Archive of Our Own ^beta

The problem is—well.

Actually, backtrack for a sec. There were a few problems.

Eddie’s got a whole lot of them, lately, and maybe that was The Problem.

Because if there weren’t a whole lot of things that were actively going wrong in Eddie’s life, or threatening to go wrong, or showing no signs of not going wrong anymore, then maybe this particular problem wouldn’t have started.

Maybe if these two things didn’t happen at the exact, precise, same, awful moment, he would have had the wits about him to, well…

It wouldn’t be a problem.

But.

He’s sitting at the table with Hen in the station loft while Buck and Chim are having an argument he can’t focus on, and two things happen.

First: “If I didn’t think a gust of wind could knock Gerrard out for me, I’d be down there right this—”

“Buck—”

“I’m serious, I know he did this on purpose,” Buck is pacing the length of the kitchen, the sleeves of his tee pulling taut with the way he has his arms crossed over his chest so tightly in frustration, “He must have overheard us talking this morning—”

“It’s fine,” Chimney shakes his head, “It’s not for long, I don’t think.”

Buck laughs mirthlessly, “Last I heard the board was in no rush to reinstate Bobby.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Chim shrugs, swirling a mug on the countertop aimlessly, “We have that one neighbor who’s got a kid, probably looking for babysitting cash.”

“Absolutely not,” Buck’s eyes go so wide, Eddie’s not sure they won’t fall out of his head, “She’s like, ten.”

“She’s fourteen.”

“Like that’s any better,” Buck exhales, fists clenching in frustration, “Let me ask to switch.”

“No, Buck, I can’t ask you to—”

“What’s he gonna do? Make me do more chores?” Buck leans into the counter across from Chim, “I don’t care. Seriously. Eddie’ll help me.”

The sound of his name gets Eddie to look up from his phone for the first time since he sat down after their last call, starting up his favorite pastime these past four weeks: staring at his blank phone screen, willing a notification from his son to appear with his mind.

“Hm? What am I helping with?”

“See, he’s already agreed!” Buck gestures a hand out to Eddie, and before he can even finish the sentence, heads for the stairs.

Chim yanks him to a stop, “You haven’t worked with Gerrard that long, so you don’t know it yet, but this? This relative peace we have right now—as good as it gets, Buck. I’m not letting you fuck it up for yourself, just for me.”

“Well I’m not letting you fuck it up for you, and I’m not letting Maddie fuck things up at her job, and I’m definitely not letting your prepubescent neighbor who gives me dirty looks when I park too close to their mailbox fuck up when you leave her in charge of my nieces!”

And despite the content of that long winded rant being less than amusing, Eddie can’t help but feel the corner of his mouth tick up the slightest bit at the little huff of Buck getting all of that out in one long breath. Eddie would berate himself for it if Chim didn’t look a little touched by the outburst too, leaning back in his stool, letting red-faced Buck go back to pacing.

There’s not much to enjoy about working under Gerrard, but when he’s not busy being an absolute ass or making messes just for the sake of having them clean it up, he does prefer to stew in his office, which makes room for brief moments of normalcy. It’s something Eddie really appreciates in his life riddled with problems, even if normalcy is being volunteered for something without knowledge. It’s nice. Normal. Shouldn’t be a problem, all things considered.

“What did I miss?” Eddie turns to Hen, who’s sitting beside him and sifting through mounds of adoption paperwork that Eddie is sure multiplies every day.

“You know how Gerrard has decided his latest act of workplace violence would be to split up most of our shifts in a very strict and inconvenient manner?” She leans in to him, so he can hear her over Buck and Chim’s continued bickering.

“I do recall that extremely pleasant announcement in readout, yeah.”

“Well it put Maddie and Chim in a tough spot with childcare. Maddie was able to move most things around since Gerrard won’t let Chim, but they’re stuck on Tuesdays. I’m on too, and Karen just gets out in time to get Denny from soccer practice at six,” she says, tapping her papers in a rhythmic stack on the table, “As for Buck’s beef with their teenaged neighbor, I have no clue. You gotta ask him for an explanation on that.”

And Eddie thinks he starts to laugh at that. He knows that’s what he wants to do, definitely would at any other moment.

But in this specific one?

Eddie gets a text from his mother.

It all sort of becomes white noise—Buck’s beet red overprotectiveness and Chim’s dismissal of it, Hen’s half amused watchful eye, Ravi skipping up the stairs to join them—when he sees Chris wants to stay a bit longer.

And it’s just. Eddie has a lot of problems, sure, but The Problem is this.

That Eddie is expected to do anything at all while Chris isn’t here. Like he isn’t using every ounce of energy on missing him.

Fuck, is the room starting to spin? Is Chim still talking? Or Hen? It sounds like—Eddie has to text back.

School starts next week

Why didn’t you call me about this?

His mom, unfortunately, doesn’t text back in a nanosecond like Eddie wants. His vision feels a little blurry. It’s been four weeks, and Chris is still—he doesn’t—he’s still in Texas and school is starting and his mom is texting him this in the middle of work—and he doesn’t—he can’t—

Eddie startles only when hear his name from Buck, “Wait wait wait—Eddie has off on Tuesdays!”

The exact, precise, same, awful moment.

And look, Eddie will tell anyone who asks, even people who don’t, that he loves so many things about Buck—or, he loves Buck, full stop. But maybe, in this exact, precise, awful moment, Buck’s picture fucking perfect memory is not one of them. Because Buck smiles for the first time since they got up here when he remembers, with picture fucking perfect accuracy, of course, Gerrard’s new slow torture device of scheduling.

Tuesday is Eddie’s day off. And no one else’s.

“What?” He can’t stop it before it comes out, a little too curt, a whole lot confused, and incredibly and wildly out of his depth.

Chim keeps his eyes trained on Buck instead of responding to Eddie, “It’s not Eddie’s problem, Buck, and it’s not your problem, either, really—” Chim tries to restart.

“But it’s your definitely not CPR-certified middle school neighbor’s problem?”

“Why are you so fixated on that, man? I never said we had to ask her—”

“And you’re not going to, because Eddie has off on Tuesdays!” Buck repeats, arms gesticulating wildly for effect. “C’mon, it’s perfect! He’s free, he’s a medic, and he’s great with kids!”

Three more messages from his mother roll in:

Christopher said his school has a virtual option he can do from here.

I think it would be easier if you enrolled him, since the school already has your information on file, but I can do it if you won’t.

This is what he wants.

A wave of nausea rolls through him.

“You can’t just tell him he has to do this because you don’t like my babysitter options,” Chim sighs.

“Like hell I can’t, it’s Eddie,” Buck says, like that’s all the explanation he needs. It’s Eddie. Finally, he turns and meets his eye, “Right? You’ll pick Jee and Mara up from school on Tuesdays?”

Buck’s expression drops so infinitesimally only Eddie could notice it. And it only does because Buck is the only person who could notice Eddie’s.

He nods, just the slightest tip of his chin to let Buck know he’s okay, because Eddie Diaz has a lot of problems. That’s not The Problem.

The Problem is that if this had happened at only other moment than this exact, precise, awful one, Eddie might have found a way out of it, may have been able to articulate why someone else really should be available on Tuesdays, why they’ll just regret this in the long run, why he is the last possible person on earth who should be trusted with this.

But it’s at this exact, precise, awful moment that two things happen: Buck asks something of him and so does his mother.

It feels like saying yes to Buck might be the first thing he can manage to do at the same time as missing Chris in the whole month he’s been gone, because he’s never not said yes to Buck, so he doesn’t really think about it before he does.

Eddie Diaz plasters on something resembling a smile, tacks it on right over all his problems, and manages to choke out, “Uh, yeah, yeah of course. I have nothing else going on.”

Eddie is super out of practice in his knowledge on saints, but there should be a Saint Eddie.

Fuck if they don’t at least add one after Eddie has to tell the receptionist at Chris’s school with a straight face that Chris will be virtual this semester, but no, don’t take him off the pick-up list, he’s got himself a babysitting gig in his parental leave of absence, how fun!

Eddie knows he’s being a little bitch about it, and he knows he isn’t actually going to back out because he’d do anything for Chim and Maddie and Hen and Karen. Anything at all.

But he also knows if he thinks about any of this too hard he’ll burst into tears, and that’s not the first impression he wants to make on these two girls, so.

Eddie is a little bitch about it.

Over texts. To no one but Buck.

How’s it going :)

Eddie swipes open the message from Buck the second it appears, desperate for literally anything to do.

She hasn’t said more than two words two me since I picked her up

Have you said more than two words to her?????

Eddie can feel his cheeks flame up, and turns to look down at the girl with four words between them in question.

Picking up Jee-yun had gone smoothly in the 30 seconds it took to wave to her in line and walk back to his car. Going less smoothly in the half hour he now has no clue how to fill before Mara’s school day ends.

No but it’s not my fault

She’s like scarily concentrated on looking for Mara

Who she is very afraid will get into the wrong car if she doesn’t see her

And I am very afraid Mara doesn’t know my name so maybe she’s onto something

Mara knows your name you drama queen

I actually told her you like to go by Edmundo specifically

So be ready for that

Fuck you

When Buck doesn’t respond to that one after a minute or two, Eddie assumes the alarm has gone off at work, and he’s left on his own again. He pockets his phone and turns back to Jee-yun to try this again.

“You sure you don’t wanna sit in the car?” He squints down at her, the bright mid-August sun beating down on them where they’re standing in the parking lot.

She doesn’t even look up at Eddie when she shakes her head, much preferring the company of the piece of gravel she’s moving around with the ball of her foot.

“We could listen to some music while we wait?” Eddie tries again, eyeing her blue sparkly Elsa backpack that’s sitting at her feet for at least one surefire win here, “I’ll put on Frozen! You like Frozen, right?”

She shakes her head no again, because why on earth would she like the movie plastered all over the backpack she picked out?

Eddie bites back a sigh, leans back on the front of his car, and thinks about how best to tell Buck he’s tried 28 whole words now, and Jee’s still only at—

“Mara!”

Three. Three words.

His victory in getting another word out of her is short lived, as Jee eyes Mara and immediately abandons any and all safety rules Eddie knows her first responder parents have definitely ingrained into her, and charges at the lineup of kids coming out of the school—on the opposite side of the parking lot.

Thankfully no matter how hard you hit rock bottom, the parental instinct to throw your arm out and catch a kid from oncoming traffic never fully leaves you, and he stops Jee-yun before she makes it more than 3 steps into the parking lot.

“Woah, woah woah, hey, wait a sec—”

“But Mara’s coming!” (Six words!)

“I know, I know, we’re going, just, there’s cars here, we have to—” Eddie’s child-friendly conversational skills are stilted but it’s fine, because she is clearly not listening, antsy on the balls of her feet. Eddie grabs her hand in his and swings a very unliked Elsa over one shoulder, “Together, okay?”

It doesn’t take very long to learn that Jee-yun is not shy at all—she just doesn’t want to talk to Eddie. She’s chattering a mile a minute the second her feet touch sidewalk and she can wriggle herself out of Eddie’s grip. She stands right at Mara’s feet, chin tilted all the way up to look at her while she uses up more words than Eddie can count. Fantastic.

She’s still going five minutes later, when Eddie finally makes it to the front of the line, smiles politely at the teacher, and starts, “Hey, I’m here for—”

“Mr Diaz!” One of Chris’s old teachers just has to spot him from one class lineup over, of course, and Eddie only doesn’t burst into tears right then and there because he has to focus so hard on remembering this woman’s name in the next three seconds.

Eddie tries his best to make his excitement match hers, and sound believable, “Ms Arthur, so good to see you.”

“How are you?” she beams. “How’s Chris? Gosh, don’t tell me he started high school already? I haven’t seen him this week.”

“Uh no, no, next year,” Eddie shoves his hands in his pockets nervously, hoping he can leave it at that, and not have to get into the “a few months ago I brought home a doppelgänger of his dead mother so he ran away to Texas and your school didn’t give me any leverage to get him home since you still offer a virtual option he’s opted into for the semester” of it all in the middle of this parking lot. So he clears his throat and tries to redirect, “I’m here for Mara, actually.”

“Oh, that’s great,” Ms Arthur responds as Eddie fishes out his ID to show Mara’s teacher, “Crazy, I was catching up with Ana a few weeks ago, and she didn’t mention you had other kids—”

Was rock bottom going for a world record today, or something?

“Nope, uh, I’m just picking up. I work with their parents,” Eddie nods in the vague direction of the girls.

“Mrs Han mentioned you were her brother’s partner,” Mara’s teacher mercifully interjects before Eddie has to go on, which feels impossible over the wave of nausea at the thought of someone thinking he’d been with Ana for four full years. “Couldn’t stop gushing about you two.”

“Yeah, her brother’s pretty great,” Eddie purses his lips, tugs at his Frozen backpack strap, “We should really get heading home though. Ms Arthur, nice to see you again.”

“Tell Chris I said hi!”

“Absolutely,” Eddie lies through his teeth rather impressively, and holds out a hand, “Ready, girls?”

“Good to meet you, Mr Diaz,” Mara’s teacher smiles lightly, “See you next week?”

If the three of them don’t suffocate in silence by then, sure, “Yeah, yeah, next week.”

Jee refrains from flinging herself into parking lot traffic this time, a lot less enthused about making their way back to Eddie’s car, and the silence returns loudly as they buckle into their seats and Eddie starts on their drive home. Buck answers when they get to the third red light, still in silence.

I don’t appreciate the tone Edmundo

But just put on Let It Go they’ll be happy

Maybe Chris missed this phase but I SWEAR it works every time

Just a few more hours !! :)

Why Buck insists on typing his smiley faces out like that, Eddie still doesn’t know, seven years deep into their friendship, but it does at least make him smile in time to try to strike up conversation again.

“How was school?” He tries lamely, and isn’t surprised in the slightest to get the standard, “Good,” from Mara in response.

“Your teacher seems nice,” he peeks at them in the rearview mirror.

Mara shrugs.

“Tell me something you learned,” he tries again, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “You know, I learned how to make quiche, this morning. Had a recipe I’ve wanted to try—”

“Are you taking us home?” Jee ignores his question completely, looking out the window thoughtfully. “Mommy always takes us home.”

“Uh later, mom’s at work,” Eddie answers, vice grip on the steering wheel, because it feels like the answer she did not want.

“When will she be done with work?”

“Later,” Eddie quips, and quickly reaches for the radio on button, “Hey, you wanna listen to Frozen yet?”

“When’s later?” Jee is persistent, and pouting heavily.

“A few hours,” he mumbles, trying to navigate Spotify with one hand and without looking down at his phone, “You might have to teach me some of the words to this one—”

“Hours?!” Jee wails, with the force and appall you’d think Eddie said years, not hours. But, Eddie reminds himself, she’s four, so that’s basically the same thing. 

He spots Mara wincing in his periphery, like she saw that reaction coming from a mile away, but still wasn’t too inclined to jump in and help Eddie out. Fair enough, Eddie doesn’t wanna help Eddie that much these days, but he shuffles the Disney soundtrack and attempts a redirect, “So I was saying, my breakfast this morning, I saw a recipe on Tik Tok.”

Surely a mention of Tik Tok will impress them! Fuck, he doesn’t even believe himself, he’s so out of practice—

“I wanna go home.”

“We’re gonna go to my house,” Eddie answers, stopping at their next of the red lights that have been lasting an eternity today. “Anything you usually do at your house, I promise, we can do at mine.”

“No, we can’t,” Jee says, and oh fuck, her bottom lip is wobbling, no no no.

“Why don’t you think so?” Eddie tries, but you really can’t reason with a four year old, he’s forgotten.

She just shakes her head and whines, more insistently this time, “Because! I don’t want to go to your house.”

“Yeah, that seems to be a common theme lately,” Eddie mumbles under his breath, can still see Chris walking out with his parents so clearly in his mind.

Mara frowns at Jee, then at Eddie, and back to Jee, but still doesn’t say anything.

“Oh man, is this Let It Go? I love this song,” Eddie says, an octave too loudly, a beat too forceful, because dammit he cannot have made one of these girls cry already. He turns the volume up louder than he’s probably ever had it in the truck, except for when Buck’s in a mood to sing and make Eddie laugh so hard he cries—

Oh yep, there we go. Jee’s crying.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay—” Eddie is so wildly uncomfortable, they really should not have trusted him with this, he thinks, for the twenty seventh time today, has to swerve to stay on the road at an especially loud screech that startles him, then he misses his exit, and then they coast into standstill traffic and then, fuck it, he starts singing. Because what’s one more thing to cry about?

“It’s funny how some distance—can you sing with me, Jee-yun? Makes everything feel small!”

The only thing that’s missing in this dumpster fire of a car ride is an actual fire, but at least that would get several adults these girls like more than Eddie here.

Holy fuck, he cannot set his car on fire to get out of this. He needs to—he doesn’t know.

Something is squeezing in his chest—god, what excellent pivotal years of Chris’s life to miss. What the hell do you do to calm a toddler tantrum? Why did everyone think he was good with kids? Is the AC on in here? Did it break—he’s sweating, his chest feels so—He’s awful with kids, he can’t—of course they don’t wanna be with him—there’s probably no one on Earth worse with kids than him right now, poster child for bad with kids—he sent his kid to another fucking state—the windshield must be dirty, it’s blurry—there’s nothing—maybe he can see better out the window on his left—

“You girls want ice cream?”

An ice cream place is the first thing he sees when his vision unblurs for half a second, and he blurts it out without thinking. It probably won’t do anything but give them a sugar high and fill them up so they won’t eat dinner, but everything is going to shit, and he sees it, and so he says it and will regret it not really working later.

But—

Jee sniffles. Mara looks up at him.

“It’s before dinner,” Mara says, the first thing she’s said, really, and luckily Jee has stopped crying enough for Eddie to hear her soft, unsure voice.

“Yeah,” he answers, simply.

“We can’t have ice cream before dinner.”

“Oh, you didn’t know? There’s actually a rule about that,” Eddie white-knuckles his steering wheel, the knot in his chest loosening the longer no one in this car is actively losing it, himself included, “You have to have your ice cream first, on Tuesdays only.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” Mara’s hair bounces with the cute way she shakes her head at Eddie, very seriously.

“No? Hmm,” Eddie hums pensively, turning into the strip mall parking lot, “Well, I can’t eat my dinner tonight if I don’t have ice cream first, so I’m gonna go get something. I can drop you guys off at home—”

“I want ice cream,” Jee interjects suddenly, sitting up tall in her seat, a trail of snot dripping down her face.

“Oh, good. Mara?”

She seems to think this over. She’s clearly old enough to see right through Eddie, that there’s no such thing as a rule about ice cream on certain days of the week. But she’s also clearly still young enough to have no qualms about rolling with it because ice cream, so eventually, she replies, “Can I get sprinkles?”

“I’d be upset if you didn’t,” Eddie smiles, unbuckling and grabbing his keys, and finally turning off shrill Disney tunes, “Jee, you need a tissue?”

“No,” Jee says, definitely needing a tissue, but she lets Eddie wipe off some leftover tears with the hem of his t-shirt sleeve while she unbuckles, “Do you think they have cotton candy ice cream?”

“I’ve never heard of cotton candy ice cream,” Eddie says, thumb running over her snotty little bright red nose, “Tell you what, if they don’t, we will spend every Tuesday I’m with you trying to find some place that does, okay?”

“Okay,” she agrees, jumping down from her seat, “Are you gonna get cotton candy ice cream?”

“Um, I think we’ll save that fun flavor for you,” he smiles, delighted when she doesn’t make a break for it in the parking lot again and takes his hand instead. “I like, you know, vanilla. Chocolate.”

Mara pulls a face a few steps ahead of them, “Of course.”

“Excuse me?”

“They’re so boring,” and Eddie can tell she’s trying so hard to damp down a smile.

“They’re classics!”

Mara hops over the curb, and if Eddie didn’t know better, practically skips to get the door for them, “Classically boring.”

“Sometimes boring is good!”

“Sure,” She says lightly, smile impossible to hide when she finally cracks, “Edmundo.”

“Who’s Edmundo?” Jee swings their interlocked hands between them, mimicking Mara’s jump up onto the sidewalk.

“Someone who’s not very happy with your Uncle Buck,” Eddie grins, “C’mon, let’s see about this cotton candy situation.”

And when the door shuts behind them, Mara already stepping up to the counter to ask if they have vanilla ice cream with a twinkle in her eye, and Jee hasn’t let go of his hand yet, Eddie finally remembers to breathe.

“Excuse me? I’m looking for babysitter of the year? Is he home?”

“Shut up,” Eddie sits back on his heels, having been crouched around his coffee table for the better part of the last half hour trying to clean up a hurricane of Legos off the floor, when he hears his front door opening and Buck’s cheery voice.

“What happened in here? There’s no rule about cleaning up after yourself on Tuesdays?” He’s met with Buck’s blinding grin at the front of his living room, two large bags of take-out in hand.

“Yeah well, your helpful tidbit on Frozen music didn’t work at all, thanks for that, by the way, so I had to get creative,” Eddie rolls his eyes, blows a puff of air to get the hair off his forehead, and then, “What are you doing here?”

“Tommy asked me to pick up pizza before I headed over, and I figured you’d be too busy doing exactly this,” Buck gestures around at the mess, “To make yourself any dinner.”

Buck places one of the bags on the coffee table, taking a seat on the far end of the couch, and Eddie smiles around a big, tired exhale, “Thanks, man. That doesn’t look like pizza though.”

“I didn’t think you’d want pizza,” Buck simply shrugs at the bags of—Eddie leans in closer to get a better look—that Thai place down the street from Buck’s apartment that Eddie craves like, at least once a week.

Buck was, of course, spot on in his assessment. Eddie hadn’t really thought about anything other than Jee-yun and Mara all evening, even since Chim picked them up a half hour ago. He hasn’t thought about dinner, or what he’d want, or how he’d get it, but if he had, he’s pretty sure this is exactly what he would have wanted. Buck knew before he did.

In the theme of not thinking today, he decides to carry on and not think about that at all.

“Well,” Eddie clears his throat awkwardly over the noise of some cartoon still playing on his TV in the background, “Tommy did.”

Buck simply shrugs again, “He’ll live. Seriously, though, how was your day? My phone died a few hours ago and I’m pretty sure I lost my charger, so my updates stopped coming through.”

“You lose that charger every other day!” Eddie pushes around some markers he was getting ready to put away to stall answering, “I uh, knew I’d be bad at this, but—”

“You’re not bad at this.”

“I had to bribe them with ice cream just to tolerate me, Buck,” Eddie deflates.

“It was just a new routine for them, that’s all, they’ll get used to it. You’re great with kids—”

“That’s why mine fled the state, right?”

“Eddie—”

“I may have given them a week’s worth of sugar in one sitting, but hey, at least I kept Jee and Mara in California.”

“You’re a good parent, Eddie,” Buck insists, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, like Eddie might listen and believe him if he’s closer.

“They’re good kids,” Eddie rebuts, “I’m just available.”

“Eddie, that’s—“ Buck fists the hem of his sweatshirt, his toes tapping nervously on the rug, and he’s avoiding really looking at Eddie now, “I know this is like, the most we’ve talked about Chris leaving since he’s left, but maybe we could—”

“Your boyfriend’s food is getting cold.” It comes out more biting than Eddie means it to, but if Buck notices, he doesn’t show it more than a little twist of his lips.

“He has a microwave.”

“Buck.”

“Fine, what’s another week we go without talking about it when we’ve already gone five?” Buck snips, reaching down to pick up a few stray Legos on his way to stand up, “Can I pick you up before work tomorrow? I promised a coffee run and could use an extra set of hands.”

Eddie’s not entirely convinced Buck won’t just use the caffeine and early morning car confines to corner him with this conversation again, but he likes not driving himself to work, and he likes free coffee, and he likes Buck.

“Sure.”

“Alright,” Buck grabs getting-cold bag number two, “See you at seven?”

“Yeah,” Eddie pushes himself up to standing as well, lingers in the hallway as Buck heads for the door, “Thanks again, for dinner.”

“Of course, man,” Buck shrugs, “I’m sorry you had a tough day, but if it helps, I think the girls had a really good one.”

“I think they told Chim to fire me on the car ride home,” Eddie tries to joke, but he sounds like he means it, and he knows Buck can hear it, “Say hi to Tommy for me.”

“Yeah,” Buck says, and Eddie thinks he hears a little bit of a lie in that too, but he goes back to not thinking, shuts his door, and reheats the Thai he didn’t know he was craving.

Eddie is delighted to let you know that he’s found someone out there who has more problems than him.

The only downside to this is that someone is sitting at his kitchen table, looking up at him with these brutal eyes, asking him to solve them.

All 25 of them. Showing your work included.

“I’m sorry, read that to me again,” Eddie presses his palms into the counter by the stove, where he’s attempting to make some boxed mac and cheese. Is he proud of it? No, but his newfound cooking skills never included doing fourth grade multiplication in his head simultaneously, so it was desperate times. Thank you, Kraft. “How many kids are at the birthday party?”

“Fifteen,” Mara reads from her math worksheet, pencil tapping lightly, “And they each eat 3/16 of a pizza.”

“That’s a looooot of pizza!” Jee sing-songs, perched at the other end of the table.

“Is it?” Eddie squeezes his eyes shut, hand over his scrunched forehead to try to think.

“I don’t know,” Jee shrugs, “Can I have more ice cream?”

“No, no, I’m making dinner,” Eddie points to his stove, and eyes Jee’s still half full bowl of ice cream, which she is dragging her hair through every time she leans over to “help” with the homework in question. Eddie’s not pretending he got miraculously perfect at this in a week. “So do we do three times fifteen? Or—there’s eight slices in a pizza—”

“I think it’s 15 times 3/16,” Mara answers, and Eddie’s head spins, so he spins around too.

“Well, how do you do that!?” He crosses his arms over his chest when he turns to face the girls, and silently delights in how big Mara’s smiling. Eddie’s also not pretending he’s miraculously liked in a week, but Mara does seem to be finding him amusing (which is just to say, she finds him incredibly uncool, which is very funny to her, but whatever, she’s smiling.) Jee still seems to mostly be in it for the ice cream, which also, whatever. Eddie will take it.

“That’s what I’m asking you!” Mara exasperates at Eddie.

“Pick a different one, something I can solve,” Eddie smiles, and leans in conspiratorially when he reaches to clean away Mara’s empty ice cream bowl with a whisper, “And maybe something that won’t inspire Jee-yun to ask for pizza for dinner.”

Mara hides a giggle on top of her pencil eraser, “Okay, Martin, Wyatt, and Adeyla are having a contest to see who could throw a softball the farthest. Martin threw the ball 9 feet. Wyatt threw the ball three times as far as Martin. Adeyla threw the ball—”

“Woah, woah, woah, wait, hold on, I can’t do all of that in my head at once. So Wyatt threw it 9—”

“No, Martin threw it 9 feet, Wyatt threw it times three, which I know is 27,” Mara corrects him, and thank god, because Eddie embarrassingly thinks he would have needed a calculator for that.

“Wyatt threw the ball 27 feet? No way,” Eddie flips a dishtowel over his shoulder as he sinks into his spot leaning against the counter, “27? You’re sure? Does it also say Wyatt plays for the MLB?”

“I can throw a ball 27 feet!” Jee stretches up, flashing Eddie a sticky sweet grin.

“I love that confidence. Alright, so what does Adeyla throw?”

“Three more than Wyatt, so I should…” Eddie gives her a second to work it out on her own, “Add three?”

“Yes, add three, oh my god. Who’s writing these?” Eddie is protesting, sounding positively scandalized, as Mara counts up by three from 27 on her fingers, her tongue peeking out in concentration to write the work out on her sheet.

“How many is that?” Jee asks, and god, if he didn’t know this kid was related to Buck before, this would surely do it, she cannot sit still. Her long hair makes a pit stop in her melted ice cream as she inches into Mara’s space, and Eddie can feel his own hair turning gray.

“Thirty, which is impossible, and you know what? Probably made poor Martin feel very bad about only throwing it 9,” Eddie says, putting his stirring spoon down and picking Jee up easily instead, slipping into her seat. He immediately pulls her hair back, “Do you have a hair tie?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re wearing more ice cream than you ate—”

“No, why is it impossible to throw the ball to thirty?” Jee shrugs, squirming in Eddie’s lap.

“Because Eddie can’t do it,” Mara glints, but is scooting out of her chair already, “I have a scrunchie in my bag, hold on.”

“Thanks,” Eddie says, then tilts his head to the side for Jee to see, “You’re right, I’m sorry. I bet you could throw it thirty feet if you practiced a lot.”

“Is it thirty of my feet? Or thirty of Mara’s feet, because hers are bigger,” Jee worries, before a terrible thought must hit her, because she smacks one very cute, but very sticky hand over her forehead, “Uncle Buck has such big feet. I hope it's not his.”

“Oh my god, kid, you don’t know how bad I wish we could get that in writing. When you start learning your letters, let me know,” Eddie laughs, then, “A foot you measure with is actually different than the feet we have.”

“That’s confusing,” Jee’s nose crinkles.

“It is very confusing, but we can leave that confusing stuff for Mara. She’s very smart, isn’t she?”

“The smartest!”

Eddie smiles, Mara flushing at the praise she’s pretending not to hear when she comes back in from the living room, some scrunchies in tow.

“Are we done with this ice cream yet?”

“No!”

“But it’s all melted—”

“She still likes it,” Mara slips back into her seat, “Calls it ice cream soup.”

“Ice cream soup!” Jee claps delightedly, clinking her spoon in the, well, ice cream soup.

Oh, to be four years old again.

“Fine, whatever, as long as you eat dinner, and stop getting it in your hair so your parents don’t fire me,” Eddie attempts to gather all of Jee’s hair up on the top of her head, and also channel the big brother to sisters instincts he really should have saved up somewhere.

“Daddy won’t fire you, he’s a firefighter!” And man, it’s hard to begrudge how impossible of a mess she’s making when her cheeks dimple like that. “And mommy talks to the firefighters on the phone!”

“That’s right, but it’s uh, a different kind of fire, kiddo. It’s an expression.”

Jee makes an unimpressed face at him, “You’re so confusing, Eddie.”

“I get that a lot, can you sit still for me for one sec?”

“Let’s do more math!” she squirms.

“We have to go back to the pizza one,” Mara says, teasingly, as Eddie tries and fails to wrangle Jee back into her seat. He gets like, half of her hair into one scrunchie, sticking up at an odd angle, and feels grateful Mara either knew how this was gonna go, or had such low expectations of Eddie that she brought in back-up.

“How about, Jee-yun Buckley-Han is eating one bowl of ice cream. Half of it is in her stomach. One third is in her hair. How much of it is ice cream soup?”

Jee-yun loves this math, apparently, her feet, which are luckily not as big as Mara’s or Uncle Buck’s, excitedly kicking against Eddie’s shins with her giggles.

“Or, Eddie can only get half of Jee’s hair into the scrunchie. There are two scrunchies left on the table. How many will he have to use?” Mara sounds positively delighted with math all of a sudden too, “And how much of Jee-yun’s hair will be left to get ice cream soup on?”

“Making fun of the guy who has a calculator to figure out your pizza problem? Bold choice, Mara, bold choice,” Eddie huffs, failing even more spectacularly with scrunchie #2 to prove Mara’s point, but both girls keep laughing at him.

(Eddie is, very cautiously, maybe, enjoying this?)

It all threatens to go to shit though, when his phone starts buzzing on the other end of the table, and he’s so armsful of Jee, that he asks Mara to check who’s calling. “If I move now I’ll never get her back,” Eddie starts, and Jee giggles on cue, “It’s probably just spam, you can hang up.”

Except, she doesn’t hang up, she answers, phone tucked cutely to her ear when she says, “Hi Buck, Eddie told me to hang up on you.”

“I did not—”

Eddie can’t make out anything Buck’s saying on the phone, but he can pick out his voice, even muffled, anywhere, and the sound settles nerves he didn’t even know he had. Mara spins her pencil around her fingers as she listens to him, humming here and there in answer, a quick “Hi Chim, Hi mom” thrown in too. Until, “We were trying to do my math homework.”

“Well that was your first mistake, Eddie’s terrible at math, ” he can make out Buck saying now—he gets louder when he’s in a good mood, “Hold on, I’m FaceTiming you guys.”

“Hey, I’m fine at math,” Eddie says, just in time for the call to switch over to video, but stays out of frame. “Wait until you hear what Jee said about your feet.”

“Why are you guys talking about my feet?”

“Because we’re doing math!” Jee chirps.

“Right, of course,” Buck nods affectionately, and Eddie can see Chim and Hen squished into frame with him, “Wait, where are you guys, we can only see Mara?”

“Um,” Mara starts, eyes wide as she watches Eddie frantically shaking his head no as he points to his less than stellar ponytail situation on Jee-yun. And the ice cream soup. She bites her lips together in a clear smile, but projects her best deadpan, “They’re not available.”

“We can hear them,” comes Chim, amused, “Jee, what are you up to? Are you being good for Eddie?”

What Jee lacks in subtlety she more than makes up for in adorableness, looking up at Eddie with a hand pressed to her lips in what he thinks is her attempt at a stealth giggle. It could wake up the neighborhood, but Eddie is sure his eyes have physically formed hearts in the meantime.

“We’re having, um, technical difficulties,” and now Mara’s got a case of the obvious giggles, as she fumbles with the phone, trying to pretend they’re cutting out. She waves her hand in front of the camera, makes a terrible impression of static noise, but loses her balance, and the phone goes tumbling across the table, towards Jee-yun.

“Oh, I got it!” She enthuses, ever willing to show she’s helpful and independent, only this time—

“Jee! Your hair!”

“Did you do that yourself?”

“Are you kidding? That is screaming Eddie—”

“Did you call just to talk about all the things I’m bad at?” Eddie says, giving in and smiling into the camera now, “Next you’re gonna tell them not to eat my dinner.”

“I think it looks pretty!” Jee is standing on Eddie’s legs, hands on the table and leaning into the camera from above, sort of upside-down, which does nothing to help her appearance.

“Of course you look pretty,” Hen says in a tone Eddie knows is bullshit, her eyes alight. “I’m sorry, I can’t even—”

“Don’t you have sisters, Eddie?”

“They had each other,” Eddie shrugs, “Besides, Jee just said she liked it, so I really don’t care what the peanut gallery has to say about it.”

“You have peanuts that talk?” Jee blinks up at Eddie.

“We’re just learning so much here today, huh?” Eddie coos, “If you guys wanna go back to saving lives and leaving us alone—”

“Mara, you can tell me the truth,” Buck stage whispers directly into the camera, “If Eddie’s getting all your math wrong, just text me the problems, I love fractions.”

“You’re such a dork,” Eddie laughs.

“We’re okay,” Mara says simply, and Eddie, well. He knows three pairs of ears on the phone hear that exhale.

“Okay then,” Buck says cheerily, “Well if you don’t wanna do math with me, can I talk to Eddie?”

Mara agrees, waving a quick goodbye while Eddie makes a show of picking Jee up off his lap to deposit her back in her seat solo. His faux grunt of effort only doubles her laughter, “That ice cream soup better be in your tummy when I get back and not in your pretty hair, yeah?”

“Ice cream soup?” Buck’s brows lift as Eddie steers himself to just outside the kitchen, leaning on the wall beside the doorway in the living room.

“Don’t ask,” he gives the girls one last peripheral glance to make sure they’re okay, reinvigorated about homework, both of them, and keeps them pretty safely in earshot so he can turn his attention to Buck, “Not even waiting until they’re gone to check up on me now, hm?”

“I’m not checking up on you,” Buck huffs, “Can’t a guy miss you?”

“Most people don’t.”

“Well, I do, almost always,” Buck admits, softly, “I miss working with you.”

“I still work with you,” Eddie corrects, a little too fondly, even though he knows exactly what Buck means.

