Chapter Text
It's funny, how you can end up with someone and be close enough to have a child together - an entire life together - and then drift away to the point of bitterness.
Maybe you didn't mean to in the end. Maybe you thought you were holding tight to the rope that kept your life rafts together and the other person wasn't holding theirs - they were drifting and you didn't know, because you couldn't see the bottom of their boat. Maybe you held just tight enough to maintain the illusion, but you got tired, and inch by inch you let that rope slip away until you were both adrift.
And the thing is, being adrift is lonely. Being adrift is running from place to place, always looking for home, always looking for a way out or some new opportunity on the horizon that will make things better. You're adrift, sometimes through no fault of your own, sometimes entirely by your own fault, and the first thing you want to do when you're adrift is find something or someone to hold on to.
Eddie knows about being adrift. About loss. He's spent eight years like this, losing sleep and sanity trying to work out what's best for his son that he can actually maintain.
Somewhere along the line, he realised he would have to stop running. That he would have to tether himself to something, because his little boat isn't just him anymore. His little boat has Christopher and he's bailing out water with a teacup, and they're sinking.
He didn't expect to find his tether in L.A.
~*~
The thing is, when Shannon left him with Christopher four years ago, Eddie thought she'd come back. Hoped she'd come back, even.
After a year, he realised she wouldn't, and he picked up and began to move. Around Texas, around Mexico, living with his mother and father and then one of his older sisters. Finally, he ended up in L.A, living alone but at least near abuela and Pépa, where there's sun almost all year round and enough diversity that Chris might not get picked on in school anymore.
At that point, he figured that Shannon wasn't coming back, and that if she did, he'd be less than interested in maintaining a relationship with her.
But then she does come back. She crashes into Eddie's life like a fucking Mack truck with a list of demands - demands Eddie feels will compromise Chris's living situation, Chris who begs him in tears one night to stay in L.A because he doesn't want to move anymore.
Eddie picks every fight he sees. That's why he was in the military, in Afghanistan. So he digs his heels in, and that's where the trouble starts, because Shannon doesn't just want Chris back - Eddie could deal with shared custody, she is his mother after all - but she wants all of it. The nuclear family, Chris, and Eddie as well.
Eddie's love for her has faded, now, to a distant memory. A relic only left behind because they share Chris, and he could never fully hate her after she's given him Chris. But right now, when she's popping up at his workplace and house and everywhere else - something has to change.
He tells her he's not interested, which doesn't work. He tells her he has a new girlfriend, which she outright scoffs at, which - okay, rude.
So Eddie is left with two options - move, and hope Shannon can't find them, which begs a legal battle over custody that he'll probably lose - or fake a relationship.
There's a slight hurdle to that. He doesn't know anyone in L.A. But this is L.A, so there has to be something, right?
This is how he ends up on his old laptop, at ten in the morning, Googling fake relationships. Craigslist seems dodgy and also seems to be where old men post about wanting to buy dirty underwear from college students, so he gives that a huge miss.
The second thing he stumbles across is a clean, legit-looking website offering fake girlfriend and boyfriend services, ranging from a full-blown contractual fake relationship lasting for months (or as long as you need it to! The cheerful writing advertises, custom plans tailored to YOUR NEEDS available!) or a single date, to get your family off your back.
Eddie clicks on it. There are dozens of faces, men and women, all ages and ethnicities and walks of life. He feels like he found a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow until he remembers the gold will cost money.
If Eddie's going to do this, he decides, it has to be good.
It has to be really good.
A woman, he decides, isn't going to cut it. A woman is still a woman like Shannon, and Shannon will stop at nothing to get another woman out of the way. She already didn't believe that he had a new girlfriend.
But - if Eddie has a fake boyfriend - well, he can just say he's gay and then Shannon will leave him alone, right? Because if he's gay there's no reason to keep chasing him, nothing she has to gain. So Eddie will have to suck it up and get a fake boyfriend.
