight to be heavy and soothing on top of him, but not thick enough that he’ll sweat right through them. Buck definitely invested more into a solid night of sleep than Eddie ever has, with his decade-old Ikea frame and mattress. No, in Buck’s big, wonderful bed, he’s sure to catch all the rest he needs right now.
And yet, when he lies down, on the side closest to the door, where he always sleeps, he lies awake, eyes unblinking.
Something is missing.
The mattress is the same, the sheets are the same. The pillow is his own, actually, but it’s the fancy thick one Buck got him for his birthday last year, not the raggedy old one he’d used for years prior to that. He’s wearing an old, soft shirt, the window is ever-so-slightly open. He has all the ingredients for a prime night, right here.
Except as he lies there, staring at the ceiling he’s so dearly missed, he realises that he’s never slept in this bed without Buck sprawled out beside him.
And now that he has the bed to himself, he realises that it doesn’t feel right at all.
If puzzle pieces realigned on the day that Buck walked into this place for the first time, right now, right after Eddie and Christopher’s homecoming, is when Eddie realises that there’s a piece missing from his life. A piece that’s right there, right down the hall, so close yet so far away.
A piece that should be next to him. In this room, in this bed. In Eddie’s arms. He’s already in his heart, after all. It feels wrong for Buck not to be right here physically, when he’s already here in every other way that matters.
Eddie blinks, slow and languidly.
He opens his eyes.
He sees the picture, now. Sees it more clearly than he’s ever seen anything before, and he’s got 20/20 vision, so that’s saying something.
Eddie’s feet are on the ground and carrying him back towards the living room before he’s fully aware of it.
“Hey,” Buck says drowsily, when Eddie stops in front of the couch. He’s curled up under the blanket, phone in hand, clearly not asleep yet but definitely sleepy. “Eddie, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Eddie says, then follows it with “no, I’m not.”
Buck drops the phone and shuffles into an upright position. One of the pillows he’d tucked under his head falls to the ground. Eddie picks it up for him, but instead of placing it back on the couch, hugs it to himself.
It smells like Buck.
“Don’t worry,” Eddie says, because he can see concern growing in Buck’s eyes, “I just- you can’t stay out here.”
“Oh.” Buck deflates. The concern leaks out of him, but it’s replaced with something else. Disappointment, maybe? Eddie isn’t sure, but he doesn’t like it. Before he can act on it, though, clarify what he means, Buck continues. “Yeah, that- that makes sense. I’ll go to Maddie’s, she said I’m always welcome there. Uh, I’ll come back in the morning to pack, if that’s okay. I don’t want to wake Christopher up.”
“What?” Eddie blinks. “Buck, no.”
“I mean, I guess I can pack now and be quiet-”
“ No ,” Eddie says, voice leaving no room for argumentation. It’s his dad voice, he’s been told. He doesn’t like pulling it out these days, but it works like a charm, because Buck stops talking mid-sentence and stares up at him, blinking in confusion.
“I didn’t mean that you couldn’t stay in this house,” Eddie clarifies. “Buck, this is your home , I’d never take that from you. I just meant that you couldn’t stay on the couch.”
Buck sighs.
“We’ve been over this, Eddie. You take the bed, I take the couch. I’ll try the bathtub, if you want, but I’m speaking from experience when I tell you that that won’t be more comfortable. You know this too, remember?”
Well, Eddie doesn’t think that his bathtub compares to a hotel jacuzzi, and he likes to think that Buck would lie down in a slightly more sensible position, but he won’t argue with that. It had definitely not been comfortable. His back had been sore for days.
“Buck,” he says again, voice softly, almost pleading. “Just come to bed with me. We’ll share.”
“I’m fine out here,” Buck tries, but Eddie can practically see him melting.
“We’ve shared before,” he continues, “it’ll be fine. Please.”
Please must be the magic word, because Buck swings his legs over the side of the couch and stands up.
“Are you sure?” He asks.
Instead of answering, Eddie reaches for the corner of Buck’s blanket that’s closest to him and pulls it with him as he heads back to his Buck’s their bedroom, still holding Buck’s pillow.
“What- don’t drag it on the floor,” Buck grumbles, following Eddie and lifting the blanket up. Eddie refuses to let go of it, though, so he carries his useless little corner until they’re in the bedroom and he can toss the pillow onto the bed, then tugs the blanket out of Buck’s grip entirely and spreads it out on top of his duvet.
“You’ll be way too warm,” Buck protests, but he dutifully shuts the bedroom door, clearly having given up on protesting. “You never sleep with more than one blanket.”
“And you sleep with as many as you can find, because you run cold,” Eddie counters, smoothing out the blanket. It’s true. Buck wears hoodies and socks to bed, covers himself with as many blankets as he can find, and still complains about the cold at times. It’s kind of endearing, actually.
But what Buck says is also true. Eddie only uses a second blanket in winter, which it’s decidedly not, and the heat of both an extra person and a second blanket – because it might be on Buck’s side of the bed only right now, Eddie knows Buck’s sleeping habits well enough to know that that definitely won’t be the case for long – is going to be a lot for him. He decides to take the only sensible course of action to remedy that.
He grabs his shirt by the back of the neck and pulls it off in one smooth movement, tossing it onto the new chair in the corner of the room. Judging by the pile of clothes already building up on it, it’s Buck’s laundry chair. An extra shirt won’t hurt it, Eddie decides.