“Not on Tuesdays, I hate Tuesdays.” Eddie can’t say he’s the biggest fan of FaceTime, probably prefers a regular phone call, if he’s honest, but sometimes it’s nice. To see Buck like this, smile just this side of petulant, missing Eddie. Eddie must get stuck in his head about just how much he likes it, neglecting to answer quick enough, and when the beat’s too long for Buck, he just pouts further, “This is when you say, ‘Yeah, Buck I hate Tuesdays too and I miss you soooo much!’ I’ll wait.”

Eddie barks a bright peal of laughter, “I think maybe—maybe I don’t hate Tuesdays?”

And oh. Oh no, FaceTime was a terrible idea. Buck looks—he looks so—

“Only took you a week, you softie,” Buck comments, too sweetly, too—did he always smile like that? “Told you you were good at this.”

“I still think it’s the sugar talking but, I don’t know, maybe,” Eddie shrugs, slumping further into his spot against the wall, “Or maybe they’re just really freaking cute.”

“Oh definitely that, but you are too.”

This really should have been a voice only call.

“I mean, you are good at this. Also. You’re—you’re doing a great job, really, um. Yes, yeah,” Buck stammers, and god what do Eddie’s cheeks look like if Buck’s are like that?

“Thanks,” Eddie chimes, pressing a hand over his ridiculous grin, “You uh, you doing a house call to check on me again later or did this fill your doting best friend quota for the day?”

“I can come over,” Buck replies instantly, “I mean, if you want me to, and are free.”

“When do I ever have other plans?”

“I mean, I usually don’t either,” which. Hm. Seems like a weird thing to say when you have a boyfriend, but what does Eddie know?

“Alright then, I’ll cook,” Eddie grins, “Make sure you eat some ice cream before you get here.”

“Of course, rules are rules.”

“Try not to miss me too much rest of the shift,” Eddie says, pushing himself off the wall to meander back to the kitchen.

“Impossible,” Buck shakes his head, “Alright, let me say goodbye to our pretty math whizzes. Hen, Chim, come back!”

There is a loud and chaotic overlapping of goodbyes and loves you’s and miss you’s and see you soon’s as all six of them crowd back into their respective frames, promises to ace their math and keep their hair out of their food and, Jee is insistent, that none of the firefighters fire Eddie.

“Don’t worry, we’ll keep him around, Jee,” Buck winks, “We happen to like him a lot.”

“You know,” Mara says, once she’s hung up the call for them, and she has this look on her face Eddie knows is going to get him in trouble for a very long time, “Maybe we can’t solve the pizza problem because we’re visual learners.”

“Visual learners, huh?” Eddie crosses his arms over his chest, his pot of water for mac and cheese long forgotten, “I thought we were a team here, Mara.”

She shrugs, “You want me to get a good grade in math, don’t you?”

Eddie pretends to think it over for a beat, and another, and another, even though he’s already picturing the pizza takeout menu in his mind, “Alright, we’ll get pizza—“

Jee is already on her feet, cheering, her tri-pod ponytails bouncing wildly.

“If,” Eddie levels with a serious stare, “If you can throw thirty feet.”

And Mara’s smile? Well, if Buck’s on FaceTime before bowled Eddie over, Mara’s knocks him out completely.

Distantly, Eddie can’t believe he did that.

“Thirty of my feet, right?”

Missing Chris is less of an emotion these days and more of a physical entity.

The best way Eddie can describe it, it’s like there’s someone standing on his chest with a shovel, and every day that Eddie is here and Chris is there, the shovel digs away. He’s got this gaping hole in his chest, deep and wide, and he’s not entirely sure that by week seven you can’t see straight through him.

It was a physical pain at first, chipping away at him. Eddie couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Wake up in an empty house, shovel to the chest. See a family picking out cereals at the end of the grocery store aisle, it erodes even further. Three new messages from his mom but none from his son, the edges are crumbling.

There’s pieces of him missing.

He’s sure everyone can see that he’s slowly hollowing himself out, that he can’t do much of anything else these days.

But then.

The shovel still sits there, sure, heavy on his chest. He’s not sure anything’s going to get it off other than Chris being back.

But there start to be days where that’s all it does. Just sits, doesn’t dig.

“You’re sure I’m gonna like this?”

Jee-yun squeals a “This is the best ice cream ever!” at the same exact time Mara giggles through a rueful shake of her head, so Eddie’s not feeling too safe.

He hovers his blue plastic spoon over his birthday cake with gummy bears and rainbow sprinkles, “Maybe we should have shared.”

“You ate a whole big ice cream last time!”

“Because it was vanilla, Jee,” Mara’s nose crinkles cutely in a smile as she digs into her own birthday cake ice cream. “It’s his favorite.”

“It’s not.”

“You’ll like birthday cake best, promise,” Jee nods, stretching out her pinky for Eddie, the patented Buckley pinky promise he knows all about, but it makes her grip on her cup wobbly, and Eddie has a vision of it toppling all over her dress. He tries to make a mental note to stock his car with wipes before next week, since clearly this is a thing they’re going to keep doing now.

“Right, well, if you promise,” he hums, before getting a perfect scoop. And within one second of clearing his spoon— “Ugh, no, no no, nope.”

“It’s not that bad!” Mara squeaks through peals of laughter, the traitor.

“This doesn’t taste anything like cake, oh my god,” Eddie says, sticking his tongue out for maximum effect. “No way you guys actually like this.”

“It’s not supposed to taste like cake,” Mara points, still giggling, and still enjoying her blasphemous ice cream.

“It’s birthday cake!” Eddie balks. “Of course it should taste like cake!”

“Like vanilla cake, you mean?”

“You’re really stuck on that, huh?” Eddie finds a giggle of his own slip out, his uneaten ice cream melting fast now, “I like more flavors than vanilla, you know?”

“Sure,” Mara says, in a tone that reminds him so much of Chris, Eddie would probably feel the ache in his chest if that one scoop of ice cream hadn’t contained enough sugar to coat every one of his nerves in something sticky sweet.

“Yeah,” he snips back, sounding a little like Chris there too, “I’m picking the flavor next week, and it’s going to blow your mind.”

“It’s Mara’s turn next week,” Jee corrects with a bright yellow smile.

“Me and Eddie can trade weeks,” Mara starts, a quirk of her brow, “If he finishes his birthday cake.”

“You’re mean, but you’re on,” Eddie challenges, bracing himself for bite number two. He didn’t realize his taste buds had gotten so old man so quickly, but god, really, why and how was this enjoyable to anyone?

Jee’s ice cream really does almost go flying, as she finds Eddie’s distaste just about the funniest thing on earth, her sneakers lighting up as they kick giddily at the foot of the bench. Mara reaches across Eddie to catch her by the elbow, which pushes Eddie’s next spoonful directly into his nose.

Jee really loses it then.

“What? What’s so funny?” Eddie feigns innocence, looking quickly between the girls at his sides. He’d be worried about their laughter attracting attention if—actually no, he’s not worried. Mara and Jee-yun’s laughter has an easy spot in Eddie’s top 5 favorite sounds in the world. Everyone passing by their park bench should be so lucky.

“You have—”

“Hmm?” Eddie really hams it up, smearing even more birthday cake ice cream on his face, “Do I have something on my face?”

Mara looks like she can’t stand his antics, which Eddie knows now is a very good sign, and Jee is practically vibrating in her seat. He makes a show of trying to wipe his face, but blatantly missing.

“Did I get it?” Jee shakes her head, and Eddie dramatically sighs, handing her a new napkin, “No? Could you get it for me, then?”

Eddie tilts down so he’s closer to eye level with Jee-yun, and as she reaches to dutifully help him, Eddie takes his spoon and bops some ice cream right on her nose instead.

She gasps in pure delight, “Eddie!”

“Jee! I thought we talked about this last week,” he chastises cluckingly, “Ice cream goes in our tummy, not on our—” Eddie swoops in to get her again, and she loses it, “Face!”

“Don’t even—” Mara warns when Eddie turns to her.

“I wasn’t gonna—”

“Yeah right,” she answers through an eye roll, but when she turns back to him, there’s ice cream on her nose too.

Some days Eddie wakes up, not even sure how much of him is left and how much is just shattered, crumbling ache. It digs and digs, a gaping hole in his chest, deep and wide.

But when Jee laughs at him trying to get his tongue to touch his nose, and Mara loops one of her arms through his to keep him from tossing the rest of his cup in the garbage, Eddie feels solid again.

Maybe he likes yellow birthday cake ice cream after all.

It’s so sticky sweet, it does a pretty good job sticking together, holding all the pieces of him up.

“You have a blue?”

“I have like, seven different blues, be more specific.”

“I want it to match my eyes,” Buck leans over, elbows on his knees, and makes a show of blinking at Eddie.

“Okay, maybe too specific,” Eddie says, rolling a few beads across the coffee table towards him, “And bold of you to assume I want to walk around with your eyes on me all the time.”

“You’re gonna wear this once to humor me, and then never again,” Buck picks up a bead or two he must deem blue enough, and slips them onto the elastic.

“I’m never taking it off, actually. Who do you think I am?” Eddie scoffs, sifting through a pile of letter beads while he takes a sip of his beer, which has been neglected so long in favor of concentrated bracelet making, it almost slips out his grip with condensation, “It’s a friendship bracelet, Buck, the rules are sacred, and obviously I follow them to a tee.”

“Obviously,” Buck smirks, “So if I’m not wearing it—”

“Friendship’s over,” Eddie shrugs, picking out a B and an F, searching for another, taking a heart shaped bead and putting it in his pile and hoping he’ll work up the courage to put it on in the next five minutes.

“Damn, okay, let me lock this in then,” and Buck slides on his own BFF letters, tongue peeking out cutely in concentration. Or just. In concentration. Eddie’s not—cute? Where did that—he didn’t—fuck. “This is actually so much harder than I thought it would be. My hands—I feel like a giant with these little beads.”

“It’s not working because you’re not on the floor,” Eddie points, “Jee says that’s how you have to do it.”

“Make friendship bracelets?”

“That and, drawing pictures, watching Frozen. Everything, I think,” Eddie explains, stretching his legs out on his living room floor, “I learned the hard way a few hours ago when I suggested we start a jigsaw puzzle on my kitchen table.”

“How dare you?” Buck mimes scandal, then starts pushing himself to standing with a grunt, “Well, if my four year old niece says it, it must be true.”

Buck holds a handful of his carefully selected beads in one hand, his half-done bracelet in the other, and rounds out the side of the coffee table to join Eddie on the floor. He sprawls out on his stomach, taking up most of the floor space.

“Oh yeah,” his voice strains as he props himself up on his elbows, trying to get back to work, “So much easier now.”

“Told you,” Eddie kicks lightly at his shoulder with the top of his foot, “Thanks again for helping me use up these beads I bought they insisted they had to have and then got bored of after thirty seconds.”

“Just trying to keep our friendship legally binding,” Buck says, eyes almost crossing as he looks at the beads he’s trying to carefully string up with his fingers that are too big for the toddler-friendly beads.

They’ve been at this for over an hour now, since the girls left and Buck came over, like that was a given now for his Tuesdays too. It’s not where Eddie would have ever expected to be—he thought his friendship bracelet days had passed—but in a less literal sense too, if you had asked him a few weeks ago if he could see himself sitting in his house that he never wanted to be in anymore, smiling and laughing, Eddie wouldn’t have believed you.

It’s nice here. And that makes Eddie feel—

Not wrong, really, but not altogether right about it, either.

“I think—no, I know, I’m thanking you for the wrong thing,” Eddie starts again when the comfortable quiet between them turns a little less so.

“Nothing I can think of you need to thank me for,” Buck avoids looking at him.

“Buck, you shouldn’t have to be babysitting me. It’s my own fault—”

“No, if you can refuse to talk about things, so can I,” Buck bristles, “I refuse to let you believe you’re some evil monster. You were hurt, Eddie.”

“This isn’t the same thing as—” the last time, he almost says, but there’s so many last times that it makes him choke over his words, “This wasn’t a natural disaster, Buck. I did this. It wasn’t a sniper, it wasn’t the weather, it wasn’t some horrible thing that happened to us.”

“But it did, something horrible did happen to you, Eddie,” Buck levels with him, “My brother died thirty years ago and my parents still don’t really know how to act about it.”

“That’s different too.”

“Is it?”

Eddie shakes his head, because he doesn’t—he doesn’t know how to make Buck see that this is different.

“I think I feel guilty,” Eddie tries to be brave, to do his homework like he spends his favorite part of his week impressing on Mara to do, and talk about it, “That I have good days.”

“Eddie,” Buck drops his bracelet, lips forming a thin, frowning line.

“I go to therapy and I get ice cream and you’re here,” Eddie rolls a stray bead around on the coffee table for something to do, “And I don’t—I didn’t really deserve to be trusted with a job like this in the first place, but I definitely don’t deserve to be enjoying it. Not when I still have things to fix, that I don’t know will ever get fixed.”

“Of course you deserve that.”

“No—”

“Getting better isn’t linear, and it isn’t all the same, and it isn’t a sure thing, I know you know that,” Buck starts, and Eddie nods. “But I am, a sure thing. I’ll be here. And so will our friends, our family. Of course they trust you. You had a horrible thing happen to you, and you made a choice, and we’re fixing it.” He says it so simply, like it’s a fact in one of his books he stays up reading in the loft on a 24.

“You will never, ever be able to talk me out of this one, Eddie,” Buck finally settles, back on his elbows, zoned in on his beadwork again, “I will always want you to be happy. For a day or an afternoon or a week or your whole life. No matter what horrible shit is happening to us or we’re making happen. Always.”

The heart has to go on the bracelet now, right?

“It’s my legal obligation now, so,” Buck shakes his bracelet at him, eyes alight again, “You can’t stop me.”

And surprisingly, Eddie means it when he smiles, happy for now, and says, “I won’t.”

“Ah shit,” Buck curses suddenly, “I added too many Fs.”

It startles a loud and genuine laugh out of Eddie, who leans forward, weight in the palms of his hands to squint at Buck’s long string of Fs. There’s four.

“Just take some off.”

“Bold of you to assume I can do that,” Buck sighs, resigned, and starts slipping on more letters, “I didn’t realize how big my hands were, like? My fingers are so—”

“Do not finish that phrase.”

Buck flips him off with one of his big middle fingers.

“Oh my god, wait, you have to take some of those off, you have all the Fs!” Eddie twists at his waist, looking around at the beads scattered around them on the floor, where there are no more letter F beads. He swore he had at least one.

“I can’t Eddie, they’re locked in!”

“I just have a B!” Eddie shouts, “What are we supposed to be just, best?”

“Get creative.”

“Typical you, distracting me with nice fucking speeches so I have to use like, Zs and Qs to spell things.”

“You really have been spending a lot of time with Jee lately, huh, you big baby?”

Eddie grumbles, and attempts to get creative, or whatever. The sun is all gone outside the window now, making the room feel darker, cozy, some random channel on the TV secondary to Buck’s almost constant excited stream of chatter. Eddie gets up to grab two more beers when he’s finally settled on some non-BFF letters, and finishes out the bracelet with a tie.

When he returns, he props Buck’s bottle up against the coffee table, easily within reach of where he’s laying, and fuck it, Eddie lays down across from him. And it’s not—he’s probably too old to hold this for a full 90-minute animated movie like Jee requests, but it’s funny, and weird, and he feels his laughs like, times ten this way, pressed between the floor and his ribcage, and he gets hit with a faceful of Buck’s. He can’t complain.

“You finished there, Picasso?”

“Picasso didn’t make jewelry, asshole,” Buck says, tying an insane amount of knots to hold his bracelet together, “I’m like, Kay Jewelers over here.”

“The engagement rings?”

“I mean, the commitment we’re making here with these plastic bracelets is actually a little more serious than an engagement, I think.”

“Right, yeah,” Eddie’s eyebrows jump up with his full-face grin, “What’d you end up spelling with the entire population of Fs?”

In lieu of an answer, Buck just reaches forward slightly—they’re so close laying like this, Eddie hadn't even realized at first, and when did his living room get so small? He pulls Eddie’s hand from where it was propped up under him, and slips his bracelet onto his wrist.

“BFFFFAENTBNMW?”

“Yeah, you’ve never heard of that one?” Buck is failing miserably at the bit, little tufts of laughter slipping out through every word he tries to deadpan seriously.

“Can’t say I have, no.”

“I gotta teach you everything,” Buck’s barely there smile cracks open, “It’s obviously, Best Fire Fighter Friends Forever And Ever No Take Backs No Matter What.”

“Oh yeah, duh. That one,” Eddie says.

“Super casual!” Buck waves his hand around expectantly, “Don’t leave me hanging here, man. How much do you love me in letter beads?”

Eddie gives his bracelet one last tug, making sure his knots will hold, and then passes it over to Buck.

“This just says bae?”

“No, no it doesn’t, it’s Buck and Eddie,” Eddie corrects, tilting his head to the side to point at each carefully selected letter, because he listened and got real creative here, “Buck-and-Eddie, B-A-E—okay, alright, I can see how it might look like that.”

“How it might—Eddie, c’mon,” Buck sputters through a bad case of the giggles. Eddie wants to bottle the sound up, grind it and turn it into bracelet beads so he can have it on him always. Forever and ever no take backs. Or whatever it was. Casual.

Eddie swoops over to try to grab the bracelet back, “I told you I didn’t see it when I was making it, Buck, give it—”

“Oh no, no I’m never, ever taking this off,” there are tears coming out of his eyes he’s laughing so hard now, rolling over onto his back, arms extended over him to slip the bracelet on and admire it. “This is incredible, Buck and Eddie.”

“If you’re never gonna be able to look at me with a straight face now, you can’t wear that to work.”

“My face is never straight anymore,” Buck says, so fucking cutely, and why the fuck did this word keep popping up in Eddie’s train of thought, he’s never used this word in his life—he’s giggling still, “You walked right into that one, man.”

And Eddie is helpless to do anything but giggle right along with him, turns on his side, propped up on one elbow, cheek in his palm, “Let me make a new one if you’re gonna be a dick.”

“No, no take backs,” Buck reaches forward and spins the bracelet on Eddie’s wrist.

He lets it linger, fingers right on his pulse point. Eddie remembers, right after the lightning, he would take 30 seconds, whenever they were together, to count Buck’s breaths, just to make sure they were there. And this different, Eddie knows. It wasn’t a natural disaster, or a sniper, or the weather. But maybe it’s a little bit the same.

Eddie lets him count.

“It looks good on you,” Buck says, finally, but his eyes are alive like he’s still laughing.

Eddie ducks his chin, feeling caught, for no reason at all, because it’s just Buck. Buck-And-Eddie.

“The bracelet?”

“Tuesdays,” Buck smiles.

He might still be thanking Buck for the wrong thing, Eddie thinks. A thank you for making me happy is right there on the tip of his tongue. He holds onto it.

“The bracelet too though, god I did a fucking fantastic job on that.”

“Well, when Gerrard fires us for wearing them, you know you’ll have a future at Kay, at least.”

“Oh man, I didn’t even think about how much Gerrard was gonna hate this,” Buck’s fingers rest over his sternum, fingers drumming idly, before he twists his head to the side, winking, “We have to make these for the entire team now, right?”

“I mean, feels sort of like our legal obligation, as good friends,” Eddie thinks about reaching behind him to grab the rest of the beads, some new elastic strings, but he can’t find it in him to move, really, with Buck this close to him. “Though, I don’t know what we’re gonna do without any Fs, still.”

“Don’t need ‘em,” Buck shrugs.

“No?”

“No,” Buck doesn’t move either, “Really Eddie, does Best Fire Fighter Friends Forever And Ever No Take Backs mean nothing to you? I can’t be handing those out to everyone. I already picked you.”

“No matter what.”

“Hm?” Buck blinks up at him.

“Best Fire Fighter Friends Forever And Ever No Take Backs, No Matter What,” Eddie slides his bracelet clad hand over to Buck, rests it almost on top of his.

“Yeah,” and Eddie thinks Buck was right, he really did a bang up job on this bracelet. Perfect blue choice, as he flits his gaze from their almost interlocked hands to Buck’s eyes, which are steadfast on his. “No matter what.”

Eddie knows he has to work on the will to say no. It’s the eyes, okay? He knows. He’s fully aware.

It’s just—that can be a next week problem, right?

“Why can’t we just go inside, again?”

“Because my boss doesn’t like visitors,” Eddie sinks back into his seat, which is difficult to do with Jee in his lap and an Elsa backpack squished between them and the steering wheel. Best he manages is to turn his head a smidge to see Mara, who has climbed into the passenger seat, “We’ll come back when Bobby’s captain again.”

“This is taking so long!” Jee laments, tipping her head back dramatically between Eddie’s shoulder and the headrest.

“We just gotta wait for them to get a call,” Eddie says, trying to peer into the station through his foggy windshield, “And it’s raining so, it won’t be much longer.”

“How do you know?” Mara asks.

“Everyone forgets how to drive when it rains. They’ll get called out soon,” Eddie waves, then nudges Jee out of her boredom-strike, “That ice cream turn to soup yet?”

“Elsa is keeping it cold,” Jee taps her backpack seriously, which she insisted they empty of all its contents when they got out of the grocery store a few minutes ago, because Elsa’s ice powers would protect their cartons of ice cream, of course. (Eddie slips in some ice packs when she’s not looking.)

“Thank you, Elsa.”

The sudden and torrential downpour that started about five minutes after Eddie started heading to the school to pick up the girls didn’t seem super conducive to their whole ‘sit and relax outside an ice cream place for an hour’ routine, so he had lightly suggested, once safely in the car, that maybe they pick up some ice cream to go to. It went over well, until Jee was worried some very other important people in their lives would not be able to get to an ice cream place in the rain either and well—

Like Eddie said, he’s working on his willpower.

It was a pretty hard point to argue with when he’d made up the rule in the first place, and those eyes, he’s really not exaggerating. The two of them must wreak havoc in the Han household all teamed up.

So that’s how Eddie ends up ushering two very giggly girls down grocery store aisles to pick one carton of ice cream each. Too easy.

They’re currently staking out in the 118 parking lot, parked a little off to the side and covering their faces with backpacks any time they see someone get close to the doors. It is more fun than it has any right to be.

“We should just call Maddie. She’ll send them on a call if we ask,” Mara suggests.

“We absolutely cannot do that,” Eddie purses his lips, “But I love the problem solving attitude.”

“I think I see Daddy!” Jee, easily distracted, has moved on to staring intently at the open bay doors, and is so convinced one of the misshappen blobs they can’t really make out through the rainy windshield is Chimney, that she leans forward, and presses on the horn.

“Jee!”

“Sorry,” she giggles, as Eddie pulls her back to him.

“The mission’s been compromised! Quick, hide, hide, hide!” Eddie throws one hand out blindly over Mara’s face, which is promptly smothered in laughter, and tucks Jee’s face into the crook of his neck, sinking them down to a slouch in the seat. And at this point, if the horn didn’t out them, the sound of their laughter would. “Don’t let them catch us!”

No one does come by, thankfully, and when they’ve returned to appropriate states of composure for executing the super secret ice cream drop-off stealth mission (full name, you have to use it every time), they ease up a little on their duck.

“I really hope they like ice cream soup,” Mara whispers, her own hand still hiding her smile.

“Do you think they’re gonna like the ice cream we picked?” Jee mimics her low tone exactly.

“Of course, because you picked it out for them.”

“You don’t always like the ice cream we pick, just because we pick it,” Mara giggles.

Before Eddie has to come up with a strong enough comeback for that (sometimes, he really is fighting for his life to keep up here), the alarms suddenly come to life. Saved by the bell.

It shocks a gasp out of Jee, even Mara squeals a little in surprise, and Eddie laughs, trying to keep the Elsa freezer backpack from slipping off their lap.

“They’re coming!”

They duck instantly again, bent over the center console, and their faces so close it does nothing to deter them from cracking up, the lights of the engines flickering over them as the engines start to roll out.

“Isn’t there an emergency?” Mara peeks over the dashboard, but is pulled back down by a teasing Jee, “Why are they driving so slow?”

“Maybe our next visit will be on performance review day,” Eddie quips, “Okay, just the ambulance, then we’re in the clear.”

“Who’s gonna carry the ice cream?”

“I got it!” Jee cheers, twisting around to try to loop the straps of her backpack on.

“We’ll have to make a run for it because it’s still raining,” Eddie says, looking from the station to the girls, mapping out their route. “We remember the plan once we get in there?”

“Straight upstairs, drop it in the freezer, and go,” Mara recites the super secret ice cream drop-off stealth mission perfectly. “No distractions.”

“No distractions,” Eddie echoes.

So of course, they are distracted right away.

“Which one’s yours, Eddie?” Mara skips straight to where their gear is stashed, half of the spots empty.

Eddie’s still trying to wipe the rainwater off a very ticklish and giggling Jee with his shirt sleeves at the entrance, because the makeshift umbrella he’d tried to make with his jacket for all three of them didn’t really do too much at all.

“Has my name on it,” he answers, swiping Jee’s hair out of her face before nodding to the back of the station, “C’mon, lets—”

“This fits you?” He turns to find Mara trying to hold his helmet on her head, the front visor drooping all the way down to her nose. “It’s so big!”

“Of course it’s big on you—”

“I want the jacket!” Jee jumps out of Eddie’s reach, scampering over to Jee to try to tug his turnout coat off its hook. Mara doesn’t even hesitate before helping her.

God, Eddie is so, so horrendous at this. (But for the first time in almost ten weeks, he smiles when he thinks that.)

The ice cream’s already super melted anyway, right? What’s a few more minutes?

“Oh my gosh,” Eddie feels like he could melt himself, watching Mara hold up his turnout on Jee, who is absolutely drowning in it.

“It smells funny,” Jee says, a crinkle of her nose, hands invisible in the sleeves that are dragging on the floor.

“I work really hard in it,” Eddie teases, “You try running up the stairs in that—no wait, actually don’t do that. Forget I said that. Please.”

“I can’t see!” Mara shrieks, trying to right the helmet again, and this was supposed to be a surprise visit, but Eddie has to take a picture of this and send it to Hen and Chim, right? Like he has to, there’s no way he can’t—

Eddie’s just slipped his phone out when the three of them all turn to hear a voice yelling from the loft railing.

“Excuse me, are you guys the new probies? You’re gonna need to work on getting that gear on a little quicker.”

“Uncle Buck!”

Yeah, Eddie is not surviving this super secret ice cream drop-off stealth mission. That smile, even several feet and a floor level between them, is easily a four-alarm.

“Stay there, we were just coming up, right girls?” Eddie says, as much to the girls as to Buck, who laugh guiltily.

“You didn’t go on the firetrucks with Daddy and Hen?” Jee hops up the last step and is immediately scooped up into Buck’s arms.

“Well it’s a good thing I didn’t, so I could protect our station from little thieves like you,” he smiles, tickling under Jee’s arms until she’s a squirming mess.

“Don’t look over here, Buck,” Mara yelps, hiding the almost-forgotten Frozen backpack behind her, and then hiding herself behind Eddie at the top of the stairs. She makes Eddie side step to shield her all the way to the kitchen, “This was supposed to be a secret.”

“There’s no one else here, right? Just you, Jee?” Buck plays along, winking at Eddie before he spins, back to them.

“Uh yeah, Mara and Eddie!”

“Right sorry,” Buck laughs, depositing Jee on the counter ahead of him as he slips onto a stool. Then to Mara, “I won’t tell anyone. You bring us ice cream?”

“It’s Tuesday!”

“Of course!”

“I picked cookies and cream and Jee-yun picked strawberry,” Mara says, dropping the ice cream (soup) cartons into the freezer.

“My two favorites, how’d you guys know!?” Buck grins, “Did you guys have your ice cream yet today?”

“Not yet.”

“They won’t be back for a while,” Buck says, looking up at Eddie for quick permission, “Wanna have some with me?”

“Yes!” Jee kicks straight into Buck’s stomach with glee, and he hides it semi-convincingly through a smile. Eddie has to bite his lips to hold it together.

When Buck picks Jee back up and walks her over to the cabinet where they keep the bowls, hoisting her so she can reach for four of them all on her own, Eddie decides they need to add another near-death experience in the workplace to his tally. The three of them work quickly together, and Eddie feels his eyes start to glaze over from not blinking so he doesn’t miss any of it. Until Mara is requesting Eddie’s help specifically with dishing out sprinkles, and he ends up shoulder to shoulder with Buck, which is a real exercise in composure. He actually needs the counter to hold himself up when Buck starts stealing bites of ice cream off the spoon Mara is using to try to scoop into the bowls.

It feels…Eddie doesn’t even know if he has the word for it.

“So,” Eddie says, sliding his bowl of ice cream in front of him at the counter once they’ve got the girls settled at the table with their own. “What are you doing here, seriously?”

Buck keeps his shoulders squared away, and shrugs, “I’m man behind.”

“You love rain rescues,” Eddie kicks at Buck’s stool, his foot looping around the opposite bar, “Makes you feel like an action star.”

“Knew you loved when I shake my rainwater hair out on you,” Buck says, mimicking the motion he does to make Eddie laugh on a rainy day call, without fail, every time. Then, “Wasn’t exactly voluntary.”

Eddie stares Buck down, waiting for a better answer than that. He’s about to pull Buck’s stool in closer with his ankle.

“I might have, sort of kind of, gotten into it with Gerrard earlier?” Buck says, squeezes it out like it’s more of a question than something he’s telling Eddie for sure, “After um, Tommy came up in conversation, actually.”

“What about Tommy?”

“That he’s my boyfriend,” Buck says, a dry humorless laugh that Eddie thinks makes their uneaten ice cream curdle, “Guess he didn’t know? Not that he has a right to, but uh, now that he does, he’s not—he’s not the biggest fan.”

Which Eddie knows is the ‘we have children ears within earshot’ way of saying he was a total homophobic asshole about it.

“Oh my god, man, I’m so sorry—”

“It’s fine, wasn’t that bad,” Buck waves him off, takes a too-big scoop of cookies and cream, a clear sign to Eddie he’s done talking about it, but Eddie is certainly the fuck not.

“Buck, anything that is not bare minimum acceptance is very bad,” Eddie insists, “What did Tommy have to say about it?”

“Not much,” Buck says, and he must feel Eddie’s glare at him from the side, because he elaborates eventually, “That it wasn’t that bad.”

Eddie doesn’t fight anymore, Eddie won’t punch people in the face, Eddie doesn’t fight anymore, Eddie is calm, Eddie will not make sure his fist finds that loser’s ugly face—

“What right do I have to complain when Tommy was with Gerrard longer, you know?”

“It’s not a contest.”

“I just, I don’t know. He doesn’t totally get it, what we had with Bobby, which makes this feel worse, I think?” Buck pushes his ice cream around his bowl absently, “But he’s right, really. I’ll get over it, Gerrard will get over it. It’s just, part of the territory now, you know?”

“No, no it’s not,” Eddie does then, scoot himself closer to Buck, “It is absolutely not part of the territory to be berated at work and be told by someone who loves you to suck it up!”

“Well,” is all Buck says, his shoulders slumping in on themselves and oh. If Eddie doesn’t keep repeating I don’t fight anymore, I will not punch a man, over and over in his head then he will. He will fight, he will punch a man. Two of them. Repeatedly.

“Seriously, I’m so fine, I already feel better,” Buck pushes his hand over Eddie’s, which he didn’t even realize he’d balled up into a fist. Their silly friendship bracelets criss-cross with the motion. “You brought me ice cream and the cutest kids in California, it’s a cure-all.”

“Ice cream and the kids,” Eddie rolls his eyes, relaxing his hand and turning it over, so his palm’s up and against Buck’s, “Glad to know where I stand.”

“I said you brought them to me, wouldn’t work if it was anyone else,” Buck says. “You guys probably should get going.”

“We should probably stay, so I can talk to Gerrard myself,” Eddie grunts.

“Won’t do anything but make both our lives more hell instead of just mine, c’mon,” Buck pushes himself to standing, and Eddie’s hand feels oddly empty, “Mara, Jee—you guys wanna go down the fireman’s pole on your way out?”

It’s an evil play to pull, because there’s no way Eddie will be able to convince them they should stay now, but Eddie’s sure Buck knows this—his face says as much as he ushers the girls to drop their ice cream bowls in the sink, and then to the opposite side of the loft where the pole is.

“Oh man, still raining, huh?” Buck says, when they make their way back to the door.

“And we don’t have an umbrella!” Jee peeks outside from behind Eddie.

“Eddie didn’t bring you guys an umbrella? How rude of him,” Buck tsks, “Then I feel like there’s only one solution here.”

“We did fine running before,” Eddie defends.

“Mara, go get his coat,” Buck nods back to their gear lockers, and Mara does not have to be encouraged at all.

“This is why you’re never allowed to babysit with me,” Eddie nudges his shoulder into Buck’s, “Three kids instead of two.”

“Got it!” Mara skids to a stop on returning, holding up Eddie’s turnout.

“Alrighty, you girls ready?” Buck stretches his arms wide, holding the jacket at either side like a canopy over their heads, “On my count…three, two, one…go!”

Eddie watches, in both delight and horror (because it’s so endearing but also so messy) as they traipse through every single puddle on their way to Eddie’s car, pouring rain beating down on them no deterrent to their sunshiney laughter. Eddie jogs behind them, unlocking the doors and swiftly sliding back into his seat. Mara climbs across into hers, Eddie shaking his rainwater hair onto her like Buck does to him on calls, because he’s asking for a premature heart attack these days, at her perfect shrieking laughter.

Buck’s sort of half shielding himself with Eddie’s coat now, halfway out the door to help Jee in, “Okay, everyone in? Everyone good?” A chorus of nods. “Okay, get home safe, bother Eddie until he lets you have more ice cream.”

“Incredibly unhelpful,” Eddie turns the keys to start the car, eyes rolling fondly.

“I’m so happy you came, love you sooo much,” Buck coos sweetly, punctuates the sentence with a loud mwah kiss to Jee’s forehead, and another he blows across to Mara.

Eddie’s already thinking of how he’s going to explain to Maddie and Chim that they got stuck in the station parking lot because Eddie can’t watch Buck do simple, every day thing, but then Jee yelps, “Don’t forget Eddie!”

“Silly me,” Buck says, and then repeats the motion once more, this time placing an exaggerated kiss in his palm, then reaching for Eddie. He leans further into the car, Eddie leans back, and pretends to grab the kiss out of his hand.

“Thanks for this,” Eddie shakes his closed fist at him, eyes sparkling.

“Don’t lose it,” Buck says, saying goodbye to the girls one final time before slipping out of the car.

They watch Buck sprint back inside, Eddie’s coat under one arm, before Eddie even attempts to move the car.

Eddie drives with one hand in a fist on top of the wheel the entire way home.

So it’s probably not Eddie’s fault at all when they ask, after dinner and homework are finished and they’re squished between the floor and the coffee table in Eddie’s living room, picking a movie, for more ice cream because they hadn’t even really had full bowls at the station, you know? That Eddie is helpless to give in within seconds.

It’s not his fault at all, this time.

Because he’s got a kiss in his palm he’s on strict instruction to keep, and a very long string string of texts that really, truly, wipe the word ‘no’ from his vocabulary.

So we’re officially sold on the ice cream on Tuesdays rule here

A picture of Hen and Chim drenched in rain water but smiling over some strawberry and cookies and cream is attached

Thanks again for coming

I know you didn’t know I needed it.

Or maybe you did freaky mind meld thing we’ve got going on sometimes!!

but i definitely didn’t know

and i jsht feel

So much better.

sorry i’m blowing up yor phone Can’t get my thoughts together

I am so lucky to have you

idk

Youre my favorite person

shit i was Literally just supposed t tell you everyone liked the ice cream

Delete these.

ok

Shit

Thanks Eddie :)

(Send me that picture of the girls in your gear right now and ill forgive you for not deleting these embarrassing messages like I know you wont.)

Eddie’s got a pretty solid routine by week five with Mara and Jee.

He leaves his house at 1:53 exactly, after his standing (and kind of working) therapy appointment, and that gets him to school six minutes before Jee’s class gets dismissed. He knows exactly what angle she’s gonna run at him so he can catch her Elsa backpack, not let it go flying into the parking lot. She walks on the curb like a balance beam on his right side from her end of the school to Mara’s and she will fill all twenty minutes exactly with anecdotes about her day in very vivid detail to Eddie.