This decision to buckle down leads him to scroll through the website for the next ten minutes, deeming everyone too old or too young or too just weird-looking - all of them look so serious, and really, if Eddie's going to have a fake boyfriend he's at least going to have a good time with said fake boyfriend - until he finds Buck.
Buck is twenty-six (a little on the young side for Eddie, maybe, but workable), tall, with big blue eyes, full lips drawn back into a cheerful, maybe slightly dopey grin, and a crop of short blonde hair. He's good looking, even Eddie can recognise that. He looks like the sort of person that might have been born a golden retriever in another life, and also maybe like he enjoys cotton candy and Ferris wheels.
And he obviously has his settings flicked over to men, which is a bonus. Hell, maybe Buck isn't even gay. Maybe he's just doing it for money. He doesn't look gay. Is that homophobic of Eddie to think? It's all fucking complicated.
He hesitates for a moment, inexplicably nervous. Then he reminds himself that he's setting up a business arrangement, not a date, and messages Buck.
gidiaz87: so how do I go about arranging you as my fake boyfriend?
A little text bubble appears almost immediately. Buck must be on his phone.
itsbuckarootoyou: messaging is the first step!! I'm buck :) what do you have in mind?
Eddie flounders. Buck's nice. Maybe overenthusiastic about being someone's fake boyfriend, but nice.
gidiaz87: Can we talk in person? It's complicated
itsbuckarootoyou: complicated already? we haven't been on our first date :O
Damn him, Eddie almost smiles.
itsbuckarootoyou: I have some time this afternoon though - wanna meet at Starbucks?
This afternoon is soon, but Chris is with abuela and Eddie has time, so it works. He messages back quickly, wanting to solidify plans before Buck gets another offer.
gidiaz87: I can be there at 2. Which Starbucks?
Buck sends a location to him, and Eddie wipes his palms on his jeans. This is nerve wracking. It's pathetic. It's all sorts of fucked up that he has to hire a fake boyfriend to get rid of his very much real ex-wife. Abuela will not be happy when she finds out.
~*~
It's not easy to miss Buck in a crowd.
Partially because he's so damn tall it's stupid and unfair (and seriously, what kind of man has legs that long?), and partially because he almost crashes through the Starbucks in his haste to get to Eddie's table.
"Sorry I'm late," he rushes out, yanking a brightly coloured and somewhat hideous scarf off his neck. "I was at my sister's for lunch and she has lots of boyfriend problems and I was trying to help but - hey, you are G.I Diaz 87 aren't you?"
"That's me," Eddie says faintly, wondering what kind of mayhem he's just invited into his life.
"I'm Buck," Buck says cheerfully, as if Eddie had somehow not matched his face to his profile photo. The grin is the same, and in real life, he's got that same goofy energy he gave off in his photo.
"Eddie," Eddie says, and shakes Buck's hand.
"So." Buck sits down, taking a sip of his frappe whatever it is when the waitress brings it over. "You need a fake boyfriend, and it's complicated. Why's that?"
"Does it matter?" Eddie asks, who still hasn't caught up with the weirdness of the whole situation.
"Yes." Buck arches his eyebrows. "Maybe I don't want to get involved with your drama, Diaz."
"Okay, okay," Eddie sighs. "My ex-wife is trying to weasel her way back into my life. I'm trying to get her to lay off, but nothing is working. I thought if I could convince her I'm gay, that would be the final nail in the coffin."
"Oh, so do you want me to be like, possessive? Crazy? Jealous? Crazy possessive? I can do a combination but you gotta make it worth my while. Ex-wives are always insane, in my experience. One time I fake-dated this woman who was a lesbian who had an ex wife, and she was pretending to go straight because she figured that would annoy her ex more than her just moving on, and she said I was the whitest straightest dude she could find and - are you okay?"
Buck talks a lot. Which is good, because Eddie doesn't talk much. "Uh," he says. "Yeah, I just-"
"Sorry," Buck winces. "People say I talk a lot."
"That's okay," Eddie says faintly, and smiles hurriedly when he notices that Buck looks a little dejected. "I just want to know what the package comes with."