“Uh.” Buck looks a little bit like he did when they Facetimed and the screen would freeze occasionally.
“What?” Eddie asks innocently, although he’s not exactly unaware of the effect he’s having on Buck right now. He kind of likes it, actually, but he also thinks that that’s a conversation they should have later, when they’re both properly awake and all that. “This way, I won’t overheat.”
“Right.” Buck’s swallow is audible, but he doesn’t protest or run for the hills, so Eddie counts it as a win.
“C’mon,” Eddie urges, “let’s go to sleep.”
He climbs into bed, sliding back under the covers and folding a corner back on Buck’s side. It takes a second, but then Buck unfreezes and climbs in, wiggling around to get comfortable.
“There,” Eddie says, pleased, as he turns on his side and faces Buck. Buck copies him and curls up, cheek smushed into the pillow, bright eyes barely visible in the room’s low light. “Isn’t that better?”
They lie curled up like commas, breathing in each other’s presence. Only a few inches separate them, enough for Eddie to reach out and cross, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to change this moment, not now. Instead, he soaks it in, and he thinks that if they’re the commas framing this space, then what’s there must not be so ordinary as the sheets and mattress and edges of their pillows, but it must be love, pure love.
“Yeah,” Buck says on an exhale, blinks slowing down as he drifts off, “This is much better.”
The grocery store has changed.
It’s silly, really. It shouldn’t matter. Eddie isn’t sure why it does. All he knows is that, in the few months he’s been in Texas, his preferred grocery store has undergone some renovations, and he’s upset about it.
He thinks he’s justified in hating the new light fixtures. They’re brighter, more artificial-looking. They’re bound to induce headaches. Eddie doesn’t drink enough to be properly hungover all that often – the last time was during Chimney’s bachelor party, actually, and he’s still not entirely sure what went down that night but he gets What I Like About You stuck in his head whenever he thinks about it – but he makes a mental note to not go here for hangover cures all the same.
So yes, the light fixtures objectively suck. He tells Buck as much, who looks up from his shopping list, written on the purple-green gradient paper from the magnetic notepad on histheir fridge, and nods. Eddie feels vindicated for a second, but then Buck points out that he likes the new layout, and Eddie turns his nose up the same way his mother did when Eddie cooked and they showed up with takeout, and he feels so awful for a second that he fully shivers.
“...so we don’t like the new layout?” Buck says cautiously.
“We do not ,” Eddie agrees.
He looks around again. They’re still near the front of the store, in the section with all the weekly bargains. Buck has already added a massive case of Christopher’s preferred soda to the cart, because that 20% off deal is too good to pass up on, apparently. Eddie would have protested, but Buck made sure to grab the kind that has no added sugar, so he lets it slide.
He does push back on the box of prepackaged donuts. They’re bright red with fucking glitters on them and they’re supposed to taste like sour candy? Eddie’s teeth are hollowing out just looking at them.
He likes Buck’s baked goods better, he decides.
“Okay,” Buck says, easily following Eddie’s lead. “But you are going to like how they’ve organised the produce section. Remember how you could never find the bell peppers?”
Oh, Eddie remembers. He doesn’t even care all that much for bell peppers, but they’re one of Buck’s favourite vegetables, so they’d quickly become a staple in the Diaz kitchen. There was usually plenty of room in the crisper drawers, and Eddie quite liked having some extra colour in there. It kind of brightened the fridge up, made it feel alive, somehow.
Except for some reason, this grocery store never quite made up its mind on where it kept the bell peppers. One week, they’d be next to the eggplants, the next, they’d be one aisle over and near the tomatoes. Sometimes they’d have four different colours and Eddie could pick up as many orange ones – Buck’s favourites – as he wanted, the week after, they’d only have green – Eddie’s least favourite, but he’d buy them for Buck anyway – and they’d be tucked away in a corner somewhere. And sure, he knows that produce availability varies, he gets that. But do they really have to change where the bell peppers are in the store? That, he doesn’t understand at all.
“I remember,” Eddie says darkly, following Buck as he trudges through the aisles. Buck places a can of beans in their cart. Eddie takes it right back out and replaces it with a bigger one.
“We always get the smaller one,” Buck says, momentarily distracted.
Eddie shakes his head.
“You haven’t met Christopher’s newly increased appetite,” he says. “Trust me, we’ll need the bigger one.”
“Right.” Buck laughs sheepishly. “I, uh, kind of can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve cooked for him.”
He rubs his chest absentmindedly, as if it hurts. Eddie knows the feeling.
“Well,” he says, hoping to lighten the mood, “his appetite might have changed, but his palate hasn’t. He’s been complaining that my chili doesn’t come close to yours. He’ll be glad to have the real deal tonight.”
It seems to do the trick. Buck smiles, ducks his head in the way he always does when he’s pleased. It’s cute.
“It’s the secret ingredient,” he says. “I almost didn’t believe Bobby when he told me about it, but something is always missing if you don’t add it.”
“I still can’t believe you won’t tell me what it is,” Eddie says, only half-complaining. He knows that Buck got his chilli recipe from Bobby – it’s a firehouse staple – and that he doesn’t want to share Bobby’s secret ingredient without permission. Eddie never pushes, only pokes. Buck knows that, too. But damn, Eddie is curious.