It’s Mara’s turn to talk about her day while they drive to the ice cream place of the week, and Eddie’s got a stack of art class drawings and A math worksheets stockpiled in his front seat  from when they each excitedly toss them up to him mid-ride to show off. They take turns picking the flavor they’ll try, still on the hunt for the elusive cotton candy, and once Eddie’s aggressively Purell-ed their hands enough and baby wiped the sprinkles off Jee’s face, they’ll head back to his house.

He makes dinner while Mara does homework right behind him at the table, and Jee flip flops between which of them she’ll help (with varying degrees of actual help happening. But she’s so freaking cute, who cares?)

One of the four parents between the two of them is always at Eddie’s door at a prompt 7:30, and they always thank him, and Eddie always feels like that’s wrong, he should be thanking them. He looks at his messy living room, scattered with whatever they occupied themselves with post-dinner that week, be it paints or puzzles or a surprisingly cutthroat round of Candyland, and he feels so good.

And more importantly, he feels okay with that. Or, he’s starting to.

He falls asleep easily, doesn’t stare up at the ceiling like most other nights of the week. He wakes up on time for work the next day, jogs in with a notable spring in his step.

It’s a good routine, one Eddie cautiously admits he really, really, really likes being part of, of having all to himself. The three of them—they’ve got Tuesdays down pat by week five.

Week six is another story.

“Eddieeeeeee!”

“Jeeeeeee,” Eddie mimics her happy drawl as he catches her before she can bruise his shins with the force of a hug. “Did you have a good day?”

“We did adding numbers!” She shouts, directly into Eddie’s ear when he bends to reach for her backpack, “I can do it just like Mara now!”

“No way!”

“Yes way! I said to Ms Brooke that I already know about adding numbers,” she states, slipping her hand into Eddie’s to start their walk over to the elementary pick-up lines.

“Did you now?”

“Yeah,” she says not unlike a duh, and wobbles cutely on the curb, Eddie’s grip keeping her up, “She asked how I knowed it and I told her Mara has homework about it and our Eddie counts with his fingers to help her and I also get to help.”

And Eddie would find time to be embarrassed that her teacher thinks Eddie only knows how to add up to like, ten if he wasn’t stuck on our Eddie.

“Well,” he tries his best to not sound like math is going to make him cry, “You’re a very good helper.”

“That’s what I told Ms Brooke!”

Eddie laughs as they settle into their waiting spot, and Jee moves on pretty easily from destroying Eddie’s composure to talk about what they drew in art, and how high up she got on the swings at recess, and there’s some very serious drama concerning the colors of the pop-its in the prize box and who’s gonna be the first student of the week that Ms Brooke said they’re starting next week.

Time passes quickly, as usual, and Jee’s just making a jungle gym of Eddie’s legs when she remembers to ask, “Did you pick what ice cream we’re gonna have this week?”

“Ah, actually we’re gonna do a raincheck on my pick,” Eddie grins down at her.

“It’s not raining.”

“Sorry, I was being confusing again,” he says, smoothing a hand over her hair absently, “I’m gonna pick next week. We have a special guest today.”

As if on cue, the elementary and middle school classes start filing out of the building. Jee spots Mara (as she always does), jumping up excitedly (as she always does) and landing on Eddie’s toes (as she always does). It’s sweet, Eddie thinks, how much she looks up to her, how close they’ve gotten, something really wonderful in the midst of a wrong situation. Mara waves to Jee dutifully, and this is when she usually pretends to be put out about also smiling at Eddie.

But this week she couldn’t hide her smile if she tried.

“So, we go home with mom’s friend on Tuesdays, but it’s okay, he’s really cool. There he is—”

“Mr Diaz!”

Denny walks perfectly in step with Mara, and calls out just before they reach them.

Jee looks about two seconds away from asking who the heck Mr Diaz is and why Eddie keeps making up people, so he answers quickly, “When are you gonna remember to just call me Eddie, hm? Your sister had no problem with it.”

“I have better manners than her, Eddie,” he shrugs, poking his tongue out antagonizingly at Mara, who swats him away, but it doesn’t do anything to dull how thrilled Eddie knows she is Denny’s with them this week. “What’s up, Jee?”

“You’re coming home with us?” Jee asks as she accepts his high-five on her tip-toes.

“No practice this week,” he explains, of the after school soccer team he’s on, which is why normally, Karen is out of work in time to get him. Eddie, of course, doesn't mind the extra company for the week. Even less so when he sees how it makes Mara buzz with joy.

Jee clearly doesn't mind either, someone else to brag about her new math skills to, and chats with him as they head towards Eddie’s truck.

Mara hangs back with Eddie just a step, so he is legally obligated to grin goofily down at her and nudge, “Really cool, huh?”

“Shut up,” she shoulders him back.

“I’m gonna remember that forever,” Eddie says, hand clutched to his chest, “I’m gonna make a note actually, and hang it on my fridge, with the date. ‘Mara says Eddie is really cool’, Tuesday, September—”

“You already knew this loser, Denny?” Mara cuts him off, reaching for the left side car door, where she always sits. Part of the routine.

But then: “Oh yeah, he’s Chris’s dad.”

Not the routine.

Eddie actually drops his keys on the ground at the sound of Chris’s name.

He doesn’t know if it’s been on purpose—actually, Eddie knows he does it on purpose, but he’s not sure if it’s unconscious or not on everyone around him’s part—but for the past eight going on nine weeks, Chris never comes up.

It’s a rule every day, but definitely on Tuesdays, Eddie’s one day of the week where he doesn’t think about how he blew his life up to bits and pieces, where Eddie breathes right from the hours of 2 to 8 pm and remembers how to smile. If Chris comes up in that window, then it all goes to shit. Eddie could, more likely certainly will, fall apart.

But Denny is new to Tuesdays. A variable in their delicate Tuesday ecosystem.

Somehow, Eddie thinks if the inevitable “Who’s Chris?” comes out of one of the two girls in the backseat, he will dissolve into the gravel and they’ll be stranded their forever, so he’s quick to jump in, “Uh, I don’t know if you’ve met him, Mara, maybe just once? And Jee, maybe you remember, but um. Uh, he’s my—he’s my son.”

Mara looks at him funny, matching stilled grips on door handles.

Jee pipes up from where she’s climbing into her car seat on the opposite side, “Is Chris the special guest!?” Because of course, everything Eddie says to her is new and confusing, but she remembers Chris. Of fucking course.

“Denny’s the special guest,” Eddie corrects, voice tight, but he tries to fix it when he gets into the car, “Chris is in Texas, Jee.”

“He’s gonna bring me back a cowboy hat,” Denny grins cheekily, but pauses when he sees the passenger seat is covered, a pile of things Eddie’s collected from the girls. Another slight in the routine, Eddie feels so—

“Here, let me—” he starts gathering things up, frantically avoiding eye contact when sweet, wonderful, inquisitive Jee adds, “Why isn’t he home? Can he get me a cowboy hat too?”

“I bet Eddie has one,” Denny says, totally unbothered by everything, even as Eddie feels like he’s shaking with anxiety, “They’re from Texas.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Eddie answers, “To being from Texas. No to the cowboy hat.”

“But I want one!”

“You sound like your Uncle,” Eddie mumbles, because Buck keeps insisting one day he’s going to uncover a full cowboy getup that Eddie’s been hiding on him. He finally, finally, gets into his seat and starts the car, and finds the strength to answer the second part of Jee’s question, “Chris wanted to stay with his grandparents for a bit, and they’re in Texas. So, he’s there.”

He turns to back out of his spot, and catches Mara’s eye, who is still looking at him with something Eddie can’t quite place, and hasn’t said anything since they got into the car.

“We can ask him about cowgirl hats, Jee. And for Mara, too. You think he can be online tonight, Eddie?” Denny turns in his seat to ask, smiling politely, genuinely, “After homework, obviously. I wanted to play this new game I got with him—”

“I actually uh, don’t know his schedule that well, bud,” Eddie says, practiced breathing in and out, in and out, as they head out onto the road, “You’re probably better just asking him what he’s up to.”

Which is, Eddie thinks, the right answer. The safe one. Sounds pretty normal coming out of his mouth, his voice doesn’t even shake!

Except, wrong fucking answer, definitely, when Denny takes this as his cue to take out his phone, right then and there, in Eddie’s car, on a Tuesday, in the middle of the time Mara’s supposed to be telling him about the chapter book she’s reading and what she got on her spelling test. This is wrong, this is all wrong—

Chris picks up on the fourth ring. Chris hasn’t picked up for Eddie in nine weeks.

It’s a miracle Eddie doesn’t drive off the road.

“Hey, Chris—no I just left school, your dad picked us up actually.”

If he didn’t have three of his favorite children in the car—god, that guardrail is calling his name!

“Yeah, he’s here, we’re still in the car—hold on, I’ll just put you on speaker.”

Eddie wants to scream that that’s totally not why Chris was asking, but Denny has already got the phone off his ear and in his hand, hitting the speaker icon, “Okay, can you hear us?”

“Yeah,” Chris’s voice sounds through the phone, “Hey, guys.”

There’s a stinging behind his eyes, suddenly, and didn’t Eddie check his AC a few weeks ago? When Jee was screaming and he thought it was broken—it wasn’t, Eddie was sure, but he feels suffocated again, but not—he doesn’t hate it, feels more like, like something’s closing up around him, or in him. And it’s—

That’s Chris’s voice. Really there, Chris. In his car.

He sounds good. That’s good.

“Chris! Do you have any cowboy hats?” Jee piques, leaning forward in her seat towards the center console, where Denny’s got the phone extended between all of them. “I want a pink one! Or, or! A purple one. Do you think it can be sparkly?”

“That was Jee-yun,” Denny narrates.

“Really? Could have sworn that sounded like my dad.”

Eddie actually can’t believe the car is still driving in a straight line.

The boys are laughing, but Jee is serious, “So? Do you think they have one? Eddie said he doesn’t have a cowboy hat.”

“He’s lying, I’ve already found three here that my tia said were his.”

“Who was that—was that Soph?—I’m gonna kill her,” Eddie finds himself, miraculously smiling, “Chris, you can’t trust a word she says.”

“I don’t know, actually. It was purple, and sparkly…”

Jee squeals.

“I’ll find something to bring you back, Jee, promise,” Chris says, and he sounds like he’s smiling, which, Eddie guesses, tracks for a Tuesday.

“When?” Jee asks, “When will you bring it back?”

And then, like he wants Eddie to cause a multi-car pileup, Chris says, “Soon.”

“Okay we gotta go in a sec,” Denny replies luckily, before Eddie has time to do just that, “Did you know about this ice cream on Tuesdays rule?”

“I heard,” Chris says, and from who? Eddie wonders. Who is Chris talking to? That’s good, he’s talking to someone, maybe he was serious, and soon is—soon. “How much vanilla ice cream is my dad forcing you guys to have, Jee?”

“I’ll have you know, I ate a whole cup of birthday cake last time,” Eddie says, pulling into the parking lot of this week’s ice cream place, his heart rate still fast, but settling. Chris, routine, Tuesdays, Chris. “And what was the week before? Caramel something, I think.”

“Which is basically vanilla.”

“Well, Denny gets pick this week, and I’m sure you’ve encouraged him to do his worst.”

“No promises,” Denny’s grin is impish and bright, “You free tonight, Chris?”

“Yeah, should be, I’ll text you,” he says, and then, “Lemme finish my homework now then, but uh, really cool talking to you guys.”

“Call us again next week!” Jee is cheering before Eddie can even get a breath in.

“Yeah,” he laughs, “Make sure dad eats all his ice cream even if he hates it.”

Eddie’s brain already feels frozen.

Denny and Jee shout goodbye, and Eddie thinks he manages one of his own, maybe? And after a few more seconds, the call’s ended, and by some miracle, Eddie is still breathing.

Jee is quickly attempting to bust out of her car seat, so Eddie takes that as his cue to sugar overload now and unpack all of this later over a beer with Buck. “Before we go in, can I just request—nothing that’s dyed a weird color.”

There’s a second where Denny (pretends) to think this over, but, “Request denied.”

“I really need at least one of you on my side,” Eddie slips out of the car, jogging around the side to help Jee out with an affronted laugh, “Man, did you have to wear this very pretty white dress I know you’re going to get blue ice cream all over today?” Jee giggles in answer and jumps out of the car, declaring she’ll be super neat, pinky promise, Eddie!

“Oh shoot, my wallet,” Eddie pats his pockets, searching, “What a shame if we got in there and I couldn’t pay!”

“Just for that, we might have to add sour gummy worms, what do you think, Jee?” Denny quips, and Eddie watches carefully in his periphery as they take off across the parking lot and head for the ice cream shop to get a head start on a plan to torture Eddie.

He rounds back to the driver’s side door, leans over the console to grab the almost missing wallet, and while he’s mostly out of view from all the kids, takes a second to give the biggest what the fuck just happened exhale he’s ever exhaled. Hearing Chris was good, but a lot, and he’s feeling, good, but also a little bit frayed at the edges, like a live wire.

He can still feel his heart beating, doesn’t know how to pull himself together in three seconds flat, but maybe, he hopes, the ice cream will cool down every cell in his body that feels like it’s been lit on fire.

He’s impressively sucking back tears he has still avoided shedding in, oh, nine-going-on-ten weeks when he straightens back up, and catches Mara standing, still quietly, next to her door. He got so in his own head for a minute there, he’d not noticed she hadn’t said anything at all when Chris was on the phone, not that Eddie expected her to, like he hadn’t even really expected himself to, but still.

She’s holding one hand behind her back, looking expectantly up at Eddie, when he knows any other week she would have been first in line to pick out a flavor that’d make Eddie squirm.

He doesn’t have the greatest track record with this kind of thing, but he tries, softly, “Everything okay?”

She nods, opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, but stops.

“We can hang out here, if you want. They can bring the ice cream to us,” Eddie softens, leaning lightly against the car.

“No, it’s um…” she shakes her head, and then, “Here.”

Mara juts one hand out suddenly, and in it, is a ripped off piece of notebook paper that reads: Mara thinks Eddie is really cool, with today’s date scrawled on the bottom, and a smiley face beside it.

When did she do this? Why did she do this now? Does she want him to collapse, right here, in the—Eddie can’t even make out the name of the place on the sign his eyes are so glassy—Hollywood Scoops (?) parking lot? And never get back up?

“For the fridge,” she shrugs, when Eddie takes it, and can’t find a single word in his vocabulary all of a sudden to answer with. “I’m glad you’re not in Texas.”

Eddie feels the paper between his fingers, then dips his head until he can catch her eye, “I’m gonna keep this forever. Thank you.”

She finally, fully smiles back, and takes two big steps to be at Eddie’s side, turns from the car to the ice cream shop, “Don’t think this means I’m going any easier when it’s my week to pick the flavor, though.”

“Wouldn’t dream it.”

It’s 7:42 pm on a Tuesday.

Eddie remembers the time, exactly, because it’s a Tuesday, and he does Tuesdays so well.

7:39 on a Tuesday, Eddie’s standing with his shoulder propped up against the wall on the side of his porch, one hand waving as he watches—a little bit terrified and a lot bit endeared—as Jee runs with her shoes she insisted she tie herself that are not really tied at all down his driveway and into Karen’s car. Mara helps her in as Denny kicks on his shoes only half way and also definitely not tied (Eddie can’t believe some days that the three of these kids are not at all biologically related) and runs out behind them so Karen can smother him in kisses.

Typical Tuesday. 7:39.

7:40 pm, Eddie waves and waves and waves until he’s sure Mara can’t see him out her window anymore, and at 7:41 Eddie uses his free hand to pull his phone out his pocket and send his routine text to Buck, come over i miss you. 

7:42, he makes it halfway through deleting the second half of that message, when a notification drops down on his screen.

all we have here is vanilla so I guess it wasn’t really your fault you grew up boring

will have to fix this when i get home

There’s an image attached of a half empty carton of vanilla ice cream on what Eddie recognizes as the kitchen table at his parents’ house.

Eddie texts Buck at 7:44 when he can see the screen clearly again: just got a text from chris

Tell me that’s not a typo

Eddie??????

Call me????????

What the fuck

How soon can you be here

I was already on my way

You’re being serious??

How soon?

10 minutes I’m breaking traffic laws

Don’t do that. Need you here to answer for me my brain stopped working.

Like seven. I can do seven minutes

Holy shit

FUCKING TUESDAYS MAN

Eddie only waits six.

“You know what this friend group needs?”

“There are a lot of ways that question could go, Chim,” Hen looks up from undoing her boots, perched on the edge of the bench beside Eddie in the locker room at the end of their one shift a week all together, “But please, tell us.”

“No, no wait—I wanna guess!” Buck yelps, shirt half unbuttoned, which is fine, totally fine, why are you even pointing it out? Eddie doesn’t care, like not even a little—“You and Maddie have finally agreed to starting an annual Buckley family road trip.”

“For the third consecutive year since you pitched that startlingly horrible idea, no, I do not want to be in a car with you and a toddler for days on end,” Chim deadpans, narrowly dodging the undershirt to the face Buck tosses.

“So it’s not a vacation?” Hen’s brow furrows, “I think we could use a vacation.”

“A million dollars!”

“Didn’t we try that already?” Ravi says around the side of his locker door.

“A dog!” Buck tries again, “Why does this firehouse not have a dog?”

“I think we tried that too,” Eddie grins.

“While this has been entertaining, no, no, and no again,” Chim leans into the lockers with one hand, “We need a single friend.”

“Like we need one more friend?” Buck’s brows scrunch, doing up the last of his buttons, “Or—”

“Like, I haven’t had a night alone with my wife since all of you decided to couple up,” Chim huffs.

“Ah, so you want a babysitter,” Hen translates, “You got spoiled having Uncle Buck on standby.”

Is anyone else getting a sense of deja vu? No? Just Eddie?

“I’m available plenty,” Buck grumbles.

“Not this Friday, you’re not,” Chim corrects, “Which happens to be my anniversary.”

A blank pause where literally everyone in the locker room, who were all in attendance at Chim and Maddie’s wedding just a handful of months ago, tries to figure out the math on that one.

“And what anniversary is that, exactly?” Ravi purses his lips, the only one brave enough to ask.

“Four and a half months,” Chim says simply.

“Oh yeah, that one,” Buck’s face scrunches cutely in confusion, a little shake of his head as he rolls up his sleeve cuffs.

“I still remember mine and Karen’s four and a half months,” Hen teases, dreamily.

“Alright, assholes, I get it, but you don’t understand,” Chim all but weeps, physically distraught, “Our last minute alone was in a hospital bed.”

“Four and a half months ago,” Ravi points out, helpfully.

“Alright, whatever made up thing you wanna celebrate, you know I’ll make myself available,” Buck says.

“You can’t cancel, Buck,” Hen nudges him as she stands and reaches for her bag, “Wouldn’t this be your all important four and half month anniversary too?”

And look. Eddie is fine being single. It's best for everyone—himself, his son, the entire population of Los Angeles—but just because he knows he should be, doesn’t mean he likes volunteering the information to be the topic of conversation.

Unless the current topic of conversation is worse.

Which.

Buck not being single arguably is.

“Uh, I—” Eddie interjects, raising a hand, “I’m single.”

“Yeah, but we already take advantage of that on Tuesdays,” Chim waves him off.

“You take advantage of my work schedule, not my singleness, which again,” Eddie reiterates, because he’s so, so, normal about this. Buck has a boyfriend and Eddie doesn’t. Who cares? Not Eddie. Eddie doesn’t care at all! “I definitely am.”

“If the girls spend another night of the week with Eddie, there’s really no hope for the rest of us,” Hen says, and then slips into a friendly mock, “Eddie makes the best mac and cheese, and Eddie has such a cool car, and Eddie lets us eat dinner on his couch, and did you know Eddie was a real cowboy?”

“Oh don’t forget, I want you to do my hair like Eddie does it, which is a request I get every single morning, and Eddie is so funny, and Eddie is so smart, and Eddie can do a cartwheel, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, when can we see Eddie again? Can you take us back to Eddie’s?”

And Eddie might be harboring a whole host of problems in his life that are going to take an ungodly amount of therapy to fix, unexplained jealousy surrounding his best friend right now tentatively included, but he has absolutely no problem being smug as hell about this.

He’s sure he’s smiling to show as much when there’s several groans around him in answer.

“I can’t really help that,” he shrugs.

“You can cartwheel?” Ravi gasps.

“Let me do this,” Buck pleads, back to the lockers, and to Eddie, weirdly, when he says it, “Consider it a four and half month anniversary gift.”

“If you’re sure,” Chim agrees, albeit a little reluctantly. Eddie though? Kind of thrilled. Date thwarted and he didn’t have to lift a finger, or cartwheel, to make it happen.

But then Hen has to go and ruin it by suggesting, “Hey, maybe Tommy will wanna join. Could still be dinner and a movie, yeah?”

So, “I’ll be available.” Eddie reaches behind Buck, grabbing his bag out of his locker, chest just an inch from Buck’s back, before he slams it shut just a little too hard, “If you know, you’re worried he’ll dump you on round three of Frozen.”

Was that—that was too much, no? Yeah. Eddie’s just—fuck.

“I’m sorry, they really ask to watch the same movie three times in a row?” Ravi’s eyes are wide, absolutely bewildered.

“I heard there’s a new ending when you turn it on for the fourth consecutive time in one night, actually,” Chim says, which is lighthearted enough it should diffuse some of the tension, but Buck’s staring at Eddie so intensely Eddie feels like he needs to bolt up the nearest North Mountain.

“Oh really? I heard they change the villain,” Hen commiserates.

“No way. My money’s on Sven going completely off the rails.”

“Hmm. I think Anna,” Eddie shakes his head, because he has to join in on this conversation again if he wants to try to prove he’s feeling so normal about this. About Buck, and dating, and Tommy being invited to watch Frozen, “She clearly wants the crown.”

“Eddie,” Chim says, hand clapped seriously on Eddie’s shoulder, “Wait until you hear about what happens in Frozen 2.”

“There’s a Frozen 2? Why haven’t we gotten to that one yet?”

“Because the girls love Frozen 1,” Hen laughs, because duh, “And you’re their cool Eddie who never says no.”

“I say no plenty,” Eddie defends, weakly.

“Maybe Buck and Tommy will be the ones to break the curse!”

Buck doesn’t respond more than a “Sure, see you Friday,” to Chim before stalking out of the locker room. If anyone is as bothered as Eddie by it, they don’t let on.

“Remind me of this if I ever mistakenly insinuate I want kids,” Ravi worries, looking spooked.

Buck was acting weird right? And no one else—no one else is seeing this? Eddie guesses he’s also acting weird, and can’t figure that out, because he has no reason to be acting weird, whatever—Buck’s more important.

But Buck is out of there with haste, and Hen is whirling on Ravi because, “Wait, back up a second—Chim said everyone coupled up, which would imply…Ravi?!” and everyone’s torn between pestering him for information and wondering how in the hell Chim knew and no one else did until just now.

So, Eddie watches Buck leave, and guesses he needs to, pun intended, let it go.

“Do you have an octopus?”

“Go fish!”

Eddie hangs his head in defeat and reaches into the center of their circle for a card from the pile, much to Jee-yun and Mara’s delight.

“I have the entire ocean in my hand at this point,” Eddie sticks his new card in his pile dejectedly.

“Then I bet you have a starfish for me,” Mara beams, holding one hand out expectantly.

“This game is rigged,” Eddie hands it over, and prompts Jee to take her turn.

They’re sitting in a circle on the grass of the little space Eddie has in his backyard, the sun still up high, bright and warm like Eddie’s insides every time the girls laugh at his downfall in their card game. They’re on round three and he has yet to win, but he’s not really trying, that’s all. Of course. Wants to be a good, trusted adult who boosts their self-esteem. He’s definitely not getting demolished in consecutive rounds of post-ice cream Go Fish by a four and nine year old.

“Hmmm, Eddie. Do you have…” Jee starts, looking over her hand of cards that she keeps waving all over the place for all of them to see.

“You could ask Mara for a card, you know.”

“You just said you have the whole ocean, why would she ask me?” Mara giggles, then leans to the side where she’s laying on her stomach across from Eddie, “Here, let me help.”

“Woah, this isn’t a team game!”

But Jee is already tipping her hand of cards towards Mara for sisterly consult. She asks for a confident clownfish card just a second after Mara whispers loudly behind one hand, “Ask him if he has the clownfish.”

Eddie heaves with a sigh, “Here you go. I’m gonna get you back for this now.”

“She got a match! She gets to ask again,” Mara defends, “Those are the rules!”

“I should have never taught you this game,” Eddie flops dramatically onto his side from laying on his stomach, and Mara mirrors him, rolling closer just to pester him some more. “How could I get you on my side instead of Jee’s?”

“Don’t think you could,” she keeps her cards close to her chest, but peers up to try to see Eddie’s, their foreheads almost bumping, setting her off in giggles. “Just show me what you have, you’re not gonna win.”

“I might!” Eddie balks, looking down at his cards, covered in various pictures of sea animals, taking this go fish thing literally.

It's an old deck that Chris reminded Eddie they had, because that was something they were sort of, kind of doing now. Talking. Chris always messages him first, mostly texts, and mostly about nonsense things, like the weather and the new benches they put up by the lake in El Paso and what he’s learning in science and where they kept a deck of Go Fish cards that Eddie should definitely teach Mara and Jee because Chris remembered loving playing it with Eddie.

But still.

He’s in semi-regular contact with his son, and the weather is beautiful, and they had a very normal chocolate chip ice cream today, and Buck’s coming over later—

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

Eddie doesn’t know what to follow that up with. Out loud or in this train of thought. Not a clue.

“I um, I don’t think that’s in the deck,” Eddie shuffles through his cards, like he’s seriously looking for a boyfriend card. “Were you looking for a blowfish, maybe?”

Mara has the audacity to giggle. If she was as good at this game as she claims, she’d be able to read Eddie’s mind and know he’s about to pass out so there’s really no room for mirth at the moment.

“Maddie told us Buck and his boyfriend were supposed to hang out with us the other night,” Mara starts, by way of explanation. The four and a half month anniversary, Eddie thinks. Right.

Eddie might be trying to remember how to breathe, but he does find it in him to eke out a, “Supposed to?”

“Only Buck came,” Mara hums thoughtfully, “So now I think Jee thinks everyone’s got an invisible boyfriend.”

“Ah, I see,” Eddie gulps. “I don’t have a boyfriend, Jee.”

“Do you want one?”

“I’m sorry?” Eddie dazes, “Do I want… a card?”

“A boyfriend.”

So.

Alright.

What?

Fuck.

Yes.

Oh.

Fuck.

So, Go Fish rulebook. Eddie’s flipping through the pages, looking for the part where it says something about having your first sexuality crisis in the middle of a game. He can’t find it. Something, anything about maybe not doing that. That maybe you shouldn’t let the thought hit you for the very first time ever, while you’re lying on your stomach in your backyard babysitting, that you want to kiss your best friend.

You’ll just. You’ll never be able to match up your cards in that state. How will you find that seahorse you’re missing?

Because that’s what matters here, right?

Because that’s what—oh. Oh. Buck would be, really, kind of perfect for Eddie.

There’s a thought that gnaws away at the literal empty void that is his brain right now that says Eddie should be freaking out over this.

But he’s laying on the ground in his sunny backyard. And everything is easier when you’re on the floor. Everything’s easier on a Tuesday.

(Everything’s easier with Buck.)

Eddie does feel a little hysterical, however, because yes, he wants a boyfriend. Yes, he absolutely does. And he is having this thought, for the very first time, in the middle of a round of Go Fish, because a four year old asked him instead of playing the game the right way. There’s a metaphor in there, somewhere, but Eddie’s like. He’s gonna throw up. Laugh. Run a lap. Throw himself a party. Cry. Who the fuck knows?

He could explain it away, the gut instinct to say yes attributed just to the fact that that’s all he’s been doing. The girls ask for a card and Eddie’s terrible at this game so he says yes.

Was that all it took? Someone just had to ask him? Point blank?

“Jee, you can’t ask that—” he snaps back into reality when he hears Mara harshly whispering over to Jee, who looks like she really just asked Eddie to hand over a boyfriend card and didn’t just change his entire fucking worldview.

“Um, no, it’s okay,” Eddie takes a steadying breath, because yeah, this might be easier, but there’s still—something’s in his eye, is all. Like a piece of pollen or, maybe the sun’s too bright? “Yeah, I’d um. I could have a boyfriend.”

Eddie exhales.

“So,” Jee chirps, unperturbed, “You’ll come to dinner next time?”

And that’s—well that’s easy, “Of course, Jee. I can come over whenever. Any time, any day, you just ask. I’ll always show up. I promise.”

“But with Uncle Buck?”

“Yeah, I can come to dinner with Uncle Buck,” Eddie laughs tentatively, because again, easy enough, what does this have to do with having a boyfriend?

“You okay?” Mara eyes him worriedly, not unlike the day outside the ice cream place when they talked to Chris.

But it’s easier for him today, to answer her.

“Of course. You can always ask me anything, you know that, right? But um, I’m definitely not looking for a boyfriend, just, to be clear,” he wipes at his eyes just a smidge, before hoisting his cards back up, “But you know what I am looking for? A whale! Jee? You have a whale for me?”

Eddie ends up still losing round three, to no one’s surprise.

But, with all his cards finally on the table (there! There’s the metaphor! He’s gotta text Chris about this, they were doing figurative language in English), Eddie doesn’t think he really lost at all.

One step forward and two steps back. Isn’t that how the saying goes?

God, Jee would hate that, he can hear her little twinkling laugh, the way she says “you’re so confusing, Eddie!”

You’re confusing him, Eddie.

Things have been good. Eddie’s been saying that so much lately, he was starting to believe it. There was a rumor Bobby was being reinstated soon so they were on Gerrard countdown. Eddie’s not freezing up in therapy every week anymore. Hen and Karen are having tons of positive-sounding meetings with an adoption lawyer—which, speaking of, Mara did so good on her math test today, told Eddie he was the first person she wanted to tell about it.

You are the last person who should be making decisions for him right now, Eddie.

And he’s been talking to Chris a lot more. About school, about Texas, about coming back here eventually.

He needs to stay here, Eddie.

“Eddie!”

Eddie slams the phone on the kitchen counter, glad his mom hung up so he didn’t have to, can focus his swiftly dwindling energy on shoving the tears back in. He presses his palms into his eyes—it’s not working.

“Eddieeeeee!” comes again from the living room. Eddie snuffles, he’s got thirty seconds to get it together. “Eddie, come here! It’s your favorite part.”

If there wasn’t such a shrill ringing in his ears Eddie might be able to figure out just what part that was. He doesn’t know what movie they put on, he doesn’t know what part is playing, he doesn’t know how he’s going to go out there and not look like he’s just been scolded over the phone by his mother like he’s the same age as the girls in his living room.

He hiccups back a sob and tries for steady, “I’ll be there in a minute!”

“It’s your favorite part! The song!” Jee repeats, which doesn’t clarify anything, because Eddie pretends to like every song that comes on in every movie they watch. It makes them happy, and that makes Eddie happy, and why the fuck did his parents have to call on a Tuesday to make him almost cry in his kitchen?

He needs to be somewhere where the door shuts, where they can’t catch him like this.

He knows his voice doesn’t sound right when he answers next, but hopes his favorite part, whatever it is, is drowning him out, “Yeah, just um. I gotta go to the bathroom real quick, okay? I’ll be out in a sec!”

The hallway seems never ending when he tries his best to make a run for it from the kitchen to the bathroom, keeping his face turned away and towards the wall. He fumbles over the handle, slips behind the door, and as soon as it’s shut, collapses.

He’s semi-successful in keeping it to sniffles only, head in his hands, and thinks, absently, that he’ll just, get a little of this out of his system, splash some water on his face, and then he’ll be fine. He’s good at this too. He can be fine, get back out there.

There’s an insistent knock at the door.

“That you, Jee? I’m coming,” Eddie clears his throat, tries to find the strength to push himself up to standing up, still back against the cabinets, kees pushed up close to his chest, “We can uh, rewind it, if I missed that song—”

“It’s Mara, actually,” her voice comes, a little muffled, through the door, “Is the door open?”

“God, sorry, yeah, did you need to get in here?” Eddie scrubs at his eyes, “I’ll get out of your way, let me just—”

The door opens, just enough for Mara to slip in, and shut it again.

“Sorry, hold on, I’m getting up,” Eddie says, but Mara sits down across from him before he can do that. She sits back on her heels, shoulders angled towards Eddie, who is struggling to come up with a way to talk himself out of this one. It looks exactly like he was crying on his bathroom floor.

She’s very quiet for a second, lips pressed into a thin, straight line, then scoots forward a smidge, her knees by Eddie’s back.

“You know, there’s a rule about this,” is what she finally says, angling her face until Eddie’s eyes are on hers, “You have to give me a hug if you’re sad before dinner on Tuesdays.”

An out of place laugh is startled out of Eddie, but the second Mara leans up and wraps her arms around his shoulders, Eddie finally cries.

It’s the first time he really has since Chris has been gone, always defaulting to pushing the feeling away, sucking it up, not trying to think about any part of how awful this feels, afraid he wouldn’t survive it.

But he’s really crying now. And yeah, it feels awful, sure.

But Mara tucks her chin into his shoulder, and Eddie feels okay.

His parents are just so frustrating sometimes. Eddie let Chris go, he let him leave, and stay there for months, without putting up a fight. But now that there’s talk of Chris leaving them, they can’t do the same? Eddie can’t talk to Chris without them knowing and Eddie can’t mention him coming home and Eddie can’t have a single opinion about any of it.

He doesn’t mean to cry, it's just—he misses Chris so much. He doesn’t know how else to express that anymore.

It could be minutes or an hour when he finally finds his voice again, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”

Guilt claws at Eddie, because he probably shouldn’t be crying in the middle of the day on the floor of his bathroom, but he definitely shouldn’t be making his friend’s nine year old clean up the mess.

“It’s okay,” she softens, before Mara sits back an inch, and tugs at her t-shirt sleeve to start wiping the tears off Eddie’s cheeks.

His laugh is genuine this time, “I have tissues in here, you know.”

“This is how you always do it for Jee,” Mara shrugs, getting a gross swipe of snot that doesn’t bother her like Eddie thinks it should. Kids.

“That’s usually just because I don’t have tissues on me,” Eddie sniffles, trying to blindly reach for said tissues off the counter above and behind them, “You should go back out and finish the movie with Jee. I’m sorry, I—I promise, I’ll be okay in a minute.”

“You’re still sad though,” Mara says softly, “You don’t like to talk that much when you’re sad, do you?” she asks, a little shake of her head. “It’s okay, me either.”

It all sort of clicks for Eddie when she says, “I’m really sorry you don’t get to live with your family right now.”

The way she would get quiet when Chris came up in conversation just like Eddie, the way she would watch him closely, how she always seemed to know when something was a little off, how she would try to cheer him up.

It’s wildly, vastly different, Eddie knows, in so many ways. But he guesses, from where she’s sitting, it looks a little similar.

“Maybe you could stay at Jee-yun’s house too, like me, while we wait,” Mara offers, “It’s really nice, I think it’ll make you feel better.”

“That’s a very nice idea,” Eddie smiles wetly, “Where would I sleep?”

“The couch,” Mara starts, “And if I get to go home, then you can have my bed.”

“When you get to go home,” Eddie corrects. “When, not if.”

“When I get to go home, you can have my bed. Jee-yun is a good roommate, she doesn’t snore or anything. You might not fit in the bed too well, but it won’t be long,” Mara explains, “Because it’s just until Chris comes home. When, not if.”

Eddie can’t help the tug down of his frown, “I had a big fight about it on the phone today, Mara.”

“I know, but you have to,” she insists, “My moms have to fight so I can come home. That’s what you’re doing.”