"Oh, okay. Well, it depends. Do you need me to just be seen with you a few times, or do you want the full experience? Instagram posts, Facebook, stuff like that?"
"The whole package," Eddie says quickly. Shannon won't believe just a few outings. "Facebook relationship status, going to family gigs - the whole thing."
"Wow, really?" Buck blinks. "I mean, that's cool, but you hardly know me yet. What if I suck?"
"Do you suck?" Eddie asks.
Buck scrunches his nose up. "No?" he asks uncertainly.
Anyone who sucked, Eddie reasons, would have a resounding, confident "no" to that question, so he feels a little at ease. "Okay," he says. "So how's it work?"
"You decide if you like me," Buck says, "and then you can select a package and put my identifying number down on the package. That'll take me off the site for as long as you continue the payments. You can just add stuff to the basic plan that you want, like weekly dates, Instagram photos, whatever - or you can go for the full package. It's up to you though man."
"And if I go for Facebook status and all the rest?" Eddie asks.
"Easy. We'd post pictures first, make it all believable, then change Facebook status."
"Facebook," Eddie says. "The be-all and end-all of dating in 2020."
Buck blinks, looking a little uncertain. "We... don't have to...?"
"It's cool," Eddie says quickly. "So... how many fake boyfriends do you have at the moment?"
"None," Buck says. "No fake girlfriends either."
Eddie isn't going to ask about Buck's sexuality. That might be neither here nor there for him. Maybe this is just a way to make money and have company. "Why's that?"
"I only have one at a time." Buck sips his ridiculous sugar concoction. "If I had more than one at once, people would connect the dots." Eddie's looking closer, and in the light, he can see a mark over Buck's left eye - an old injury, maybe?
"So," Buck says. "Why G.I Diaz?"
Eddie groans; he knew that would come back to bite him. "I went to Afghanistan."
Buck's eyes are wide. "No way."
"Yeah. Two tours. Back here now, though. Just trying to make ends meet until I can settle into something else." Buck's nodding along seriously - Eddie can't imagine him having responsibilities other than rent, maybe. He won't mention Christopher yet. It might not even get that far.
"Lots of jobs going around town," Buck says. "Unless you're trying to be an actor."
"I'm not," Eddie says quickly. He can't think of anything worse than having a camera shoved in his face all the time. "What do you do?" Buck's definitely in shape - he's broad and solid, defined shoulders, and he has to be doing something physical with how much damn energy he has. Eddie's hoping for something that's not entirely vapid and self-obsessed, but this is L.A.
Buck puffs his chest out proudly. "I'm a firefighter," he says. "With the L.A.F.D."
Which... somehow isn't what Eddie was expecting. It's L.A, and Buck looks like that, and he could be a model or an actor. But he's a firefighter, which is unexpected and kind of nice.
"Sounds like a good gig," he says. "Why this, then?"
Buck looks startled for a moment. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and he's friendly enough that Eddie's already concerned about it getting stabbed. "Extra money," he shrugs eventually. "Free food at family gigs. I can't just hang out and wait for someone to decide I'm their perfect new boyfriend, so it can't really be a full-time thing."
It's still not quite making sense to Eddie, but hell, he'd be even worse off right now if it weren't for Buck and his odd train of thought.
"Well," Eddie says, and smiles. It's a weird situation to be in, but Buck is friendly and remarkably good at mitigating Eddie's awkwardness over this whole situation, and he seems decent enough. He's a good fit, especially given that Eddie has Christopher to think about. "Worked out for me okay."
Buck relaxes a little. It strikes Eddie then how finely tuned Buck is to his body language, to everything he's saying - maybe that's part of being a first responder, always reading people and having to analyse.
"Most importantly," Buck says, "what do you do for fun?"
~*~
The easiest thing for Eddie to do is measure their differences.
Buck is about six-foot-two, with long legs, pale skin, bright blue eyes, and sandy blonde hair. He's got a mark over his left eye that may be an old injury. He's twenty six, and works as a firefighter. He has a loft apartment in the downtown area.
