Chapter Text
Eddie collapses down on the sofa, propping his ankle up on the coffee table. It’s pretty much completely healed by now, but it still twinges a bit when he’s been on his feet all day. Marisol drops onto the couch next to him and kicks off her heels.
“Man, that was such a funny coincidence, seeing Buck and Tommy at Micheli's,” he says.
She hums noncommittally. “It’s a pretty popular spot, isn’t it?”
Eddie wouldn’t really know—Buck’s the one who picks the restaurant when they go out, always excited to try whatever new place he saw on instagram or the Los Angeles food subreddit. Now that he thinks about, Buck is definitely the one who first mentioned Micheli's to Eddie, so maybe it wasn’t such a coincidence.
“Well, I’m glad he and Tommy are hanging out. I knew they’d hit it off if Buck just gave him a chance.” It had been a surprise to see them out together, but a good surprise. After the basketball incident, Tommy had told Eddie he wanted to clear the air with Buck, and it seems the air was successfully cleared.
They’d been done with their dinner, but Eddie had convinced the two of them to stay for another drink while he and Marisol waited for their own pizza. It had been fun—he likes Tommy a lot, and now that Buck’s let his guard down he can see he likes the guy, too.
It kinda reminded him of how Buck was when he first met Eddie—territorial, at first, but then once Eddie had proved he wouldn’t be so easily put-off by Buck’s barking he’d sort of…melted. That was the only word Eddie could think of to describe it, the way he’d smiled and just opened up, like a dog rolling over to show his soft belly, blushing pink as a flower unfurling into full bloom.
Anyway, it would’ve been a nice night, with the four of them—and on the surface, it had been. They’d laughed and joked and recounted the entire hurricane rescue for Marisol. But something had felt…off with Buck. It had been bothering Eddie all night. Not quite the same way things had felt off with him before the basketball incident. Something else. He’d been…nervous, almost? Eddie had been thrilled to run into them, but for a minute when his gaze landed on Buck, Buck had looked…guilty, almost.
He had no reason to be. He’d already apologized to Eddie for the whole thing, and Eddie had reassured him and gently chided him for not just telling him he was feeling left out, and they’d been fine since then. More than fine. They had plans to take Chris to his surf lesson tomorrow, for god’s sake.
“Eddie,” Marisol prods gently. “What are you thinking about?”
Eddie turns to her, his easy-going smile already in place. Her own smile flickers and he knows he’s made a mistake.
They’ve been talking about this, is the thing. A few days ago, she sat him down and told her how it bothers her that Eddie doesn’t—hasn’t—opened up to her. He can’t really deny it. He hadn’t told her much at all about the hurricane rescue until it had come up tonight. He hadn’t told her much about Shannon, or about what Chris had been going through a few weeks ago. He doesn’t know why—he’s not that guy that just bottles up his feelings anymore. He’s not.
So he takes a breath, and he says, “I guess I’m just thinking about Buck.”
“Buck?” she echoes, but she doesn’t sound surprised, exactly.
“Yeah,” Eddie continues. “He seemed off tonight, and I guess maybe he’s still feeling guilty about what happened at the pick-up game, but—I forgave him for that.”
Tommy had been the one to explain the basketball incident to Marisol, when she’d showed up that night for their date and Eddie had been crashed out on the couch, loopy with pain meds. Eddie’s actually not sure what Tommy had told Marisol, but she seemed to at least have gleaned that Buck was more or less responsible for Eddie’s condition.
Eddie shakes his head and blows out a breath of frustration. “I just—I wish there was some way to get him to really understand, you know? That we’re partners and that nothing and no one is ever going to change that.”
Marisol shifts beside him, her dark curls brushing against his arm where it lies along the back of the couch. “Well, I mean. What if one of you gets reassigned?”
Eddie stares at her for a minute, puzzled. Then he laughs. “No, I don’t mean partners at work. I mean, you know. We’re partners.”
Now it’s her turn to look puzzled.