The “that’s different”, Eddie’s fucking motto lately, is on the tip of his tongue. All he feels like he does lately is make excuses for the things in his life, rationalize them away and make sense of them. Shrink them, make them less of a burden, to not get his hopes up, to let people know he knows he doesn’t deserve the improvements.

But Mara doesn’t even let him get that far.

“You tell me every day I see you that I’m gonna go home soon, so I’m gonna start doing that too,” Mara says, “Home soon.”

And Eddie is better at a lot of things. But still hasn’t gotten good at ‘no’s.

“Okay,” Eddie smiles, just a smidge, “Okay, yeah. Home soon, pinky promise.”

“Pinky promise is Jee’s thing,” and oh, Eddie’s gonna get a kick out of telling Buck that Jee has taken over the generational Buckley pinky promise name, “We need our own thing.”

“What kind of thing like, a high five?”

“That could work,” Mara says, holding up her hand, expectantly. Eddie goes in for it, but Mara holds his hand in place instead of letting him high-five and go. “A five-promise, so it’s like, a pinky promise times five.”

“You’re so good at math.”

“You’re not.”

Eddie’s shoving their interlocked hands at her when Jee suddenly yells through the door, “Mara! I got it, like you said!”

“Oh good, come in,” Mara ushers her inside, the door already squeaking open. When Jee plops down on the tile next to Mara, two bowls go down with her.

One is full of ice cream, the other is made up of mostly cookie dough pieces.

“We made you vanilla,” Mara gestures to one bowl. “At least, I think we got all the cookie dough out and into our bowl.”

Eddie laughs for real this time, “You know, I think we need to enact the hugging rule one more time before we do the ice cream rule.”

“Eddie,” Mara grumbles, but launches herself back into Eddie’s arms, fiercely, and Jee is excited to latch on top.

“You two are my favorite girls in the whole world, you know?”

“We’re the only girls you know, Eddie.”

Which, he knows a lot of women who wish that were true.

“Well,” Eddie’s sure his smile glistens as he picks up his bowl of homemade vanilla ice cream, on the floor of his bathroom, promised times five that things are going to be okay, “You’d still be my favorites.”

“I can’t believe I let you guys talk me into this.” (Eddie doesn’t believe it even a little as the sentence leaves his mouth.)

“You have the vanilla ice cream of paint on your walls, Eddie,” Mara says from the back seat, Eddie’s truck moving an agonizing inch by inch in traffic. “Maybe that’s why Chris hasn’t come home yet, your beige walls put him to sleep.”

“And yet, you’re always awake when you’re over, bullying me,” Eddie grins despite it, happy that some bathroom floor ice cream has reset their dynamic, be it at the expense of Eddie’s bathroom walls.

He might end today with pink walls in the entire house. Stay tuned for updates.

“I never painted a wall before,” Jee claps excitedly in her seat, “I’m gonna tell everyone at school tomorrow!”

“Well, we can only paint if your Uncle Buck gives me back my paint rollers,” Eddie rolls to a stop at a light, “So you better hope my key still works.”

Eddie has had a key to Buck’s apartment for almost the entire time they’ve known each other, (which is something he has started looking at closely since The Great Go Fish Revelation of 2024, because what? They did that? Platonically?) but he has been using it considerably less. He always did, when Buck was in relationships that Eddie was aware of. For both common courtesy and for the same reason he’s only now started looking at it closely. He doubted Taylor really wanted to compare key rings.

Anyway, all this to say, Eddie’s key to Buck’s apartment has spent the better part of four and a half months collecting dust, and it should work, but he still feels a little nervous about it. Will Tommy’s shoes be by the door, will the bed be unmade, will there be beer bottles that weren’t Eddie’s in the trash?

All moot worries though, because his girls wanting to paint his bathroom sparkly pink outweighs it all, and Buck has some of Eddie’s paint supplies still from back when he was helping Maddie and Chim, so Eddie has to let himself in.

They’re a few blocks away when Jee answers, “Why can’t we use Uncle Buck’s key?”

“Because Uncle Buck’s still at work.”

“No, he’s not.”

“He is,” Eddie feels himself transported back to week one, when breaking the news to Jee that all the trusted adults in her life would be at work for a few more hours that would feel like evil, horrible lifetimes she would have to spend with the mustached stranger driving this truck instead. “Think we’ll be able to get my bathroom painted before they come pick you guys—”

“No, Eddie, really,” Jee is unrelenting, and Eddie watches her in his mirror squish her nose up against the window, “He’s right there!”

“I actually don’t think she’s lying, Eddie,” Mara leans over to peek out Jee’s window too.

And they’re in bumper to bumper traffic, 5pm on a weekday, so Eddie relaxes his grip on the steering wheel, and intrigue getting the best of him, turns to look out the window too, and—

“Oh my god, she wasn’t lying.”

Buck is there, standing on the sidewalk outside some restaurant Eddie can’t make out the name of on its sign, hands shoved uncomfortably in his pockets, talking even more uncomfortably to Tommy.

“See, we can use his key!” Jee is saying, rolling down her window before Eddie can slam on the child locks. “Uncle Buck!”

Both men turn at the sound of her voice, and Eddie doesn’t miss the way Buck’s shoulders untense.

“Jee-yun, hey,” Buck ducks his head to peek into the windows, “Hey guys.”

“Well isn’t this a weird coinci—” Eddie starts, his own window rolled down now, but Buck starts frantically shaking his head ever so slightly, eyes wide. “Totally on purpose. Isn’t this a very planned meeting!” Eddie grits through a smile, because he’s a professional at being normal now, thank you very much. He raises a hand for a polite nod and wave that does not say I want to steal your boyfriend, not at all, “Tommy.”

“Yes, planned, because we have that thing,” Buck points at him.

“That thing,” Eddie echoes.

“Right, so I should be,” Buck spins on his heels, juts a thumb over his shoulder to gesture to Eddie’s truck, smile tight, “Text—or actually, don’t—don’t call, we’re gonna be, um, very busy.”

Buck all but teleports into Eddie’s passenger seat, he flings himself away from Tommy on the sidewalk and into the car so quickly, “As soon as that light turns green, Eddie, you gotta go.”

Eddie’s mouth hangs open a little, brows scrunched together in bewilderment, but he does hit the gas as soon as he can.

“Girls, ears for a sec,” Eddie twists in his seat and covers one of his ears with his hand to demonstrate, before whirling back on Buck without even checking if they followed, “Dude, what the fuck?”

(Mara’s adorable little yelp indicates they most certainly did not.)

“Is he still there?” Buck ignores him, leaning forward to peer into the side mirror.

“I don’t even know which part of this to tackle first,” Eddie’s shoulder bounce, feeling a little crazed. Talk about rollercoaster of emotions today, “What the hell are you doing here? Why aren’t you at work?”

“I called out, just drive,” Buck gestures forward, “I’ll explain later. We getting ice cream, girls?”

“You called—what?” Eddie makes an unbecoming screeching sound, “Don’t make me curse in front of them again.”

“You should absolutely make Eddie curse again,” Mara suggests helpfully.

“Watch it, you.”

“Your mustache is twitching,” Mara sputters, quite amused, “And you’re so red.”

“Red’s a good paint color,” Jee leans over to Mara to conspire.

“What are we doing with red paint?” Buck inquires.

“No way, nope, you first,” Eddie shakes his head, driving with no direction right now, because what the fuck just happened, “I need a thorough explanation, Buckley. You haven’t called out once in all the years I’ve known you.”

“Wasn’t feeling good,” Buck gives a noncommittal shrug.

“What? What do you mean? What’s wrong?” Eddie asks, “Why didn’t you call me?”

“You’re busy.”

“Not until 2,” Eddie says, “And even then—”

“Whatever, I’m fine just, just. Thought I could use the day,” Buck says, like that’ll ease any of Eddie’s worries at all, “Then I got the bright idea to use my day to surprise my—hmph. I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“We should definitely talk about it.”

Mara reaches across the middle seat and puts her hands over Jee’s ears, smiling cutely at Buck, “Go ahead.”

Eddie knows that look Buck’s sporting now, the impossible attempt at not smiling. With a heaving sigh, Buck twists and stretches back to cover Mara’s ears, even though she protests (“I’m nine and three quarters, Buck.”)

“I think Tommy might be kinda an asshole.”

And well.

Eddie’s also trying to not smile now. He’s going to hell.

“This is when you’re supposed to tell me I’m wrong, my boyfriend’s not an asshole. I’m just upset because we fought,” Buck grits. (They fought????? They fought!!!!!!!!)

“I mean, I’m not a liar,” is all Eddie shrugs.

“But!” Buck sputters, “You’re friends!”

“We haven’t hung out in months,” Eddie says, as Buck slumps back into his seat, “I also don’t know why you think there’s any universe where I side with him over you. You think he’s an asshole, then I think he’s an asshole.”

“I already took my hands off their ears, man.”

“What’d you fight about?” Eddie tries to ask in a way that doesn’t imply he’s popping confetti cannons in his mind.

“Nothing,” Buck says flatly, “Literally nothing. It’s so stupid.”

“It’s not stupid if it made you flee him in the middle of the street, Buck.”

“About time he had it done to him,” Buck murmurs, like he doesn’t want Eddie to hear it, but Eddie does, and they will be talking about this extensively when they get home. “Alright, seriously now, where’s the ice cream stop this week?”

“Sorry Uncle Buck, we already had our ice cream,” Jee explains.

“Are you kidding?” Buck balks, “What am I even doing here then? Let me out of the car.”

“We need your key!”

“We need your paint brushes,” Mara corrects, “We’re painting Eddie’s bathroom,”

“No way,” Buck twists to look at the girls again, one hand on the center console, the other on his headrest, “No way you convinced Eddie Beige Diaz to repaint—”

“I’ve been informed I have the vanilla ice cream of wall colors,” Eddie’s fingers drum on the steering wheel, “But I’m a big fan of cookie dough now.”

“We’re gonna paint it pink!”

“We did not agree on pink,” Eddie sterns, “I said maybe a dull green, a light blue.”

“Eddie says we can’t paint until we get the paint rollers from your house,” Mara says. “We were on our way there when Jee saw you.”

“Oh, it’ll take like, another half hour to get to my place. And then to the paint store? Forget it,” Buck huffs, “By then, Eddie’ll demote us from a dull green to an off-white. I’ll buy us new stuff.”

“You don’t have to do that, Buck—”

“If you’re not gonna get me ice cream, let me have this,” Buck grins, “C’mon, my boyfriend made me feel like shit—oh my god, you guys cannot tell your parents how many bad words I’ve used today.”

Jee and Mara forget it easily enough, laughing into a heated conversation about what dull greens and light blues they might find when they get to the home improvement store, but Eddie finds Buck’s eyes at a breath in the conversation.

“We’re gonna come back to this, understand?”

“I’m fine, Eddie.”

“Yeah well, I have to tell you about the fight I had with my mom today when we’re busy watching paint dry later, so,” Eddie nods, “Fair is fair. You have to tell me about your fight too.”

“You talked to your mom?”

“Talk is too kind a way to put it,” Eddie says, navigating his driving from Buck’s to the store, “Tell you about it later.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Buck reaches across the console suddenly, seeking out Eddie’s hand. Their friendship bracelets still make Eddie’s stomach flip, which is also something he acknowledges is a feeling and not him just getting mysteriously hungry around Buck now, post-Great Go Fish Revelation of 2024. Eddie’s mind is a fucking trip, these days, really. “Whatever it was, you look really good—like, calm about it. I’m proud of you.”

“I’m supposed to be making you feel better,” Eddie is helpless to smile a little bit.

“I do,” Buck nods, “Feel better. Cure-all. Told you.”

There is something very petty and a raging, not very dull at all green on the top of Eddie’s tongue for that. But he keeps it to himself.

“Oh man, I’m so excited now, I love paint stores. They always give the colors the weirdest names,” Buck jitters in his seat, looking just like the kids in the back, “Like it can’t ever just be blue. It has to be beach day blue or peculiar blue. And I fall for the trap every time, because I’m obviously picking blueberry fields or misty morning just because they have cool names.”

“Woah, who said we were picking a blue?”

“Yeah, I vote green,” Mara says, “The duller the better.”

“Your sarcasm aside,” Eddie rolls his eyes fondly, “I also think I’m team green.”

“I like blue!” Jee chirps.

“Sounds like we’ve got an even tie,” Buck starts. “We need a tie breaker.”

“It’s my bathroom!” Eddie yelps, “Shouldn’t my vote count extra?”

“It’s also Chris’s bathroom,” Mara hums encouragingly, looking up at Eddie, “Ask him to break the tie.”

“Yeah?” Buck asks, mostly to Eddie, a little worried, a little hopeful, a little proud looking and god, Eddie is swimming in want.

“Yeah,” Eddie nods, twisting one arm behind him while he stays fixed front driving, for Mara to take in a five-promise.

“Alright,” Buck smiles, “I’ll text him.”

(Chris picks green.)

Eddie doesn’t do much praying these days, but when the catholic guilty urge hits, he sends a spare prayer to Maddie and Chim’s phone plan.

Mara is not personally offended when Eddie declines, six whole times over on her way out the door the night they paint his bathroom green, her apparently very serious offer for Eddie to move into the Han house.

This does not, however, stop her in the slightest from her new brigade to never ever let Eddie be sad or alone. That five-promise was serious shit.

He was worried the first time Chim’s contact pops up on his phone, 8:30pm on a Thursday, and he was halfway to the door, one hand already on his keys when he picked up with a panicked, “What’s wrong, Chim?”

And got a giggle that is way too sweet to be Chim’s in response.

Now, at any given moment in the day, there’s at least a 50/50 chance, whatever Eddie’s doing? Mara’s on speakerphone.

She times how long he brushes his teeth and makes him do it again if it wasn’t long enough, she props him up on FaceTime when she and Jee are watching a movie and will restart a song if she didn’t hear him singing along, she talks to him through his entire morning routine and asks for pictures of his outfits, and then again once she’s made him change because “those are somehow worse than dad jeans, Eddie.”

Sometimes they both don’t say anything at all, but the line stays open next to him while he folds laundry and she does homework. She tries to con Eddie into convincing Hen and Karen when she’s there for dinner one night that ice cream before dinner is an everyday thing. She reads him chapter books out loud before bed and reminds him he can come sleep on the couch here, really, she swears Maddie and Chim won’t mind, she already asked them.

If they’re FaceTiming, she ends every call with a hand pressed to the camera, five fingers splayed out for a five-promise, and a whispered ‘home soon.’

It never matters the time or the place--if there’s a phone within reach, for the past few weeks, Mara is taking it and calling Eddie.

It’s so absurdly sweet, Eddie feels like he’s not going to make it to see her the next Tuesday. Every time. He genuinely doesn’t know how to stand it, or why she still insists on doing it, when he’s insisted he’s the babysitter here, not the other way around.

“What’s even the point?”

“We want Mara’s class to be able to go to the zoo in the spring,” Eddie says, accidentally getting a splash of flour on his phone as he reaches up into his cabinet with messy baking hands for the vanilla extract.

“No, what’s the point of sifting?” Chim’s voice sounds over the phone, “I’ve never sifted in my life. Aren’t we just gonna mix it all together in a second anyway? Why are we double-mixing?”

Eddie laughs, “I don’t know man, we’re just following the recipe.”

“Mom says baking has to be precise,” Mara supports, and though Eddie can’t see them, knows she is doing all the heavy-sifting for the pair.

“Well, I trust your mom with a lot of things, but I may have to draw the line at sifting,” Chim grumbles, “Do you think our butter’s soft enough yet, Cake Boss?”

Eddie hears the distant “You’re making cookies!” from Jee-yun somewhere in the background and if they keep this up, Eddie’s going to have to mute his phone. Chim has not been tolerating his laughter.

“Does it feel like you can mix it?” he probes, his butter and sugar already beaten together in his mixer, because Chim had been really excited about getting to jump into PTA-dad mode a little early and insisted on making something with Mara for her class’s bake sale, but. The things he was bringing to the kitchen tonight start and end with his unwavering enthusiasm.

Which means Eddie is secretly making his own batch simultaneously that he’s already coordinated a swap-time with Maddie on.

“I’m…not sure.”

“I was asking Mara, actually,” Eddie grins, cracking 2 eggs quietly into his mixing bowl.

“Alright, if you two are gonna keep ganging up on me, Eddie should have just come over.”

“I did ask,” Eddie can hear Mara’s eyes roll as she says it, “But he picked Buck over us.”

“Ah,” Chim hums appreciatively, “You’ll learn the two of them tend to do that.”

“Oh my god, I did not pick—”

“It’s too easy,” Mara laughs, thinks he hears some hi-fiving happening on the either end of the line, “How red are your cheeks right now?”

“Hurry up and start beating your two eggs before I beat you two,” Eddie grumbles, his cheeks incredibly red. “He’ll be over in like, ten, and he’s gonna be a lot less relaxed than I am about baking instructions, so…”

“We’re sifting, we’re sifting,” Chim lilts, and gets back to work.

Eddie talks them through the rest of their mixing, dry ingredients into wet, breaks up a fight about which one of them was responsible for breaking the yolk when trying to separate the third egg, and again when the same thing happens on the re-attempt. It is easy and silly and nice, and slowly but surely continues to fill up Eddie’s heart and his house, both of which had been collecting dust and cobwebs for the past 3 months.

They’re just discussing what the point of preheating an oven is, because the sifting wasn’t enough, when Eddie hears his front door swing open.

“Eddie, I’m dying.”

“Hey Mara, maybe you should run lines for your school play with Buck instead of Eddie,” Chim snorts, “So dramatic.”

“You gonna die in my front hall or do you have the strength to make it to my kitchen?” Eddie calls as he opens up his bag of chocolate chips.

“This is serious, Eddie,” Buck appears in the doorway, clutching one hand in the other over his chest, expression stricken, “I just got attacked on your front porch.”

“By who? Was it Geraldine next door?”

“We know you don’t have the best track record with neighbors,” Chim chimes in, and Buck looks up startled.

“You’re on the phone with Chim?” Buck leans in, then yells, “Go away, Chimney!”

“Eddie’s talking us through how to bake chocolate chip cookies for my bake sale,” Mara interjects, “Sorry to hear we’re losing you, Buck.”

“You really turned her into a little you, huh?” Buck grumbles, then makes it the rest of the way into Eddie’s kitchen, shoving his wounded hand out, “You have like, a swarm of bees on your porch around that new plant.”

“It’s nice, right?” Eddie smiles, of the plant, his new pride and joy. He’s got a lot of free time on his hands lately, might as well pick up a hobby. “Jee-yun picked it out the other day for me.”

“I’m sorry, all these dramatics for a bee sting?” Chim trills.

“Do you or do you not recall us surviving a bee-nado a few weeks ago?” Buck stammers, letting Eddie take his dying hand gingerly to look at while he does, “Sorry if I’m feeling a little on edge about it still.”

“You’re also the only one still calling it that.”

“It’s literally what they called it on the news. We watched Taylor report—fuck, ow!”

“Sorry,” Eddie grits, loosens his sudden vice like grip and lies breezily enough, “Gotta, you know, get the venom out.”

“It’s fine, just,” Buck’s bottom lip pouts out a little and oh my god, Eddie gets it, he’s dying too, “Just make it hurt less.”

“Think you two can handle mixing in some chocolate chips over there while I do bee-stinger surgery?” Eddie says into the phone, resting Buck’s hand on the counter while he goes to get his tweezers. He hears Mara chat idly with Buck like she does with him, which probably helps Buck relax more than anything Eddie’s gonna do. He returns with some haphazard supplies (former medic without a proper first aid kit in his house--they do exist) and gently works on cleaning the bright red and stung area of Buck’s hand while Mara and Chim keep him distracted.

“So what’s the verdict, doc?” Chim teases, “Will he live?”

“I hate you, you know?” Buck barks laughing towards the phone, propping his hip against the counter to face Eddie.

“Love you more!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Buck exhales, “We got ice or something? Still hurts.”

“Yeah, I can get—” Eddie offers, but is cut off.

“Kissing it better would probably do more than ice,” Mara quips, the voice of pure nonchalance and innocence. Eddie’s going to make her eat vanilla ice cream for a month straight.

“Very funny—”

“No, Eddie, I think she’s onto something,” Buck points, hopping up onto the counter, fucking twinkle in his eyes, “A kiss, some ice, and you let me eat a bowl of that dough? I’ll be good as new.”

Eddie’s heart feels like it got cracked into the bowl with the eggs, the paddle beating the shit out of it, on the highest setting.

“Wait a second, why do you guys have dough there? Are you—are you making a back-up batch, Eddie?”

“Couldn’t I just want cookies for myself?” Eddie quickly tries to damage control.

“You’re making a back up batch!” Chim yelps, “Et tu, Eddie? Et tu?”

“I think we’re getting off track here, guys, Buck is dying,” Mara gloats, because she loves Eddie so much and also she hates him. Like with an evil, burning passion.

“I didn’t even finish putting half of my dry ingredients in that yet,” Eddie tries to focus on the baking and the baking only, nothing else.

Not the way Buck’s eyes fucking sparkle like he’s a Disney princess in Eddie’s shitty kitchen lighting. Definitely not how his shirt is way too tight when he reaches over to swoop two fingers through the batter. Not the one curl of his undone hair that falls in front of his blue eyes that match the bracelet on Eddie’s wrist. Not his biceps or his thighs or his chest or his abs or his jawline or any part of him that is way too eye level with Eddie right now.

Eddie’s not thinking about any of it.

(Did you know Eddie wants a boyfriend? Eddie wants a boyfriend. Eddie Diaz? A boyfriend wanter. Wants. He wants a boyfriend. Because you might not know, but he does. Like, absolutely nothing about how normal he’s being right now would indicate this to you, so he just wants to be clear. He would like a boyfriend. This boy. That is his friend. He wants him. Go fucking fish.)

“And you were getting on me about my sifting, Diaz,” Chim, luckily, is also being normal and not mentioning the questionable kiss that’s lingering in the air. Air also littered with tension. Did Eddie accidentally leave a window open? It’s--the air in here is not normal. But Eddie’s normal! He’s so, so normal.

But like.

If he could be a little not normal about it, for just a second?

Buck is sitting in his kitchen, not his boyfriend’s, asking for a kiss from him, not his boyfriend.

“Hmm,” Buck hum, and then, holy mother of fucking Christ--which is the only prayer you’re getting out of Eddie lately--he puts the two of his fingers that stole cookie dough batter into his mouth. He’s looking at Eddie while he does it. Ot makes an obscene noise when he’s done, “Still dying over here.”

Yeah, Eddie thinks, get in line.

This is probably several degrees of wrong, even if it’s not a real kiss, and everyone is joking about it, driving Eddie out of his mind and--whatever, doesn’t matter.

What matters is: this is a matter of life or death, right?

What kind of public servant would Eddie be if he left this poor civilian with a bee sting to succumb to his injuries?

So Eddie lifts Buck’s left hand, bandage wrapped with care around the middle, skin still a little red. And then he tucks his chin, and without breaking eye contact, presses the softest, gentlest, barely there kiss to Buck’s hand.

“All better?”

Buck chokes on something. The weird air, or the half-done cookie dough.

But then, he lights up the whole kitchen, “All better.”

Mara finds out she gets to go home on a Friday.

And then Bobby’s tying his shoes up in the locker room like it’s any old Saturday, asking what they all want for breakfast, so Tuesdays are really gonna have to start putting up a fight.

It’d be real ideal if Chris let him know he wanted to come home on Sunday and then Buck broke up with Tommy on Monday, but the Friday and Saturday are good enough for now.

Sunday finds Eddie instead slipping out of his truck and jogging up the steps to Hen and Karen’s house, because they have a lot to celebrate.

“Waiting to make a grand entrance, Cap?”

“The three musketeers in there have been arguing over how to hang a ‘welcome back’ banner for the past twenty minutes,” Bobby grins at Eddie from where he’s leaning beside the front door, “So I’ve been out here practicing my surprised face for the past nineteen.”

“I might have to join you in that,” Eddie says, because Eddie likes to decorate, just not so much when Buck, Hen, and Chim all think they’re in charge.

“Smart choice,” Bobby peers up and into the box in Eddie’s hand, “That’s weird, Hen told Athena to bring a cake, too.”

“This was a Mara specific request,” Eddie places the ice cream cake he had been under strict instruction to bring on the small porch bench.

Eddie’s usually kinda helpless when it comes to Mara, but she could have asked him for the deed to his house in the excited squeal she’d used to let him know, just two minutes after she found out herself, that she was becoming an official Wilson, and Eddie would have handed it over no questions asked. Luckily, ice cream cake is a little easier on the follow through.

“Ah, right,” Bobby smiles knowingly, “Didn’t need any more than the two minutes I had in there before getting kicked out to learn that there’s a new leader in the team favorite Uncle race.”

“I just supply the ice cream,” Eddie shakes his head, embarrassed, “I’m sure they’re really excited to go back to normal. You know, when our shifts get switched back.”

It’s a reality Eddie has been trying to brace himself for, over the weekend. Having Bobby back and the team all working together is one of the only things Eddie has allowed himself to openly want these past few months. Of course they’ll all work together again, and of course Chim and Hen will have their weekday afternoons figured out, and of course, they won’t need Eddie anymore. That was always the end goal, right?

It’s fine. Everyone else’s lives are settling themselves out, back to normal. Eddie’s hasn’t, and that’s okay. It’s selfish, he knows, to want to keep everyone stuck in a non-normal routine, just because that’s still where Eddie’s at, his house still empty, his weekdays still free.

He can’t—he’ll be fine.

Bobby’s looking at him with this expression Eddie can’t pinpoint when he speaks next, “Do you want your shifts to get switched back?”

“Of course, why wouldn’t I?” Eddie is quick, defensive, “Actually, I was thinking of starting to pick up some overtime again. I didn’t wanna be there any more than I had to with Gerrard, but now—I don’t know, can help when people want days off.”

“You need days off, too, Eddie.”

Eddie thinks all his days have been off for the past thirteen weeks, will be as long as Chris is still gone, but that’s probably not what Bobby means.

“No one needs me on my days off,” Eddie shrugs, “If I can be helpful—“

“There you are!”

The front door swings open suddenly, a little smile peeking up and out in the opening.

“I found him, Jee!” Mara calls behind her before turning back to Eddie again, “What are you doing out here?”

Eddie leans forward, almost on instinct, for Mara’s outstretched hand, “I just got here.”

“Well, Buck said you left your house 20 minutes ago,” she squeezes his hand once before letting go to cross her arms over her chest, sporting an adorable glare. “It only takes 18.”

Eddie laughs, “Sorry.”

“You’re forgiven,” she says, eyes on the cake. When she smiles back up at him, Eddie knows trouble is incoming, “Guess what?”

“Do I wanna?” he multitasks his skepticism with trying to catch Jee, who is speeding towards him around the door.

He’s heaving her onto his hip with a giggle and a smacking mwah! on her cheek when Mara decides to tell him what anyway, “Mom said now that my room is mine forever that I can paint it any color I want.”

“Did she?”

“Well,” Mara starts, “Technically she said you could paint it. When she’s very far away and not in the house.”

“Oh, did she?” Eddie gets another earful of Jee’s laughter to go with his own when he repeats it, “I can’t wait to see your mom now.”

“I told everyone how good at painting you are, Eddie!” Jee cheers, arms gesturing wildly, a centimeter from smacking Eddie right in the nose. “Uncle Buck said he did better but I said no, Eddie’s the best.”

“I’m sure he loved that,” Eddie smiles, and even though they ended the other week with more

paint on their clothes and all the bathroom appliances than the walls, and Eddie’s sure he’s still washing green paint out of his hair, there is no universe in which he gets out of this, “I’ll talk to your moms, pick a day.”

“We already have a day. Tuesday,” Mara rolls her eyes at him, like it was obvious, like she’s not constantly putting Eddie on hysterical-sob watch. “I’m thinking green. And one wall pink for when Jee sleeps over.”

“We can go to the ice cream place by the paint store,” Jee suggests, as less of a suggestion and more of a definite. “It’s your turn, Eddie!”

“His turn for what?” Buck appears in the doorway behind Mara then. He smiles at Eddie quick, like habit, before turning on the dramatics at Bobby, “Cap! Oh my goodness! You’re here! What a surprise!”

Eddie, honest to god, forgot Bobby was even there with him. Has to shake himself out of whatever trance slipping into Tuesday-Eddie for a second there has put him in.

“Don’t quit your day job, kid,” Bobby nods fondly, “I think Eddie here was just making plans for his day off.”

Eddie feels a little squirmy under Bobby’s gaze, not for the first time and he’s sure not the last, but he nods in understanding. You get to have this, it says, you are needed.

Eddie’s trying really hard not to cry.

“Bobby! Look at you, arriving on our front step for the very first time this afternoon!” Hen adds to the pile-up in the doorway, chin propped cutely on Buck’s shoulder. “You girls done bothering Eddie?”

“Never,” Mara sticks her tongue out at him, which Eddie, albeit childish, has to answer by mirroring exactly, “But the cake’s melting so, I guess we can leave him alone for now.”

“It’s a pretty big cake,” Eddie turns on Jee, “You think you guys can carry it inside together?”

“Yes!” she squeals, legs kicking excitedly to be put down, “We have firefighter muscles like you and Daddy and Mara’s mommy!”

“Uh, and Uncle Buck, right?” Buck gawks, offended.

“Hey there, Cap, you just get here?” Chimney rounds out the trio in the doorway, well timed to let Jee and Mara use their firefighter muscles to keep the cake from turning to soup, and keep Uncle Buck from crying about his firefighter muscles, which may not be that big.

“Forget it, he’s not even playing along,” Hen grumbles.

“Wait a second, Eddie, you brought cake too?” Chim says, as he slips onto the porch to clear a path for the girls.

“What do you mean, too?” Eddie laughs, “So if I brought cake, and you brought cake, and Athena and Bobby brought cake…”

“Three cakes?” Bobby piques, amused.

“Well we have three things to celebrate, and they all need their own cake, that’s just the rules,” Hen explains, hip jutted nonchalantly into the doorframe.

“Mara’s adoption, Bobby coming back,” Buck lists, “And?”

“And Maddie and Chimney’s very, very important five and a half month anniversary.”

“I hate you,” Chim deadpans as the rest of them burst into uncontainable laughter. “I hate you all.”

“I think I’d rather have cake brought for me than be humbled by a four year old,” Buck wheezes out through his laughter.

“I think you have big and strong firefighter muscles, Buck,” Hen coos, but she’s not faring much better in quelling her laughter, and pinches his biceps big-sisterly.

“That’s not making me feel any better,” Buck nudges her away, equally little-brotherly, “But you know what would?”

Eddie has this split-second, totally irrational and very insane thought, that Buck’s going to ask for a kiss again. Which is just—that’s not—he shouldn’t—but he would. He very much would.

He tries not to show that he’s losing it on his face, and luckily Buck answers his own question rather quickly, “All five of us here, back together? Looks like the perfect time for our yearly group hug to me!”

“Not this again.”

“Pretty sure we did this this year already.”

“You guys suck, I just love you all, and this is the thanks I—”

“Actually,” Eddie shrugs, catching Buck’s bright blue eyes, “Could be nice.”

“Well, since Eddie asked,” Hen pushes at Buck once more, playfully, but she’s just as quickly got one arm around his shoulder, pulling him in.

Buck’s suggestion that they do this once a shift is pretty swiftly shut down, somewhere between Eddie’s big firefighter muscles getting pretzeled between Bobby’s and Chim’s, and Hen’s glasses getting knocked square into Chimney’s nose, and the door accidentally shutting behind them and effectively locking them out.

But as far as new things that do get added to the normal, Eddie’s not too upset with the changes.

Eddie has homework and he doesn’t wanna do it.

He’d forgotten for a minute there, so many years removed from being a student himself, how much it sucks. And he gets it again. Totally gets the looks Chris would throw him, the way Jee kicks at her chair and Mara procrastinates the hell out of everything. He will never force them ever again.

Because this is torture.

Eddie has typed and deleted and retyped this text he’s supposed to send 17 times in the past hour.

Hey, Chris! It’s your dad!

Which, delete delete delete, because obviously. This isn’t an anonymous letter. It’s a text.

He tries again: What are you up to?

Delete, delete, delete, sounds too formal. Too old man trying to check in on his son who doesn’t need checking in on. But sup? is ridiculous, delete again, and Chris is gonna think Eddie hit his head if he doesn’t delete the string of smiley face emojis he just attempted.

Delete, delete, delete.

Eddie’s on a tirade against homework now, pacing around his quiet living room. It should be banned, all of it. Spelling words and math worksheets and five paragraph argumentative essays and absolutely, definitely, without a doubt, the instructions from your therapist to initiate a conversation with your son you haven’t seen in three months.

So maybe it’s not homework in the literal sense, but it’s been stressing Eddie out like it is for the past three days since he was tasked with it.

Eddie deletes How’s the weather? before he even gets halfway through the phrase.

He’s been talking to Chris a lot, lately, but he’s really following Chris’s lead here. He answers only if Chris calls, if Chris texts, if Chris suggests they facetime or log onto a video game or press play on a movie at the exact same time so it’s kinda like they’re watching it together. Eddie has loved every minute of it, is thankful for every second Chris is willing to give, but he so badly wants Chris to keep giving that he’s afraid to push it himself.

His therapist, and frankly every other person he loves and trusts in his life who he tells about this ‘homework’, seems to believe it’s Eddie’s turn to want.

It’s not going well.

It’s just—what do you even say in a situation like this? Where do you start? How do you sift through three months of saved up conversation to pick just one thing you wanna say? How do you know you’ll get it right so he won’t shut down again?

Stakes feel high and Eddie feels—a whole host of things.

He keeps coming back to some variation of I miss you I love you I need you to come home but that’s—that’s not going to work.

He needs to be casual. Cool. Something like how’s the weather? but for thirteen year olds. 

This shouldn’t be as hard as it is, and yet—oh, oh good. Someone’s at his door, knocking. He can put it off some more, Eddie thinks.

But then he sees who’s at his door.

“Maddie?” Eddie swings the door open immediately, voice on edge, because it’s nice to go from one flavor of stressed to another.

“Oh my god, sorry, sorry everyone’s fine,” Maddie waves her hands frantically, laughs to herself, “I clearly need to visit more often, you look awful.”

“That’s sort of my baseline these days,” Eddie kicks at the bottom of the door nervously, but finds himself laughing a little too. “You’re sure everyone’s okay?”

“Yes, yes,” she starts, and then, “Well. Physically.”

“That’s not doing much to inspire me to sound less awful.”

“You wanna come pick up Jee-yun from school with me?”

Eddie’s mouth drops in a surprised little ‘o’, “What’s wrong with Jee-yun?”

“She’s fine,” Maddie repeats.

But, “Physically,” Eddie corrects. “It’s early, you shouldn’t have to get her for another hour.”

“Right, well, her teacher called—”

“Miss Brooke called? She never calls—she’s an emailer.”

“Yeah, yeah,” and Maddie has the audacity to laugh while she shifts her weight to one side in her stance on Eddie’s porch, “Mara was right, your mustache does do this cute little thing when you’re upset—”

“No, it does not—”

“I mean, I’m staring at it,” she says in a tone so fond and familiar it takes Eddie a second to place the feeling—he misses his sisters so bad, “More on the mustache later—but Miss Brooke said they were drawing family pictures, and out of nowhere Jee started crying, wouldn’t stop.”

“Oh my gosh, she okay? Does she know why?”

“Pretty sure I do,” Maddie winces, “We explained to her a bunch why Mara was coming to stay with us, a couple months ago, and that she would eventually go home, and she said she understood, but she’s so little, you know? She misses her—we all miss her—but she just—she gets it but she doesn’t—sorry, that doesn’t make any sense—”

“No, no, that makes perfect sense,” Eddie shakes his head in understanding, “It’s a weird adjustment, um, having someone leave your home, suddenly. Even if you uh, know it’s happening.”

Maddie’s lips twist to the side in a sort of pout that looks so much like this face Eddie knows Jee-yun makes when he runs out of money in the Disney Princess Monopoly Junior game he was conned into buying, and then she says, “I know everyone’s fine on my end, but should I be asking you?”

