Chapter Text
Chris belonged here, with Buck. The boy had settled into the flat like there’d never been a question about where he belonged, and – for once – Buck didn’t regret taking Chris away from his dad.
Buck hated it, but he no longer regretted it.
Chris had easily claimed the bedroom that Buck had already mentally assigned him, and grinned when it meant that he’d get the accessible ensuite with the waterfall shower head and shower seat. Chris had, in typical teenage fashion, spent nearly 45 minutes with the water running over him and had flushed skin and a genuine smile when he emerged for dinner with his hair still damp.
Buck had set the steaming bowl of ramen and vegetables in front of him with a soft smile. “How’d you like it, Chris?”
“The ramen?” he asked, mouth fuller than it should’ve been and a small fleck of juice spitting out which led Buck to tut in a way that was way more stepdad than he’d been expecting.
“Don’t eat with your mouth full,” he scolded, tone gentle as to not being a true telling off. “And obviously I was asking you about the room.”
“Well, the ramen’s great,” Chris said once he’d swallowed his mouthful. Buck felt a proud smile cross his lips. “The room is great,” there was a pause, a shift in the air that made Buck not want to fill it even with a hum of acknowledgement. “I like that this flat has a place I can escape to when seeing my dad becomes too much.”
Buck felt his smile slip away. Fuck.
“I’m glad that I can give you your own space,” Buck manages, before finding himself deep in mouthful after mouthful of ramen, and then washing dishes, and then packing away the kitchen bits until he could reasonably head to bed without causing suspicion.
Maybe there was still some regret.
--
When Eddie knocked at the door of the new flat, Buck cursed not immediately giving him a spare key – he'd only had one and hadn’t had the time to get it copied. He was half-way under the couch, trying to find the tiny, missing Lego brick with his phone torch, and the knock had caused him to try and get up only to give himself a painful bump to the head. “Shit.”
“I got it,” Chris said. He heard the pad of crutch feet as Chris made his way to the door, and he slowly shuffled back to free himself. Turns out, having a couch is great for sitting space but an absolutely terrible thing to own when you’ve lost something.
“Hey,” Eddie said, and you could hear the warmth in his voice. Buck’s heart fluttered just a little bit.
Even Chris’ non-enthusiastic ‘Hey dad, me and Buck are building with Lego’ didn’t seem to ruin his mood. “That sounds like fun. What are you building? Anything worthy of being in Legoland yet?”
The two had just reached the living room, discussing the project that Chris was leading development on, when Buck had finally freed himself from under the sofa. His skin was blushed pink and there was a sheen of sweat across his brow but luckily neither of the Diaz boys commented on it. He still slapped the piece of Lego on the coffee table with a feeling of triumph.
Chris let out what was definitely a teenager-appropriate and not-embarrassing-at-all-Buck-please-shut-up gasp of happiness as he picked up the light aqua 1x1 rounded tile and clipped it into its place.
Buck’s gaze met Eddie’s. His eyes were warm and twinkling, smile reaching them easily. Buck’s shoulders released a tension he wasn’t aware they held.
Everything was going to be okay. They would get through this.
They would.
Then Chris pushed his Lego model onto the floor, watched it crumble into seemingly a million pieces and Buck was back under the sofa as Eddie worried his lip and Chris was locked in his room openly sobbing far louder than usual.
“I’m - I think I should go,” Eddie said. Buck took a deep breath.
“No. We need to get passed this, and you leaving every time he gets upset isn’t going to do that. You’re going to help me pick up the Lego pieces, I am going to speak to Chris, and he is going to apologize for the outburst.”
“He needs therapy,” Eddie said. The tone wasn’t scolding – if anything it was full of worry for his son – but it still rubbed against Buck in a way that made him feel inadequate as a substitute parent even though he’d stepped up without question.
The harsh “I know that” left the air feeling icier than it had in a while.
It hung in the air for a few minutes before Eddie huffed out a sigh, dropping handfuls of Lego into their designated boxes. He snapped two pieces apart, “I didn’t mean it like that, and I think you know that. You’ve done a phenomenal job looking after him without question and I am so grateful that you have been here for him. I just – I said it because I couldn’t quite believe how bad it was.” He snapped another two apart, the sound louder than usual as Buck floated between his various feelings. “I think there is so much going on in that brain, so much loss and pain and hurt and stress, and I don’t want him to completely break. I don’t want to end up losing him completely. --- and I’m not saying you want that either! You’ve got him to be open far more than I ever did.”
