Chapter Text
on the road between El Paso and Los Angeles.
Eddie sometimes makes impulsive decisions. A few times, he tried to escape his problems in a raging warzone. One time, he tried to escape his fate of flying bullets on a sunny Los Angeleno street. This last time, he tried to escape a love that he’d convinced himself wasn’t returned.
Except, as it turns out, it was. Enthusiastically so.
Within less than a week, Eddie does the following:
— quits his boring job at Dispatch,
— begs and pleads for Bobby to accept his transfer back to the one-eighteen,
— removes his Craiglist house sale offer that, holy shit, he must’ve accidentally added a few more zeros than necessary to,
— enrolls Christopher back in his old school for his final months as a middle-schooler,
— and starts the cross-country trip in a van filled with bare necessities and a very pleased teenage son in the passenger seat.
And the thing? He doesn’t tell Buck. Not via email, and not in any other way.
Lena is the one to wave them off. She comes before her shift, her Dispatcher uniform already on, and watches as Eddie packs the last of his stuff into the van. He hadn’t gathered any new things from his time in El Paso. Just a heck of memories to remember it by. Most of which made with the very person who’s come to say goodbye.
Eddie smacks the door to the van shut and turns to Lena.
“That’s it, I think,” he tells her, rubbing his bicep.
“That’s it,” echoes Lena, humming. “So, learned anything this time around?”
“Plenty,” says Eddie. “And a lot of it, thanks to you. I— I know I was a shit friend to you back in the day. So caught up in my own shit to bother about anything else. But I’d like to think I’ve improved a little. So, thank you, Lena. For being there for me, again. Appreciate you.”
A genuine smile develops on her face. Eddie can’t help but beam back.
“Hey, I’m just happy to see you made it out. Don’t be a stranger, though?”
“You’ll be my first call after I talk it out with Buck,” he promises.
“You nervous?” she wonders.
He probably should be. He should be crawling out of his skin. But at the end of the day, who he’s coming home to is his home. All the six-foot-two dangly-legged cute-birthmark-having of it.
“Honestly? No. It’s just Buck.”
It’s just Buck. Just the keeper of the key to his heart. Just the greatest friend he’s ever had, turned who he guesses is now the love of his life. Nothing terrifying about it at all.
“Well, safe travels,” says Lena. “Text me when you’re home.”
“Will do.”
Eddie makes it nearly all the way to the driver’s seat when he realizes to have forgotten something. He quickly steps back onto the sidewalk, and to Lena’s surprise, envelops her in a tight embrace that makes her gasp.
“Thank you, again,” he mutters into the crook of her neck. “Couldn’t have gotten here without you.”
When he releases her, her eyes are a bit misty.
“You’re a lot less crappy of a friend than you think you are,” she answers, choked.
They leave it at that, Lena watching as Eddie claims his seat at the wheel and steers outside of the parking lot of an apartment building he will not remember fondly. He doesn’t rush, doesn’t speed, just taking in the sights of El Paso and whispering his goodbyes to every corner.
Perhaps, after all, Texas isn’t all that bad.
It’s later that evening, when Eddie is slipping under the covers of a hotel bed in Arizona, that Christopher, for the first time since Eddie explained to him why they’re going home now, brings up Buck.
“Hey, Dad,” is how he starts, tossing his phone on the nightstand between their single beds. “When we get home, things are going to change, right?”
“Change?” he wonders.
“Like, you and Buck. You’re going to go from being best friends to more.”
“We don’t know that yet, Chris,” Eddie reminds him. It’s true. Even if they share the same feelings, it doesn’t automatically mean Buck would want to be with him. Doesn’t mean he’s willing to risk what they already have to be… More, as Chris said.
“You need to promise me something,” says Chris. Eddie meets his eyes in the dim light, noticing how serious they are. “That if you invite Buck into our lives like this, you’re not going to mess it up. You aren’t allowed to hurt him and break up with him. I don’t want to lose another person I love over you not being sure about your feelings. Especially not Buck.”