“I’m fine,” he grits, “Just—thing with Chris, it’s fine, like I said, baseline awful.”

“Awful and fine are very different words,” Maddie states, “I used to use them interchangeably too, when I left, you know? But they don’t really mean the same thing.”

Eddie flushes, mildly uncomfortable with being so transparently seen right now, and tries to redirect, “So what do you, uh—I mean, I’m always happy to help and spend time with Jee, but,” Eddie clears his throat, takes an unconscious step back into his house, suddenly nervous, “I mean, I don’t see what you need me for.”

She studies him for a minute, and has this look that reads so clearly we’re coming back to this because Eddie has both seen it used on him from Buck, and has developed his own to use right back. But she seems to settle for now, and adjusts the strap of her bag on one shoulder as she find’s Eddie’s eyes.

“I don’t need you to come, I want you to,” Maddie smiles lightly, so sincere.

After a beat where Eddie is unsure how to answer, she adds, “Well, I do need you a little bit, because I’ve been trying to cheer her up the past few days with this ice cream soup she’s always talking about that you and Mara make her, but every night it’s ‘not real ice cream soup, mommy.’”

“She literally just takes too long to eat her ice cream and it melts,” he echoes her smile lightly, because it’s easy to talk about Tuesdays, always, when everything else is hard.

But Maddie wants Eddie to join her.

Eddie doesn’t know how to do that, to ask, to want, outside of necessity, but it feels—the way she’s smiling at him in the afternoon sun on his porch, feels nice. Feels like something small enough he might be able to try wanting for now.

Plus, he can procrastinate that homework a little more.

So, “Let me just, uh. Grab my keys.”

Eddie pockets his phone, thankful to be putting off texting Chris for at least another hour or two—maybe he’ll come up with something during their drive, Jee and Maddie might be a nice neutral topic of conversation to attempt—-slips on sneakers and locks the door behind him.

Maddie’s a step or two ahead of him, heading for her car, clearly thrilled she was victorious in getting Eddie to join her. Eddie never, ever stands a chance against a Buckley, apparently.

“She’s going to be so happy to see you,” Maddie grins, unlocking the car doors, “She’s gonna convince you to come to our house for dinner by the way, so, I hope you didn’t have plans.”

“I never have plans,” Eddie laughs a little, climbing into the passenger seat, “But I’m not inviting myself to your house.”

“Didn’t I just say Jee was inviting you?” Maddie smirks, lets the music play low as they head off of Eddie’s street, “And if she doesn’t, I will, because Jee’s actually only part one of the three part crisis management we’re doing tonight.”

“We?” Eddie chuckles, “When did I sign up for this?”

“You got into my car,” she shrugs.

“So you long-conned me?”

“Knew you wouldn’t say no to Jee,” Maddie peeks at him, not even a little guiltily, in her periphery, “I do apologize for the unexpected house call, though. But I had to flee the house 20 minutes into the Howie-Buck spat happening in my living room.”

“Oh, the Jee pull first really was evil, because if you’d led with that…” Eddie’s laughter continues bubbling, “I’m not getting in the middle of them.”

“Yes, you are! Because I’m not,” Maddie echoes.

“Do I at least get a debrief on what fight I’m breaking up?”

“They’ll be done when we get back, I mostly just need you as leverage for Buck to stay for dinner.”

“Don’t—don’t take this the wrong way, but why does Buck have to stay? I mean,” Eddie questions, “If he’s upset, and Chim’s upset—”

Maddie chews worriedly at her bottom lip, gaze flicking between Eddie and the road several times nervously, before she starts cautiously, “Alright, before I get into part two of the Buckley-Han crisis management dinner party, I would like to know how you feel about Tommy.”

And that’s—I mean, Eddie doesn’t know what he was expecting Maddie to say, but that certainly was not it.

“Tommy?” Eddie brows crease. “How do I feel about Tommy?”

“Yeah,” Maddie nods, “I just—it may change how I talk about this particular crisis, is all.”

She sounds overly cautious, not the way someone who was gushingly approving of their baby brother’s partner would be. Which is—an interesting development, to Eddie. For no particular, or petty-jealous, reason at all.

“I feel like, if you have to ask me how I’m feeling about Tommy, then we might feel the same way.”

“I feel like you might be right,” and it's absurd, but their equally wary voices are making Eddie giggle, “Just because we’ve been using the word, not because it’s how I feel, necessarily, but, would awful, maybe, be a word you might use?”

And he shouldn’t, right? Like, he’s a terrible, awful friend, and really, Tommy hasn’t done anything to Eddie personally, besides date Buck, which is personal even if Eddie is the only one who knows that anyone dating Buck is personally offensive and mind-numbingly awful to him, so he really shouldn’t, and are he and Maddie even close like that?

Fuck it, Eddie thinks.

“Maddie, the word I want to use should not be repeated with Jee-yun in the car in a few minutes.”

“Oh my god, I really do need to be visiting you more,” Maddie all but cackles.

“This was kidnapping, I think.”

“I’ll kidnap you over a bottle of wine next time. Or beer—you and Buck are like, beer guys, right? I could stomach it for a night to trash Buck’s awful boyfriend together,” she gasps, “He’s the worst, right?”

“The worst, the absolute worst,” Eddie shakes with laughter, “And please don’t ask me about being best friends with him, I swear, I never liked him that much—”

“Oh I knew, we all knew. Buck didn’t,” Maddie says, “I don’t even care if I’m biased because I love Buck too much,” Right, that must be what’s happening to Eddie. Just some good, friendly bias. No jealousy, no hopelessly-in-love rage. “He could have literally anyone, Eddie!”

“I know.”

“Someone with a personality!”

And oh, this is going to be wonderful. Eddie could get used to selfish wanting like this, “Someone with a normal looking chin, maybe.”

“Eddie, oh my god, I thought I was the only one,” Maddie claps a hand over her gasping laugh, “No fashion sense, like none.”

“I’m about to burn all the henleys I own. I can’t be compared to him.”

“And I mean, did you know how old he is?”

“He yawned mid sentence when we were speaking once, which, to be fair, I do all the time after a 48–“

“But it’s just worse when he does it.”

“Exactly!”

“He was so dismissive about your guys’ concerns working with that old captain,” Maddie says, “And is Jee making this up or did you guys pick Buck up in the middle of a date?”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m making it up too, I can’t believe it happened,” Eddie slouches in his seat, “He’s told me nothing about it, but it was so weird.”

“I like, I really can’t figure out what he likes about him.” Maddie turns to look at him when they stop at a light, “He could be with someone who makes him really, really happy.”

“And you don’t think, uh,” Eddie avery’s her gaze, “You don’t think he does?”

“Do you?”

“I asked you first,” Eddie says, “But uh, no, I don’t.”

“Me either,” Maddie says solemnly, “He was giving me, like, a Jee-yun level pout before I left to come get you, he’s so upset. And it's killing me.”

“What happened?”

“Tommy’s bailing on dinner tonight,” and ah, there it is, why Buck has to stay, “Which, on its own? Fine. Like, we are a family of first responders, I get it. Things happen, shifts run over, you end up dead on your feet and just need to sleep, not socialize.”

“But?” Eddie prompts.

“But, Buck has asked him to come with him almost every night he’s been over our house the past few months. And you know how many dinners Tommy’s been at?”

Her tone is clear. Eddie knows Buck’s at Chim and Maddie’s at least every other week, usually more. Never making a time or effort is absolutely crazy, and awful, and personally offensive in a way that Eddie can talk about that’s not ‘I love Buck and want to date him instead’.

And Eddie might still be working on his fourth grade fractions, but he knows anything over zero is just zero. He doesn’t like those odds.

“Shit,” Eddie curses, “None?”

“Buck usually doesn’t say he’s too upset, and we usually leave it alone too, but I guess everyone’s sort of at their breaking point?” Maddie explains, “So Buck is visibly devastated and Chimney makes some comment about how he could’ve told Buck this was coming, and it just spiraled from there.”

“Shit,” Eddie repeats, because it bears repeating.

“They love each other very loudly,” Maddie laughs in a very kind way of saying when Chim and Buck argue, you don’t want to be around without headphones, “And if I know Buck, he’s gonna end that argument feeling guilty, and try to leave, but I don’t want him at home, eating dinner, alone and devastated. Hence, you.”

“I mean, I’ve already agreed to come, but Maddie, I can’t be the right person for this situation,” Eddie shakes his head, “I mean, we just spent the past fifteen minutes of this car ride discussing how much I hate the guy, I’m probably going to say all the same things Chim said to him. I can’t make him feel better—”

“You’re always the right person for him,” Maddie says simply.

“No, I’m the worst friend in the world,” Eddie’s head flops back against the headrest as they pull into Jee-yun’s school.

“No, no. You’re a great friend because you recognize his worth, and want better for him.”

Which, Eddie thinks, is only half true.

Because Eddie knows what Buck is worth. Buck is (and Eddie only includes this in his train of thought because he can hear Buck’s tinny little laugh at it) worth a million bucks.

Buck is worth so, so much, and Eddie does know that.

But that second part? Wanting better for him? Eddie isn’t sure that’s true.

Because what Eddie wants for Buck is him.

Eddie wants Buck to love him, to choose him, to be with him in every sense of the word, for every day as long as he’ll choose it.

Eddie wants to be in the passenger seat of Buck’s car, to lick half-done cookie batter off his fingers, to keep his friendship bracelets on his bedside table, his clothes in his closet, to make him cook dinner while he ties up Jee-yun’s hair, to wait at a house they share for him and Christopher, to three way call with Mara. He wants to kiss the crease between his brows when he laughs, when he worries, wipe the soot off his cheeks at work and let his hand linger, to find a way to crawl inside his skin after a shift he wants to be so close, but settle for draping himself over his muscles like a weighted blanket and feel the rumble of his laughter. He wants to show up to everything he asks him to, to take him on dates that stretch for whole days off, to make him, irreversibly, unequivocally, fantastically happy. (Thank you, Mara’s spelling word list.)

Eddie does not want many things, doesn’t know how.

But Eddie does want this.

And he’s not sure if that’s better.

Eddie is a hot mess on a good day, rock bottom has a bed reserved with Eddie’s name on it, and he’s so far away from having his shit figured out.

So if he knows what Buck is worth and what he deserves based on that worth—Eddie is objectively not it.

But fuck, it’s what Eddie wants.

He finds a normal tone to his voice to answer, “Yeah, yeah, right. I um, I’ll talk to him.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Maddie reaches over the center once the car is in park, and wraps her arms around Eddie for a quick, warm hug, “We’re so lucky to have you, you know?”

“I don’t know about that,” Eddie shrugs the praise off.

But Maddie is quick with an, “I do.”

She sits back and reaches for the door suddenly before Eddie can start crying over that too, “Alright, you can come with me to get Jee, but I’m 99% sure Miss Brooke has a very massive crush on you, so I’m going to suggest you wait by the car.”

“And you brought me here anyway?” Eddie shakes his head, laughing, “I can surprise her out here.”

With that, Maddie heads into the school, and Eddie waits by the car. He thinks about taking his phone out and attempting his text to Chris again, but is still coming up blank, gripped with worry at messing it up. Maybe, Eddie thinks, if he does a good job with Jee and Buck, Maddie’ll trade off their problems and send the text for him. She’s an incredible parent, she’d have no problem.

He doesn’t make it more than a draft version of: I put a new plant on the porch (which, why would Chris care about that? And how would he make that conversation last more than three messages, fuck Eddie is awful at this.) when he spots Maddie returning.

“Eddieeeeee!” Jee squeals the second Maddie points him out to her from the school doors, and she takes off lightning fast down the sidewalk, Elsa backpack flopping behind her.

She wobbles on the curb, stopping herself just short of running into the street, but stretches one hand out expectantly for Eddie. He is quick to snatch it up, jogging to her with a beaming grin, before deciding to just scoop her up entirely instead.

“Hey, my princess,” Eddie squeezes her to his chest, “How was school?”

“Not good,” she pouts, hiding in the crook of his neck.

“Oh no,” Eddie can feel the dried snot on his collarbone, and oh, the unconditional love you have for a child. He is successful enough in hiding his wince, “You wanna tell me or your mom what happened?”

She shakes her head, “Are you here to get us ice cream?”

“You know it’s not a Tuesday, Jee,” Eddie soothes, as they walk back towards the car, his insides twisting the more he feels her pout, “But maybe we could make an exception since you had a bad day.”

“Yeah?” she perks up immediately, and he can hear Maddie laughing behind him. He turns and sees her when he’s opening the backseat door, as she twirls one of her fingers in the air, mouthing, “she’s got you.”

Eddie doesn’t mind all that much. Thinks he wants it that way.

“I really didn’t think I was bad enough to warrant calling in reinforcements.”

“Funny you think I’m here for you,” Eddie lets himself be dragged down the walkway towards the Han house, where Buck, sporting the exact pout Maddie had described, is sitting on the bottom step.

“Look, Uncle Buck! I got Eddie to come to dinner with us!” Jee jumps her last few steps, physically walking right on top of Buck’s legs to get to him.

“Pretty sure I did that,” Maddie scoffs, carrying the bag of ice cream they made an all important pit stop for, that Jee forgot in the back seat, “You gonna help me put this in bowls for everyone, Jee?”

“She’s the best at it,” Eddie grins, nudging Jee inside, “You won’t be able to do it without her.”

Jee is delighted by the praise, and after sufficiently smothering Buck in greeting, climbs over his legs and reaches for the door. Before the girls make it inside, Maddie leans down to whisper to her brother, “Just so you know, he’s my best friend now.”

“You can’t steal all my coworkers.”

“He’s still yours, you just need to find a different title,” Maddie squeezes Buck’s cheek affectionately, “Love you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Buck grumbles, eyes following them inside, before turning back on Eddie. He has to look up a little to catch his eye, where Eddie stands, arms crossed, opposite him, “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same thing,” Eddie nods.

Buck doesn’t put up a fight in answering, even if it feels like a half-answer, “Chim said you were coming, thought I’d catch you on my way out.”

“You’re leaving?”

“Don’t—I know Maddie filled you in.”

“I wanna hear it from you,” Eddie says, finally taking a seat beside Buck on the small step. Their knees and shoulders bump together and stay there. He feels warm all over, like he’ll melt right through Buck’s arm and fall somewhere in the middle of his ribcage. It wouldn’t be close enough, he thinks, ridiculously.

It’s quiet for a while. Eddie has known Buck long enough by now to know how this goes, how he’ll talk when he wants to.

It’s a few minutes later, maybe, when he says, his voice hoarse, “I have to break up with him, right?”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Eddie offers, gently, “Do you want to break up with him?”

If you can’t take it, dish it, or however that saying goes, right?

“No,” Buck answers, with very little hesitation, and Eddie’s thinking about how he can play off his disappointment at that when he follows up, just as quickly, “I don’t want to be with him, anymore, though. I just—I don’t wanna break up with him.”

Which is—“Okay,” Eddie nods, “Okay, we can work with that.”

It startles a soft laugh out of Buck, “Are we brainstorming things I can do to get dumped?” He leans his elbows on his knees, his head hanging a little between his shoulders, “Because that’s tricky, it needs to be bad enough that he’ll break up with me, but not so bad that no one will ever date me again.”

Eddie’s brain supplies this very unhelpful, I’d date you no matter what! that he absolutely cannot ever share. Ever. Never.

“You’re probably asking the wrong person for that,” Eddie sighs, but it’s light and airy, “I tend to lean pretty cataclysmically in the latter direction.”

“Cataclysmically?” Buck laughs at him, wide-eyed.

“Helping Mara study for the spelling bee,” Eddie shrugs.

“Ah,” Buck hums, “Is there a word for horrendous at relationships?”

“You’re not—just because this one didn’t work out—”

“It’s been a hell of a lot more than this one, Eddie,” Buck grits, his knee pressing more insistently into Eddie’s, his fingers knotting together in his lap, “I’ve been wrong every single time. And I don’t know what it is, anymore, that I’m getting wrong. I was supposed to have this fixed, like, this was supposed to be it, right? Like, I figured it out.”

“I don’t know if it works like that,” Eddie says, even though he’s pretty sure he’s staring at his own ‘figured it out, this is it’ in the face right now. “You can, you know, have figured something out, but still be figuring it out.”

“I don’t know what it is,” Buck shrugs helplessly, “And I know it’s irrational, but I’m afraid if I give up on this one—I just, I’m afraid this is the closest I’m ever gonna get.”

Eddie staunchly disagrees with that logic, even if he’s used it himself several times—this is Buck, though, he knows what he’s worth and he wants better for him, right?

“Sorry, you’re having the worst year of your life, and I’m complaining because I don’t like my boyfriend and am just choosing not to do anything about it,” Buck rubs at his eyes.

“I’m putting off dealing with the worst year of my life by listening to this,” Eddie tries to get him to smile, “So please, complain away.”

“It’s not even like—like they haven’t even been bad relationships, really, when I think about it, you know? Everyone I’ve dated, since Abby at least,” Buck starts to rationalize, his shoulders tense, his eyes fixed straight ahead, “Something is always right. Like one little piece, I’ve figured out.”

“Alright, well,” Eddie starts, “Not to make this all about the homework I do with a fourth grader, but we’re working on analyzing evidence from multiple sources for an essay right now, so, maybe we could try that? Tell me what you get right, not what you get wrong.”

Buck decides to humor him, “Alright. Okay, yeah, um. Sure. So, Abby.”

He doesn’t even get more than her name out before Eddie realizes what he’s set himself up for. If anyone ever needs to torture some information out of Eddie, this is exactly how you would do it, having to listen to Buck list off all his exes that Eddie hated, one by fucking one.

It’s better than therapy homework, Eddie thinks, the alternative is therapy homework.

“We talk a lot about how she was my first serious relationship, but she was also, kind of, the first person to take me seriously, you know? Like she had all this shit going on, with her family, and she let me help, right? She trusted me with that.”

Eddie nods him on.

“I actually don’t really remember much about being with Ali,” Buck says, and seems proud to have made Eddie laugh, which is cute—fuck, here he goes with that word again, in the middle of the crisis management dinner party, which is so not the time—“She thought I looked cool doing dumb heroic shit on the job, I guess? I saved her life?”

“That was me, but okay,” Eddie nudges.

“Team effort,” Buck acquiesces, “And then I will admit I backslid a little.”

“A little more than a little, man.”

“You’re so—”

“If you were shocked when I had no issue agreeing with Tommy being an asshole, you’ll be downright scandalized when you hear the shit I’ve been saving up on Taylor fucking Kelly.”

“I’d let you get into that real detailed list, but I’m sure it’ll take you so long to get through, the ice cream Jee’s scooping you will melt.”

“Fucking rookie, that’s the point,” Eddie nudges, “Ice cream soup.”

“Gross.”

“You can say that to your perfect niece’s adorable face, I won’t.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I think, until it went to shit, I actually had a good relationship with Taylor, whether you wanna admit it or not, asshole,” Buck smiles, “She was a really good friend to me, and I don’t know. Maybe there’s something to that.”

“Dating a friend?”

“Yeah,” Buck shrugs, “And Natalia—”

“Had horrible taste in couches.”

“Fuck you, man, weren’t you brought here to make me feel better?” But he’s laughing, so Eddie thinks he’s doing an okay job at that.

“I told you, I was brought here for Jee and Maddie. You just happened to be here, blocking my path inside with them,” Eddie lilts, “But go ahead, what’d you love about the death doula?”

“Make fun, but it was kinda nice, you know? Not having to watch what I said, about stuff,” Buck says, “She saw all these horrible things that happened to me and was like, okay. Fine by me.”

“No, no, that’s good, um,” Eddie has to force the lying out, “I was happy for you, when you found her. Shame it didn’t work out.”

Buck’s shoulders shrug like he doesn’t think it's too much of a shame though, “And then Tommy’s… a guy?”

“Oh my god.”

“It was a real big difference from my last partners,” Buck says, and he’s laughing, and Eddie wants to kiss him, which is maybe related, maybe relevant, probably not appropriate at this exact precise moment, “And that’s all I really feel like acknowledging that he brought to the table right about now.”

“While I appreciate you leaning into my hatred, we can’t half-ass the assignment,” Eddie pushes.

“I half assed all my assignments in school, until the fire academy,” Buck snips, but then, “I guess, it was nice we had the same job, or same enough. That was always, I don’t know, tricky to navigate with people who weren’t used to it.”

“So see?” Eddie says encouragingly, “That’s so many good things, that you found in people.”

“But they were all in different people,” Buck whines, “Everyone’s always like, when it’s the right person, you’ll know, but at this point, it’s like, I know what the right person would look like, and maybe my expectations are too high—you can’t have all of that, they just don’t exist. There is no magical right person for me.”

“Buck—”

“Someone who has all those things we just went over, who trusts me and likes me and sees me and understands me,” Buck’s voice sounds wrung out, resigned, certain he’ll never have this, and Eddie aches for him, wants to patch him up with his bare hands, just right, “Or I don’t even—maybe I just need someone who will love me no matter—”

Eddie looks up when Buck stops suddenly, his lips parted mid-phrase, and he follows his eyeline to where it rests, somewhere around Eddie’s—arms? He thinks?

He blinks down at them, suddenly self conscious at the awed way Buck is gaping at him, for no reason at all, and the only thinks he sees is his BFFFFAENTBNMW bracelet, which he was serious about never taking off—it’s funny, makes Eddie smile—and a spare hair tie he’s started keeping on him out of habit for the girls.

“Oh, uh, ice cream soup is usually a pigtails activity,” Eddie explains, snapping the hair tie on his wrist to emphasize his point to Buck, “Sorry, you were saying?”

And Buck is just—he’s staring.

Does Eddie—does he have something on his face? He scrubs at his chin, pushes a hand through his hair, was Jee’s tearful snot stuck on him someplace?

“Uh yeah, I think, um, it’s sort of confusing,” after a long moment, Buck looks like he has to physically shake himself out of his daze—he must be more upset about breaking up with Tommy than Eddie first thought, nudging at glassy eyes.

“Hey, I really am sorry it didn’t work out,” Eddie squeezes Buck’s knee, and he startles at the contact, for some reason, but doesn’t let Eddie move away.

He smiles, just a little, “No, you’re not.”

“I am,” Eddie confirms, “Because even if I don’t think he’s good enough for you, if he made you happy, that’d be good enough for me. I want you to be happy more than I ever want anything else, no matter what.”

Buck makes a choked off kind of noise at that, “That’s um—shit, sorry, I don’t know why I’m—”

Eddie watches a tear roll down Buck’s cheek and rushes to wipe it away, keeping his hand at the base of his neck just in case there’s another, “You don’t have to break up with him.”

“No, I—I do, I definitely do, now,” Buck nods, and oh, he’s crying some more, Eddie wants to die, and haunt Tommy Kindard’s miserable existence forever for making Buck this sad. “Just, need a minute.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Eddie soothes, running a hand over Buck’s shoulder, rubbing gentle circles on his back before letting it settle.

“Yeah, yeah. I know.”

They fall into a quiet again, the only noises a car driving by, Buck’s occasional sniffle (Jee and Buck both in one day should actually be illegal), a siren far off in the distance. Eddie watches Buck’s breathing, counts it for a whole minute (16, if you were wondering), keeps a hand on him, and thinks, desperately, of what he can do. Getting Jee ice cream is a much easier, simpler, fix, it always is with a kid you love—

Oh. That’s—that could work.

Eddie pulls his phone out of his pocket.

He doesn’t even hesitate when he navigates with his one free hand to the contact he’s looking for, and fires off a text that takes not a second of agonizing over. (Everything’s easier with Buck.)

Hey Chris, you free? I think Buck would love to hear from you.

The answer comes almost instantly, which is a relief for Eddie’s heart, which has just, after the fact, realized what he did—he texted Chris first.

what happened

is he okay

is he hurt

i didn’t see anything

i follow like every la update account ever there wasn’t an accident or anything

Eddie takes a page out of Maddie’s book:

He’s fine!

Physically

?????

I think him and Tommy are going to break up.

Eddie waits, watches the typing bubbles float on Chris’s side, feels thankful Buck has sort of dejectedly zoned out at his side. After a minute or so, the next text comes in.

oh no how awful

The text is sent with the confetti effect.

Christopher.

if u knew how to do that you’d have sent ur text the same way

I know how to do that.

(He does not. He’s going to have to ask Mara next time she calls him.)

Whatever

That’s not the point, he’s very upset.

so what do you want me to do find him a new boyfriend

Eddie’s typing out a ‘no’ with a little smile when Chris texts again, before he can send it.

because i have a list

A list?

yeah it’s not a very long one but I can offer

No, no

I was thinking more like

Maybe you could call him?

I think he’d love to hear your voice.

You’ll cheer him up a lot quicker than I can.

are you with him?

Yeah

then he’ll be fine

but yeah i can call him if you want

ill try to sound upset or whatever

put on my sad voice

Christopher Diaz.

sorry

my bad (he’s sent this one with confetti again, and Eddie’s chest rumbles with a trapped in laugh.)

u sure he doesn't want another boyfriend

Probably not yet.

ill take not yet

and you?

We’re not talking about me.

well whenever we are

i have a list for you too

And that’s—that’s. Okay. Alright. (What the fuck?)

its as short as buck’s so don’t get your hopes up

I won’t. Not looking for a boyfriend right now either Eddie sends, without even realizing what he’s sending and—fuck. Fuck. This was not the homework assignment at all, or something that should ever be done over text, and maybe Chris won’t even realize—

omg

dad

This one’s sent with confetti again.

Enough of that.

but that one was worth it

No it was not

Eddie’s brow scrunches, his therapist’s gonna have a fucking field day when he reports back on this failed assignment.

Seriously though

I’m so sorry, Chris. Didn’t want to drop something like this on you over text.

i couldn’t confetti over a phone call so this is better

which

ill call buck if you still want me to

Of course I still want you to

He’s crying :(

no one sends sad faces like that dad

Buck does

he doesn’t count

ok just splashed some water on my face so it looks like i was crying too

im SO sad! rip tommy!

also

love you by the way

And for what it’s worth, he listens, and cuts it out with the confetti that makes Eddie feel warm all over and little bit like he might join in on the crying.

(It’s sent with balloons instead.)

Eddie barely has a minute to push his soul back into his body from where it went reeling after that conversation before Buck’s phone starts ringing, startling him just a bit, making him slip out of Eddie’s grip just a smidge to answer it.

“Oh shit.”

“What’s up?” Eddie says, putting on an acting performance his menace of a son might be proud of.

“It’s Chris,” Buck says, holding his phone out to Eddie, “Chris is calling me.”

“Oh,” he might overdo it on the shock and awe, clears his throat to get back to baseline, “You should answer.”

“Uh,” Buck’s eyes flit all around Eddie’s face, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Eddie presses his hands behind him to push up to standing, “I got ice cream soup to make anyway. Heard your sister is terrible at it. Don’t know what you Buckleys would do without me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Buck nods, “I’ll, uh—”

“Come inside when you’re done?”

“Yes,” Buck repeats, “Thank you.”

“Didn’t do anything,” Eddie shrugs, reaching for the door, and catching Buck’s eye as he answers with a ‘hey Chris—yeah, yeah, I’m fine—’ just before he pushes the door open and heads inside, leaves his boys to catch up.

Eddie maneuvers his way around Jee’s set-up in the living room once inside, a bowl of melted ice cream on the coffee table and markers and construction paper on every other available surface, her tongue peeking out in adorable concentration as she works on whatever she’s drawing.

“So?” Maddie doesn’t waste a second before leaning forward on her kitchen island when she spots him, looking at Eddie expectantly. Chim is waiting beside her, arms crossed and expression almost more worried than Eddie’s.

“Let him get inside first, Maddie,” Chim laughs, sliding a beer across the island where Eddie settles, “A kidnapping gift, as promised.”

Eddie grins in thanks as he twists the top off the bottle he accepts gratefully, because really--what the fuck just happened out there?

But Maddie can’t seem to wait for Eddie to freak over sexuality crisis part two, and repeats, “Well?”

Eddie takes one long sip, a deep breath, and then with a smug smile he should not be wearing to deliver this news, “He’s gonna dump him.”

The whole kitchen erupts into silly, ridiculous cheering.

“Ahh! You did it!” Maddie claps, swinging Eddie into a hug that she ropes Chim into too, “I never doubted you for a second.”

“Was he upset?”

“Not with you,” Eddie shakes his head, still laughing giddily at Maddie’s side,

“I just, I love that kid so much,” Chim sighs, “But he’s not a kid, I have to remember, and even if I think he deserves better, he can make his own decisions—”

“He did! He’s decided to break up with him!” Maddie jeers again.

“I promise, we’re usually normal about people we love going through heartbreak,” Chim says pointedly, even though he is wearing a grin that matches Maddie’s.

“Eddie knew we were on a mission today,” Maddie waves him off, “Buckley-Han crisis management dinner party.”

“Wait, yeah, about that—” Eddie smiles around the rim of his bottle, Chim opening up one of his own, and offering a sip to Maddie, which she pretends to enjoy for the sake of Eddie, as promised on the car ride here, “What was the third thing?”

“Hm?”

“You said there were three crises we had to fix,” Eddie starts, “Jee upset at school, Buck upset over Tommy. What was the third?”

“Oh!” Maddie brightens, “Howie wants to grow facial hair. I need you to talk him out of it.”

“Hey!”

Eddie laughs loudly.

“That’s a crisis?” Chim is sputtering, wide eyes, patting at his stubble defensively. “On the same level as fucking Tommy?”

“I love you so much, babe.”

“Again, I appreciate the faith you have in me, but I don’t know if I’m the right person for this one,” Eddie gestures to his mid-life-crisis mustache. “If you wanted someone anti-facial hair, you literally have Buck here.”

“Uh, Buck is not anti-facial hair,” Maddie scoffs, slipping around the counter to settle on a stool with her bowl of ice cream, which is, luckily, not quite as soupy as Jee’s manages to be.

“He made fun of me for weeks,” Eddie exasperates.

“Maybe to your face,” Chim chimes.

“I can get over the whole, ‘it’s normal as a straight, supportive ally to think a guy’s ass looks good’,” Maddie starts, rolling her eyes affectionately, “But I draw the line at the third ‘but you have to see him Maddie! The mustache is so hot!’ I have to hear in a week.”

And Eddie. You know the drill by now. Has a very normal reaction to that.

“He doesn’t—”

“Oh, he does,” Chim laments, like he’s gotten it too, “You know what, if we’re getting into this, we got anything stronger than beer?”

Eddie laughs brightly and waits for his cheeks to cool down as he slips into a seat beside Maddie, which is almost immediately taken over by Jee climbing into his lap to show him her new family portrait she drew, complete with her and Maddie and Chim of course, but also Mara, and Denny and Hen and Karen, and Uncle Buck, and Eddie and Chris (in a pink sparkly cowboy hat.)

So maybe, Eddie thinks, as Chim keeps making a case for why he’d rock a beard, and Maddie asks for seconds on ice cream just like her daughter, and Jee squirms through the entire process of Eddie putting her hair in pigtails that she literally asked for, that some assignments, some homework, is pretty okay.

When Buck comes back in about ten minutes later with a smile that could knock Eddie off his seat?

Well, it’s a good thing ‘awful’ isn’t on any spelling word lists.

It’s wiped from Eddie’s vocabulary completely.

Buck breaks up with Tommy on a Tuesday.

No other day of the week ever stands a chance again.

“Are you serious?”

“Please, Eddie,” Karen whispers, pushing the box insistently into Eddie’s unaccepting hands in his driveway. “I tried, I can’t do this.”

“What do you mean you can’t? It’s house plants, it’s not rocket sci—okay, that’s—poor comparison for you.”

“I killed all of them within a day,” Karen deflates, “And Hen’s worse than me.”

“And I’m worse than Hen!”

“I thought you were into this now?”

“One succulent on my front porch is totally different,” Eddie glances behind him at his brief foray into a plant hobby, then back at the three tiny sprouts Karen is close to weeping over, “Can’t we just, I don’t know? Buy a couple fully grown ones and send those back to school?”

“And set the example of cheating?”

“What do you call handing them off to me?”

“She’ll still take care of them,” Karen perks, eyeing Mara, who is buckling into her seat in Karen’s car at their side, “Just. Under your supervision, not mine.”

The impeccable timing of Mara blowing a breath onto the window and making a heart in the condensation and then waving to Eddie should, actually, be considered the most damning evidence of the universe being sentient Eddie’s ever experienced. Because what the hell. How dare she.

And then Karen’s pulling out those eyes, and Eddie knew Mara learned them from somewhere but god—

He’s really gotta work on this ‘no’ thing, yeah?

“What do I have to do with them?”

“Eddie, I love you!” Karen launches to hug him, but is mindful of the plants between them, “The Los Angeles School District will never forget your investment in the futures of young minds.”

“This is an investment in one fourth grade science report card.”

“Which will have a domino effect on her becoming high school valedictorian, getting into any college her heart desires, and changing the world so,” and Karen honest to god pinches his cheeks lovingly, “Thank you.”

“Sure,” Eddie flushes, “Do I get instructions, or something? What am I supposed to do besides keep them alive?”

“There’s something about variables? Growing conditions? I don’t know, honestly I didn’t get that far, because I kept murdering them,” Karen exasperates, before knocking on the car window lightly, “Mara, honey, what are we doing with the plants, again?”

“Why don’t you guys just come over for dinner, tomorrow, after my shift,” Eddie says, as her window rolls down, “We can go over it then.”

“Yes, yes, can we mom, please?”

“Anything modern savior of the fourth grade plant world Eddie Diaz wants,” Karen smiles.

“Two days with you in the same week!” Mara leans on her knuckles, gripped on the lip of the window. “I’ll bring my science notebook tomorrow, but until then, you can start by playing music to that one, I named it Jee-yun,” Mara points to the one on the left, and then to the right, “And talking to that one, named Eddie. Middle plant is me, the control.”

“Talk to—why do they need names? And what music?”

“I hadn’t decided yet, but I know how much you love that one song from Frozen 2—”

“I don’t—”

“He has a crush on Kristoff,” Mara pretends to whisper behind a hand to her mom, “He just won’t admit it.”

“Well sorry to disappoint Karen, but I might die before these plants do.”

“Love you, Eddie!” Mara yells cheekily, just before her window shuts and she blocks out Eddie’s withering glare.

“I should have known you were a Kristoff guy,” Karen laughs knowingly, “Silly buff blonde, right?”

“Your plants are dead. Dead, Karen,” Eddie grumbles, “Kiss valedictorian goodbye.”

“What did you say before? It’s not rocket science?” she echoes cheerily, running around to her side of the car, “See you tomorrow!”

Eddie holds his box of soon to be serenaded and dead plants until their car disappears off his street, and heads back to his front door. He swings it open with one hand, and keeps the box balanced on his left side even once he makes it inside, so he can open his phone and fire off a text to Chris, “say hello to your new siblings” and a picture of Mara’s plants attached.

can’t believe i opened this and it wasnt a picture of a dog and a cat

Keep dreaming, kid.

Anyway, I think they like their new room.

Eddie sends a very awkwardly angled selfie, the plants positioned on Chris’s bedroom desk behind him.

one day ur gonna take me seriously when i say to shave that thing off ur face

but also

dont let them get too comfortable there

i dont feel like sharing

Eddie flops back onto Chris’s bed with a giddy giggle, and calls Buck, suggesting he comes over for dinner and a movie.

Frozen 2, maybe? In the name of science, of course.

So, Eddie’s gay.

He hasn’t said it as such a concrete fact since the Great Go Fish Revelation of 2024, which started and ended with wanting a boyfriend, Buck specifically, but really, by this point, there’s no way around it.

And it’s like, sure—there were a massive number of factors that stood in the way of him figuring this out, and he knows, logically, that he wouldn’t have been able to, you know, come to this realization any sooner, what with the oppressive parents and religious upbringing and rapid transition from having a pregnant girlfriend to a dead wife, so, yeah. Sexuality crisis in his thirties, over an afternoon of babysitting or not, makes sense. And he’s proud of himself for recognizing that this makes sense.