“Like,” Eddie begins, but he’s not sure how to even say it. He’s never had to…explain to someone what Buck is to him. At least, not like this. All his explanations in the past have been to Buck himself, and they’ve taken the form of—well, sitting him down and telling him Eddie put him in his will as the legal guardian of his child, for example. “You know. We’re always there for each other. We support each other through everything. He’s got my back, and I’ve got his. Always have.”
There. That about says it, right?
Marisol softens, settling back against Eddie’s arm. “He’s your best friend,” she supplies.
“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. “And he’s always gonna be my best friend. He’s always gonna be the person I turn to. The first person I look to when I’m happy, or hurting.” He laughs again. “Even when it’s kind of his fault.”
Marisol goes a little still against his arm, and draws away. “The first person?”
Eddie turns his face toward her. “Well, yeah. That’s just how it’s been since we met.”
Marisol blinks at him. The expression on her face is not one he’s seen before, even after almost five months of dating. He doesn’t know what it means.
“Okay,” she says slowly. Almost like she’s trying to be careful. “But…I mean, of course you’ll always be friends but that’s not…friends are…they’re important, of course. And they’re the most important people to us for a while, but then, eventually you…you settle down…you start a family…and your priorities change.”
“Start a family?” Eddie echoes, the words setting off an alarm in his head that he’d thought he’d defused long ago with a careful maybe you should go home, first. “I already have a family, Marisol.”
They’ve gotten further and further apart on the couch, pressed to either corner like fighters in a ring.
“I know that,” she says, a tart note in her voice. “I was speaking broadly. I didn’t mean—I know you have Chris, already, I just meant—”
Chris. Eddie hadn’t even thought she’d been excluding Chris when she’d said ‘start a family.’ Chris was his son, his heart, his entire world.
No. He’d thought when she said start a family that she’d meant a family without Buck. And the thought is—it chokes him. A panic like he hasn’t felt in almost two years is building in the pit of his chest. The mere suggestion of the possibility of it ever not being Buck at his side is like—it’s like he can’t breathe. The idea that they’re ever going to be less than what they are to each other now, it’s—it breaks his heart.
“I…no,” he says faintly. “That’s…no.”
He stares at Marisol from across the couch, and he suddenly feels like he’s never seen her before in his life. What is he doing here? What is she doing here? What have they been doing?
“I don’t think I can do this,” he says in a rush.
Her brows pull together. “What?”
“I—”
“Eddie,” she says, more gently, her voice curling around his name in that way that he used to find cute, that drew him in when they first started this thing. She leans toward him, puts a hand on his knee. “I’m not telling you you can’t be friends with Buck.”
Of course she’s not, because that would be the most absurd thing anyone has ever said to him. Buck—his friendship, his place in their lives—is not up for debate.
Marisol isn’t absurd. She’s pretty sensible, actually. He’d liked that about her, at first. It had reminded him of Shannon, a little.
He doesn’t really see the resemblance, now. In fact, he doesn’t really see any of the things he’d liked about Marisol at the hardware store, or during those first few dates. What even were they? Her smile? Her laugh? All he sees now is a woman sitting on his couch who doesn’t belong there.
“I can’t do this,” he says again, for a lack of anything else to say. “I don’t—this isn’t going to work out.”
“Eddie, what?” she demands, pulling her hand back. “All I meant was—”
He drags a hand down his face. “No, no, it’s—you were right, Marisol. Before, I mean. You were right.” He means during their last “fight”—if it could be called a fight. “I don’t open up to you. I don’t ever tell you what’s going on with me. I don’t—I don’t make you—a—a priority.” There’s no space for you in my life, he wants to say. It’s true, but he thinks he doesn’t need to say it.
She’s staring at him, still, anger flashing bright and hot over her face. “And you won’t,” she concludes crisply. Final, like a period at the end of a sentence.
Eddie hangs his head between his shoulders.
“Okay,” she says. And she sounds just—done. “Okay.”
He looks up.
She meets his gaze and nods to herself. Picks herself off the couch, straightens her blouse. Wipes below her eyes like she’s wiping tears, but she’s not crying. Slides her feet back into her heels, tucks her phone back into her purse and throws the strap over her shoulder.
“Have a nice life, Eddie,” she says, and breezes to the door. She pauses there. “I hope you and Buck are very happy together.”