And Eddie supposes Christopher is right with the feelings thing. The main purpose with Ana was for his son to have the mother figure he assumed he needed, and it was very little about what Eddie felt, regardless of how long he tried to convince himself that a romance between them existed. With Shannon— Everything he did with Shannon was for all the wrong reasons. Confusing his eternal, complicated love for her for what a wife and a husband are supposed to feel.
At the end of the day, it was his confusion that messed up both his past relationships. His unwillingness to search deeper and explore the root of why love felt like a performance, and Eddie could never get it right.
And then he fell in love with Buck and realized that those romance novels he read growing up were right about one thing. When you find that person, the one you’re destined to spend your entire life loving, no one that came before them ever stood a chance. You’ll do everything in your power to keep them around, hold onto them as tightly as your fingers can muster. And Eddie will cling onto Buck until they’re blistered and pruned from blood.
“I’ve never been more sure in my life,” says Eddie. “I can’t promise you that I won’t mess up sometimes, if Buck and I get there, and I don’t know enough about what he wants just yet. But what I can promise you is that, no matter what, Buck will always want to stay in your life. He loves you like crazy. Like—” Eddie stutters an exhale. “Like his own, sometimes.”
Because you’re willing to change for your kids. Learn to be a better caretaker of them. And Eddie noticed, after the shooting, how Buck became careful. Not only out on dangerous calls that the old him would dive into head-first, but outside them. He indulged in a bunch of health kicks, for one, and when Eddie asked him about it, he’d simply answered, you know, I gotta stick around, be there for the people that matter. And then added something about how Eddie should avoid red meat if he doesn’t want to clog up his arteries, to break the tension.
Buck might not only grow to be Eddie’s partner. He could, eventually, become Christopher’s parent. And there’s no one quite else Eddie would trust with that honor, knowing all the care and attention Buck has put into helping him look after him.
“So, things would change,” says Christopher. “But, for once, they might change for the better?”
Eddie smiles softly at that.
“Yeah, Chris. I think so.”
They’re on a road in Pasadena, mere thirty minutes from their house, when it happens.
A loud pop and the stalling of his Jeep.
“What happened?” asks Christopher, stirring awake from his nap. He puts his glasses on and looks around. “O-oh, we’re almost home! Wait,” he adds, scrunching his forehead. “Why are we parked on the side of the road?”
“I think one of the tires popped,” says Eddie, sighing. “And we don’t have an extra.”
“Well, call someone for help!” urges Christopher. “I can’t wait any longer to sleep in my bed.”
Eddie grabs his phone and steps out of the car to access the damage. He’s right, his bottom left tire has completely fizzled out of air. His fingers navigate to his speed dial without much thought. He waits one ring, two—
“Eddie? Are you okay? Is Christopher okay? Why are you calling? Did someone die?”
Though Buck is certainly panicked at Eddie calling him for the first time since last December, there’s a tinge to his voice that sounds a lot like relief. At that moment, Eddie is painfully aware that the email with his love confession has been unanswered for two weeks.
“Everyone’s okay,” says Eddie, and hears Buck’s breathing calm. “But, I’ve got a flat. I haven’t put a spare in my trunk since the last time I had a flat, when—”
“—we were on our way to Thousand Oaks,” Buck remembers for him. “But, Eddie. I’m in Los Angeles. Not that I’m not willing to go to Texas to help you replace your tire, but don’t you have someone closer to you who could assist?”
Eddie’s mouth falls agape. “You’d go to Texas to help me replace a tire?”
“Well, if you wanted me to, of course,” he answers, and Eddie can picture his face scrunched in confusion. Like that’s a completely normal request. Eddie shakes his head.
“You’re one ridiculous man, Buck. But, that’s kind of the point,” he carries on, tapping his fingers against his bicep. “I’m not in Texas. I’m in Pasadena. If I ping you the location, could you go grab a spare from my garage and take it here?”