But good god, that Catholic guilt must have really been putting in the work on repression, because now that Eddie knows, it’s clear as fucking day that he was being hit over the head with signs for years.

Eddie is so gay.

It’s like—at work, right?

They’re standing in the locker room, getting out of their uniforms and into clothes so they can leave, some of them freshly showered, some of them barely kicking off their boots because they just wanna get out of here. Fine. They always do this. Eddie isn’t the tiniest bit self conscious about his body, the whole act of changing in their glass locker rooms has never once phased him at all.

But now, he can’t help but wonder, did Buck always take so long to put a shirt on?

He’s telling Chim, who has been worrying all day about a noise he heard in the attic he and Maddie didn’t even know they had last night, about this article he read on bumblebee bats, which are named for their size of a bumblebee, making them the world’s smallest mammal—and he gets distracted halfway through his excited rant on their insect diet, so his shirt is no longer being slipped over his head and onto his body.

No, it’s in his hand, which he’s waving around as he talks, drawing attention to both his million-pack abs, and how gay Eddie is.

He doesn’t even know what Buck’s talking about anymore, it’s all muffled blah-blah-womp-wah because Eddie’s brain is just mush and wanting Buck. He’s so attractive, Eddie thinks, eyes very obviously on his waist, just above the belt he’s only got half off, and his biceps that flex when he swatting Chimney away, who is trying to shut him up about bumblebees? The bee-nado again? What was he talking about? Was he always this attractive?

Yes, yes he absolutely was, Eddie thinks.

Because now Buck is in clothes that are not new, and smiling his very familiar Christopher smile, as Eddie’s dubbed it, because he’s on speaker phone between them, and he’s sitting on his designated side of Eddie’s couch, like they do at least three times a week and have done for the past seven years, and looks attractive as hell— so yes, yeah.

He’s probably always looked exactly this attractive. How did Eddie miss it?

(Should he see an optometrist?)

And he’s so—he pushes his knee in between Eddie’s in the engine, pushes his headset down so he can lean forward and whisper something to Eddie that the rest of the team can’t hear—Eddie can’t either, because did you ever notice how pretty Buck’s eyes are up close? Eddie sure didn’t, until now.

And he doesn’t know—Eddie is sure he’s been flirted with by a guy before, and just, like this whole Buck suddenly being the most attractive man on earth thing, didn’t know it.

So, is Buck flirting with him? Is Eddie supposed to be flirting with him?

He always chose the seat beside Eddie at any table they sat at, but now, like, and this is so old man of him—god he can hear Chris and Mara laughing at him—they’re gonna be menaces when they’re together—he pulls Eddie’s chair out for him, waits for him to sit first.

Or he’ll spread his long, beautiful legs across the whole couch, making everyone roll their eyes, walk around him, find someplace else to sit, but then Eddie jogs up the stairs to the loft, coming back from a call, and Buck swings his legs down, and smiles like “hey! Eddie! I saved this spot just for you! Isn’t that fantastic and not at all going to make you fall even more hopelessly in love with me! Let's see how long our thighs can touch before you start to seize! What fun! Come on!”

He told Eddie he ‘looked really good in those pants’ the other day, and they were his uniform slacks that he’s been wearing for years. He held Eddie’s hand for fifteen whole seconds under the guise of scrutinizing the nail polish job Jee gave him the other night. He sent Eddie a link to a Tik Tok, which Eddie swears he is cool enough to have downloaded but not cool enough to post anything to, talking about cool new restaurants to try in LA, but the caption very explicitly reads: ‘Save for your next date night!’

So the thing is.

Eddie is gay.

And spiraling fast about it.

He doesn’t know what’s flirting and what’s not and what he’s reading into and what he’s not but he does know that right now he is being hit on by a guy at cleanup of a scene, and for the first time in his entire firefighting life, thanks to a game of Go Fish and Evan Buckley’s delicious looking abs, Eddie he is consciously aware of it.

And.

He thinks…he likes it?

“So scale of one to ten, and please, consider the heart monitor you have attached to my chest when you answer this,” a very tall, very muscular man with a very nice smile and a very unfortunate spot in the middle of a high school’s creaky old bleachers that collapsed mid-football game tonight flashes said very nice smile, directly at Eddie, of all people, while he sits on the edge of the ambulance, “What are the odds?”

“I think you’ll live to grade another test,” Eddie smiles back at him, because he thinks he has a very nice smile sometimes too, and maybe, if he dials it up to its full wattage, this very nice looking teacher will keep his very nice smile at him, because its making Eddie’s stomach flip around very nicely. Nice is a very nice word, don’t you think. Is he blushing?

“Oh no, I mean, how embarrassed should I be that the hottest man in all of LA is wrapping my wrist up while I look electrocuted right now?”

“It’s cute that you think this is even the most embarrassing thing to happen at this scene,” Eddie can’t believe himself, does he—does he…dare he say, have game? The guy’s heart rate is like 140 for a second, which is medic speak for ‘I think that dumb line worked’. “We found the band teacher, I think? With his hand up the vice principal’s dress where they were crushed under the bleachers.”

“And I think it’s cute you think we didn’t all already know that,” the guy laughs, as Eddie reaches behind him for a second bandage wrap, “I don’t contribute much to the teachers lounge gossip mill, but my abnormally large ears are finally good for something.”

“I think your ears are perfectly normal sized.”

“Not a compliment I was ever expecting, but thank you? I think?” he laughs, and oh, that’s a nice sound, Eddie thinks, like a rainbow confetti text message, “They’ve helped me get dirt on almost everyone.”

“So let me guess,” Eddie smirks, “Drama teacher?”

“Even worse—environmental science,” he gasps, “Or as my students like to call it: Honors mid-day nap.”

“No way, I think it would be riveting to learn about…” Eddie slowly teases, “The ozone?”

“We’re actually doing soil conditions in different US climates but thanks for that, man.”

“Soil conditions? Like what plants grow best where?” Eddie asks, and still unnamed hot teacher with very nice smile nods at him very nicely, “You’re actually looking at the proud owner of three little sprouts growing in three variable conditions in my kitchen.”

“I’m doing more than looking,” he says, and Eddie thinks he’s blushing, oh my god, “You got a green thumb?”

“No, I have a nine year old niece who wants an A in science and an inability to say no.”

“That works out for me,” he laughs lightly, his now bandaged hand still hanging sort of limply in Eddie’s, “Because I was actually wondering if I could ask for your—“

“Eddie!”

Eddie actually almost jumps out of his skin, his name gets called so loudly behind him. He wobbles in his crouch on the balls of his feet as he turns to find—oh, wonderful. Buck’s coming over. Striding with intense purpose, it seems, long, beautiful legs getting him right on Eddie’s back in seconds.

“Hey, everything okay?” Eddie peeks up at his partner, “Did Cap need—”

“Does your patient need to be transferred?” Buck nods curtly at the very nice smile man sitting on the back of the ambulance, crossing his arms tightly over his chest, and Eddie wishes they weren’t in turnouts for this. Shame this very nice man doesn’t get to blush over Buck’s biceps too.

“Uh, no, no, I think—“ Eddie turns, looks back at the patient with a once over, up and down, “We’re good here, yeah?”

“Yes, um, sorry if I was keeping him, from something more important. I tend to yap,” he says, apologetically to Buck, who is not cracking even the smallest hint of a smile. Buck has the best smile ever, Eddie thinks.

“No, don’t worry, our paramedics are with the more serious patients. You got stuck with the spare,” Eddie soothes lightly.

“The band teacher and vice principal?” he laughs.

“Exactly—”

“It’s inappropriate to speak about the condition of other patients on a scene,” Buck bristles.

“I am so sorry—”

“We were not,” Eddie sends a withering glare at Buck, who looks like he’s physically turning red—what the hell? “I was actually telling him about Mara’s plant experiment, was about to pick his brain on soil conditions to get her an A.”

“A science teacher’s dream,” he clutched a hand to his heart dramatically, “What kind are you using?”

“Whatever the school sent her home with.”

“This is gonna sound crazy, but you can try coffee grinds in the soil—weird trick, but it works.”

“Mara’s locked in her variables of talking to the plants and playing them music to encourage growth, but I’m gonna have to try that on my own—”

“Eddie doesn’t have a coffee maker,” Buck interjects.

“I do,” Eddie nods, “It’s just not a Hildy, no thanks to you.”

“No way, I have this old collectors item you may have never heard of,” the guy laughs to Eddie, “A Keurig!”

“Oh my god—”

“We really should be going, Eddie,” Buck presses, “Got some more students to triage before we go.”

“Right, of course, again, I’m sorry for—”

“Don’t worry, it was really nice meeting you, um,” Eddie titters nervously, “I’m sorry, I’m so rude. I didn’t even ask your name.”

“It’s okay, was hoping I could just put it in your phone,” he shrugs, smooth as hell, and yes, Eddie likes being flirted with on calls by men, for sure. “Maybe we could discuss soil options further over coffee? I’m free after the school day on Tuesday?”

“Eddie’s not—”

“I am pretty busy on Tuesdays,” Eddie cuts Buck off this time before he can literally bite the poor guy’s head off, “It was really nice meeting you though. Thanks for the tips, soil and otherwise.”

Buck pulls Eddie away by the sleeve of his coat before Eddie can hear the guy’s full response.

(When he’s getting ready for bed that night, Eddie sees four new messages on his phone from Buck, all of them with links to tips for growing your plants, and a not at all subtle ‘no need to text soil guy’.

Eddie wonders if there’s any tips out there for abating a blush when he texts back, I didn’t even take his number, Buck, but maybe you should come over and tell me more about soil to really make sure.)

Missing Chris is a little easier these days.

It’s constant, will be until he’s back in the state, but it aches a little less, Eddie thinks.

It doesn’t claw up his throat and make it impossible to breathe, doesn’t cut him off from being able to do literally anything else. He wakes up and his first thought isn’t that he should just go back to sleep. He doesn’t schedule out his smiles. He’s like, looking down at rock bottom from a very comfortable mediocre middleground, for now.

But most importantly, he doesn’t need sticky yellow birthday cake ice cream.

“Absolutely not.”

“But Eddie! This one has sprinkles in it!” Jee wobbles on her tip toes, nose pressed against the glass of the ice cream case, “The last one didn’t have sprinkles in it so we have to try it.”

“It’s my week to pick,” Eddie implores, peeling her off the germ-infested glass and surveying his options.

“You can’t prove that,” Mara resists.

“You literally bought me a calendar just so you could write out a hard copy of the schedule I couldn’t refute,” Eddie says, before grinning at the employee behind the counter, “Can we get three small cups of moose tracks, please?”

“Let’s just drop you off at the retirement home on our way out,” Mara huffs, “What if I’m allergic to nuts?”

“You’re not,” Eddie says, accepting the first cup and passing it down to a slightly upset but not so put out because there’s still ice cream involved, even if it’s not sprinkle birthday cake, Jee-yun, “You’re gonna love this. It has fudge in it.”

“That’s a bad word, Eddie!” Jee squeaks, ice cream already more on her nose than in her mouth.

Which, is par for the course by week—hm, wait—when did Eddie stop having to count?

Anyway, he’s used to adorable shit coming at any given moment with the girls, is his point, but the employee behind the counter isn’t expecting it, and laughs so hard, she gives them a free kids size sprinkle birthday cake to go.

Eddie watches them share it in his backseat, passing their spoon back and forth sweetly, and his chest aches a little, but in a way he hopes sticks there forever.

“Shh, they’re sleeping!”

“I see that. Why aren’t you?”

“This book is so good. Eddie let me borrow it from Chris’s room.”

“That was nice of him. You wanna start heading out, I’m sure you’re tired. Your mom went to get Denny, I’m gonna drop you off.”

“Can we wait a couple minutes? I’m stuck under Eddie’s arm, I don’t wanna wake him and Jee up.”

“I think he’d be okay getting up.”

“He’s so sleepy!”

“Okay, okay, we can wait.”

There’s a small creak, someone sitting on the coffee table, the refrigerator door swinging open in the background too, Eddie thinks, very much still half asleep. He is so sleepy, this is nice. He’s got like, a weighted blanket or something on his chest, didn’t know he owned one of those, and his left arm is tingly. It’s nice. He can’t get his eyes to open up.

“You wanna tell me about your day? Eddie said no one got hurt, you were safe at school?”

“Oh yeah. Some of the stuff fell off the walls, and there was so much traffic it took us a whole hour to get home, Chimney!”

“Oh man. That’s a lot of time trapped in the car with Eddie’s singing,” there’s a light bubble of laughter, “I bet you guys were scared, too. Stuck at school.”

“A little, at first, but mostly because I wanted to know you and mom and Buck were okay. School wasn’t scary.”

“No?”

“No, they let Jee wait in my classroom with me, and she said Miss Brooke said we might be here all night because our parents couldn’t get to us, but I told her I knew you guys were helping lots of people, and Eddie would come. He never misses a Tuesday.”

“Of course he did.”

“The band-aid on your eyebrow is funny. Jee’s gonna want to replace it with an Elsa one, though.”

“Oh, I know. I told your mom to not even bother, but she insisted.”

“And she’s okay too?”

“Everyone’s okay, little 4.7 has nothing on us. Did Eddie ever tell you his first week in LA he worked a 7.2?”

“No way.”

“You gotta ask him about it when he’s awake, he’s pretty cool, brags about it even less than I do.”

“You brag every other sentence, Mr. April!” comes a new voice from, Eddie’s muddled brain tries to parse out, the kitchen?

“Watch it. I popped your shoulder back into place, I can just as easily pop it right back out.”

A sweet giggle, one of Eddie’s favorites, “What happened to Buck?”

Eddie’s eyes snap open.

“Hey there, Sleeping Beauty.”

“Chim? Oh my god, I’m so sorry—” Eddie tries to reach a hand up to rub his eyes awake, but they’re both, apparently occupied, one around Mara’s shoulder and one holding a still-sleeping Jee to his chest.

“Don’t worry, we had it on good authority you were sleepy,” Chim grins.

“I was, best sleep I’ve had in months, thank you,” Eddie drops his voice to a better whisper, Mara snuggling in closer. “If we’re careful, you can probably carry her out asleep.”

“Sounds good,” he says, “I’ll trade you.”

Eddie’s brow crinkles in confusion for a second until Buck appears in the doorway, wearing what looks like a pretty serious looking sling on his left arm, and at least a somewhat guilty grimace.

“What did you do?”

“Why does everyone keep saying it like I did something and not the literal earthquake?” Buck hovers around the edge of the living room.

“Because the earthquake was over, you decided to rappel off the side of a school bus,” Chim says, disapproval pretty impressively noticeable even though they’re all still whispering for Jee-yun.

“You what? How does that even—why would you—I can’t imagine—”

“There were kids inside, Eddie,” Buck explains, propping himself on one hip on the arm of the couch, “And my shoulder—all I did was dislocate it, that’s it.”

“That’s it?”

“I know we’re whispering, but it can’t be so bad you have to repeat everything I—”

“Only reason he’s not in a hospital bed right now is because I know they’re slammed and I made him promise he’d stay the night here,” Chim interjects, “Under your watchful, responsible eye.”

“He would have stayed anyway,” Mara shrugs, “It’s Tuesday.”

Eddie would feel a little caught, but he’s too busy trying to glare ‘how dare you get hurt without me there’ daggers at his best friend.

“That’s what I told him, Mara. Like I’d willingly leave when Eddie keeps half the population of California’s ice cream supply in his freezer.”

“People who scale the sides of unstable objects don’t get access to my ice cream stash,” Eddie huffs, “You can reheat dinner with a glass of water and an ibuprofen, then bed. That’s it.”

“Well shit, maybe I should have insisted on the hospital.”

“Language.”

“I’ve heard him say worse.”

“I thought we promised to never bring that up, my sweet, beautiful, non-snitching niece?”

“C’mon, let’s get you home so Nurse Ratched here can get to work,” Chim nudges Mara’s knee, and stands up for the gentle Jee-yun hand off, “Text me how he’s doing overnight? If there’s any swelling, bruising—”

“I’m fine, Chim,” Buck says, flopping onto the now vacated couch.

“Hourly updates,” Eddie ignores him, “You sure you’re okay to drive home?”

Chim nods, “Thank you, so much, for staying with them. I don’t even know how to—”

“Of course,” Eddie says, because not one single second of today, from when he first felt the earth shake to getting the alert on his phone and the call from Bobby that the crew would be stuck in overtime, did Eddie ever think anything he was doing was a chore, or a favor. His legs moved him on autopilot into his car the second the ground was still and he violated every traffic law ever written racing to the school, without so much as giving it a second thought.

“Thank you for letting the girls keep me company today, how many years here and I still hate earthquakes,” Eddie says, as Mara shoves her things into her backpack to leave, “Sorry I fell asleep on you though, Mar.”

“It’s okay, anything I would have said out loud to you if we were reading together, I just put on a post it,” Mara says, sliding Chris’s old book she was reading back to Eddie, “But make sure you’re caught up by next week, sleepy.”

Eddie is pretty sure he read this book to Chris three times over and knows the blot forwards and back, but he laughs, “You got it. Get home safe you guys.”

Buck accepts the sweetest, gentlest hug goodbye from Mara and kisses Jee’s hand as she passes, avoids Chim’s final brotherly nudge on his way out. Like always, Eddie waits for their car to disappear off his street before he steps off his porch, heads back inside, locks the door behind him.

“A school bus, Buck?”

“You would have done the same thing if you were there, Eddie,” Buck whines, kicking his shoes off where they hang off the arm of the couch.

“Well, I wasn’t,” Eddie huffs, wiggling into the mere inches of space Buck’s sprawl has left him on the opposite end, “Save that shit for when I’m there to hold your harness.”

“Hmm, no one does hold a harness quite like you,” Buck overdoes it, smile saccharine, “I missed you.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I’m serious,” he implores, squirming, unable to find a comfortable position, it seems, with his long legs and slinged shoulder.

“You worked a whole year without me before I moved here, you remember that, right?”

“Have you heard about the shit I was pulling my probie year?” Buck laughs, Eddie can feel it on his thigh, “Makes my school bus stunt look tame.”

“Well, I’m glad you kept yourself alive long enough to meet me.”

“You’re joking but I’m serious.”

“I’m serious too,” Eddie says, even though he was joking at first, but when he really thinks about it, “I don’t know what I would have done if you’d never met me.”

Finally having had enough of Buck’s restlessness, Eddie picks up Buck’s head and places it in his lap. He settles just fine after that, blue eyes blinking up at him, every muscle in his body going slack with ease.

“Like, I know what I would have done if I’d never met you, but I don’t think I’d be here if you hadn’t met me.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” Buck asks, moving Eddie’s hand to his scalp in a silent question. This fucking guy.

“No, because if I’d never met you, I would have just kept on doing the same awful things I was doing. Running away, feeling guilty, blowing up at my nearest loved one, work way too hard, rinse and repeat the cycle,” Eddie starts, tracing slow, patterns on Buck’s hairline, down his neck and good shoulder, that soothes himself as much as it visibly does Buck, “I’d be miserable, without a doubt. I’d be fine, getting through the day, but sinking fast. I couldn’t keep it up. I think I’d have drowned by now.”

“You did a great job, Eddie.”

“Yeah, because you met me,” he says, so softly he hopes Buck can hear him, eyes fluttered shut. “I met you, and there was nothing I was going to do differently, I was so—stuck. This same, exact, awful moment of my life on fucking loop. Getting shot, my parents wanting Chris, Shannon gone. And that was it. Everyone I met was just, there.

“But you met me, and you fucking hated me.”

“I did not—“

“No, you did, and thank god you did,” Eddie laughs, “Because everyone treated me with kid gloves, those first few years, after my last deployment, when Chris was a baby, when Shannon died. But you, you just hated my fucking guts.”

“I think that’s a very simplified way of putting it—I was going through a complicated wave of emotions that you just happened to be on the receiving end of—”

“You met me, not the guy that was living this miserable loop of bad choices, but just, me, and it,” Eddie shakes his head, he doesn’t know if he’s making any sense here, actually—he’s sure he’s not, but whatever, he can’t stop himself from word vomiting now, “It changed my life, Buck. I’m—I’m not stuck anymore.”

Buck grabs Eddie’s wrist, pulls it down to his chest, and holds it there. He can count his breathing. One in, one out, two in, two out, three in—

“You’re stuck with me, though,” Buck smiles, “No matter what.”

Eddie squeezes Buck’s wrist, and stops counting. He’s here, he’s his. He’s not worried.

“You changed my life too, you know?”

Buck breathes it more than he says it, and Eddie inhales it up so quick, locks it in his chest to keep forever and ever.

“I’ve never had a best friend before, not until I met you, or you met me, or whatever,” he adds, and now he’s tracing lines on Eddie, outlining the veins on his wrist methodically, “So I have no real benchmark here.”

“On how to be a good friend?”

“On how to feel about you,” Buck admits, “I don’t know if this is normal or not, but it’s like, I can feel it, like you’re a little pebble under my skin.”

“That’s an interesting comparison.”

“Sometimes you’re here, telling me to not scale an overturned school bus hanging off a crumbled overpass,” Buck says, moving their hands to his temple, and then down to his stomach, “Sometimes you’re here.”

“When you’re hungry?”

“When you make me happy, asshole,” Buck bristles, “You make me laugh so hard, you like, I sound so corny, don’t laugh—you make me vibrate with happiness.”

“Yeah?”

“But usually you’re just here,” Buck says, settling back with their hands over his heart, “There’s like, an extra beat or something, and I’m positive it’s you, rattling around, making sure it keeps going.”

“You should probably get that checked out by a doctor,” he teases.

“They brought me here, didn’t they?”

“I’m not a doctor, though.”

“No, but you’re my cure-all,” Buck says, “Not sold over the counter, must take daily, side effects may vary.”

“Side effects?”

“Yeah like, you might end up the happiest you’ve ever been in your whole entire life,” Buck blinks, “Or, I don’t know. Something like that.”

“They made me stop doing CPR you know?” Eddie doesn’t know why he brings it up, but he also knows exactly why he does, “Bobby made me drive the ambulance, and I was pissed, I wanted to—I had to restart your heart.”

“You did,” Buck pushes a finger over his knuckles, back and forth, “Little pebble.”

“You need to spend a week with Mara, I think, I want a better metaphor than being compared to a prescription drug and a pebble.”

“People call people they love their rock all the time.”

“Well you didn’t call me that, did you? You said I was a pebble giving you a heart murmur.”

“Oh my god, I was just trying to—“

“I know, I know,” Eddie placates, can’t wipe the embarrassing smile off his face, “I feel you too. Everywhere.”

“Yeah?”

And Eddie wasn’t too sure he had room in his busy schedule of nothing and missing Chris and more nothing after that for another revelation. But he guesses it makes sense, that Eddie looks at Buck, here, in the middle of his life that he got moving again, over and over, every time Eddie could feel the gears rusting, getting stuck again, and thinks, yeah, absolutely.

He’s in love with him.

It’s the easiest of the three realizations. His brain doesn’t turn off, he doesn’t start overthinking every point of contact and every interaction they’ve ever had.

It just is.

He can feel it, in every bit of him, rattling around.

Eddie loves Buck.

“Yeah.”

He’s gonna remember the way Buck looks in this exact moment forever, Eddie thinks. Injured for some heroic maneuver at work, a job they share, months after Eddie kept him alive, with his hands or his space in his chest. He’s been here, through Eddie’s messed up family problems, the best friend he’s ever had. This is serious.

I’m going to kiss him one day, Eddie thinks. Soon.

“Doesn’t change the fact that I’m pissed at you for this shoulder,” Eddie quirks.

“Damn, I drained my monthly nice things to say about you budget for nothing.”

“Stay put, I’m gonna get you a Motrin,” Eddie says, slipping out and off the couch, heading for his bathroom.

was trying to wait until the morning so i didn’t bother you in the middle of earthquake clean up but i saw a 118 truck in a picture of a bad accident

if you see this

just send me a thumbs up or something

please

If this was a ploy to get me to use emojis…

It worked.

👍🏻

hey dad

I wasn’t working today

But your friend Buck dislocated his shoulder trying to get some kids out of a school bus or something

oh right tuesday

and that sounds about right

you wanna help me yell at him about it?

Chris calls within seconds, and Eddie doesn’t let the ringing get stuck looping even once before picking up.

“I get it.”

“Get what? Mara’s fractions homework?” Eddie presses the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he jogs up the stairs to the station loft, “Because we’re like, seven units past that, Buck. It’s all about decimals now.”

“No, no, I get why you were like, freaking out over this the first few weeks,” Buck hisses over the phone, “It’s like I can feel them silently hating me.”

“They don’t hate you.”

“See, and I also get now why me saying that to you wasn’t at all helpful.”

“You were right about the Frozen thing, just play some music. You sing better than me too,” Eddie reaches up for a few mugs, pouring himself and Chim and Hen coffee. The midday slump is starting to hit real bad.

“It doesn’t matter that I sing better, they clearly just want you.”

“They don’t—“

“Jee already asked six times when you were showing up.”

“She knows I’m working,” Eddie says, having covered Buck’s last few shifts this week while his shoulder heals, which, unfortunately fell into a Tuesday.

“Well, apparently, she keeps forgetting, every thirty seconds,” Buck says. Eddie looks at the time, and notes that they’re in that fun stretch of time between her and Mara’s pickups, which at the beginning felt like it lasted years and years of awkward to Eddie. “I don’t think I’m prepared for her to start crying when we get to my boring all-gray apartment and not your fun house with toys and nail polish and plants you can sing to and ice cream.”

“So take them to my house,” Eddie shrugs, he doesn’t even know why this is an issue. “You have a key.”

“Yeah, but I can’t just—“

“Jee drew a picture last week, you can look at it when you get there, it’s taped up on a cabinet because I ran out of fridge space,” Eddie starts, swinging the fridge here open, grabbing the milk, “It’s you and me at your house, she said. It’s cute.”

“What does that have to do—“

“Just look at it, yeah?”

“Alright,” Eddie can almost hear Buck’s reluctant shrug, “I think I see Mara’s class coming out, I gotta go.”

“Text me when you get home?”

“‘Course.”

“Just a few hours, you got this.”

“Be safe,” Buck says, just before he clicks off the line.

They get through two sips of coffee each before the alarm sounds and they run off to a call. Their mugs are still sitting there when they return, way too long later, but the coffee pot’s empty and it’s going to take forever to brew a new one, and it’s desperate fucking times, man. (Don’t repeat this to anyone ever, what happens in the last few hours of your 24 stays in the last few hours of your 24.)

Chim is wincing through a gulp of cold coffee and Hen is staring at hers like she’s working up the courage when Eddie turns his phone on, in the middle of laughing at them.

Don’t think I see whatever picture youre talking about man.

We’re at your hous now btw

Thank You for this they’re freaking stoked

anyway I’m looking nd i just see like this one of a dinosaur and a cowboy? and then there’s one of a firetruck That’s cute

The eddie is very cool note

Still can’t believe you didnt coerce her into writing that

And then just this one on the cabinets.

Think its me and you???

No definitely you. With the mustache and the muscles Jee doesn’t think Ihave.

But that looks like your house

oh

OH

oh man

yeah she jst saw me looking t it and let me know this is indeed “Uncle Buck and Eddie’s house”

fuck man

Did my niece just ask me to move in with you????

Ok I get it I get it Im not a guest I can use my key whatever blah blah blah

You must be on a call!

Hope it’s going well and youre staying safe

love you

*miss you

Sorry Autocorrect Haha :)

“Smiling and zoned out at his phone, we’ve officially lost him, Hen.”

Eddie looks up sheepishly, caught by his best friends and their gross lukewarm coffee. Eddie definitely doesn’t need his caffeine anymore, thank god. His heart? It’s racing.

“How do I even answer this?” Eddie slides his phone across the table, Hen and Chim bumping foreheads in their rush to both take a look.

“No way he’s playing that off as autocorrect.”

“Say you love him too!”

“Absolutely not,” Eddie reaches for his phone back.

“Maybe a tasteful red heart?” Chim offers, spitting his coffee back into his cup before he can even take a full sip. “That tastes horrendous.”

“Red hearts have never been tasteful.”

“Not helpful, guys, I can’t leave him on read.”

“When have we ever been helpful in a situation like this?”

Eddie doesn’t even know what day it is.

But he does know this:

He’s in his house, and the sun is setting. It’s pretty, Eddie thinks, as he sets his phone down on the kitchen counter, and sees it, out the small window. He’s never noticed how pretty the sunset is from his kitchen before. Or maybe, it’s never been as pretty as it is right now.

Buck is in his living room, sorting laundry, and pretty isn’t a good enough word. Eddie doesn’t think, he knows that.

He’d told him not to do that, that Eddie could do his own laundry, but Buck came here straight from work, hasn't been in his own apartment too much these days, and tossed his own dirty clothes into Eddie’s hamper, and smiled smugly like that argument wouldn’t work anymore, it was their laundry.

There’s music playing, jazz covers of all of Buck’s favorite songs, because he read that’s best for plants, and when he asked Eddie what songs he wanted, he said he liked anything Buck did. He’s humming as he folds, a pile for him, a pile for Eddie, a pile he thinks is both of theirs. Eddie doesn’t know what he’s doing with that, but he lets him keep at it.

Eddie cooked dinner. The dishes haven’t been done, they’re sitting, sauce that Buck said ‘was so good it’d wake him from a coma’ and Eddie has to beg him not to test the theory, caking onto the pans as they just sit in the sink.

Should he do the dishes? Maybe he should.

He’s rooted to his spot, hands on either side of the sink, holding onto the counter. His phone is face up next to him.

His history shows a seventeen minute call with Chris he just hung up. He swipes out of it, opens messages. There’s a few texts.

One from Buck he never opened saying I’m home!

One from Hen, which is actually from Mara, wishing him luck on his call with Chris, with a picture of her with her hand pressed up close to the screen.

There’s one from his mom. He deletes it before he even reads it.

And the last one’s a screenshot of a boarding pass from Chris. Texas to LA. One way.

Eddie decides not to do the dishes.

“You didn’t have to call me back right away,” Mara giggles as soon as she answers the phone. “What’s up?”

Eddie is thinking about answering her. What’s up? Eddie doesn’t even know. His mind was whirring, like the laundry machine he hears Buck distantly say he’s going to check on, time to switch the second load to the dryer, and now it’s sort of blank.

“You okay, Eddie?” she asks again, a little more insistently, when Eddie never decided on an answer, and then, “Oh no, you’re crying! Why are you crying! Don’t do that!”

And oh, is he? Eddie didn’t even realize. When did he start doing that?

“If it's the plants, I really don’t care. You did so much better than mom, we can start over! You’ll have to see me more, and sing some more, which is—”

“No um, sorry, sorry,” he finds his voice, and finds he’s smiling so wide with it. “Happy tears, I promise.”

“Happy tears?” Mara quirks.

“Yeah,” Eddie breathes, and it feels so good, he hasn’t felt like this in months, he forgot he knew how to feel like this, and it’s so—maybe Mara has a vocabulary word for it. “I think that five-promise worked.”

A beat passes, then another. Then, “Oh my gosh! Mom, mom! Get your keys, we gotta go see Eddie!”

He hears a muffled response in the background over his laughter, Hen or Karen, he can’t tell, but surely one of them is asking what has Mara suddenly yelling.

When she answers, it's the first time Eddie’s really hearing it out loud, and it’s prettier than the sunset he never noticed out his window, “Because Chris is coming home!”

Chris is supposed to come home on a Saturday. At least, that’s what the tickets say.

He’s coming with abuela, because Eddie learned how to hold a grudge from his parents, and when he doesn't answer a single one of their messages or calls or emails or carrier pigeons they send, probably, they decided they’re pissed off at Eddie enough to not escort Chris back personally. He could care fucking less.

But the state of domestic flights is abysmal, and Eddie doesn’t even have the screenshot of Chris’s boarding pass in his possession to stare at every spare second of the day to make sure it’s real for 24 hours before Chris is letting him know the flight info has been changed.

First it’s delayed a few hours, then a day. Then they change the terminal, then the whole airport, which, Eddie doesn’t even think they should be able to do, really, and he’s literally in his car ready to just drive to Texas himself when Chris reminds him no dad that’s ridiculous do not drive we leave on monday now don’t stress.

Which of course, now that Chris said it, Eddie will just, not stress. It’s that easy!

(Eddie paces around his house the entire Monday.)

(Buck is probably going to kill him.)

“We should just drive,” Buck says, at 6 am on Tuesday morning, because they slept maybe three hours combined, eyes glued to the LAX arrivals page.

“He said not to.”

“Yes, but you have to listen to him,” Buck leans in the doorway to the kitchen, words muffled through a yawn, “I don’t.”

“Ignoring how untrue that is, the latest flight hasn’t changed in,” Eddie looks down at his watch, “12 hours now. I think this might be the one.”

“Which is?”

“8 am Wednesday.”

“Okay, good, good,” Buck yawns again, stretches with it, and his shirt rides up, exposing a sliver of skin on his hip, which is only fine in this moment because Eddie doesn’t have the higher brain function available to spiral over it. (But he can appreciate how good he looks, sleep-tousled, the wrinkles around his eyes, like he’s got a neon sign over his head that says ‘kiss me, Eddie Diaz!’) “You sure you don’t want me to stay? Bobby said I can take the day with you—”

“No, no, that’s ridiculous,” Eddie must miss his son so much he’s borrowing phrasing, “He won’t be home until tomorrow, so it’d be a waste of your day.”

“Wouldn’t be a waste if I got to spend it with you,” Buck says, and alright. Maybe Eddie has a smidge of higher brain function available. He’s gonna up and melt into his kitchen tiles if Buck keeps looking at him like that while saying things like that.

“My plan for the day is to pop a nyquil and sleep until the alarm I set for 2pm when I have to go get Jee and Mara. They’ll keep me distracted for long enough until you get home again, and by then we’ll only have to wait a few more hours.”

“Solid plan,” Buck smiles, “If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure, thank you for offering,” Eddie nods, “You’ve been, uh—you’ve done so much for me.”

“Like you were ever going to get me to willingly leave your side from the second you got the call he was coming home.”

“I meant a little more than the past few days, Buck.”

“Yeah, well,” and Eddie isn’t sure he’s ever seen Buck blush like that before. It’s cute (he’s stopped pretending this word is not in his vocabulary.) “We made a promise.” He holds his wrist out towards Eddie, and he mirrors him.

“Forever and ever.”

“Buck and Eddie,” Buck laughs softly, “You sure you’re gonna be okay?”

“My god, yes, can you get out the door before you ask one more time? Because then, I’ll have to kill you.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Buck waves, grabbing his bag and slinging it over one shoulder, “Let me just—”

“Made it already,” Eddie raises a to-go mug of coffee, a little tuft of steam swirling out the top.

“It’s like you never want me to leave,” Buck smiles before Eddie can blurt out something along the lines of I do, I never want you to leave, stay here forever. “Okay, I’ll see you later?”

“Be safe,” Eddie has to crane his neck to look up at Buck, who rounds out the side of the table, and ends up pressed to the back of his chair, leaning over to grab his coffee, steals a bite of Eddie’s toast. “Hey!”

“Can’t be safe without the most important meal of the day,” he says, voice right by Eddie’s ear, grin audible even though he’s grossly talking with his mouth full, and he kisses Eddie on the side of his cheek, just by his ear, on his way leaning back to leave, “Have a good nap! Save me some ice cream?”

Eddie nods the affirmative, watches him jog all the way out the kitchen, follows the sound of his footsteps down the hall, and even though his stomach is a stress ball of knots, this was a nice morning, a little—

Wait a second.

Back up.

Did he—

Grabbed his coffee, stole a bite of toast, kissed Eddie’s cheek, said goodbye, took his bag, walked out the door.

Hold on, again. One more time.

Coffee and toast, kiss on the cheek, goodbye, out the door. Coffee, toast, kiss—kiss? Kiss! Kiss. Kiss??????