He’d missed the chilli when he was in El Paso. It was one of many, many things he missed, and one of the many reasons he’s glad to be back home.
The biggest reason, though, is right in front of him, now back on the topic of the new and improved produce-section layout.
No, Eddie doesn’t like the new grocery store. He doesn’t like the lighting, and he can’t find anything here, and if not for Buck, he’d be wandering around for hours trying to check every item off his grocery list.
Doing the grocery shop with Buck, though?
Yeah, Eddie likes that a lot.
“That’s not julienne.”
Eddie startles so badly that he nearly drops his knife.
“Buck,” he hisses, but his best friend looks entirely unrepentant. “You scared the shit out of me.”
Buck shrugs. He has an apron on, the striped one Bobby gave him for Christmas one year, and there’s a sauce-covered whisk in one of his hands.
“If you don’t want me to scare you, you should julienne the carrots properly,” he says, as if that’s a logical thing to say. “These are way too thick.”
“Well, I’m not done with them yet.”
“What?” Buck frowns, slightly distressed. “No, you should be done by now. The schedule says-”
“ Fuck the schedule,” Eddie says, with feeling.
Look, Eddie likes cooking. He didn’t always, it took him ages to learn, but once he’d successfully made a few of Linda’s recipes and branched out to some other dishes, he’d been hooked. He’s no Bobby in the kitchen, but he’s better than Chimney, so he’ll take the win. When he’d been in El Paso, his Abuela had even taught him some family recipes, and it had been one of the very few highlights of his time there.
So, Eddie likes cooking. Eddie also likes cooking with Buck. They’d done plenty of it before they became roommates, which was always fun, and they’d kept it going over Facetime while they were states apart. If anything, they’d done it more often then than before. One of them would pick a recipe, they’d both get the right ingredients, they’d hop on a call, and they’d cook. More often than not, they’d sit down and have dinner while still on the call, phones propped up on the other side of the table so they could pretend they were having dinner together.
Since Eddie and Christopher moved back home, they’ve mostly been taking turns. Buck makes chilli while Eddie does laundry, or Eddie makes that chicken tortilla soup they love while Buck preps a batch of brownies. Sometimes, one of them cooks while the other relaxes, or naps, or plays a game with Christopher.
Today, though, that’s not the case. Today, they’re both in the kitchen, all hands on deck. Because today, they’re hosting family dinner for the first time.
It’s a new tradition. The day after Eddie and Christopher came back home, Maddie and Chimney had hosted them for dinner. Hen and Karen invited them a week later. Ravi had them over to eat curry and watch a game and resolutely refused to answer any questions about the pictures and other personal items that Buck found. Then, just last week, Athena and Bobby held a little housewarming dinner in their newly-finished home, inviting the entire 118 A-shift and their families. They’d all joked about the number of dinner parties they’d had recently, and when Chimney suggested they make it a regular thing, heads quickly turned to Buck and Eddie. They, after all, are the only ones who have yet to host.
Eddie knows that Buck hadn’t done a lot of hosting while he and Chris were in El Paso. It hadn’t felt right, Buck had said, even though he was well aware that he could do anything and everything with the house. He’d jumped on the opportunity now, though, leaving Eddie feeling all sorts of pleased with how things turned out.
Well. He’d been pleased for the rest of that housewarming dinner. He hadn’t been pleased when he woke up the next morning, face smushed in Buck’s neck, and had looked up to find Buck using his tablet to browse recipe websites.
To be clear, Eddie couldn’t care less about Buck using his tablet. Buck’s known the password since the day he bought it, because Eddie doesn’t trust technology but he does trust Buck, so instead of using one of those password list apps, he’s gotten into the habit of just telling Buck what all his passwords are, because Buck will remember, and it’s also the easiest way to make sure that Buck actually uses he Netflix account Eddie got for both of them, because Buck would never actually ask for the password but does really want to watch shitty reality television on his days off.
Actually, now that he thinks about it, Eddie isn’t entirely sure that Buck isn’t just throwing all of Eddie’s passwords in his own password list apps. Or maybe he has a physical list somewhere, like Eddie’s parents have. Well, Eddie doesn’t really care. He trusts Buck to keep his information safe.
He also hadn’t been upset to wake up so close to Buck. No, he’d been the opposite of upset because of that. As it turns out, there are more advantages to sharing a bed than the simple fact that neither of them has a sore back. The cuddling and snuggling is Eddie’s favourite bed-sharing perk, and he hasn’t heard Buck complaining either.
So no, Eddie’s groan when faced with the too-bright tablet screen flashing the best carrot salads and roast chicken dinners was not because of either of those things. It had been entirely because five in the fucking morning is way too early for anyone to be thinking about dinner, let alone to be thinking about a dinner that is two weeks away.
Now, however, said dinner isn’t two weeks away but two hours, and it’s safe to say that they’re both a little on edge.
Sure, they’ve hosted people for dinner before. Not frequently, but they’ve done it. Separately, Buck in that loft and Eddie right here, and sometimes Eddie would invite people over and Buck would also be there, and so they’d essentially be hosting together anyway, because that’s just what they do. Officially, though, this is their first shared dinner, and it’s also the first time that they’re inviting ten different people for dinner in one go.
Buck borrowed kitchen utensils from Bobby. Eddie picked up Maddie and Chimney’s extra chairs earlier today. Christopher laid out some card games to play with the other kids.