The last few bricks were shuffled into their boxes, and Buck stood up and clicked his back. He needed to do this for his family, and it wasn’t fair that he finally accepted them for what it was – a loving family – when they were in turmoil and struggling.
He headed to Chris’s locked door and rapped his knuckles against it. “Chris, come out. We need to talk about this.”
“Not until dad goes,” came the heaved reply. The breaths were coming out at a faster and faster rate, and it seemed like Chris was unable to control them.
Buck paused – was that a panic attack?
“Buddy,” Buck began. He took a deep breath. “I think you might be experiencing a panic attack right now, so I want you to open the door and let me in if you can. You don’t have to see your dad, but I need to come in so I can calm you down and we can address this.”
It hurt. It hurt a lot. Should he stop Chris from seeing his dad? No. That was definitely not going to be the solution a therapist recommended. God, he needed to contact the children’s therapist center yesterday.
Another rough sob broke his thought.
“Can’t,” Chris managed. “Can’t m-move right now.”
“Okay, buddy, that’s ok. I’m here for you, and we’re going to work together to calm you down, okay?”
No reply came, but Buck powered on regardless. “You’re going to take a nice deep breath in for me, can you do that?” Chris’ breath rattled through him. “I’m going to count to 10 repeatedly. Every time I say 1, I want you to have a big breath in, and on every 6 I want you to breath out until I say 1 again. Can you do that?”
A very week “Yes,” was choked out among fast breaths.
It took 15 minutes of coaxing, but eventually Chris was calmer, and Buck had managed to get into his room and curl around the boy in a hug. Chris had buried himself into Buck’s chest and curled his fingers into the back of Buck’s shirt, and Buck was pulled back to memories of 8-year-old Chris and his tsunami nightmares. He’d been called up, late one evening, by a panicked Eddie who asked Buck to come, and he did. And he always had. And he always will.
--
When Chris had finally managed to fall into sleep (more like it had dragged him kicking and screaming until he was too tired to stand against it), Buck slipped out of his room and bumped into Eddie. Literally.
The man was standing just outside of Chris’ room, leaning against the wall beside the door. Buck blinked, having assumed that Eddie would’ve left, or perhaps had camped out on the sofa to find out what had happened. Instead, it appeared he’d been listening in, ear against the wall.
“I don’t think he’d be too happy to know you heard all of that,” Buck said after he’d stepped around Eddie and lead him to the kitchen. He switched on the coffee maker, filled it and left it to filter into the jug while he got out two mugs. He definitely didn’t choose the matching purple and green frog mugs that they’d brought one day while out together buying Christopher’s birthday presents.
“I wasn’t listening in for most of it,” Eddie said, fiddling with a piece of cardboard that he’d swiped from the recycling box. “I only stood outside once it went past his bedtime because I was going to say goodbye through the door, but you were still working him down. I know I shouldn’t have stayed listening in, but I couldn’t face the idea of leaving and, sort of, froze.”
“I’m glad you stayed,” Buck murmured. “For purely selfish reasons. I could really use some company after that, and I really miss my best friend.”
Buck found himself in Eddie’s arm, somehow hunched enough to feel small and engulfed by Eddie despite him being the bigger of the two. While he didn’t spiral into a panic attack like Chris had, Eddie still found his shoulder damp with the tears that Buck heaved into him. Eddie wouldn’t have ever admitted it, but Buck felt the silent, soft tears drip from Eddie’s chin onto the top of his hair.
But at least Buck felt like he’d finally found his home. They may be shattered, they may be wrecked, they may be trying to piece themselves back together with masking tape that kept peeling, but they were here, and they were together.
Buck should’ve made Eddie leave that evening, but it had gotten late, and they both had a 24-hour shift starting at 8am the next morning so Buck allowed Eddie to sleep on the new pull-out. He left Eddie with the bedding and shuffled into his room, a room far too empty and far too cold after tonight and crawled into bed.
--
“What the fuck are you doing here,” was the yell that Buck woke up to, body groggy and slow and brain not entirely sure what was happening.