No yeah, he didn't hallucinate that, Eddie brings a hand up to his cheek, and ends up with some stray crumbs on his hand.

Buck kissed Eddie on the cheek goodbye.

Accidentally, out of habit, just like, a friendly goodbye, maybe? But still.

And Eddie just sat there, didn’t even realize, smiled him lovestruck out the door like a housewife oh my fucking god.

Buck kissed him.

Eddie feels glued to his seat in the chair, unsure how he’s ever gonna force himself into a nap now that he feels a little like he’s been swirled around like a morning cup of coffee, his mind on a significant delay like a flight to LAX.

But if the sound of Buck’s car turning on only a full five minutes later is anything to go by, then Eddie is pretty sure Buck is on the same sort of delay.

So whatever. They’re in this together.

“It’s a snowman making s’mores!”

“That’s not possible.”

“It is!” Jee stomps her foot cutely in the bed of Eddie’s truck, head turned up at an almost 90 degree angle at the sky, “There’s his head, and his arms, and the marshmallow on his arm, and that’s the fire to roast the marshmallow, and there’s the box of grim crackers—”

“Graham crackers,” Eddie says, shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand, his other a vice grip on the back of Jee’s shirt, because she refuses to safely lay down to cloud watch with him and Mara.

“Graham crackers,” she repeats. There’s like, a 50/50 chance the ice cream she’s only taken two bites of is going to fall directly on Eddie’s face, “It’s Olaf!”

“When does Olaf eat s’mores?” Mara peeks up at her from her spot laying at Eddie’s right. “Wouldn’t he just—”

“I know you were not about to say what I think you were just about to say,” Eddie cuts her off with a teasing grin, “Let’s not give her snowman soup nightmare fuel.”

“What?”

“I don’t think you whispered that as quietly as you thought you did,” Mara giggles at him.

“Oh, look at that! A unicorn with a bowling ball!” Eddie points, trying to divert quickly.

“A unicorn? Where? I love unicorns!”

“Nice save,” Mara whispers, at perfect pitch.

They’re parked off at the far end of a park parking lot, having stopped at a little pop-up stand sort of out of the way of their usual route, much further than Eddie’d normally take them, for their ice cream tradition, because he’s on a serious mission to keep himself so occupied he isn’t thinking about his son packing his bags probably, as they speak, to come home. Home! By tomorrow, Eddie’s going to have his son home!

But Eddie’s being super, very, awesomely normal about that, obviously. 

You should never be cloud watching long enough you get to ‘unicorn with a bowling ball’ level, but. Eddie’s being normal.

“Eddie?”

“Hm? You see another unicorn?” His eyes are shut to block the sunlight, and he feels the most relaxed he’s been the past four days.

He’s gotta write Hen and Chim and Buck thank you cards, and if he were a bigger person, Chim and Maddie’s fourteen year old neighbor no one trusted, and Gerrard too for fucking up their schedules (he has not and never will be the bigger person, fuck you Gerrard!) to have given him this perfect day of the week, this time that Eddie feels like he gets everything right for once.

“No,” Jee says, “Your phone’s ringing.”

Eddie had enacted a bit of a no phone rule for himself, once he picked up Mara and Jee. He stared at it most of the afternoon, watching flights come in and arrival times change, no new updates from Chris, with his nap plan to keep him away from doing just that completely out of the question post cheek kiss-gate, and it had driven him insane.

If he stays away from it, it can’t bother him. Buck talked him through on the phone how to turn on do not disturb and everything.

“It’s okay, it’s not important. You’re both with me,” he smiles, stretching out comfortably.

“It’s ringing lots though so we can’t hear the song,” Jee pouts, “It’s your favorite!”

Which again, Eddie has lots of favorite songs these days. Whatever Jee’s favorite is that day is also his, so he really couldn’t tell you what song is currently, apparently, being ruined by the frequent pausing it’s doing every time Eddie’s phone chimes with a new text that he hadn’t even registered he was getting.

But if it’s making Jee sad.

“I can’t believe you still have a ringtone,” Mara exasperates, as Eddie reaches blindly behind him, trying to find wherever his phone is laying to play the Frozen soundtrack for them.

“You’ve made fun of me for being behind on a lot of things since we’ve met, but there’s no way I can mess up having a ringtone—”

“No one uses ringtones anymore, Eddie. They turn them off.”

“Well, I don’t like the feeling of the vibrate.”

“They turn the vibrate off too.”

“Wait, wait, wait—so it’s just silent? Like completely silent? At all times?” Eddie sits up, crooked smile down at Mara as he cleans off his phone screen with his shirt, a couple of rainbow sprinkles having missed Eddie’s nose, thankfully, but landed there from Jee’s cup instead. Mara nods at him, “How do they know when people are calling? Or texting?”

“They just know, I dunno.”

“Foolproof logic there, Mar.”

“You just didn’t hear your phone with a ringtone, Jee had to tell you.”

“Well you better be grateful I’m an old man on this one, otherwise I’d never pick up when you called to bother me,” Eddie laughs, and damn, his phone was really overheating even without use, he has to squint when he clicks it on, warm in his hand, “I’ll restart that song for you, Jee, just—”

Head out of the clouds for a moment—oh wait, that was a good metaphor, he should have Mara write that down, and tell Buck—

There’s only 2 contacts Eddie had set up (or: let Buck talk him through step by step like a child) to bypass the do not disturb feature he was using, and for the most part, highly enjoying for today’s frenzied and stressed out state.

Buck hasn’t answered him in about an hour or two, bad abandoned building structure fire they had to respond to.

So that leaves—

sorry this is so late tia soph like ran us out of the house before i could find my charger to pack

so its like lost to texas forever i guess 🤠

luckily the person next to us on the plane was nice and let me borrow her charger jst soi cld sentthis

but by the time this sends idkif well have the service for it to go through

they offered to have us switch to an earlier flight

obviously we took it

we’re taking off in a couple minutes i know ur prob busy so i told abuela we could uber to our house just wanted to give you a heads up

okay airplane mode i gotta go

Eddie’s got Tuesdays down to the minute. He’s good at it, good at Tuesdays.

But that last text, which Eddie has to read three times to make sure it's real, is timestamped 2:37.

It’s, Eddie knows from obsessively checking, about a 2 hour flight from El Paso to LA.

He looks at his phone. It’s 4:06.

“You guys wanna take a trip to the airport?”

Chris comes home on a Tuesday.

Eddie does the worst parking job of his entire life, sliding very crooked into a spot all the way at the back of a lot he paid way too much to enter, pulls Jee out of her seat and thanks god Mara is with him to remind him to grab his keys and his wallet, and tells them there’s a rule, just for the next five minutes, that it’s okay to run through a parking lot.

He’s holding onto Mara’s hand on one side and he’s holding Jee up on his hip on the other, and they run, start and stop with infectious giggles, down the row and towards the airport doors. The cool air conditioning blasts them when the sliding doors part, and they dodge several loitering people, probably knock over a suitcase or two, as they look for the right arrival gate.

“Over there! Gate 18!”  Mara points, yanking Eddie’s arm out of its socket she pulls him so forcefully in the opposite direction when she sees the sign.

“My math whiz, so good with numbers.”

Eddie has never liked airports. They’re confusing, poorly planned nightmares. Nothing ever works, everything’s overpriced. You can never find a place to sit, or even stand. They’re noisy, over-crowded. Eddie would be fine never stepping foot in one again, if he had a way around it.

But everything is better on Tuesdays.

“Christopher! Abuela!”

Eddie doesn’t know if they can hear him over the noise, where they’re leaning up against a far wall, but they definitely see the way Jee is wildly waving around a sign she made on the back of one of Mara’s homework sheets on the drive here that says ‘welcome home!’ (It’s going up on Eddie’s fridge beside Mara’s note and never, ever coming down.)

Chris is here.

Eddie’s been repeating a version of this over and over in his head since Chris left at the start of the summer, Chris should be here, I wish Chris was here, why isn’t Chris here? that the change startles him a bit.

Chris, his Christopher, all lanky five feet of him and his floppy curls and brilliant smile and sweatshirt he insists should be a size too big hanging on his shoulders, is here. In the same room as Eddie.

And he looks—he looks happy.

“My Edmundo and two little princesses come to get us!” Abuela shines when they get closer, already reaching up to wrap Eddie in a hug “What service they have here in LA! Why’d we ever leave, huh, Christopher?”

“Jeeze, abuela, I do have to breathe, you know,” Eddie laughs as she squeezes the life out of him, but how wonderful of a problem it is to have, Eddie thinks, when just a few days ago breathing had been a practiced chore. He drops Jee down, who is begging to run to Chris, but Mara stays squeezing his one hand.

“Sorry my love, I’ll let go in a second,” Abuela whispers to him, their hug now swaying a bit, “I’m trying to give Christopher the FOMO.”

“Where the heck did you learn about FOMO?”

“I steal the phone when Buck calls Chris,” she waves him off, like that doesn’t need its own line of interrogative questioning on its own, “I wasn’t sure how he was gonna be feeling when we landed and I didn’t want you upset, but I think the longer I hug you, the more likely he’ll wanna join.”

“I love you so much,” Eddie breathes into the top of her head, squeezing tighter still, because that’s insane logic, and the good family he’s got, related or chosen, is the greatest family in the entire world, he thinks. “And I missed you, and your cooking! I have to cook all the time, abuela.”

“I heard you are good at that now, no?”

“I don’t know, what do you think, Mara?” Eddie looks down at the girl, smiling up a little shyly at them.

“I don’t like to give him an ego, but yeah, he makes pretty good dinners.”

“Oh, I like her!” and Mara doesn't get to protest before a fomo-length hug is inflicted on her too. She doesn’t look like she minds too much, Eddie thinks, as she giggles into the ends of abuela’s sweater.

“Eddieeeeeee!” Jee squeals suddenly to get his attention, her hands balled up into excited little fists, and hand to god, a real, actual, pink cowboy hat with a couple bedazzled gems that’s way too big for her and definitely wasn’t there two minutes ago on her head, “Look! Look! Look!”

“Woah, look at you, cowgirl!” Eddie laughs, as she jumps on the balls of her feet, and Chris looks doubly amused, trying to keep the hat on her head with one hand.

“I’m never ever taking it off!”

“You know what? I believe that.”

“I uh, I have one for you too, Mara,” Chris twists, gesturing to his open backpack, “Don’t tell Denny his is actually the lamest one.”

“Thank you,” Mara reaches forward to grab a complimentary purple one, and where Chris found these cheap looking, felt-ish and very bright looking hats, Eddie has no idea, but god, this kid of his. They had this conversation months ago. Eddie’s heart doesn’t fit inside his chest. “But I think this would look so much better on Eddie.”

“Oh no—”

“Oh, yes!” Mara has that look on, and Eddie’s a goner, “Chris, you’re taller, can you help me get it on him?”

And then Chris is taking two big steps from where he was standing to where Eddie is, leaving Jee to her own devices for a moment, and none the wiser to how Mara likes to scheme, walks right into her trap, and abuela’s too, and leans up to put a hat so bright and ridiculous and doesn’t fit.

Doesn’t really rival the brilliance of Eddie’s smile though, when after he squints at him, and is satisfied with his work, he wraps his arms around Eddie’s middle, and hugs him tight.

“Hey, dad,” his voice rumbles against his shoulder, god, did he get taller? “I missed you.”

“I missed you more,” Eddie hums, “I’m so glad you’re home, kid.”

“You’re not gonna be when you see what you look like in this hat.”

“I could look like a rodeo clown for all I care, there’s nothing that would make me not wish you were right here.”

“That’s actually—” Chris peels back for a second, squints up at Eddie, his head tilted to one side, “That’s actually pretty accurate.”

And Eddie just—he has to just look at him again, feel his hands up and down his shoulders, he’s here, he’s here, and “Okay, five more seconds.”

“Dad!” Chris whines, but gives him a whole seven and a half more in a hug anyway.

“We’re twins, Eddie!” Jee yelps excitedly again, “Can we take a picture for Uncle Buck, he’s gonna be soooo jealous!”

He promises Jee that yes, he will wear his hat the whole way home and the rest of the night with her and yes, they can take as many selfies Mara will make fun of forever that she wants, but yes, the ice cream they had before counts so no, they cannot go get more just because Chris is here now. She gets over her disappointment rather quickly as she heads out, either of the girls flanked at abuela’s side headed for the car, because abuela is like, magic, or something.

Eddie is a step behind them with Chris when he leans in to say, “Get ready for that by the way.”

“Hm?”

“Buck,” Eddie says, “I made him go to work today even though he asked me three times to stay home because I was certain you were flying in tomorrow.”

“Oh he’s gonna be pissed at you.”

“Me? I’m not the one who let his phone die before trying to deliver a very important piece of information,” Eddie sputters.

“So dramatic, I can’t believe I missed you guys.”

They spend the entire afternoon at Eddie’s and he can’t believe how good its all going. He was mostly excited for Chris to come home, but there was a pretty strong undercurrent of mild panic at how it was gonna play out. But Tuesdays are always good, and Mara and Jee, and abuela too, are really great buffers whenever Eddie worries things are going to get difficult between him and Chris.

Only, there’s only so many hours in a Tuesday.

They all pile back into Eddie’s car later that night, and drop Jee at home first, then abuela at his tias, even though Eddie insisted she could take his room and he’d sleep on the couch as long as she wanted to stay in LA, and then Mara’s last, which, if Eddie remembers correctly, is exactly 18 minutes from his house.

So. 18 minutes alone, in the car, with Chris.

Good. That’s fine. He can do this.

It makes sense, Eddie thinks, that they’ve reverted back to a week one scenario, like Chris came back and hit a hard reset.

That first car ride with Jee and Mara, where they hit three red lights before either of them said a word. And Eddie thought that was horrible at the time, but he can do 18 silent minutes he thinks, if Chris just stays here. Maybe doesn’t cry. But that’d be fine too. He’s here. It’s all fine.

A minute passes, then another, and another. Fifteen left. Eddie can do this. He’s got a tight grip on his steering wheel, some playlist Chris picked out playing lowly, so it's not even really silence. Piece of cake.

Another minute, and they coast into traffic so now, fuck, not eighteen minutes. Okay. Okay, fine. They could—

“I’m really sorry I left.”

Oh great, they’re doing this right now, when Eddie could crash the car. Perfect.

“Hey, Chris, what—you never have to apologize for that,” Eddie shakes his head, but keeps his eyes forward, “I’m sorry, and you never have to forgive me, okay? I’m just glad you’re here.”

“It’s okay,” Chris mumbles, that sort of compulsory response whenever someone apologizes to you, and Eddie feels nauseous.

“It’s not though, okay. It’s not okay at all, and you can, you should be mad at me.”

“I don’t wanna be mad at you forever,” Chris shrugs, “I mean, I don’t think I am, anymore. I did really miss you.”

Eddie is trying not to overkill with how many times he repeats that sentiment, how much he missed Chris, so he leaves it at finally looking over at him in the passenger seat, a grateful smile on his lips.

“And I miss mom, and I don’t know, I guess, you always make me feel better when I’m missing her, that I forget you miss her too,” Chris says softly. “That’s why you did it, right? You miss mom?”

“So much,” Eddie sighs on a big exhale, “She was my best friend, Chris. I miss her all the time, sometimes I don’t even realize I’m missing her, it’s like—I just always do.”

“I get that,” he nods, “You said you would go to the lake with her, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, she uh, she loved the water,” Eddie smiles at the memory, her smile that Chris inherited almost exactly sitting across from him, “Not much of it in El Paso, though. Think I knew she’d always end up here.”

“It was really nice to talk to her there,” Chris says, “At the lake.”

“Yeah? What’d you talk about?”

“Anything. Sometimes school or video games, which she probably cares less about but whatever, she can’t cut me off,” he giggles, just a little, “I asked her when I should go home, which, was silly, but then—”

A weird look crosses his face, but Eddie nods him on.

“It was a week or two ago? Maybe three? And I got grandma to leave me alone there for like, ten whole minutes, which was a big deal,” Chris starts, “And I’m not kidding, I'd been asking mom to let me know when I should go home for weeks, because, I don’t know. And then like, this group across the lake shows up, starts making s’mores.”

“Wow—”

“No, that’s not even it, dad,” Chris insists, and he looks almost excited now, “So I’m sitting there, waiting for my dead mom to talk back to me at a lake she went on a date at with my dad I’m sort of pissed at right now, and I don’t know what they did, but out of nowhere, their fire pit goes nuts, flames like, up in the air.”

“Oh my god, was everyone okay?”

“Yeah, because you know who showed up, like, within minutes?” And Chris is on the edge of his seat to drop the punch line, even though Eddie can see where it’s going, and it’s making his eyes water real bad.

“Who?”

“The firefighters,” Chris says, smiling, “I called you as soon as I got home.”

Eddie’s so grateful, for one night only, for abysmal LA traffic, so he doesn’t have to pull off the road when he has no control over the waterworks anymore, and Chris decides its a good time to be even more the most perfect kid in the world, and reaches to grab at Eddie’s t-shirt sleeve and use it to wipe off a tear.

“I love you so, so much, Christopher,” Eddie sniffles.

“I know,” he says, and then “I love you, too.”

“I um, I’m sorry—”

“I told you you could stop doing that,” Chris says, leaning back into his seat when the light turns green, and Eddie has to remember how to drive, “I miss mom all the time, I’m not gonna miss you all the time too.”

“I’m sorr—” Eddie cuts himself off with a wince, “I just, it’s hard to miss her, I know, and whatever you need, just—anything, Chris.”

“You should try talking to her. We have lots of water options,” Chris hums, and then, “And when you say anything—”

“Alright, I’m trying to be cool dad now but not that cool,” Eddie nudges him, the roads clear up ahead, traffic gone, all open.

“That’s never gonna happen.”

“Mara thinks I’m cool.”

“And I think you brainwashed her,” Chris laughs, “Seriously though, I’m glad you had them while I was gone. You look really happy.”

“I am really happy,” Eddie says, doesn’t even have to practice the words in his head first, doesn’t strain to get the sound out of his throat. It’s real, and genuine, “I don’t need anything else.”

Chris makes a little disbelieving, instigating hum, pretending to be very interested in the window, all of a sudden.

“What?”

“I just—now that we got all the serious stuff out of the way,” Chris lolls, “I think there was something else you discussed wanting.”

“Huh? When did I—”

“And I mean, as long as it’s not a teacher I’ve had, or someone you meet in an emergency—”

It takes Eddie a second to catch on, but once he does, “Oh my god, shut up.”

“You really thought I wasn’t gonna bring that up the first second I could!”

“I was hoping you’d forgotten,” Eddie grumbles, and thanks a god he hasn’t said hello to in a bit for their eighteen minute drive mercifully ending at the perfect time, as he turns onto their street, “I’m not even thinking about dating right now, maybe never again, actually.”

“You have to date again, I made you a list I haven’t even given to you yet.”

“Was that not the list?” Eddie sputters, “The no teachers, no one from a call thing?”

“No, that was just me trying to embarrass you. It worked, I think.”

“Did I say I was glad you were home? I lied. And what if I had my own list, hm? What then?”

Eddie delights in Chris’s laughter that fills up every available space of the car as he pulls into the driveway. He left the porch light on when they left before, but it doesn’t seem too necessary anymore, because Buck, when he spots them arriving, lights the whole place up. He waves from where he’s leaning up against the wall, and Eddie is in love. He is so in love it’s insane.

Buck’s still got his uniform on, like he couldn’t be bothered to change out of it at shift change, and his bag’s by the door, meaning he didn’t go inside yet either. He’s just been waiting here, for them, which is so kind, and so genuine, and so much more than they’ll ever deserve.

Eddie thinks he’s been waiting too. His whole life, he’s been waiting for this, for this kind of love pressing in on him from all sides.

He feels whole again.

“I think we have the exact same list, actually,” Chris pokes at him, shaking Eddie out of his daze.

“I don’t really have a way out of this one? Do I?” Eddie sighs, and maybe he should be more worried about this, more embarrassed, more mortified that this is a conversation he’s having with his teenage son.

Except, he’s having a conversation with his son. And that had felt pretty impossible just a few days ago.

So maybe, he thinks, looking at Buck, there are some more possible impossibles on the horizon for him after all.

“You should see your face right now.”

“I’m not gonna do anything about it,” Eddie says, truthfully, even though his feelings about it are a little more complicated than he knows how to articulate right now, as he puts the car in park.

“What? Why not?” Chris bleats, “You should.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he nods, serious, genuine, but then, because he’s fourteen and that can only last a max of thirty-seconds, he smirks impishly, “I mean, as long as that’s actually Buck, and not a creepy, body double clone of him—”

“Christopher Diaz!” Eddie yelps, turning the car off and all but pushing him towards his door, “Get out of here.”

“Too soon?”

“Out!”

Chris is laughing the entire time he climbs out of his seat, and it sounds so wonderful layered over the sound of Buck’s voice, which starts yelling the second they’re out of the car.

“While I was at work?! Are you serious!”

“Hi, Buck.”

Buck bounces on the balls of his feet, like Jee yun had before, it’s so cute Eddie really thinks it’ll be this that takes him out, not a workplace hazard in a city unnaturally prone to natural disaster, “Am I allowed to run now, or is that not allowed?”

“I mean, you’re gonna do it whether I say you can or not—”

“You’re right, oh my god!” it takes Buck all of three long strides to run up to Chris and scoop him up in a hug. “Ugh, this used to be so much easier!” he groans when all he can manage is to get Chris’s heels off the ground, “Welcome home, Chris.”

“I missed you,” Eddie hears Chris smother right into the top of Buck’s shoulders, and oh my god, how much did this kid grow the past few months?

“I missed you more.”

“Dad said the same thing, so you’re gonna have to work that out with each other.”

“We can share the title, I don’t mind, right, Eddie?”

And Eddie looks up from where he’d settled himself, back against the front of his car, arms crossed, and eyes probably in the literal shapes of hearts, because Buck is here, and Chris is here, and it’s a Tuesday. The best day of the week.

Eddie doesn’t know how many minutes it took exactly, to get here, however the math works out, but it doesn’t matter.

He’s here now.

Eddie doesn’t really know what he’s waiting for.

But he’s waiting, or stalling, or trying really hard not to talk himself out of this.

Maybe he should just— “Hey, Shannon?”

He’s not waiting for the glass of water on his kitchen table to talk back, he swears, really. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for.

But—

“I’m only doing this because Chris asked me to,” Eddie starts again, fingers drumming against the wood, “And I don’t know what kind of entertainment they have where you are, so I figured you could use the laugh.”

The AC vents are blowing directly above him, making the leaves of Mara’s sprouts, that live on this table too, ruffle, and the water in the glass ripple, and Eddie snuggle deeper into the hoodie he’s got on that he hopes no one catches on isn’t his. (Still smells like Buck’s detergent, which is rare these days, since he’s started doing laundry at Eddie’s.)

“I um, okay—I don’t really know what I’m doing here, I waited until everyone left the house ‘cause I thought it’d be easier, but shit,” Eddie breathes, “This is weird right?”

The glass of water still doesn’t answer, unfortunately.

He drops his head into a hand, “I um, I meant to go to the beach, thought you’d like that, but it’s raining, and you know—I hate driving in the rain. Or, you hated me driving in the rain, I think, which is why I probably just always hate it now.

“I drove in the rain only once this whole year I think, a few weeks ago. Usually I guilt Buck into driving me everywhere, but I’ve been uh, helping my friends with their kids after school on Tuesdays? It’s—It’s been so good for me,” Eddie continues, just powering through the awkward. He meant it when he said he’d try talking to Shannon, for Chris. He doesn’t think this is what he meant by talk to her at the water, but, whatever, he had to get creative.

“I don’t know if you ever got to properly meet them, my team, but uh, it’s Chimney’s daughter. She’s a little spitball, thinks everything I say is so confusing, which I can hear you agreeing with,” Eddie laughs, “And Mara—oh my god, that kid…

“She reminds me a little of you, actually.”

Eddie traces the rim of the glass with one finger, smiling despite himself as he goes on, “She’s so funny, and so smart, and so not afraid to call me out on my bullshit, I’m like—I’m really being kept in check here, not a cool bone in my body I’ll ever believe in.

“She’s kind, just like you, and she—she started caring about me out of nowhere one day, when I absolutely did not deserve it, just like you, too.”

He blinks rapidly, bites his lips together, “I think, maybe, I don’t know how to miss you now because I was already missing you when you were still here.

“I wanted you to be here so bad, but you were here, just not in this like, unrealistic way I wanted, or thought I should want. So now, wanting you to be here…I don’t know how to do it. And that’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to Chris, which is something I’ve always been kind of spectacular at, not being fair to you both, so this tracks,” Eddie rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“Sometimes I think, if we had ever made it to a divorce lawyer, by the time they were done with us, they would have had us on billboards advertising for the place,” he laughs loudly, “Don’t you think we would have been so good at divorce?

“I feel like we would have talked, sort of like this. About random shit, mostly Chris, but also how dumb we were, and your pet peeves and you’d definitely talk me out of this mustache. It’d be a little weird, a little awkward, a little like I should be saying ‘what the fuck?’ in between every phrase, because seriously, what the fuck, Shannon? I’m pretending one of these glasses we both hated but neither of us was brave enough to say we hated them and buy new ones is sentient.”

Eddie laughs again, and the glass does not, in a surprise turn of events, become sentient like Eddie is make-believing it will.

But outside, there is a roll of thunder.

“Yeah, you’re finding this real amusing, huh?” Eddie almost snorts, he’s surprised he feels so joyful in such a scenario, “But it’d be good, I think. And so I’m trying to miss a little bit of what I think we could have had, if you’d still been here, but getting out of the habit of missing things that are still here.

“My friend Maddie was here the other night to shit talk people at dispatch with me, and my captain, Bobby, was here last week, to help me get green paint off my toilet. Abuela spent half the afternoon here today cleaning the house that I swear I cleaned impeccably before they flew in!”

“And Chris, oh my god, Shan, Chris is you, he is—he’s a goodman miracle that, no offense, neither of us deserved, but thank god we got him. He’s so much of you, I see it more all the time, but in his smile the most, spitting freaking image,” Eddie grins, leaning back in his chair, hands settled, less nervous now, “And he’s here.

“I’m sorry fucked up so many things with you, and I’m sorry you’re getting the apology in a glass I’m pretty sure you kept trying to accidently ‘drop’ but they’re ugly and indestructable, apparently, but I love you, and I miss you. I’m always going to, and that’s okay,” he says, “It’s okay, I’m okay.”

It’s the first time Eddie has said that and meant it.

Chris might’ve been onto something with this.

“Well this was weird, right? Like I think I just did a therapy session with myself, which, did you notice, I go to therapy now? Willingly!” Eddie laughs, incredulous at himself still, sometimes, “And I swear to god, if I notice it starts raining a lot more than usual, I’ll know it’s you, mocking me for this, so, a drought, please.

“Okay, good talk, time to wrap it up. Me and Chris and this guy I’m in love with are going to paint a room, which is, maybe more shocking than the therapy thing, not the first time,” Eddie says, and then, “I mean, the painting, not being in love with a guy, that’s—that’s a one and done, I’m pretty sure, he’s—yeah, he’s it. Not pretty—oh my god no, he’s so pretty I meant not pretty sure—I'm positively sure he’s it for me, and he’s so pretty.”

Eddie’s impressed in his gay word vomit he has the wits about him to hear the key in his front door clicking and promptly wrap this shit up.

“And shit, he’s here, I think I gotta—” Eddie grabs the glass of water, “Thanks for this, maybe we’ll do the beach next time, yeah?”

There’s another roll of thunder, Eddie can’t fucking believe it.

“Alright, we’re gonna make this weird shit worth something other than a near descent into madness, you’re gonna water me,” Eddie says, pouring the glass of water onto the Eddie plant that gets talked to, nurtured to grow every day. In the name of fourth grade science.

“Eddie?”

“I’m in here, one sec,” Eddie calls, once the ugly glass him and Shannon hated is tossed into the sink—still refuses to break—”You guys took a while, rain traffic bad?”

“No,” Chris calls happily, Buck trudging in behind him, both their curls flopping over their forehead, drenched in rain, but their smiles not one bit damped, “We stopped for reinforcements!”

“You just don’t know how to paint a wall without us,” Mara shrugs, peeking out from behind Chris, and holding a very large can of paint in her hands.

“Mom said we could sleepover at you and Uncle Buck’s house because it's too late to paint the whoooole room tonight!” Jee runs in, headed straight for Eddie’s legs.

“Did she?” Eddie laughs, eyeing Buck.

“One day we’re gonna be thankful we have this favor to cash in,” he shrugs, “Now let's go my little Picassos, those walls aren’t going to prime themselves!”

Jee helps Mara carry the paint buckets one by one into Eddie’s room, Chris right behind them with paint rollers that still look a little green, but never went back to Buck’s apartment, like he doesn’t much these days either.

“You okay?” Buck glances up at him, hand on his shoulder as he passes him down the hallway.

It’s one of the easiest yeses of Eddie’s life.

“I’m so glad you’re home,” Buck whispers.

It’s dark in Eddie’s living room, Chris asleep in his room, the girls sprawled out on Eddie’s bed, so him and Buck are trying to make the couch work for the both of them.

Neither is mentioning that there’s a perfectly good air mattress in the closet.

He’s crammed into Buck’s shoulder, their legs cross crossed and up on the coffee table, two blankets haphazardly only covering half of them.

He’s never been more comfortable.

“I’ve been home this whole time,” Eddie tries to laugh quietly, but it’s hard to do with Buck. He makes him loud.

“You’ve been here,” Buck says, his cheek falling onto the top of Eddie’s head, “But it hasn’t felt like you’ve been home.”

“But it does now?”

“Yeah,” Buck says, and Eddie might be half asleep, but he thinks there’s lips on his forehead just for a second there, “Best home I’ve ever been in.”

The problem is—well.

Actually, backtrack for a sec. There were a few problems.

Eddie’s got a whole lot of them, and lately, he’s been okay with that.

It’s just—maybe if these two things didn’t happen at the exact, precise, same, awful moment, he would have had the wits about him to, well…

It wouldn’t be a problem.

But.

He’s standing in his kitchen on a Tuesday afternoon, and two things happen.

First: “I just don’t think it’s fair.”

“And I think you should be doing your homework,” Eddie flips Chris’s laptop shut with one hand at the the kitchen table, and gets back to drying dishes he had put off washing after lunch, before his therapy appointment he just got home from.

“I literally do my homework on there,” he grumbles, opening his laptop again, “And it’s not like it would be a hardship for you, I’m just asking to have ice cream.”

“After dinner,” Eddie says, “And when your homework’s done.”

“That’s not the way I heard the rule worked,” Chris protests, leaning into one hand, propped up on the table, and Eddie’s back may be to his son but the eye rolling is loud and clear, “It’s not fair the first week I’m home you take a week off of being cool dad who lets Jee and Mara pick whatever ice cream they want.”

“It’s not any—we take turns,” Eddie points out, like that’s the real problem here.

But the real problem is: it’s a Tuesday and Eddie’s not on babysitting duty.

The entire team has been back working together for weeks, since a little after Bobby got back and could undo the torture schedule Gerrard had inflicted on them, and Eddie—well, he has off most every Tuesday still, but Chim and Hen and Buck do too.

So sometimes, Eddie isn’t needed on a Tuesday. He doesn’t mind the switch in routine anymore, like he had when it was literally the only thing holding him together. But Chris is home and work is great and Buck’s practically moved in and he sees the girls much more than once a week now.

So a week off here and there is fine, except today, apparently, because Chris wants ice cream, and unbeknownst to him, Eddie’s about to fuck a couple things up.

More on that in a minute. First:

“So shouldn’t it be my week?” he all but bats his lashes, picture of pure, sweet innocence, when Eddie turns on him.

The ‘no’ thing still needs a lot of work, he guesses. Baby steps.

“You can have whatever I have in the freezer,” Eddie gives in. “If you promise to do five more minutes first.”

“Did you know you were the best, nicest, coolest—”

“Don’t overdo it,” Eddie tosses his dirty dishtowel at Chris, who narrowly dodges it with a giggle.

He hears him go back to typing for a bit, as promised, so Eddie turns the faucet off, all his dishes dried, and reaches up for a bowl, or, what the hell, two bowls, it is a pretty fun made up rule, and, Eddie thinks, he’s pretty sure the last carton he bought with Jee was a triple chocolate fudge (she admitted the moose tracks was pretty good) and that’s going to impress Chris so much more than—

There’s a brand new pint of vanilla.

Eddie didn’t buy that, he knows he didn’t, he only ever buys ice cream with one of three kids in his life who like to remind him how boring that pick is, so no, he’d never—this isn’t Eddie’s.

Only, when he bends down to get a better look, there’s something taped to the top.

It’s a Go Fish card.

Eddie kind of thinks he’s babysitter of the year because his deck of cards he taught the girls how to play Go Fish with was cute and fun and eductaional, each card with a picture of a sea creature for each letter of the alphabet, to help you learn your letters. Like, hand the guy a medal, right?

The girls get a kick out of them, A for anemone, B for blowfish, C for clownfish, D for dolphin, E for—

There’s a little mustache scribbed on the cartoon eel on this card in sharpie, taped to the top of a pint of vanilla ice cream Eddie didn’t buy himself, but clearly labeled in handwriting he’d recognize anywhere, “FOR EDDIE ONLY.”

When Eddie tries to trace back his feelings for Buck, he can come up with a lot of good memories that seem, in hindsight, crystal clear. The adrenaline of that ambulance they had a death wish in together, the way he drove him to Chris after that earthquake, introducing him to Carla. He can still feel how Buck’s hand held him up when he got out of that collapsed well, his gentlest touch to fix his nasal cannula in the hospital after he was shot because Eddie’s smile when he saw Buck in the doorway kept knocking it out of place. The look on his face when he told him about the change he made to his will, how he’s rarely ever meant anything, or felt anything, stronger than that to be true, and he had to get Buck to understand.

Littler things too, like his shoes lined up by his front door, his dirty coffee mug in his sink, his easy smile when he waits for Eddie to jog out of the locker room after a shift, the silly way he types out his smiley faces over text, his stupidly earnest friendship bracelets and gorgeous blue eyes.

The point is, Eddie has a plethora of big, huge, life changing moments to point to, when he wants to make sense of how he fell in love with Buck. If their history is anything to go by, Eddie had been pretty certain whenever he hit his breaking point, when he couldn’t hold all the love he is so, immeasurably lucky to have inside his chest anymore, that it’d be in the middle of some awful moment. An earthquake, a mudslide, a collapsed building, a fire that they need every station in Los Angeles for.

But what does it, really, is a Go Fish card.

The Great Go Fish Revelation of 2024 part two goes like this: like Eddie blinking at this little card that Buck, a six foot three rock of a man, scribbled on so, and Eddie can say this with his whole heart now, cutely, on a picture of an eel for ice cream Eddie doesn’t buy for himself.

He just—he feels crazy, actually, like he’s going to vibrate out of his skin if he doesn’t tell Buck right now, if he doesn’t have Buck here right now, if he doesn’t get to kiss Buck right fucking now.

“Chris?” Eddie is saying before he even knows what he’s doing, or maybe he knows exactly what he’s doing. “Can you uh—I gotta make a phone call, can I come back in like, 2 minutes?”

“Yeah sure,” Chris shrugs at him, barely looking up from his laptop, “You okay? You sound weird.”

“Fine, just, something I gotta do,” Eddie nods, before he can lose his nerve, “Be right back.”

His kicks his freezer shut and all but runs out of the kitchen, dives into his bedroom, and takes a deep breath.

He can do this. What he’s going to do, Eddie has no fucking clue, but whatever his freeze dried vanilla brain comes up with in the next thirty seconds? He’ll do it. It’s gonna be fine. Great, even. Spectacular.

He loves Buck.

That’s always been true, and it’s always been possible.