All that’s left, really, is the food.
“We need the schedule,” Buck insists. He waves the whisk around. Splatters of sauce fly off of it. Eddie wisely decides not to point it out. “If we don’t stick to the schedule, things won’t be done in time, and then we’ll make everyone wait.”
“Which would be fine.” Eddie takes the whisk from Buck and gently lays it down on the countertop. “Buck, these are our friends. Our family. Not a single one of them will mind waiting for a few minutes. It’ll be fine.”
Buck takes a deep breath, ending in a long, drawn-out exhale.
“I guess you’re right,” he says. “I just want it to be perfect, you know?”
“I know.” Eddie does, really. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little nervous about tonight, himself. He’s just a bit more of a realist, maybe. Either that, or the schedule was really driving him crazy. “And it will be. The food will be great. People will have a good time. Don’t talk yourself into a spiral over dinner, okay? It’s just dinner.”
“It’s just dinner,” Buck repeats. Some of the tension slides out of his posture, his shoulders dropping ever-so-slightly.
“There you go.” Eddie turns back to the carrots and picks his knife up again, dutifully continuing to chop his carrots. “Now go back to your sauce before you overheat it.”
Buck curses violently, scoops up his whisk, and heats back to the stove, where the saucepan is patiently waiting for him.
“It’s fine,” he calls out, relieved. A second later, a spoon appears in Eddie’s vision. “Taste it for me?”
Rather than taking the spoon from Buck, Eddie simply opens his mouth. His eyes slide up to Buck, who watches him with flushed cheeks and takes a long moment to move. Then, Buck gently slides the spoon into Eddie’s mouth. Eddie closes his lips around it.
“It’s good,” he says, once Buck pulls the spoon away. “That’ll go well with the chicken.”
“Thanks.” Buck stays there, watching him, before kicking back into action and taking the sauce off the stove. The spoon clatters down into the sink, where a veritable mountain of dishes is already waiting for them. A problem for future Buck and Eddie, Eddie has long since decided.
“The sauce is done, the chicken is resting,” Buck says to himself, clearly running through his mental checklist. Frankly, Eddie is surprised that he made do with only a notes app schedule, and didn’t break out the clipboard. “Pie is in the fridge, whipped cream is ready to be whipped…”
“The potatoes and green beans are in the oven and will be done in,” Eddie cranes his neck to check, easily sliding into Buck’s checklist when his voice trails off, “twelve minutes, and I’m almost done with these carrots, so you can start whipping up the dressing for your carrot salad.”
“And the carrots will be julienned?”
Eddie doesn’t bother responding to that, just picks up a thin sliver of carrot – perfectly julienned, if he may say so himself – and holds it up for Buck’s approval. He only looks up when he feels the carrot slide out of his fingers, and when he does, he sees Buck stepping away, chewing, hands nowhere near Eddie’s. He must’ve picked the carrot up with his lips. It’s basically the same move that Eddie pulled with the sauce tasting. Cheeks flushed, Eddie wonders if this is payback or a reward.
“That’s good,” Buck says, still chewing. He’s certainly taking his time with that tiny sliver. At least he’s not likely to choke on it. Eddie’s heard the stories, and though he probably could pull off an emergency tracheotomy, he doesn’t really want to. Doing something like that to his best friend slash the love of his life would probably be traumatising. It would definitely mess with Buck’s dinner schedule.
“Go make your dressing,” Eddie says. He slides the carrots into a bowl and pushes it over to Buck’s side of the counter. According to Buck’s schedule, the only thing left for them to do now is prep the carrot salad dressing, and that’s not exactly a two-person task, so he turns to the full sink and begins to brave Mount Dishes.
Buck whips his dressing up in no time, exactly as Eddie suspected. He’s made this particular salad for them before, usually as a side with dinner to make sure everyone eats their proper share of vegetables. He’s always been good at making sure that they do, at making them eat food that’s healthy but also tastes good, but he’s been on an extra little health kick lately. Eddie isn’t quite sure what brought it on, but he’s not complaining. He likes Buck’s carrot salads and roasted green beans.
He’s not that big of a fan of the kale smoothies, but he thinks he’s made himself clear on that front. This morning, his smoothie was a nice, appealing, strawberry pink, no green kale chunks anywhere in sight.
By the time Buck places the carrots in the fridge, Eddie has tossed the dirtiest dishes in the dishwasher and is just debating if it’s worth making a start on the rest of them by hand, or if he won’t have enough time for that. Their friends can be here any second, after all, and it would be a waste of hot water if he doesn’t actually use it.
“All done,” Buck announces. He doesn’t slam the fridge door shut, but the way he claps his hands is loud and final enough. “I told you the schedule was a good idea.”
Eddie rolls his eyes.
“I never actually disagreed with that,” he points out, setting the measuring cup back into the sink and deciding that it can wait till later. “I just didn’t like the way you were stressing yourself out over things that were always going to be fine.”
“Oh.” Buck’s expression flickers through several emotions, eventually settling on a little pleased smile before he clears his throat and changes the topic. “Here, taste this for me?”
“You know it’s perfect,” Eddie says, though he turns fully towards Buck anyway, “you already put it in the fridge.”
“Humour me.”
“I always do.”
