Chapter Text
Buck cries through the entire ceremony at Maddie and Chimney’s wedding. Eddie gets to sit next to him and hold his hand, and pass new tissues, and feels so full of love he doesn’t really know what to do with it.
It’s mid January, and they’ve spent the last two and a half months blissfully happy. Egged on by both of their therapists, they’ve talked about absolutely everything (Eddie’s sexuality, Buck’s sexuality and the fact that his last relationship ended barely two weeks before they started dating, the whens and hows of their feelings for each other, what this means for them and Christopher as a family, their shared traumas, their wishes for the future, and so on) at length, and Eddie has to admit that they probably wouldn’t have navigated the shift in their relationship this well if they hadn’t.
But they did, and they’re really fucking happy.
For six or seven weeks, Eddie had forbidden himself from imagining what being with Buck would be like, had just pined silently and secretly from afar. But now that he knows what it’s like, he also knows he never could’ve imagined it.
He had no frame of reference for what it’s like to be with someone he always wants to be right next to, who knows him well enough to anticipate what he’s going to ask for, someone who makes him feel giddy simply by smiling at him. Someone he can barely keep his hands off.
Buck smiles at him through his tears, and Eddie kind of wants to go down on one knee immediately. But this is Maddie and Chimney’s day, he’s not gonna take the attention off him by proposing to his boyfriend of two and a half months, even if said boyfriend is the love of his life.
Later, when Buck is making his best man/brother of the bride speech and Eddie can’t tear his eyes away from him, Karen nudges him with her elbow from where she’s sitting on his left as soon as Buck stops talking.
“So, is this giving you ideas?” she asks teasingly, and Eddie just smiles.
On his other side, Albert leans closer, across Buck’s empty seat.
“Maybe. But we’ve got time.”
Karen sighs happily. “You guys are so damn cute. You think you’re gonna be able to tear yourself away from Buck’s side for three minutes to dance with me later?”
“Maybe,” Eddie says again, then finally turns to look at her with a grin. “We practiced a lot for the first dance, maybe we want to show off.”
“Eh, you can show off with me a little, too. Dancing with you was so much fun at our vow renewal.”
“Of course I’ll dance with you, Karen,” Eddie laughs, and feels Buck’s presence behind him a second before Buck’s hand lands on the back of his neck, cupping it gently.
“Not as much as with me though, right?” Buck asks, leaning down to meet Eddie’s tilted back head for a kiss.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Eddie promises.
“You can have him back after one dance,” Karen says. “Besides, I’m sure you want to dance with Maddie, too.”
Buck sits back down, his hand finding Eddie’s immediately. Fondly, he says, “If Chimney lets go of her.”
Eddie looks over at where Maddie and Chimney are sitting, smiling at each other while they talk, Chim’s arm around Maddie’s shoulders. They only have eyes for each other today, and it’s very cute.
“Says you,” Albert says, gesturing towards their intertwined hands. Buck sticks his tongue out at him and presses a kiss to the back of Eddie’s hand. Eddie knows it’s to annoy Albert, but he never complains about any kind of kiss.
Karen turns towards Hen, who’s just returning to her seat, too. “I’m not sure I believe you that they’re not like this at work.”
Hen laughs and kisses her cheek. “Don’t get me wrong, they’re still constantly making eyes at each other. But I think the threat of being separated is too big to risk anything more.”
“But would Bobby really do that?” Karen asks, eyeing Bobby on the other side of the room, where he and Athena are talking to the Lees.
“I don’t think he would for a little kiss,” Eddie says, thinking of the many times he and Buck have snuck a short kiss while on shift. “But he made it very clear that he wouldn’t have a choice if we…acted unprofessionally.”
Karen waggles her eyebrows, making all of them laugh.
“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Buck laughs. “Anyway, he doesn’t really want to separate the dream team anyway.”
He lifts his arm for him and Eddie to bump forearms, and Hen shakes her head. “I really don’t get how none of us saw this coming from the start.”
“It’s because we were all so used to Buck and Eddie being BuckandEddie,” Karen says. “It happened so gradually we just accepted everything as normal for them.”
“That’s what Maddie said too, when I told her,” Buck says. “She said she didn’t see it coming, but that it somehow made total sense.”
Eddie smiles and squeezes Buck’s hand. “Kind of like it was for us, too.”
Buck smiles back, darting close to press a kiss to Eddie’s lips.
“And she won’t stop gloating that she was the one to get the ball rolling,” he tells Hen and Karen. “If she looks smug when we join them on the dance floor later, that’s why. She makes one joke about me dancing with Eddie…”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Albert grins. “Credit where credit is due.”
“We would’ve gotten there eventually,” Buck says confidently, and Eddie likes to think he’s right. It might’ve taken a lot longer, but he thinks their love is too big to have stayed hidden forever.
“If you say so,” Karen says, taking a sip of her wine. “Imagine if you hadn’t yet and poor, pining Eddie would’ve had to dance with you anyway.”
Eddie can imagine only too well what that would’ve been like, but in this reality, Buck pulls him close and presses a kiss to his temple.
He smiles. “I’m really glad it worked out this way.”
“We all are,” Hen says. “Okay, you ready? I think it’s almost time for the dance, and Maddie might kill us if we miss our cue.”
Their cue is about halfway into the song, which Maddie and Chimney agreed is plenty of time for them to be the only ones dancing. Hen, Karen, Buck and Eddie are supposed to “break the ice” by joining them so everyone else will know they can get on the dance floor, too.
Buck gets teary eyed again when Ravi, who’s acting as kind of a DJ (though that mostly means letting a playlist specifically created for today play through the surround system Chimney installed in their house), announces, “For the first time, please give it up for Mr and Mrs Buckley-Han and their first dance!”
But Eddie has to admit that his own eyes get a little wet watching them spin around the little circle their guests have created around them, their faces lit up with love and happiness.
He’s still blinking away tears when it’s their turn to join them, and Buck cups his cheek for a second before placing his hand on his shoulder.
“Love you,” he whispers, holding on to Eddie tightly.
Eddie leads them across the dance floor, practiced enough now that neither of them has to focus very hard.
“Love you too,” he whispers back, and watches the crinkles around Buck’s eyes appear when he smiles.
Everyone else around them disappears, even as more and more couples join them on the dancefloor, but Eddie just pulls Buck closer.
Yeah. Someday soon, they’ll be dancing at their own wedding.