Eddie is maybe six foot, doesn't have long legs, and is brown basically all over - olive skin, brown hair, brown eyes. He's got perma-stubble and he's thirty-three in two months. He works as a diesel mechanic at the moment, and lives in a little house on the outskirts of L.A that he can afford while still paying for Chris's appointments.
Buck doesn't have a kid. Eddie has Christopher.
He's sitting in his living room, a beer cracked open and sweating directly onto the coffee table. Christopher is in bed, and Eddie's eyes are dry and itching from exhaustion, but he's staring at the hire website and making his mind up.
The full package includes a lot of stuff Eddie doesn't necessarily need, like a whole fake installation of Facebook posts from "friends" about their relationship. The mid-tier package has exactly what he wants, really, so he selects that.
It's money. But he's got a job now and if he cuts back on his gym membership, he can still do it. It shouldn't take that long for Shannon to leave him alone.
He still can't believe it's come to this. But he doesn't see another way to get her to leave him alone. She already has once-a-month custody visits with Christopher, and she's using them to weasel her way back into Eddie's life after being AWOL for years... but nobody would believe him if he told them.
He buys the package and puts a payment down. When he refreshes the page, Buck's smiling face is whited-over, visible but muted, with a stamp saying "UNAVAILABLE" across it.
He breathes out. Buck will tell him what to do from here, he guesses. He gets emailed a contract to sign, which he does read but doesn't apply because he's not going to do anything as batshit insane as abusing Buck or trying to force sexual favours out of him.
Not that he'd admit it, but Buck could give him a run for his money. It took one look for Eddie to ascertain that while Buck is friendly and probably doesn't like fighting, he would and could if he had to.
His phone pings. It's from the website, their messaging service.
itsbuckarootoyou: that was fast! Didn't want to try anyone else?
Buck must've been notified that his package had been bought. Eddie feels almost uneasy. It's a little fucked up to be buying a boyfriend off the internet when you're not gay or even bi.
gidiaz87: you're no leggy blonde but you'll do in a pinch
itsbuckarootoyou: last time I checked I was blonde
And leggy, Eddie has to admit to himself. He's honestly never seen a guy with legs that long. So maybe he did end up with a leggy blonde. God, Buck's even perky. What the hell is wrong with him?
itsbuckarootoyou: here's my number! Easier than using the app
Eddie plugs it into his phone, sends Buck a text message before he can chicken out of the whole thing, and then downs the rest of his beer in one gulp.
He doesn't know when his life got so fucking weird, but he's got a fake boyfriend and a fake date for Tuesday, and now he has to organise childcare.
~*~
"Do you think ants have like, any concept of a tsunami?"
This is just one of the strange things that Buck has said in the last half hour. He has to think before answering. "No?"
"Oh. Good. I drowned a bunch of them today and I feel really guilty about it."
Really, this isn't the worst fake date he's ever been on. Well, it's the only fake date he's been on to be honest, but it's ranking up there with some of his best real dates. Buck is bouncing around like nobody's told him he isn't actually part golden retriever, and he bought them both food, so Eddie's happy.
They're walking through the park, at Buck's suggestion, just getting to know each other better. Buck's touchy, but it's hard to tell if it's because he's supposed to be Eddie's boyfriend or if he's naturally tactile, and this is just an extension of it. He's in Eddie's space, bumping shoulders with him, hands occasionally brushing - it's kind of nice, really.
Eddie - who is not normally so careless with his affection - is touch-starved and lonely, so he doesn't shrug it off.
"This way," Buck says, grabbing Eddie's hand to lead them towards a cafe, nestled neatly between two huge office buildings. "This place is great. We can take a few pictures here, get something to eat, talk strategy."
"Strategy?" Eddie asks, even as Buck ushers him into one of the outdoor seating tables.
"Strategy." Buck drops into the seat opposite him, leans forward. The light catches his eyes, which are shockingly blue. "So, how are we gonna play this? What's gonna get your ex to back off?"
"So far, nothing," Eddie says dryly.