Buck doesn’t respond. In fact, he doesn’t respond for so long that Eddie worries the call cut short. “Buck? Did you hear me?”
“I— I heard you,” comes out in a stuttered, croaky voice. “I can be there in an hour.”
An hour. An hour until he sees Buck, for the first time with this new knowledge of their feelings being mutual. His heart might as well jump out of his throat, whether he’s a red meat eater or not.
“‘Kay. We’ll sit tight,” he answers calmly, despite feeling the very opposite.
Something on the other end of the line shuffles, possibly Buck getting out of bed — and Eddie tries not to worry why he’s still in bed at two in the afternoon —, and then the call cuts off. He listens to the rings until they give out.
He hops back in the Jeep, turns the blinkers on, pings the location, and waits for Buck. Kind of like how he’s been waiting on him every day since he sprinted his way into his life and consumed the air which he breathed.
Eddie never wants to share that air with anyone else again.
And that finish line? It’s well in view.
When Buck’s Jeep pulls up in front of his, Eddie instructs Christopher to stay in his seat. Eddie himself takes a steadying breath, shutting his eyes and nagging away all the worst-case scenarios that his brain helpfully supplies. He feels his son’s encouraging hand on his elbow, squeezing a little, and is driven out of his seat with Christopher’s quiet, “You’ve got this, Dad.”
Eddie’s out on the sidewalk at the same time Buck gets there. He watches as all six feet of him freeze, taking Eddie in, his road-clothes reasonably disheveled and hair sticky from the Californian heat. But it’s just Buck. Buck’s seen him in much worse states and loved him anyway.
“Hi,” Eddie greets him quietly.
“Hey,” answers Buck, his lips thinned. “So, you got a flat.”
“Yup.”
“On your way to Los Angeles,” he carries on.
“Yup,” Eddie echoes himself. His vocabulary might be just that one word in his fuzzied mind.
Because Buck is in front of him, nearly in his reach, and he loves him.
Wholly, irrevocably, unconditionally.
For longer than his dying breath.
He loves him.
And what the hell is he supposed to with that, except run over and embrace him, right here and now, on the side of the road at three in the afternoon, under the blazing sunshine that would lose in a fight with the very man he grips with a gentle kind of force, knocking the breath out of Buck’s heaving, troubled chest?
He embraces him under the branch of a sycamore tree hanging over the hedge of someone’s front yard.
Fitting, he thinks. Sycamore trees symbolize eternity.
“I missed you,” Eddie cries onto his shoulder, his fingers running across Buck’s back. “I lacked you. But I— I did it. I finished my business in El Paso. And as soon as I could, I came here. Came home. To you. My home.”
Buck’s breathing heavily as he, finally, returns the embrace.
Eddie lingers in it, his eyes glued shut as he sniffs him in and doesn’t even mind his sweat. Any part of Buck is worth loving, worth basking in, worth appreciation. He holds him with the sort of kindness that one would give to a lost and drenched puppy.
Except, Eddie found him and saw him all those years ago, and Buck’s never really been alone since. Even when Eddie wasn’t physically there, he always kept him in an invisible locket near his heart. And in its warmth, Buck always had a place.
When Eddie finally releases him, Buck’s gazing at him, unreadable.
“You read my email?” he croaks out.
Eddie nods feverishly.
“Very belatedly, though. That damn thing fell into my spam folder.”
Buck chuckles, wiping something wet from his cheek. Sweat or a tear is anyone’s guess.
“Figures that would happen. The universe never makes it easy on us.”
“The universe isn’t responsible for any of it,” grumbles Eddie. “I swear to God, if you tell me it’s the universe that made you and I get here, I will smack your head. Buck,” he carries on, gripping his shoulder like he has so many times before, but never with this much devotion to it. This much need to touch the bare of his collarbone and feel the warmth, the life of him. “The journey we endured wasn’t some grand scheme. It was our choices, good ones and fuck-ups included, that carved that path. Texas? We needed that.”