“Chris, I’m -”
“You’re not meant to be here !”
The pieces snapped together as Buck bolted upright. Fuck, he really should’ve made Eddie leave.
“I’m here for Buck, okay. I’m not here to try and convince you to move back in with me, or whatever. Buck needed me last night, and I stayed for him,” Eddie snapped in a hushed tone, and Buck grasped at the sheets. “You seem to forget that I am your dad, yes, but I’m also his best friend and we haven’t been able to speak to each other outside of work properly for months. And it’s hurting him.”
Buck got out of the bed as his teeth pulled at the skin of his bottom lip. He shuffled out into the hallway – being as quiet as possible – and strained to hear the conversation that had gone hushed.
“It’s not my fault that you were an asshole!” Chris’s anger was evident even through the hushed voices.
“I know it’s not. I’m not saying that!”
“You’re implying it!”
“No, I am just asking you to let me hang out with my best friend once in a while. Would it really kill you to have a sleepover?”
“Buck is mine !”
Buck blinked. He’d shuffled to stand in the doorway of the living room, where Eddie and Chris hadn’t noticed his approach, too absorbed in their own anger to notice. However, it seems like that comment from Chris made them all freeze in shock.
The spell of silence was broken by Buck clearing his throat, and both Diaz boys snapping their heads in his direction. “Buck,” he said, in a voice that was clearer than he felt. He felt somewhat hazy – like he hadn’t fully landed back in himself after his sleep. “is no one’s. He’s a man who loves the both of you a lot, and really just wishes that you’d sort out whatever this mess is and let him really love you both. So please, Chris, Eddie, let us just get ready for the day ahead and begin to deal with whatever feelings are still lurking one step at a time – together.”
Chris let out a huff. But Buck expected that, teenager running through his blood and all. “Fine.”
Eddie’s was softer. “I’d like that. I’m willing to do anything to go back to how things were.”
That was apparently the wrong thing to say, and Eddie immediately recognized it. “Between you, me and Buck. I know I did wrong with other aspects of my life that really really hurt you Chris, and I am so sorry for them. But I really want to go back to being a family with you and Buck.”
Chris’ face faltered. It was somewhere on the emotion chart between bright-red angry and the muted mauve of want and longing. He looked almost like he would say something, but instead he turned around and headed back to his room, the harsh padding of his feet and crutches only making his departure more evident.
“Sorry you had to see that,” Eddie muttered, looking ashamed as he took ahold of the bedding and began to fold it up. It looked like he had barely slept in it, and Eddie – now that Buck looked – looked exhausted. “I - I thought therapy would’ve prepared me more for that situation, but I still lost my temper.”
“Eddie,” Buck let out a sigh. “I think, in fact, I know that needed to happen between the two of you. Now I know stuff about the way Chris is feeling more than I did before, and I think it did him good to hear that you want us to be a family. You see me in your future.”
Buck didn’t say one part out loud. Chris now knew that Buck was a permanent fixture in their lives – something he never got to have with any of his father’s partners before. Because who was Buck really kidding? They’d been co-parenting since Chris was 7 and it was probably getting to the point where it needed to be addressed properly.
But that would wait. He needed to find something a little bit stronger than masking tape to hold them all together first.
--
B uck learned about the art of Kintsugi when he’d been attending therapy with Dr Copeland during lockdown. They take gold, she explained, and repair the cracks in pottery. What was once broken, has become only more valuable through the act of repair. Humans, she said, should be dealt with in much the same way - no one’s life is perfect, no one is truly trauma free, but through the act of care and love and recovery, those acts that have chipped away at them has only made the stronger and more beautiful in the long run.
It had been Buck’s biggest takeaway from those therapy sessions, back when his therapy had been tied to his own self-worth and his fear of true relationships with others, and it was something he’d been keen to teach to Christopher the second he’d become ready to engage.
Now, Buck’s therapy sessions were focused, instead, on the stress of raising a teen son who wasn’t officially his own and bearing the burden of trying to aid the recovery of the two most important people in his life. No one had prepared him for this type of first aid, nor prepared him for the emotional weight he’d feel seemingly buried under.