"Be positive, Eds!" Buck smiles at the waiter, who's bringing them water and filling their glasses, and also looking like he's curious about their conversation. "Got any ideas?"
Eddie thinks, biting his lip. Buck reads the menu as he does.
"We need a story," Eddie says. "About how we met."
"Oh, I've got one." Buck lights up, begins talking animatedly with his hands. "I saved you from a burning wreck. Or a burning building! And you were so taken with me and so grateful that you had to buy me dinner-"
He stops at the flat expression on Eddie's face.
"Or maybe you fixed my car at the mechanic's?" Buck asks sheepishly.
"There we go." He has to laugh, though, at Buck's dramatics and wild imagination. "I have to be the one who pursued," he says thoughtfully. "Shannon won't believe it otherwise. She has to think I made the first move."
"Ohh." Buck grins. "You swept me off my feet, huh?"
"That so surprising?" Eddie asks smoothly.
For a second, Buck is actually speechless. His face tints pink, and Eddie sinks back in his chair, smugly revelling in his one small victory.
Buck rallies. "No," he says, "just surprising that I didn't sweep you off your feet first."
Are they competing over who fictionally seduced who first? It doesn't matter really, because the waiter brings their drinks right around then and takes their order. Almost everything here is GMO-free something on gluten-free whatever, which is so quintessentially L.A that Eddie can't even be mad about it - or the price.
"So," Buck says. "What kind of guy are you?"
"Uh." Eddie puts his fork down. "Meaning...?"
"Are you the jump in headfirst in love kinda guy? The romantic? Do you really take your time to warm up to people?"
"That last one sounds about right," Eddie says, only Buck thinks it's because he's shy when in reality most people just don't stick around for the baggage that is a thirty-two-year-old single father with a seven year old kid with special needs.
Buck nods along enthusiastically. Eddie is totally distracted by the single pieces of lettuce Buck is lifting to his mouth, not seeming to know he has a whole side salad or that he has a knife and fork. This man is eating lettuce leaves on their own, no dressing, no nothing, with his hands - maybe Eddie should've looked into this more.
"Please tell me you aren't vegan," Eddie says.
Buck blinks. "Huh?"
"Tell me you aren't vegan," Eddie begs. "I'm half Mexican, you won't last a night with the rest of the family if you're vegan."
Buck barks out a startled laugh. "No? What gave you that idea?"
"... Never mind," Eddie says. "So, what's the plan?"
"Okay, so we got our story down - we met when you fixed my car at the mechanic's, and you were so taken by how ravishingly handsome I am-"
"I'm pretty sure that's not how the story went-"
"That you kept finding reasons to call me, saying that you needed to fix different parts on my car, because you were too shy to ask me out right off the bat. I was gonna go with you asked me out to dinner right away but that doesn't sound like you, so we'll change it-"
"To me being shy-?"
"To you just, you know, thinking of little reasons to keep calling me back to the garage. And finally you got the courage to see if I wanted to get coffee, and the rest is history!"
Eddie blinks. God, Buck is dramatic.
Buck scrunches his nose when Eddie doesn't reply right away. "What?" he asks. "Is it too basic? Not tragic enough? We can go with my story of rescuing you from a burning building. Maybe, oh, maybe I got injured and you kept coming to see me at the hospital!"
"No," Eddie says quickly, deciding to curtail Buck's wild imagination while he can get a word in edgewise. "No, the mechanic story works. I think it's good. Coffee sounds like me."
"Okay!" Buck eats another piece of lettuce, dios why he eats it like that Eddie will probably never know - "So now we have to start taking pictures!"
Eddie's stomach swoops and falls right into the ground. "Uh, what?"
"For Instagram! And Facebook I guess. We need pictures for both of our accounts."
"How come both?"
"Well, if you're in a situation that you're hiring a fake boyfriend to get your ex-wife off your back, I'm guessing that she's probably going to stop at nothing to figure out if this is real, which means I'm gonna get cyber-stalked just as much as you are."
"... Good point," Eddie sighs. "So where do we start?"