Eddie expects Buck to hold up a fork for him, carrots speared on the prongs. Maybe a spoon, even. Instead, Buck is holding up several of the smallest bits of carrot between his fingers, the dressing glistening on his thumb.
Heart pounding, Eddie steps forward. Buck meets him in the middle of the kitchen, hand raised between them. Eddie opens his mouth. Gently, Buck holds the carrot up, just brushing Eddie’s bottom lip.
Eddie has to duck his head to fully take the bite of food in. Buck lets the carrot go then, of course, but the dressing makes them stick to his fingers. The only logical thing for Eddie to do then, of course, is to take Buck’s thumb and forefinger into his mouth and clean them up with his tongue.
Well. Really, the logical thing would’ve been for Buck to use a goddamn kitchen utensil, but that clearly didn’t happen. Eddie’s just rolling with the punches, here.
The carrot shavings fall into Eddie’s mouth with a soft nudge from his tongue. He slides it against Buck’s fingers a little more insistently, licking up all the dressing clinging to Buck’s skin. He hums.
All the while, they look right at each other, eye contact never breaking.
Suddenly, the bell rings.
“They’re here,” Buck breathes out. His fingers are still in Eddie’s mouth. Eddie sucks on them gently, only a little bit to clean them up and mostly to see Buck’s eyes darken and his cheeks flush. He rips his hand away quickly. Eddie misses it immediately.
The carrots are still there, though. Eddie chews them, once, twice, then swallows.
“Tasty,” he says, voice coming out lower than he intended.
“What?” Buck blinks. He’s still staring at his fingers, now shiny with Eddie’s spit instead of carrot dressing.
“The carrots. They taste good.” Using confidence Eddie quite frankly didn’t know he had until now, he lets his eyes flicker down to Buck’s hand, and he smirks. When he drags his gaze back up to Buck’s face, he’s delighted to see how red he is, the birthmark on his eyebrow darkening along with the rest of his skin.
“Let’s go,” Eddie says, wrenching himself out of the moment. “Our friends are waiting.”
“Right.” Buck clears his throat. He wipes his fingers on his apron. “Let’s, uh, let’s open the door. Chimney will never let us hear the end of it if we leave them on the doorstep.”
“He’ll be insufferable,” Eddie agrees, following Buck out of the kitchen and down the hallway.
“Christopher,” he calls out, “they’re here.”
His son shouts something back, muffled by the walls between them and the sound of their friends greeting them. It’s not Chimney yet, but Bobby and Athena, each holding a covered dish to add to their dessert table.
Both Buck and Eddie easily slide into their roles as hosts, bringing out drinks and chatting and keeping an eye on the food in the kitchen. Everything turns out great, thankfully. For hours that night, their house is filled with laughter, good food, and great company.
But as much of a success as dinner is, Eddie can’t forget the feeling of Buck’s fingers in his mouth. The taste of his skin, the curve of his fingernails.
The look in Buck’s eyes when Eddie sucked on them.
Look, Eddie knows he’s in love with Buck. He’s known it for a while, now. And he’d suspected that his feelings might not be unrequited, but he’d never dared let himself hope.
Now, though? Now that he’s seen pure, unadulterated lust in Buck’s expression, aimed directly at him?
Now, Eddie hopes.
One of Eddie’s favourite things about not living on his own is that he doesn’t have to do every single household task alone.
Well. That’s not exactly true.
He used to be happy about doing everything alone, back when he first moved to Los Angeles. Christopher was so young then, way too young to be of help when it came to cooking and cleaning and all those little domestic chores. They’d made a deal back then, that Christopher would try to keep his toys tidied up, and Eddie did pretty much everything else.
It was exhausting, working full-time and keeping the house clean and them both fed and doing it all without help. Sure, his Abuela and Tia Pepa would’ve been happy to lend a hand, to do more than watch Christopher while he worked, before he’d gotten childcare sorted out, but Eddie never asked for help. He was too used to the way his parents stepped in, overbearing and condescending and making him feel like that little kid who burnt his sisters’ eggs but was really just trying to help, to do his best.
Coming to Los Angeles had been a breath of fresh air. Just him, and Christopher, and no outside interference.
Him, and Christopher, and the dust piling up in every nook and cranny and the neverending laundry and piles of dishes and paperwork and countless other things to focus on.
And then came Buck.
Buck solved his childcare problem, easy as breathing. Buck liked to cook and quickly slotted himself into Eddie and Christopher’s schedule for weekly dinners, claiming it was to help him practice non-breakfast meals. Buck, who picked up little tasks around the house, not because he didn’t think Eddie could handle it, but because he’d liked to help.
Buck, standing next to him now, all those years later, vacuum in one hand and rag in the other.
“Okay,” Buck says, tossing the – thankfully still clean – rag on the kitchen counter, “I’m thinking we vacuum first, then clean everything else, then mop. We probably can’t do everything before we have to pick Chris up, but I think we can at least finish the vacuuming.”
“Sure.” Eddie doesn’t think he really cares about the order of their spring cleaning extravaganza, or exactly how far they can get in the twenty minutes they have before piling into the car. He clicks around on his phone, setting an alarm so they won’t have to worry about losing track of time. “Do you want to vacuum or move everything out of the way?”