It’s a little caustic. A little mean. And Eddie probably deserves that, but it makes something hot and feral crack like a whip inside him and before he knows it, he’s on his feet.
But she’s gone before he can get the last word, the front door rattling in its frame behind her.
Eddie collapses back down onto the couch, all the fight leaving him. He buries his face in his hands and just—breathes. And thinks.
About what the fuck it means that he can’t be with Marisol. About what it means that he can’t settle down with a woman because he can’t give up what he has with Buck. About what it means that he would rather throw himself into a five-alarm fire or another hurricane than do anything that might threaten what they have together.
Eddie wakes with a start. It’s a second or two before he identifies the cause of his abrupt waking—namely, the six-foot-two firefighter bursting through his front door.
“Morning!” Buck chirps. He’s wearing pinkish board shorts and a soft blue T-shirt, looking like sunshine, and miles away from the tense, cagey Buck Eddie had seen last night.
Miles away from how Eddie currently feels.
Buck pauses in the entryway as he toes off his shoes, appearing to take in the full picture of Eddie and realizing that he just woke up on the couch, still wearing the clothes he was in last night.
Eddie is also, himself, grappling with that fact. He fell asleep in the early hours of the morning, after exhausting himself all night thinking about Buck, and everything he means to Eddie, and to Chris, and why Eddie was ready to dump Marisol at the drop of a hat for daring to even slightly imply that Buck could ever be anything but the most important person to them.
“Sleeping on the couch Eddie?” Buck smiles, all smug and playful, the smile he only gets when he’s making a joke at Eddie’s expense. A smile Eddie’s unfathomably fond of, the way he’s fond of all Buck’s smiles. “What happened? Marisol kick you out of bed?”
He’ll blame it on the lack of sleep, that he’s too caught up categorizing Buck’s smile to answer right away. “Uh. Well, kind of. We broke up.”
“Wh-what?” Buck’s smile is wiped from his face, but before Eddie can mourn it, Buck’s swooping around to come sit beside him on the couch. “But I just saw you guys last night, everything seemed fine?”
Eddie rubs the bridge of his nose, feeling a bit like he’s staring into a too-bright light. “Seemed being the operative word, there.”
Buck just looks at him, bewildered.
Eddie can’t talk about this with him. Not now, not yet. Buck’s the person he wants to talk to about everything, but how can he even begin to explain the clusterfuck of last night? He barely understands what happened. “We’d been having—I don’t know. Growing pains. And it just became clear that…” He groans. “Buck, I literally just woke up, can I have a cup of coffee or something first?”
“O-of course, I’ll go brew a pot right now,” Buck says, almost tripping over his own feet in his haste to get to the kitchen. His voice calls back, “Hey, are there any chocolate chips leftover from the cookies we made a few weeks ago? I was gonna make pancakes.”
“There should be,” Eddie calls back, wiping the sleep out of his eyes and lumbering to his feet. He drags himself to the bathroom, knocking on Chris’s door as he passes by. “Chris, Buck’s—”
The door swings open and Chris appears, sleepy-eyed, his curls a wild halo around his head, but smiling so big Eddie’s whole body relaxes. “Buck’s here?”
“Kitchen!” Buck calls.
Eddie takes a quick shower and changes into clean clothes. When he joins Chris and Buck in the kitchen, they’ve already got a small stack of pancakes made, and they’re both grinning and jabbering away about the new Spiderman video game they’ve both recently gotten obsessed with.
“No way you beat that level on your first try,” Buck says incredulously. “You’re good, buddy, but you’re not that good.”
“I did!” Chris insists.
Eddie leans against the doorframe and just—watches. Watches his two favorite people, who are in turn each other’s favorite people, laugh and rib each other and flip pancakes. Buttery morning light saturates the kitchen, and something in Eddie’s chest goes loose and pliant. There’s no trace of whatever tension he’d been sensing in Buck last night. In fact, he looks relaxed. At ease. Like standing in Eddie’s kitchen at eight am on a Sunday is exactly where he’s supposed to be.