Buck’s mouth quirks up into a smile. “Yeah. I don’t think I would’ve figured it out, if it weren’t for the fact that we were apart. It was only when I realized how much I’d lost that the place where I stored you in my heart started making sense. God,” he adds, chuckling. “I’ve been such an idiot, Eddie. World-class idiot. In a competition for the universe’s biggest idiot title, I would win first place with a huge gap from the second running.”
“Hey, now,” says Eddie, squeezing his shoulder before finally letting go. “Don’t talk about the man I love that way.”
Buck’s eyes fill up more. “But, Eddie—”
“For a long time, I didn’t get it,” he says, cutting him short. “Why you would run away. But then I read your emails, over and over again. And though some of the contents were unkind at the time, they made sense with this new discovery you were going through. You had so many questions and no answers. And if the roles were reversed, if it had been you who came to me with that confession and I hadn’t ever considered it beforehand, I would’ve freaked out, too. It wasn’t cool to run off like that, but I think I get it. And because I’m incapable of holding a grudge or staying mad for too long when it comes to you, I forgive you.”
Buck ducks his head, grinning. “You know, that’s really going to work in my favor when you get pissed at me for forgetting to take out the trash, or something, at our future house.”
Eddie raises a playful brow. “Future house, huh?”
Buck steps even closer, a sycamore leaf flying between them and landing on the asphalt.
“I meant it, in my email,” he says. “I meant every word. And I could’ve raved on into a ten-thousand-word essay, Eddie, but the point is— I’ve spent thirty years searching for someone to matter, someone who I could genuinely picture spending my life with, only to run into all these obstacles on my way to realizing it was you all along. But now that I know it? I don’t want to waste another minute. I don’t want to spend another day away from you, the good and the bad ones, and the boring ones in between. I want you, Eddie, every step of the way.
“I love you,” he confesses softly. “Like a crazy person. And if you’re still willing, then—”
Eddie cuts him off by cupping his cheek with one hand and tangling his other in his curls.
He pulls Buck in, hears his stuttered gasp at the urgency, before breaking the distance.
Before kissing him, the world around them be damned.
Eddie grasps at every inch of Buck he can find in his daze as Buck eagerly returns the kiss after the initial moment of shock, and he wants, wants, wants. More, more, more. He presses their chests together, feeling the rapid movement of both, a perfect cacophony.
And if he could muster a single thought, he’d probably be thinking about how this is the only kiss of his life that has ever felt like the ones he reads about in novels, between two characters who finally erase the space between them and allow their threads to intertwine as one.
This is Eddie, handing over all of him, flawed and faulty parts included, to Buck.
And based on the delirious, heated way Buck swallows him whole: this is Buck, accepting them with vigor.
Right as Eddie’s hand slips beneath Buck’s shirt, feeling the skin over his spine, they are interrupted by a loud honk sounding from behind them. They drift apart with mutual groans, until realizing the horn is coming from Eddie’s own Jeep.
“For the love of Han Solo, replace that tire so we can get the hell home!” yells out Christopher, once he’s rolled down the window. “You can make out all you want when I finally get my TV back!”
Buck and Eddie share a bewildered glance before bursting out into a fit of laughter. It’s an easy thing, going from kissing to laughing. He supposes it’s natural for two best friends turned more.
“Alright, I’ll get the tire, you get the wheel chocks,” instructs Buck, a determined look on his face. “Let’s get this over with before Chris decides to call war on us. Besides,” he adds, beaming. “I miss your house, too. Even the lumpy couch.”
Eddie snickers. “Good thing you won’t need to sleep on it ever again.”
Buck pretends to be shocked. “Eddie! Wait until the third date to pull out, at least!”
This time around, Christopher honks and honks until they finally get to work.
two years later.
“—wrong. You are wrong! Mint chocolate ice cream does not taste like toothpaste!”
“Yes, it does.”
“That’s not even a valid point! You can’t just say, yes, it does, and think you’ve won the argument. Act like an adult, Eddie! Come on, at least offer something of value for the debate.”