“I’ll vacuum,” Buck says, just like Eddie thought he would. They have a system, after all. Buck vacuums, and Eddie walks just ahead of him, moving furniture out of the way so Buck can reach all the nooks and crannies, placing everything back in position as soon as he can. This way, they don’t have to stop vacuuming to move stuff around every other minute. That had probably been Eddie’s least favourite part of vacuuming, back when he still had to do it alone.
“Are we doing just the living room, or everything?”
“Everything except Christopher’s room,” Eddie decides. Christopher is old enough to clean his own room by now. Besides, Eddie thinks that if he walks in there and sees all the laundry on the floor, the half a dozen cups that Christopher swears he doesn’t hoard and Eddie knows he does, he’ll lose all his cleaning motivation before he can even blink. “He’s doing that himself this weekend. We can start in the living room and work towards our bedroom?”
Buck gives him that same pleased little grin he wears whenever Eddie refers to something as ours. Our house, our room, our bed. Our life.
“Sounds like a plan.”
They move to the living room. Buck gets the vacuum set up while Eddie cues up their cleaning playlist. Sure, they won’t be able to hear much of it while Buck is vacuuming, but he always insists on it anyway. According to Buck, the vibes will be different if the playlist isn’t on, and good vibes are essential for good cleaning. Eddie doesn’t know if he agrees with that statement, but he likes a clean house and a happy Buck, so he’ll listen to that playlist any day.
Besides, it’s a pretty good playlist. They made it together, after all.
“Ready?” Buck brandishes the vacuum cleaner almost as if it’s a sword. His head is already bopping to the first song, unstyled curls shifting with every movement.
Eddie nods. He reaches for the lamp in the corner.
“Ready.”
It’s a bit of an intricate dance, vacuuming together. As furniture-mover, you have to anticipate the other person’s movements, predict where they want to vacuum next and feel when they’re done with a certain area and everything can be placed back. Meanwhile, as vacuum-holder, you have to keep pace, not move too quickly, but also not make the other person feel like you’re waiting for them. And also vacuum. You have to do that part too.
It’s a good thing Buck and Eddie are pretty good at this whole teamwork thing, is all Eddie is saying.
The living room is no problem. They’re used to this dance, know all the steps. Buck sings along to the music he can barely hear, voice off-key and half the lyrics wrong, Eddie is sure of it, but he’s grinning while he sings and doing some half-aborted dance moves, and he looks so goddamn happy that Eddie would never, ever dare point it out.
The dining room is always easy. There’s not a lot of furniture there, after all, not a lot that Buck can’t move around. They have to pause then, though, because to reach the kitchen and hallway, Buck needs to plug the vacuum into a different power socket. So while Buck chases the dust out from underneath the table, Eddie walks back over to the power socket, hand raised over the plug but not touching it yet until Buck calls out that he’s done.
For a moment, the silence is almost overpowering as the vacuum turns off. Then, their playlist blares back to life, the opening melody of one of Buck’s – and therefore one of Eddie’s – favourite songs playing.
“Oh, I love this one,” Buck says, predictably. Eddie doesn’t need to look at him to know he’s dancing, but he likes watching Buck, so he does anyway.
See, Eddie might have been a ballroom dancer, so he has rhythm and all that. He dances often these days, and he’s never really danced to this kind of music, but he knows how to move with the beat. Buck, on the other hand, is living proof that you don’t always need to be good at things in order to enjoy them.
He’s still singing off-key, of course, though he at least seems to know all of these lyrics properly. His hips are shimmying, one arm holding the neck of the vacuum cleaner and the other hand pumping the air, and he’s stepping around and twirling around the table.
Eddie leans against the wall and watches, for a second. Buck knows he’s there, of course, but he doesn’t turn his dance into a performance. He doesn’t even look up, doesn’t even worry about whether or not Eddie is watching him. He’s just having a good time, is just letting loose.
Fuck, Eddie loves him so much.
It almost bursts past his lips, a love confession on the tip of his tongue, when Buck stumbles over his feet and nearly falls into the dining table. Instead, what leaves his mouth is a loud laugh, even as Eddie steps forward and frees the vacuum cleaner from Buck’s grip. Buck’s singing came to a halt with a startled swear when he tripped, but he’s still moving, albeit with slightly smaller movements.
“Give me that,” Eddie says, tugging the vacuum cleaner to the kitchen, where it’ll be safe and out of reach. The last thing they need today is a trip to the ER because Buck’s feet get tangled up in it. Spring cleaning is dangerous enough, Eddie thinks.
“Eddie, come dance with me,” Buck calls after him. Eddie is helpless to do anything but listen to him, so he leaves the vacuum cleaner on its own in the kitchen and turns back to Buck, already nodding his head in time with the beat. His feet join in, a simple stepping pattern, each move getting him closer and closer to his best friend. The love of his life. His Buck.
“Careful,” Eddie says, as Buck begins to mirror his moves, a slight pinch between his eyebrows out of focus, “don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“Fuck you,” Buck says, a little breathlessly. He’s keeping up, though, not nearly as off-beat as he was before. His arms are a different story, still flailing around him. When he almost smacks Eddie in the face, Eddie takes his hand instead, trying valiantly to ignore the flutter in his stomach when their fingers intertwine, and raises it up as if they’re about to slow dance.
“This song is a little fast for that,” Buck says, but he easily slots into place in front of Eddie, his free hand coming up on Eddie’s upper arm and Eddie’s hand splayed out on Buck’s back.