After how fraught the past week has been between them, Eddie feels a little like sinking to his knees and thanking god or the universe or whoever that he has this. That they’ve built something this resilient, this unshakable. Something he can trust in a way he’s never done before.
The morning unfolds from there: they eat pancakes, drizzled with syrup and scattered with berries, they make plans for what they’re going to do at the beach, they relax into the familiar, easy cadence of a morning like this, all three of them together like it’s supposed to be.
It’s…domestic. It’s life, the way the three of them have been living it for some time now. They’re a family. And Eddie suddenly—he can’t understand why they don’t have this every day. Not the pancakes and the beach, but the rest of it. The back-and-forth, the cooking together, the making plans, the laughter, the sharing a life the—the love.
Eddie feels, very suddenly, winded.
He knows he loves Buck, that’s not news to probably anyone in the greater Los Angeles area, least of all Eddie. But it’s—
It’s more than that. It’s the way he lights up every time Buck comes in the room. It’s the way everything in his body eases just a little more when Buck is near. It’s the way he wants Buck to be the first person Eddie sees in the morning, every morning.
It makes sense now, the way it didn’t last night. Why he’s had so little interest in trying to build anything with Marisol. He doesn’t want her. He wants Buck, bright and buoyant, smug and teasing, silly and serious and nervous and playful and tender and loving and—Buck.
“Are you gonna tell him?”
Eddie almost falls out of his chair. “Tell who? What?”
His heart is pounding.
“Chris,” Buck says patiently. Eddie looks around and realizes Chris left the kitchen about ten seconds ago to get dressed. “Are you going to tell him about Marisol?”
Right. Right, the fact that Eddie dumped his girlfriend of almost five months might be of interest to his son who, as of late, had probably been spending more time with her than Eddie has.
“Uh,” Eddie stammers. “No, I—not yet. Tomorrow. I just wanna enjoy the day with you guys.”
“Okay, I won’t mention it.” Buck smiles at him, soft.
Eddie’s heart turns into Jell-O.
It’s a gorgeous day for the beach, and they get there early enough to beat the inevitable Sunday crowds. Eddie tries not to let the morning’s revelation cast a shadow over their beach day. It’s easier than he anticipated.
He should be reeling. He should be bewildered and confused and knocked completely off-kilter. He just figured out he’s in love with his best friend. He, a man, is in love with his best friend—also a man—and he wants to spend his life with him. There are so many questions lapping at the edges of Eddie’s periphery but right now, in the sand, beneath the sun, watching Chris bob along the waves, he just feels at peace. Because it’s the three of them, and they always make sense together.
They’d picked up sandwiches on the way to the beach, so after Chris’s lesson they eat lunch spread out across their picnic blanket. Overhead, kites wheel and sail through the ocean breeze. Chris is pretty tired from his surf lesson—and the crowds have started getting bigger—so they pack up not long after.
Eddie feels his newfound knowledge like a growing flame in his chest. Like a pool of sunshine.
They drop Chris off at a classmate’s house to finish a history project, and then cruise back down PCH. Eddie starts to doze. He’s tired from his sleepless night, but it’s also just—relief, maybe. It’s being in Buck’s car, Buck’s hand steady on the wheel, driving them home the way he’s done so many times before. Eddie’s never really recognized the feeling he gets, every time, on every drive. It’s comfort. Safety. It’s knowing that he can just sit back and breathe, because Buck’s got him.
“Eddie?” Buck shakes him awake. It’s the second time he’s woken Eddie today, and Eddie can’t help the smile that instinctively wants to take over his face. “We’re home.”
Eddie stretches, and unbuckles his seatbelt, and starts to open his door when he realized Buck hasn’t moved.
Eddie turns back to him. “You coming in? You should stay for dinner.” He smiles self-deprecatingly. “I don’t have any plans tonight, clearly, seeing as Chris is busy and I just broke up with my girlfriend.”
Not that he’d been spending most of his evenings with her lately anyway.
“Uh, yeah,” Buck says. He scratches the side of his neck. “We didn’t…get a chance to really talk about it. What happened?”
Eddie’s mouth goes suddenly dry, his chest tight. He wants to talk about it with Buck but he just…he can’t open that can of worms right now. Can he?