“It’s hard,” Buck sighed, iPad resting in front of him. Dr Holisted had come highly recommended when he’d emailed Dr Copeland for recommendations. He specialised in non-heteronormative families and while Buck and Eddie weren’t in a relationship, their current co-parenting situation still fit the bill. ”I’ve taken on the role of a full-time parent for Chris, and I love him but it’s been so hard to not have any alone time due to his clingy-ness. I haven't even been able to, y’know, in about 9 months,” Buck almost whined with a blush staining his cheeks red.
“I’m sure there are ways you can get around that problem - you have a lockable bathroom right?”
So, Buck sometimes hated his therapist.
“I meant have sex,” Buck muttered, cheeks somehow ever rosier. “We established in one of our previous sessions that I have a high sex drive, and it’s been driving me nuts.”
That had been one hellish conversation. It had been innocent, the question pertaining to why he’d been in therapy previously and had snowballed into far too much detail about his sexual exploits, how it related to his own self-esteem and self-worth, and his embarrassing situation with a previous therapist due to his unhealthy use of sex as a coping mechanism.
“We also established in that same session that you have always used meaningless sex in an unhealthy way to cope with the trauma of your life. And I know you do not have a partner unless you’ve miraculously met someone in the last week where you have complained about not having any free time. So this would be an unhealthy desire for sex to relieve some of the stress you’re currently under.”
“Usually, I would completely agree with you. But it’s mostly because my own hand is starting to get, really, very dull and doesn’t really do it for me anymore.”
Never, ever let it be said that Buck likes therapy.
“Get some toys,” Dr Holisted said flippant, causing Buck to choke on his own spit. “Returning to Christopher, did he open up to you about anything he spoke about in therapy?”
“Not really, but he asked me to help with his therapy homework. He’s got to do this, like, anxiety breakdown of the things he is feeling and thinking when he sees his dad during one of his weekly visits.”
“How are you going to help him?”
“He asked me to scribe while he says things out loud after we have the next visit with his dad. Said he wants to do it straight away so it’s fresh in his brain, but knows he won’t have the energy to write it himself.”
“And are you able to listen to your son – he's effectively your son, Buck, let me finish - talk about your best friend in that way? Of someone you have romantic feelings for in that way?”
“Probably not,” Buck said with a shrug. ”It’ll feel uncomfortable, and I’ll want to ask Chris lots of questions to try and figure out why. But I won’t be able to do that, and Chris progressing in therapy is somewhat a higher priority now. I can talk to you about it after it happens, so at least I won’t be letting it fester for months on end like I do most of my trauma.”
Dr Holisted hums thoughtfully, and then pulls his diary towards him. ”Let’s get you booked in now then. I leave it up to you, you decide to wait until after the homework and then feel too overwhelmed to book the appointment until it has festered for at least a month.” He knocked his pen against his teeth for a few moments. ”Can you do Tuesday afternoon at 3pm?”
Buck, checking his own calendar, hummed in the affirmative.
“Well, you know it's the end of our session. You’ve done incredibly well today, Buck, we talked about a lot of things that even a few weeks ago you weren’t overly comfortable talking about. Have a good week, and I hope that Christopher, Eddie and you continue to make progress.”
--
When Christopher had nervously asked if they could get pizza during his dad’s next visit, Buck had tilted his head. “Sure, we haven’t planned for the week yet so it’s not like I’ve brought any of the ingredients for anything else. Why were you nervous to ask?”
“Pizza always used to be our thing,” Chris said, chewing on his bottom lip. Buck had noticed the habit developed a few weeks into them living together and now the lip was clearly very sore and almost constantly covered in lip balm. “I don’t know if I’m ready for it to be our thing again yet, but Dr Livins said that I needed to try stepping out of my comfort zone and employ some of the techniques she taught me to regulate myself otherwise I might find that my anxiety gets worse. Something about how avoiding life doesn’t make us less anxious.”
“Well, you know that both your dad and I will do whatever you need to be supported through this. If pizza night goes wrong, you’ve got us in your corner to get you through it -- and that doesn't mean that your dad will stay here and try and muscle you through it, I just mean that your dad is here for the long-run and wants to help you feel better.”
“I know,” Christopher said. It felt like a revelation - Chris acknowledged that his dad wanted what was best for him and wasn’t trying to actively sabotage his life! ”It, it’s just scary. I’ve gotten so used to worrying about worrying when I see dad, that I get into the ’endless cycle of panic’ and feel like I won’t ever be able to escape it.”