No discussion about who gets to lead, of course. They both know that this is more up Eddie’s alley than it is Buck’s.
“You can dance to a song of any speed,” Eddie says, guiding them in a simple stepping pattern. “You just have to adapt.”
True enough, Eddie probably could whisk his partner around to the beat of this song, if he’d been in an actual ballroom, with plenty of space and no furniture around. As it is, however, they have a dining table and chairs to worry about, so he guides them into a slower rhythm, moving in steady circles. They keep going like that even as the song changes on them, neither of them ready to let go of the moment just yet.
“Hey, Eddie,” Buck says, leaning in just that little bit closer.
“Yeah?” Even closer.
“Eddie,” Buck breathes out, and he’s leaning in and in and in, so close Eddie can practically taste his breath, so close his lips almost brush against Buck’s, and oh, okay, they’re doing this now, Eddie desperately wants to do this now, and-
The music cuts out.
The silence is jarring enough that they jump apart, both blushing as if they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t.
“The alarm,” Buck says, panting as heavily as he does after a run. It takes a second for Eddie’s mind to get with the programme.
The alarm he’d set earlier. Their sign to go pick up Christopher.
“Right.” He swallows. He’s a little disappointed that they got interrupted, sure, but the sheer potential of it all is buzzing under his skin.
Buck was about to kiss him.
Buck wants to kiss him.
“We, uh, we should go,” Buck says. He’s bright red, even his birthmark having darkened with it. He looks happy, though. Really happy.
“We should,” Eddie breathes out. He doesn’t move.
They stay there for a long second, chest heaving, just looking at each other, before they head out of the house and towards the car.
Yeah, Eddie thinks, it’s a shame that they were interrupted. That they couldn’t do anything about the tension that’s been thrumming between them for so long.
It’s okay, though. They’ve waited years for this, after all.
They can wait a little longer.
In the end, they don’t have to wait all that much longer.
It’s late in the evening, late enough that Christopher has gone to bed and the dishwasher is done running. Spring cleaning is long done, every surface of the house sparkling anew and smelling distinctly of Buck’s lemon diy-cleaning spray. All that’s left to do is tackle the pile of clean laundry they’ve been letting build up these past few days.
Honestly, Eddie would have been happy to push the laundry back another day, but right when he’d sat down on the couch, hoping to put his feet up on the table and watch some mindless television and maybe, just maybe, finally get to kiss Buck, the man himself had appeared and unceremoniously dumped the entire laundry basket on the couch next to him. Here they are now, each sitting cross-legged on one end of the couch, pulling random items from the pile and folding them neatly. The coffee table is covered in much neater piles, one for each room in the house. Bathroom towels on one end, kitchen towels on the other. A pile for Christopher, suspiciously smaller than it should be this time of the week – Eddie really needs to talk to him about tossing his laundry in the designated basket instead of hoarding it in his room – and, biggest of them all, a pile for Buck and Eddie.
Oh, they’d tried to keep things somewhat separated at first. But now that they’re essentially dealing with enough closet space for one person and two people's worth of clothes, it’s a little bit difficult not to blur those lines. They’ve found it much easier to separate their clothes by type of item than by whom it belongs to. So all of their socks go in one drawer, all of their shirts are together, all of their pants in a single neat stack.
That last one is objectively the funniest. They have the same shoe size, so sharing socks is fine, and although it’s usually easy to tell which shirt belongs to who, they can usually get away with wearing each other’s shirt. Honestly, Eddie kind of loves it when they do that. Wearing Buck’s clothes makes him feel so safe, so held, and seeing Buck in his shoots a little thrill through him that he doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of.
Sharing pants, though? Between Buck’s long, long legs and Eddie’s, ah, more curved behind, they definitely do not wear the same size pants. Eddie’s tripped over too-long jeans more than once, is all he’s saying, and he’s rather fond of Buck’s confused expression when he pulls on a pair of pants, only to be left with several inches of bare ankle.
“Yours?” Buck asks, holding up a pair of black underwear.
Eddie squints at it. Quite frankly, all black boxer briefs look the same to him. They might not always wear the same size, but their underwear sizes aren’t that different.
“If you don’t recognise them,” he says, and Buck nods once and places them on the little Eddie-underwear pile.
Yeah. That’s the one thing that they don’t share. Underwear. Well, that and shoes, but Eddie is fairly sure that that’s just a style thing, and that Buck wouldn’t even blink if Eddie woke up one morning and decided to wear Buck’s sneakers. Underwear, on the other hand, is relegated to their respective sides of the underwear drawer. Buck got them a whole entire drawer divider for it and everything. It would be useful, except they favour not only the same style and colour of boxer briefs, but also the same brand. With the exception of a few pairs, all of their underwear looks the exact same. At this point, Eddie isn’t even sure if the underwear he’s got on right now is even his or not, even though he took it from his side of the drawer.
He folds a pair of Christopher’s socks. Buck squints at another pair of black boxer briefs.
“Buck, just leave it,” Eddie says with a sigh, tossing the socks in the direction of the Christopher-pile. “We might as well just accept that we can’t keep underwear separate either. Either that, or one of us needs to switch it up.”
“You’re probably right.” Buck folds the underwear and places it right between the two existing underwear piles. “But, uh, that doesn’t gross you out?”