“Okay. Here’s another one. It looks like alien poop.”
“And how do you know what alien poop looks like? You don’t even believe in—!”
“Buck? Is that you?”
Buck cuts himself short at the sound of the faintly familiar voice from behind them. With tubs of ice cream, respectively plain chocolate and mint chocolate crisp, they’ve been on their way back to their beach chairs on the resort. Except, both of them freeze when they turn around and see her.
Natalia, in a yellow bikini and a matching bucket hat, gazing at the pair of them, quite obviously shaken to her core. Eddie watches as Buck’s mouth falls agape.
“Natalia! Holy shit. What—? How—? Why are you here?”
Right as she opens her mouth to answer, a woman with wet, dark curls turns up at Natalia’s side, passing over a tub of what appears to be strawberry ice cream with sprinkled-on sauce, smooching her cheek as she does so. Eddie blinks.
“Marisol and I are here to celebrate our first wedding anniversary,” Natalia tells them. “It’s been a tough year for both of us, so we wanted to treat ourselves to a fancy resort. What are you two here for?”
Buck beams, grasping Eddie’s hand and pulling it out before Natalia, to show off the ring Eddie swears will force their entire family into bankruptcy.
“We got engaged last month and wanted to celebrate,” he says, proudly jutting out his chin.
“Oh!” exhales Natalia, wide-eyed. “What great news. Congratulations!”
“Thanks,” says Buck, pulling Eddie’s hand down but never letting go. “No hard feelings?”
Natalia lets out a genuine laugh.
“Not even one,” she promises, her hand finding Marisol’s. Eddie notices their wedding bands then, and feels a rush of anticipation for when he and Buck will have the same ones. “In fact, I probably gotta thank you for making me get my head out of my ass when you did. How about, hm, we get you dinner at the hotel tonight as thanks?”
Buck looks over at Eddie, inquiring about the proposal. He gives him a quick nod.
“Sure!” he agrees. “Let’s say, eight o’clock? We want to head to the cliff and—”
Eddie tunes out their conversation, his full attention on the warmth pooling in his gut from the touch of Buck’s hand in his. The novelty of it has long worn off, but the butterflies remain regardless. For every touch shared, is yet another promise of them never running out. Eddie will probably reel at their contact until he’s gray and old, and not even then will he want less.
Natalia and Marisol wave their goodbye with a promise to see them later, and Buck and Eddie head back to their reserved spot on the beach, settling on the chairs and munching on their few scoops of ridiculously expensive ice cream.
“You ever think about her?” wonders Eddie.
“Who?”
“Natalia,” he clarifies. “Ever think about if you had married her?”
He probably asks it out of some long-since-buried resentment. But he does wonder about it sometimes, if Buck had never figured his feelings out, what their lives would look like these days.
“Never,” fires Buck. “Your hatred for mint chocolate chip ice cream or not, I happen to be very fond of you, and quite nothing will ever be able to convince me that there is another person out there for me. Since you, Eddie? I haven’t even thought about anyone else.”
“Woah,” exhales Eddie. “Might even kiss you for that, if not for your mint choc breath.”
Buck swats at his elbow. “Moron.”
Eddie kisses him anyway, appreciating the taste regardless.
December 26th, 2026.
(made by beth // dreamescape1997)
Re: Buck & Eddie’s Wedding E-Vite
Eddie <[email protected]>
to buckleybuck
Dear Future Husband Who I Promise To Cherish Forever And Yada Yada,
Thank you for your email. Here are my two cents:
Cent one: I will happily await you at the altar, and my breath will definitely be knocked out of my throat at the sight of you. Can’t wait to pass out in front of our entire family and friends because my man is a stud.
Cent two: I adore your passion for the job and all, but couldn’t you have asked the graphic designer to pick a color that doesn’t resemble our uniforms? Seriously, Buck. You’re a Class-A workaholic.
With hopes to make you ridiculously happy for now and forever,
Your Eddie. ♥️