“It’s okay to be scared. We’ve just also got to be brave in the face of fear and prove our own minds wrong. I had to do it, your dad had to do it, heck pretty much everyone who loves you has had to do it. Nothing, ever, to be ashamed of.”
“Love you, Buck,” Chris said, before promptly fleeing the kitchen.
“Love you too, kid,” Buck yelled in reply. Progress, and it’s sweet.
--
Eddie had just hung up his jacket and slipped off his shoes when Christopher came out of his bedroom. That’s not unusual - Chris would normally be eager to start, and then eager to finish the one hour that had been agreed three times a week. No, it was unusual because Christopher was holding a gift bag.
He dropped it onto the table, dropped onto the couch and pushed his crutches to the side. Eddie and Buck came into the room and took a seat on the couch - Buck taking the middle which had, slowly, become natural and Eddie pressing up against Buck’s left-hand side.
“Father's Day was Sunday,” Chris begins, bottom lip finding home between his front teeth once again. ”And you’re both dads to me, right? Like dad is dad but Buck has been looking after me so much this last year. I can’t believe it’s been a year,” the sound of panicked giddiness bubbles up Chris’ throat but he manages to swallow it down. Buck is so proud that he’s witnessing his son – who called him one of his dads! - having such a mature conversation. ”And as much as I still do not plan on moving back in with my dad or anything like that, I still think it’s important to recognise that he’s trying and that he’s been trying to be the best dad since I was about 4. The first few years there, he was more the runaway-type, but he really pulled through - and then made some really ugly mistakes. But he pulled through at first, so... yeah.”
A present and card were shoved into each of their laps. Buck opened his card first, eyes wet as he reads the message: ”Thank you for being the father figure I needed in my worst moments” with a message inside, scrawled by Chris, ”Buck, I know I didn't make life easy, and this wasn’t how you expected your early 30s to go, but I am so glad you picked me just like I picked you. Love, Chris”.
The present, when he pulled off the shiny red wrapping paper and far-too-much tape, was a fridge magnet that read ‘best bonus dad ever’ with two penguins, one big and one small, underneath. Buck felt a tear dribble down his cheek, ”Thank you, Chris, for being the best bonus son anyone could ever ask for.”
A lap full of Chris, though, was probably the best gift he received that day.
Both of their focus turned to Eddie, who seemed to be staring at the card and gift in fear. Was he wondering what sort of gift he got? Was he worried he got a card that kids got for their shit dads who didn’t really love them - the ones that just say ’Happy Father’s Day’ with a to and from on the inside?
Buck watched Eddie’s adams apple bob up and down as he swallowed. He then carefully untucked the envelope and slid the card out and let out a sob that was clearly louder than any of them expected. ‘I forgive you. Happy Father’s Day’
The card was handmade, some stock card that Chris had clearly stolen from school because it had a crease in the corner that he’d evidently tried to fix when making it. The bubble writing was imperfect, letters varying in size and the word ’day’ being cramped against the side of the card, but the relief that flowed out of Eddie made the card the clear highlight of the evening.
Chris took the card from his father, opened it and said, ”To dad, I have worked a lot in therapy to work out why I was so angry with you about the situation that happened in our front room, and why it’s taken me so long to forgive you for it. I have spent hours working through the fear I have of being separated from Buck, and why I feel that way. I have done so much therapy homework, and I think I might’ve done more of it than school homework.
Dad, what I have come to realize is that I am terrified that one day I am going to lose you. Anyone with any amount of distance from the situation would’ve told you that getting into whatever you did with that woman was a form of self-harm, and you’d already destroyed your room not a year beforehand. I was terrified that the next step would be you trying to reunite with mom – and in the way you cannot take back.
But I am tired of being scared. And I can see how much you’ve worked on yourself. And although I never really want to move out of Buck’s, I would like my dad back. So, I’m saying I forgive you, but I do not forget. Let’s fix this, the three of us.
Love, Chris.”
How much of that letter that Eddie took in, Buck wouldn’t have been able to tell you. But bundling the two of them in a hug and not having Chris immediately run away? The last year of pain and suffering had been so worth it.