“We just—we had different priorities,” he settles on.
Buck scoffs softly. “Isn’t that the kind of thing you say when you’re looking for an excuse to get out of a relationship? What does that even mean, ‘different priorities?’”
It means, Eddie thinks, she wanted me to prioritize a future with her, and I wanted to prioritize my best friend.
He doesn’t say it. But he wants to. Maybe he’s being an idiot, thinking he needed to keep this to himself just because—what? Out of respect for a five month long relationship? Because he’s only just realized it himself? Because he had no way of knowing what will happen when he tells Buck what he just discovered?
This is Buck. Eddie knows he can tell him anything, even this, and they’ll still be okay. Maybe even…maybe better than okay.
Buck sighs, clapping a hand down on Eddie’s shoulder. “Well, that sucks. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
Eddie shakes his head. “Don’t be. Marisol was…she didn’t get it. Get…me.”
He looks up into Buck’s eyes.
There’s one person who always, always gets Eddie. Who should have Eddie. Buck’s hand is still on his shoulder, steady and grounding. His eyes look like the sky above the Pacific. Something in Eddie’s chest takes flight, like a kite cut loose from its string, sailing up, up, up into endless blue.
“Eddie,” Buck says, and his voice is different now. Lower. A little nervous. “Can I tell you something?”
Eddie’s answer is immediate. “Anything,” he breathes. Buck’s eyelashes flutter, and his face goes open and soft the way it does when he’s gearing up to say something important.
Eddie’s gaze drop to Buck’s lips—pink, like his birthmark. Eddie wants to taste those lips, and he wants it with a fierceness so sudden it shocks him.
“I’m, uh,” Buck stammers. “Last night. When you saw me and Tommy…we—we were on a date.”
Everything inside Eddie goes still. If his heart is a kite, then this is the moment it plummets back to earth.
Then the words come crashing through Eddie’s brain.
Tommy.
Buck.
Date.
The thought slots into place and Eddie’s thinking about Buck’s caginess at the pizza place, how he kept glancing between Tommy and Eddie, that look of guilt clouding his eyes.
It makes sense now. They were on a date and Eddie—he had no idea. Not a clue.
About a lot of things, it seems.
“And I…I think I want to see him again,” Buck goes on, ducking his head with that bashful smile that Eddie knows so, so well. “Go out with him again. I mean, this is all really new to me, obviously, and it wasn’t something I ever even thought about before, but it’s like—I don’t know. Like I just found a piece of me I never knew was missing.”
It takes Eddie an embarrassing amount of time to realize he’s just been sitting there staring at Buck like he’s short-circuited.
He feels like he has.
But his thoughts finally catch back up to Buck’s words and he realizes two things in very quick succession: one, Buck is telling him something very important about himself. And two, Eddie needs to say something back. Right now.
“I—oh, Buck,” he gets out. “That’s—that’s great. I’m so happy for you. I mean—it’s…”
“Unexpected?” Buck offers.
Eddie laughs, and thinks he manages to keep the edge of hysteria out of it. “A little. But I’m happy for you, Buck. And I’m…I’m really proud of you, man.”
Because no matter what else is happening in the confines of Eddie’s mind, that will always be true.
Buck looks relieved, another shy little smile lighting his face. “Thanks.”
“Hey. Come here.” Eddie pulls him into a hug. And if he holds him a little tighter than usual, Buck doesn’t seem to notice.
Eddie’s got about one thousand emotions churning in his chest at once, but the main thing he knows to be true is this: he loves Buck fiercely and he will hold him and support him through this the way he’s always done.
No matter what else he feels, all Buck needs to know is that Eddie loves him.
Buck curls into his embrace. His voice is a little muffled by Eddie’s shirt when he says, “I felt so bad for keeping it from you.”
“Don’t,” Eddie says, hushed. “Don’t feel bad. It’s okay.”
Buck draws away enough to look Eddie in the face. His eyes are a little misty, not quite teary. “Yeah, but…it didn’t feel right. We tell each other everything.”
Eddie pulls him into another hug, cradles him close. “Yeah,” he agrees softly. “Everything.”