“They’ve been washed.” Eddie shrugs. Like, he probably wouldn’t wear Buck’s dirty underwear, but if things are clean, he doesn’t see the issue. It’s Buck and him, after all. “I’m fine with it if you are.”
“Yeah.” Buck’s head bobs up and down, and then it keeps doing so until he looks like a bobblehead. Eddie has to resist the urge to lean over and still his chin. “Just, uh…”
“Just what?”
“Most friends don’t share underwear.”
Eddie shrugs again.
“Most friends also don’t share beds,” he points out, folding up one of Buck’s sleep shirts. He wonders if he can get away with wearing it later tonight, if he makes sure that it’s on top of one of the shirt piles. It’s soft. “Or other clothes, or phone plans. Or lives, not the way we do.”
“I guess you’re right.” Buck still isn’t quite meeting his eyes.
Eddie hesitates briefly, but then decides to push it. He’s pretty sure he can get away with it, this time.
“Most friends don’t slow dance to pop songs and almost kiss in the middle of spring cleaning,” he adds, voice coming out steadier than he’d expected and full of love. He hopes Buck can hear that, too.
Buck’s head snaps up.
“Uh,” he says, very eloquently. He’s blushing furiously. Eddie can’t quite decipher his expression. He looks a little confused, a little scared. A little like he’s been caught. But there’s some truth in there, too. Some love.
“Buck,” Eddie says, scooting forward until he can place one hand on Buck’s shoulder, laundry pile between them be damned. “Buck, I don’t want to be just friends anymore.”
“No?” Buck sounds so full of hope, eyes blinking up at him so earnestly, lovingly, that it almost makes Eddie kiss him right then and there. He doesn’t, though, because he wants to make sure that they’re completely on the same page, here. He doesn’t want Buck to mistake this for some sort of convoluted friends-with-benefits-type thing.
“No,” Eddie confirms. “I think this, this thing between us? It hasn’t been friendship in a long time. I just didn’t see it, before.”
“I’m in love with you,” Buck blurts out. “I- Eddie. Eddie, I love you.”
“I love you too,” Eddie says, and then he’s leaning forward and Buck’s leaning in and the laundry between them gets horribly creased, but it doesn’t matter because Buck’s lips are on his and Eddie would live in rumpled clothes forever if it means he gets to keep this.
Buck’s lips are soft and steady against his own. He tastes of peppermint chapstick and the chicken they had for dinner. Eddie wants to lick every last bit of flavour from his mouth. Sure, he’s kissed people before, but it’s never felt like this. It’s so good, so all-consuming, intoxicating. Eddie thinks he could get drunk of this, of Buck’s lips and tongue and teeth, the big hand Buck has on the back of his head, angling him just right.
“Buck,” he breathes out, as they break apart for air. “Buck, I- closer.”
“Well, unless you want to kick the laundry to the ground, we can’t get much closer here,” Buck says, placing soft sucking kisses down Eddie’s jaw.
“I don’t care about the laundry,” Eddie says. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Eddie can feel Buck’s smile against his skin. It’s a new sensation, and it’s one he hopes he becomes more and more familiar with. He’d get the feeling of Buck’s curved lips tattooed on him, if he could.
“We should take this to the bedroom,” Eddie gasps out, as Buck’s kisses trail lower and lower. He rakes his fingers through Buck’s curls. “Our bedroom.”
“I like the sound of that,” Buck agrees. “Our bedroom.”
“It’s all ours,” Eddie says, hands sliding down until they cup Buck’s face, pulling him away from Eddie’s collarbone and up until he’s facing Eddie properly. “You know that, right? Our bedroom, and our house, and our life. I want it all, with you.”
The smile that breaks out on Buck’s face shines so brightly, he could give the sun a run for its money.
“I want it all with you, too,” Buck says, and Eddie just has to kiss him about it.
They do make their way to the bedroom eventually. Buck insists they finish the laundry first, so it doesn’t crease from a night spent on the couch and on the floor instead of neatly folded. They hurry through it, slapping half-folded shirts onto the table and practically racing each other down the hallway when they’re done. Eddie feels like a teenager again, fumbling around in the dark, giggling and hiding moans and whispered curses in the crook of a neck. At the same time, he feels so much like him, so in the present, so at home in his skin.
He’s never felt so at home at all.
When Eddie wakes up the next day, the first morning sunlight is just streaming in through the window. It catches on the pale, rumpled bedsheets, on their bare skin. On Buck’s curls, fluffy and sleep-mussed where his head rests on Eddie’s chest. Buck’s warm breath puffs against Eddie’s damp skin with every exhale. Eddie is warm, too warm, and he kind of has to pee, and his mouth tastes like something died in there, and he doesn’t think he’s ever cared about anything less. Because Buck is here, right here, in his arms and in his life and in his heart, and Eddie doesn’t plan on ever letting go.
There’s that saying, Eddie thinks, closing his eyes and already drifting back asleep, about home not being a place, but people. And although Eddie likes the idea of that, knows that places and buildings aren’t everything, he doesn’t think that’s entirely true either. Because yes, his home is Christopher, and Buck, but his home is South Bedford Street, too, because he doesn’t think he’d feel like this anywhere else. He feels at home here. Maybe, then, home is both.
Maybe home is everything.
Maybe home, he thinks, blinking slower and slower as sleep takes over, is just love.