Eddie calls him, starts pacing up and down the length of his bedroom that still smells a little bit like new paint, thinks maybe it’ll take Buck a few rings to pick up, it usually does, and he can use those like, ten seconds to come up with a game plan. Should he just tell Buck to come over? He might have plans but, he’d drop them for Eddie, he’s sure, and maybe—

There’s a long dial tone.

Immediately to voicemail.

Hm, that’s odd. What was he—

Wait, fuck, he’s gotta go, no brainstorming time, he just—

“Hey, Buck. It’s Eddie,” which, good one Eddie, real smooth, not like he’s had your number saved in his phone for seven whole years. It’s fine, rocky start, he can recover, “Um, sorry, you’re probably busy, day off. And I—I just wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Actually,” Eddie chokes, “That was a poor start, because you probably think I’m about to tell you something really awful like, my house set on fire or, your oat milk went bad, or, I don’t know, those were bad examples, I’m fine, we’re all fine, I just. Felt I should lead with that, before you start speeding over here and get yourself killed, or worse, pulled over by Athena.”

Eddie’s staring at his wall so intensely he might actually set it on fire, “You uh, you came up in therapy today.”

Which, maybe not better than what he led with but whatever, let’s just keep going.

“Chris and my asshole parents have had a bit of a monopoly on sessions the past few months, but first thing my therapist said when I sat down today was that I looked happy, and I said sure I am, Chris is home. He said no, right now, like, right this second, you look happy. I didn’t really get what he meant.

“Apparently I had just looked up from my phone, before I sat down, and he asked who I was texting. It was you,” Eddie starts, shoving one hand in his pocket nervously, still not really sure where this was going, but it was improving, at least, “He gave me this odd smile, like the way you look at a cute dog you pass on the street, I thought he was about to ‘aww’ out loud, and he asked me to remind him how long we’ve been partners.

“I told him six, going on seven years, and then he gave me another weird look, but this time it was a little like he wanted to say what the fuck but he couldnt do that if he wanted to keep his license, so he just says, ‘oh, sorry, I thought you were still married to Shannon back then’.

“And that’s when I realized, this whole time, he’s thought you were like, my partner, not my partner. My cheeks are literally preheating just remembering this, oh my god, so I try explaining it to him and he’s apologizing and I’m apologizing and it’s like, a hot fucking mess, which is normal for my therapy sessions, but I realize, I am, actually, really happy right that second, which is new.”

Eddie runs a hand through his hair, blows out a breath, “He said he was gonna be a little unprofessional for a second, I didn’t care, and he asked why not? Like why were you not my partner? And I had an answer for him. He didn’t like it very much.

“I’m pretty sure, and I’m so sorry I’m doing this over fucking voicemail but I’m very afraid if I was looking at you while I tried to get this all out, I wouldn’t make it more than two words before I had to kiss you, so, sorry, but,” Eddie laughs, “I think I’ve been falling in love with you since the day I met you.

“That sounds like a line I pulled out of my ass, but I mean it, I—I can’t believe I didn’t get to notice it while it was happening, because I just started to, the past few months, and it feels—it’s been incredible. You’re incredible.

“And I’m—I’m telling my therapist this, because I’m tired of talking about my asshole parents and I’d sit in therapy for 24 full hours just to talk about you—and I tell him that I can’t be with you yet because well, I’m still seeing him.

“He thinks this is a bad joke, but then he notices I’m serious and I—I just, I would have told you the second I realized, I think, but I couldn’t, because my life is still a little bit of a shit show. And you, we’ve established, are incredible.

“I don’t deserve it, I don’t deserve you. I feel this nagging, ugly guilt that I found something so incredible when I have a lot of problems that I caused and am still trying to fix. And I’ve been convinced, the past few weeks since I realized—in the middle of a game of Go Fish thanks to your niece with no filter, mind you, wait until I tell you that story—that I want you, but I can’t have you, not yet. Maybe one day, I don’t know.”

Eddie takes a seat on the end of his bed, starts tracing the seam of his pants just for something to do while he bares his soul on voicemail, “Time’s up and my therapist says I should think about telling you anyway. I’m just trying to leave at this point, so I’m like, yeah, yeah, sure, I’ll think about it, maybe soon, and he stops me, very forcefully, and says ‘no, do it today. Don’t you have that rule about Tuesdays?.’

“I have no clue what he means, and I think about it the whole way home, and the whole time I’m washing dishes I forgot to do before, and the whole time Chris is trying to get out of doing homework, and I don’t get what he means until I open my freezer and see an eel on vanilla ice cream.

“And I realize, it’s Tuesday,” Eddie giggles, “We have ice cream before dinner on Tuesdays.”

“Now that’s a good metaphor, oh my god, take notes, pebble guy, because I—I have more problems than I can count and I’m going to keep causing them, and things are going to be messy. I can make mistakes and feel like there’s parts of me that I wanna work on and I can love you anyway.

“I’ll love you no matter what, Buck, so I might as well get to kiss you when I come home from therapy instead of wishing you were here.”

“Which I do,” Eddie bubbles over a hysterical sort of laugh, his whole body feeling so light and free that he worries he’s going to float away and hit the ceiling, “Wish you were here, right this second. So, maybe—

“I um, I know I just dumped a hell of a lot on you, I don’t even know how much time I have on a voicemail, but uh, hopefully, before this cuts me off, I just wanna say, no pressure, man,” he winces at himself, the way his voice goes up an unnatural octave at the end there, “I understand that what I just did was batshit insane, and you might not feel the same way, and that’s okay, that’s totally okay. I’ll still love you anyway.

“If that’s what’s happening here then, if you could just, completely ignore this message. I promise we’ll be good, you’re my best friend forever and ever or, whatever dumb acronym is on my wrist right now.

“But if I’m right about this, and I think maybe I am, then um, maybe you could come over? No, no not maybe, actually, I’m um—I’m wanting things, for myself, having ice cream before dinner, and I want you to ditch your all-gray apartment and come to my dull green house. I want you to break a traffic law or two, even though I just told you not to, just to get here quicker, because I’m tired of waiting, I’ve waited six years too many, and I want to kiss you the second you show up on my doorstep.

“I’m going to, just so you know,” Eddie bites his lips together to keep from embarrassingly giggling again, “Kiss you as soon as I see you.”

“I love you, Buck,” Eddie shrugs, “I don’t think there are any other words for it.”

Eddie goes back to pacing, sort of proud of himself for getting all that out, but now he has no idea how to hang up, “Okay, I left um, ice cream on the counter for Chris that’s probably melting, and he’s not four and into that, so, um, I should probably—yeah. I’ll um, see you? Hopefully, soon? Okay, yeah. Love you. Bye.”

Chris clocks him not even three seconds into his return to the kitchen, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Eddie shrugs, avoiding his gaze, putting the vanilla eel ice cream back into the freezer because like hell he’s ever touching that national artifact ever again.

“Who were you talking to?”

“No one,” he echoes, and Chris looks very unimpressed, “Seriously, no one. It was a voicemail.”

“Dad.”

“Eat this ice cream before I change my mind,” Eddie says, taking a seat beside Chris, placing a bowl of triple chocolate fudge in front of him, “Also, I’m pretty sure you have several months of middle school relationship drama to catch me up on. Is Tyler still dating that girl, what was her name? Amanda?”

He seems placated by this enough, his little gossip in training, and launches immediately into his answer with a gasp, “Oh, you’re gonna love this, she dumped him for a seventh grader.”

“No!”

“Yeah, he refused to turn his camera on in class for a week,” Chris dives in excitedly, to his story, and to his ice cream, and Eddie’s adrenaline finally settles out.

Eddie has a short list of people who he could listen to talk for hours and hours and hours with a smile on his face, Buck and Chris at the top of it, and when they start going on tangents together—forget it. Eddie is ice cream soup.

It’s a good distraction, an easy one, from the way Eddie is itching to literally watch the clock. It’d take Buck at least, like, a half hour to reach Eddie’s house, and that’s if he listened to Eddie’s voicemail as soon as Eddie hung up, and then drove here immediately. So he’s not—he’s not freaking out. Not yet. No.

Eddie is so, so normal.

He should get that made into stickers or something.

He’s about ten minutes into hearing about Mrs Frederick’s divorce which was oddly timed exactly with the gym teacher’s divorce, Chris heard, when there’s a knock on the front door.

Chris stops mid-sentence, “That’s weird.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, tentatively pushing his chair out, “Did you talk to abuela today, she say she was coming?”

“No, she’s going to play some card game with Tia Pepa, I think,” Chris shakes his head, “Do you want me to—”

“I got it,” Eddie waves him off, “Finish your ice cream, probably just a delivery or something.”

Eddie force of habit ruffles Chris’s hair on the way out, and they’re still in that sweet spot where Chris being happy to be home outweighs how embarrassing he thinks everything Eddie does is, so he doesn’t protest much. He heads out of the kitchen, past the living room that’s only half cleaned up from Jee and Mara’s sleepover from the weekend, down the short hallway, by pictures of him and Chris and Shannon, the girls in his gear, his abuela his tia at the beach, his sisters in Texas, the 118 and—

“Buck!”

Eddie actually thinks time stops moving, for a second there.

He swings his front door open and is met with Buck, all wide-eyed, hair a little messy, a crease on his cheek like he just woke up from a nap and came straight here and—

Buck came here.

“Hey, hi,” Buck starts, all cute and awkward, rocking back on his heels, “Sorry, I um, I would have called, but uh, do you—”

Eddie doesn’t let him finish the thought.

They don’t have words for this, Eddie thinks, when his lips first touch Buck’s, his palms on his warm cheeks, his chest pressed up right against his. No one’s ever accurately put words to how this feels. Get to fucking work, Merriam-Webster.

It takes Buck a second to react, which is fair, Eddie was on him so quick, but respond he does, oh my god, Eddie goes boneless. His arms are on Eddie’s waist, until they’re not, they’re under his shirt a little and holy shit. They kiss and kiss and kiss, it’s the best first kiss of Eddie’s entire life, he thinks, as he gets his bottom lip bit and his hair messed with and his whole body tugged closer, closer, not close enough.

He could kiss Buck for hours, he thinks, and he will, just, maybe after he gets a little more air in his lungs to do it again.

“Um, hi?” Buck stutters through a breath, and Eddie can feel it, their foreheads pressed together.

“Hey,” Eddie laughs, a little delirious, who fucking cares, he should have been doing this forever and ever, oh my god, “Sorry, you were saying?”

It’s Buck’s turn to cackle then, his head tossed back in glee for a a second, but then he’s back just as quick, hands on Eddie’s face, eyes flitting around like he’s trying to memorize him, Eddie feels insane. He kisses Eddie’s cheek quick before he finally answers, “Um, yeah, I was just—uh, can I borrow a phone charger?”

“You lose that charger more times…” Eddie’s giggling, takes a smidge of a step back to try to push the door open more, for Buck to come in.

“Gave up trying to find it when my phone died, like a half hour ago,” Buck shrugs, his hands sliding sweetly down Eddie’s shoulders, “Figured I either left it here, or you’d let me borrow one, so…” he drawls, nodding inside.

So the problem.

The problem is two things happen at the exact, precise, same, awful moment, and Eddie may be bad at math, but—

“Sorry, you said your phone died when?”

“Uh, like, thirty, forty minutes ago, I think?” Buck answers, not knowing themore he repeats the more he’s metaphorically stabbing Eddie directly in the chest, fucking metaphors, “Like I said, I would have called, but, you know, dead phone, so I just, drove here. Forgot my key, even. Lot of traffic. I had to listen to the radio, Eddie. The radio! Also, fuck my phone, are we gonna kiss again, because—”

“So you haven’t seen anything that’s been on your phone for the past half hour, then?”

“No?” Buck quirks, “Sorry, am I missing something—”

Yes, Eddie thinks, because he knows what time exactly he has to leave his house on Tuesdays to get to Jee and Mara’s school, and how many minutes are between his house and Hen and Karen’s, and that he sent Buck a voicemail only ten minutes ago.

Buck doesn’t know—he didn’t hear—and Eddie just—

“Uh, I have to go.”

“What?” Buck gapes, “Where are you going? You’re leaving right now?”

“Yeah, I have to um, I’m late,” Eddie jumps back instantly, panic seizing him, putting on the first shoes he sees, Buck’s slippers that are two sizes too big, of fucking course, “Late to pick the girls up from school.”

“What are you talking about?” Buck tries to catch the door that Eddie lets go of, presses him inside, but Eddie’s quicker, side steps him swiftly once he grabs car keys and nothing else, “You’re not getting them today.”

“Change in plans, Maddie didn’t call you?” Eddie’s voice is high and tight, “Um, Chris is inside, he’s uh, homework. Yeah, I’ll um—you stay, I gotta—”

“Eddie, slow the fuck down for a second—”

“I can’t, I’m late,” he calls, jogging out his doorway, avoiding touching Buck even a bit, pointing towards his car as it lights up unlocking, and grits an unnatural smile, “It’s Tuesday!”

“Are you coming back?” Buck yells, left there, gaping at him, which, is fair, but Eddie’s leaning hard into the flight side of fight or flight right now, he can barely even see him anymore from his car.

“Uh, maybe, maybe not, I don’t know,” Eddie says, getting into the car, not sure if Buck even hears his, “Order whatever you guys want for dinner, don’t wait for us!” before he slams on the gas and gets the hell out of here.

Eddie’s so good at Tuesdays that even after his brain has been fried via earth shattering kiss, he still times his arrival almost perfectly.

He doesn’t even bother with parking, just drives right up in front of Maddie and Karen’s cars, which are parked beside each other, jee sitting up on the hood of her mom’s car while they talk, and wait for Mara, who, perfect fucking timing, will be coming out in one minute. Heck yeah, he’s still got it.

“Eddie?” Karen smiles when he rolls his window down, even though her voice is laced with confusion, “I thought we gave you the day off.”

“Can I borrow your kids?” he cuts right to asking, frantically, shifting the car into park so he can lean closer to them.

“I mean, my gut reaction is yeah, of course?” Maddie says, squinting at him, a little wary, “But I feel like I gotta at least try to ask why.”

“Can’t get into it.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

BIg sisters are the worst, man.

Her withering stare breaks Eddie within seconds, “You can’t repeat this to anyone, you swear?”

“Who are we gonna tell?” Karen throws her hands up.

“Literally everyone,” Eddie grits, because the levels of gossip tendencies between the three of them is diabolical. “Just promise me, please?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, just tell us, you look awful,” Maddie waves him off.

“Okay, so,” Eddie’s knee bounces nervously, tries steadying his voice, and then just, fuck it, blurts, “I kissed Buck.”

There is a gasp so loud it could cause a gust of wind, but it doesn’t come from anyone in front of him.

“No way!” Mara appears, holding the straps of her bag, her mouth hanging open.

“Oh my god, way to go, Eddie!” Karen is cheering, and Maddie is about to whack him over the head through the window it looks like, “Well, what the fu—fudge are you doing here?”

“That’s Eddie’s favorite ice cream,” Jee giggles where she’s hanging onto her mom’s arm, perched on top of the hood of the car, “What the fudge!”

“Jee-yun,” Maddie hisses, trying so hard not to laugh that her eyes water, “Seriously though, I don’t see the problem, get out of here! Go kiss him again!”

“This is actually perfect, you have a day off, empty house,” Karen prods at him teasingly, “Oh my god, drop Chris off with us too, what the hell, Eddie, this is amazing—”

“I knew it was you,” Maddie gushes, “You should have seen my face when he said Tommy kissed him—”

“I know, right!” Karen agrees giddily, “We thought for sure—”

“No, no, you guys don’t get it,” Eddie interjects, “I poured my heart out in a voicemail, told him if he felt the same way to come over, then ten minutes later he shows up, and I kiss him—”

“Yay!” Karen can’t help her little squeal.

“No, not yay—his phone was dead,” Eddie grumbles, “He didn’t listen to the voicemail, I just, like, jumped him!”

“I can’t believe you’re making me say this about my brother but please, for the love of god Eddie,” Maddie says, hand over her forehead, “Get out of here and jump him again.”

“I feel like there was a very easy fix to this, but what do I know?” Karen shrugs.

“Well I’ve been known to panic,” Eddie exasperates, “I told him I had to pick the girls up, and I’m a terrible liar, so, if you don’t mind…”

“I guess it’s only fair, a kidnapping for a kidnapping,” Maddie says, nudging Jee off her perch and towards Eddie’s car, “But I mean it, Eddie, if you don’t just talk to him—”

“Absolutely not,” he shakes his head, “Thanks guys, I owe you. Mara, you coming?”

“I’ll work on it,” she salutes solemnly to Maddie and her mom, before climbing into her seat behind Eddie. She doesn’t even let him pull out of the parking lot before she turns her attention back to Eddie, “So, are we just gonna ignore that?”

“Ignore what? We’re not ignoring anything, there’s nothing to ignore,” Eddie says, as they head down familiar roads outside the school, and he busies himself with pulling up some music. “Oh look, my favorite.”

“This isn’t your favorite,” Jee insists.

“Sure it is,” Eddie says, turning the volume up.

“I don’t get it, I thought you wanted a boyfriend!”

“You should sing along, Mara, this one has a good message,” Eddie lilts, and chimes in, “Let it go, let it goooo.”

“He has a boyfriend, Mara!”

And that—“What?”

“You came to dinner with Uncle Buck!” Jee explains, with the same blank expression, like this is obvious and not tilting Eddie’s entire world on its axis as we speak.

“That’s not—” Eddie sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I’m not his boyfriend, Jee, I’m his best friend.”

“Same thing!”

Eddie slams his head onto his steering wheel with a hysterical laugh, making it beep, because what the fuck is his life.

“It can’t be that bad,” Mara says, laughing at him, when a couple cars behind him start to beep also, for him to get up and move.

“It is,” he groans, “I did something very, very silly today.”

“You do that all the time anyway.”

“It’s different,” Eddie groans, “Oh my god, I shouldn’t even be talking to you guys about this, enough—we’re going to get ice cream!”

“Hey, you five-promised,” Mara says sternly, crossing her arms in her seat, “Obviously I’m not gonna say no to ice cream if that’s really where you’re taking us, but I think you should at least tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

Mara glares at him, arms crossed and unconvinced, “I’m gonna bother you until you tell me.”

“You do that all the time anyway.”

When she doesn’t appreciate his snark, Eddie tries to think of how to make the mess currently going on in his head and his heart kid-friendly, “I think Buck might not like me as much as I like him, so I’m a little scared, okay?” Eddie vents, reluctantly, like an angsty teen, “Happy?”

“Uncle Buck’s not scary to talk to, Eddie!” Jee offers happily, “But I can hold your hand if you want.”

“He likes you,” Mara says, simple.

“You can’t be sure.”

“I am very sure, I’m the smartest kid in my class,” Mara says, “You know it’s true, you check all my homework.”

“Why don’t we just ask Uncle Buck?” Eddie hears Jee say, stopping to turn into the parking lot of their favorite ice cream place.

“That’s a good idea, but we can’t right now,” Eddie placates, “His phone is dead.”

“But he’s right there!”

And before Mara can even confirm it, Eddie can’t believe this is happening again, he considers head banging on his steering wheel again.

“I don’t think she’s lying, Eddie.”

“Of course she’s not,” Eddie tries to keep calm, backing into the only spot available in this crowded parking lot, in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, because why not, that is directly in line with where Christopher and Buck are standing. “I can’t suggest we try someplace else, right?”

“Eddie, listen to me,” Mara unbuckles fast, and leans forward, one knee on the spot between the front seats, so she can grab Eddie’s shoulders and twist them to her. Jee peeks up with her head on Mara’s shoulder from behind just a second after, “You know what kind of ice cream you are?

“You’re like, if they put a scoop of cookies and cream and rainbow sprinkle surprise, and cookie dough and caramel, and moose tracks and mystery blue flavor and birthday cake with gummy bears all in one,” Mara says, squeezing his shoulders.

“That sounds gross.”

“It wasn’t my best metaphor, the point is,” she pushes on, a little shake of her head, “We already know for sure, that you’re Jee’s favorite, and Denny’s favorite, and Chris’s favorite, and my favorite.”

“The bestest ever!” Jee smiles.

“But we never let Buck pick, so you have to let it be his turn this week,” Mara insists, “Cause I’m pretty sure he’s gonna pick you.”

He looks out the front window in his periphery, sees Chris waving a big thumbs up in encouragement, and Buck, looking even more beautiful than he did an hour ago, which Eddie swore, foreheads touching post-kiss, was impossible to beat, is just waiting patiently, like he’s got all the time in the world.

“I can’t believe I’m letting you girls talk me into this.”

“Hey, no one in this car has ever had a boyfriend, so we’re just as smart as you.”

“No, you’re smarter,” Eddie quips, smiling brightly, “Smartest, and kindest, and bravest girls in the whole world.”

“Flattery will not distract us from our mission, right Jee?” Mara says, but the facade slips almost instantly when she leans forward to hug Eddie, “But we love you too.”

“Think you guys earned yourself some ice cream, go on,” Eddie gestures to the store, unlocks their doors so they can hop out, “Tell Chris he can use the emergency credit card I gave him, get whatever you guys want.”

“We should get you boyfriends more often!” Mara teases, as she helps Jee jump down from the truck, before very safely, Eddie is so proud, crossing the parking lot, but not before the girls have to embarrass Eddie one more time before cheering, “You got this, Edmundo!” (“You guys still never told me who that is, Mara!”)

Eddie watches them, impossible to hide grin on his face, all the way until they make it to Chris, who pushes Buck forward to do the opposite. He’s at Eddie in less than five seconds, which is not enough time to make any sort of game plan, but, here goes nothing, Eddie thinks.

“Found my charger, in case you were wondering,” Buck says, hands in his pockets, “For no particular reason, at all.”

“Hm, that’s—good, good for you,” Eddie nods. Buck settles his stance just opposite Eddie, at the side of his truck. There’s a whole foot between them, and how silly, Eddie thinks, that that feels like too much. This is like a normal, respectable amount to stand beside a friend you are having a conversation with.

Eddie has never been normal about Buck, though.

“How’d you know we’d be here?” Eddie says, shifting the topic, stalling.

“I just know you that well,” Buck points from his temple towards Eddie with a cheeky wink, “I’m kidding, I have your location, and I drive faster than you, old man.”

“One month, Buck,” Eddie rolls his eyes fondly. “And you’re an okay driver, could stand to change lanes less, maybe—”

“You seriously wanna talk about my driving habits right now?”

“Sort of,” Eddie shrugs, “I know what I don’t wanna talk about.”

“You know, when my phone finally turned on, after I got kissed so thoroughly I needed a full five minutes on the porch where I got fled to catch my breath,” Buck ignores him, and starts talking about it anyway, “I had three missed calls from Maddie, an email response from my building  manager who I’d contacted about breaking my lease, an ominously long voicemail from the guy who just ding-dong ditched me, and a notification from my grocery store app about the weekly sales.”

“That’s not how you use ding-dong ditch.”

“You have such an interesting way of filtering the things I’m saying to you,” Buck laughs, “Anyway, once I confirm Maddie’s not trying to tell me someone died but she is worried about you, I’m like, maybe I should listen to this voicemail before I start to worry.”

Eddie waits for him to take a breath before continuing.

“And I am worried, a little, now,” Buck says, “Worried that there are going to be times when my phone dies again, and that will be time I don’t get to listen to that voicemail on loop.”

“How many times—”

“Not enough, four at least I think, for now,” Buck says, “But I’ve already looked up how long your phone will let you save a voicemail, and as soon as my storage is up I’m putting it on a hard drive, and spare CDs, and putting little speakers all over my apartment just so I can make sure I can hear it at all times.”

“You said you’re breaking your lease?”

“I’m glad you finally got there eventually, but too late, I’m in the middle of a, like, romantic thing here,” and Eddie tries to step forward, to close the foot of space, but Buck stops him, one hand out, “No, no, you got your chance, now I wanna compete for the title of best monologue.”

“You think you can take me?”

“I mean, I was super confident I could until like, twenty minutes ago,” Buck grins, “You love me so much.”

“I do.”

“And you didn’t let me tell you how much more I love you back.”

“Buck—”

“There isn’t a single thing you’ve had to do besides exist, Eddie, for me to fall in love with you,” he starts, stepping forward just a bit, “When I was crying over Tommy last month, and you made me do that weird self-esteem torture exercise, or whatever, where I named all the good things about my exes, and I had a meltdown because they were all small good things in lots of different people, and I was never going to find someone who was all of it?

“I just happened to look up, and it was suddenly like, ‘oh, there you are.’”

Eddie remembers it, the way Buck looked at him that night, he had no idea—

“You love me no matter what, no take backs, and you talked for a real impressive by chronic ‘bottle it up’ Eddie Diaz standards whole seven minutes about what I deserve,” Buck’s voice is raspy, delicious, beautiful, Eddie is going to die, “And I don’t know why saying that you deserve me too and kissing you back life my life depended on it, because somehow, I’m pretty sure it does, you live in every part of me, Eddie—I don’t know why I haven’t convinced you yet, I don’t know how to make myself any fucking clearer: I love you.”

“I hear you,” Eddie nods.

“Do you? Do you actually? Because I’ll do anything Eddie, I’ll—I’ll update your bracelet, I’ll move out of my apartment, I’ll drive 25 miles an hour and never change lanes, I’ll eat vanilla ice cream every night, because—actually, I had wanted to work that into the monologue somehow but I got sidetracked, that was the grocery store thing, there’s a two for one sale on ice cream this week—whatever, I just—what can I do? A math problem? A metaphor, oh wait—”

And then, with no warning whatsoever, Buck drops, bends on one knee, and Eddie doesn’t mean to but I mean, it looks like—his breath hitches, as Buck is crouched down there for a second before jumping back up. He sees Eddie’s spooked expression and laughs, “Oh my god, sorry, sorry, just—”

He takes Eddie’s hand slowly, opens it gently, palm facing up, and places something in it, “Pebble.”

“I think that’s technically gravel,” Eddie squints down at the tiny piece of parking lot he’s holding.

“You’re the fucking worst, man, I’m trying to do something here,” he snips at Eddie’s giggling, before closing his hand around Eddie’s, and the pebble-gravel, and putting them just over Buck’s heart.

“Your heart’s beating so fast,” Eddie whispers.

“Yeah, that’s all you.”

Eddie can trace back all the moments that made him love Buck, and it felt insane, and impossible, and terrible timing that he missed them all, that he has to come back to them after the fact and try to make sense of them, to just be appreciating them as memories now.

But, Eddie thinks, standing here in an ice cream parking lot, feeling the steady rhythm of a heart he restarted and keeps beating, that there’s going to be so many more moments that Eddie gets to live already loving him.

He’s going to need his brilliant scientists inside to figure out a way to play this moment on loop like his voicemail.

“Your life depends on it, huh?”

“Pretty much,” Buck says, a squeeze of his wrist, “Don’t mind me just, withering away over here—“

“Well then I guess I have a legal,” Eddie starts, inching closer between every word, until his noise brushes over Buck’s and he can taste his smile, “And lifelong obligation to do something about that.”

“I guess so,” Buck says, “No take backs, by the way.”

And Eddie thinks his life might depend on it too, so he doesn’t wait another moment, and finally kisses Buck.

Buck has committed to outdoing him this time, Eddie feels, when two arms wrap around his lower back and pull him so close Eddie dips back, like a swooning heroine, and he can feel it, in all of him, every part, vibrating under his skin and rattling around his rib cage and god, is he supposed to get used to this?

He kisses him, and kisses him again, and Eddie’s never pretended to be good at numbers, won’t start now, so if there’s a cap on kissing, Eddie will never know. It’s addicting and intoxicating, and so soft and incredible and—

This is the rest of his life, right here.

It’s so cute, the way Buck giggles over his lips as he leans back in for more, missing his lips, landing on the outside of his nose, the side of his jaw, between his eyebrows, on his eyelids, he’s ridiculous and so! cute!

He’s all Eddie’s and maybe the setting is getting to him, but he’s so sweet—

“Eddieeeeee! Guess what!!”

They jump apart after god knows how long, probably for the best, when Jee comes running out of the store, two big cups of ice cream in her small hands.

“What!” Eddie humors her, holding one hand out ahead for her, and one behind him for Buck.

“They have it! They have cotton candy ice cream!” Jee bubbles and oh my god, one of those cups is going to go splat on the ground for sure, “I got you one and I got me one!”

“Oh, lucky me,” he deadpans, can feel Buck’s laughter give him goosebumps on the back of his neck. He twists to him with a droll grin, “Hope you like really gross ice cream.”

“Um, I’m pretty sure she said she got some for you, not me,” Buck huffs, “I know my man Chris got me something delicious.”

“You not gonna kiss me anymore?”

“Oh my god, I’m definitely sitting in the front,” Chris grumbles when he reaches them, “Need to separate you two.”

“That’s fine, I’ll remember this,” Buck teases back, and much to Eddie’s dismay, slips out of his grasp and runs around to the other side of the car, “I’ll sit happily with my girls, who aren’t traitors.”

He lifts Jee up into her seat and climbs over into the middle, squished with his knees almost up to his chest in the small space, and Eddie isn’t positive, he’s too busy making really convincing faces in the mirror to Jee to show he loves the cotton candy, he promises, but he’s pretty sure Mara’s whispering some version of a shovel talk to Buck while they buckle in.

“Alright,” he yells out to his packed full of love car, “Where to, team?”

“Hold that thought, I’m calling Maddie,” Buck says, his elbows knocking into Jee, who has cotton candy on her nose and in her hair already, while he tries to get his now charged phone out.

Eddie knows meeting Buck changed his life, got him moving towards something good again, but he never imagined it’d be a good like this.

He thought, maybe, one day, he’d just feel okay. Normal enough. Wake up, go to work, make an average dinner and get a good enough night of sleep.

Instead, he has this. Chris at his right trying, and failing, to make Eddie eat bites of cotton candy ice cream at red lights, and Mara begging someone with a phone to get a picture of Eddie’s blue and pink mustache, and Jee’s sweet giggle that Eddie should make a ringtone, and Buck—

“Hey Mads, yeah we’re all here, all good, I was wondering,” Buck grins into the phone, “You remember that favor you guys owe me and Eddie?”

And it can’t be helped really, at all.

Eddie throws a hand over Chris’s eyes, and Buck drops his phone, Maddie’s muffled yelling in the background, so he can block Mara and Jee’s views.

And he kisses him, everyone giggling and laughing and yelling, until the light turns a bright, beautiful, vibrant green.

“Uncle Buck! We’re home!”

“Shit—I mean, shoot, hold on, go back, go back,” Buck scoops Jee up the second she steps foot into their kitchen, tosses her giggling back into the living room, “How did you guys sneak in like that—I had a thing planned.”

“A thing?” Mara looks at him, unimpressed, and backs herself up before Buck gets any ideas about picking her up and out too.

“Last day of school! I have music, and balloons, and—” Buck huffs, untying his apron and chucking it across the room, “Your chauffeur was supposed to text me when you started heading home.”

Eddie has learned a thing or two from Mara in a year about withstanding a glare, so the one Buck hits him with doesn’t do much besides make Eddie want to embarrass everyone in the room, self included, by kissing him silly.

“Chauffeur? That’s a new one,” Eddie deadpans, and limits himself to a kiss on the top of Buck’s creased brow.

“Rolls off the tongue better than dad,” Chris teases, hastily trying to hang up a banner for party planner czar Buck, “Pretend to be surprised by the confetti poppers, later, please. Buck was really excited about them.”

“Can we come in now, Uncle Buck?” Jee yells from the other room, the only one still sweet enough to follow instruction to a tee, “We got you strawberry and it’s melting!”

“Ah! Thank you so much, my favorite,” Buck takes the cup from her.

“I thought cookies and cream was your favorite?”

“I meant you, you guys are my favorites,” Buck says, sticky sweet like he wants to send Eddie into heart failure prematurely, kissing Jee on top of her head as she runs past to join Chris at the table.

“Oh good, because we used to be Eddie’s favorites, but someone took that from us,” Mara points, trying and failing to squirm away from Buck getting her in a smothering kiss too.

“That’s so not true,” Eddie defends, before gesturing towards his windowsill that’s teeming with plants, “If you weren’t my favorite, would I have kept these plants alive all year?”

“That was definitely more me than you,” she says, fishing out a piece of paper from her bag and handing it proudly to Buck.

“Highest science grade in the entire class?!” Buck reads out loud, “No way! Do we get to share custody of this report card? We keep it here on the fridge for the day and your moms take it home after dinner tonight, and then it gets handed off to Chim at work the next day?”

“I don’t think my moms ever want to see anything related to these plants ever again,” Mara giggles, “It’s all yours.”

“Good thing we already have the world’s largest supply of decoration tape out,” Chris deadpans, and Buck glares at him.

“Don’t help me decorate, see if I care. We’re gonna do something awful for your first day of high school in the fall, like watch water boil and paint dry.”

“Speaking of watching water boil,” Eddie says, hooking his chin over Buck’s shoulder once the kids are distracted enough behind them, and peeks down at the mess Buck has made of the stove, “What happened here?”

“I don’t wanna get into it, Maddie and Chim are bringing take out,” Buck huffs, and sinks into Eddie, “I burnt a whole loaf of bread and the sauce boiled over and—whatever, I got distracted.”

“Hm? By what?”

“Making you this,” Buck turns just a smidge, to produce a small beaded bracelet from his front apron pocket with a flourish.

It’s a new bracelet, still the blue of Buck’s eyes, but a few greens, some brown ones Eddie thinks are supposed to be pebbles too, but the letters now read BFFBFFAENTBNMW.

“Best firefighter boyfriends forever and ever,” Buck explains, a low whisper just for Eddie, “No take backs, no matter what.”

“Boyfriend is one word, babe, that just looks like BFF twice,” Eddie laughs softly, but slips the bracelet on, “You friendzoned me.”

“Shut up.”

“I feel bad I didn’t update yours.”

“Well, bae still works, works better now, actually,” Buck hums, “Plus, I, unlike you, who’d bever be able to replicate this, am a skilled, artistic craftsman.”

“That’s right, that’s right,” Eddie pinches Buck’s side teasingly, rolling the new bracelet on his wrist, “It’s too bad, I was at a Kay Jewelers the other day, I should have asked for some business cards of your to hand out.”

“Ha ha, I’m not—” Buck starts, and then, “Wait, why were you at a Kay Jewelers?”

Eddie just shrugs, all smug and warm and fuzzy, twists an imaginary key at the side of his lips.

“Eddie,” Buck stammers, “Why were you at a ring store?”

“I love you so much,” Eddie says, and he held out as long as he could, he really, really did, he has to kiss him.

Chris makes a gagging noise from the doorway out to the backyard, where he;s ushered Jee and Mara and their things out ahead of him, “Are you guys coming or what? The ice cream’s melting the longer you stand there and be gross.”

“Rookie,” Buck shakes his head, “That’s the point, ice cream soup!”

And oh my god, Eddie can’t believe this is his life.

He feels tears start to prick at the back of his eyes.

“Okay actually, Jee will murder us if we don’t get a game of Go Fish in outside, laying on our stomachs specifically, in the next twenty minutes before it starts to rain,” Buck says, nodding towards the door, “You coming?”

“Yeah, yeah, just,” Eddie sighs, “Just gimme a second.”

“Yeah,” Buck says, sliding his hand over Eddie’s shoulder and down to his chest, right over his very full heart, “I love you so much too.” He runs out to join Jee and Chris.

“Psst,” Eddie hears behind him, a small nudge in the back, and he goes to move, because he’s clearly just blocking the entire doorway so he can stand and stare and the beautiful life he can’t believe he gets to build here like an old, uncool sap, but the hand tugs him to stay in place, and when he looks down, Mara is looking back up, “Those better be happy tears.”

Eddie laughs, and it has the opposite effect, makes another tear fall.

Once Mara uses his t-shirt sleeve to catch it, she holds up her hand, all five fingers, and smiles up at him expectantly, “We did it.”

“We did it,” he repeats, as he hi-fives her, and holds on tight.

“C’mon,” she finally does nudge him out of the way, “I wanna kick your butt.”

“One of these days I really am gonna win!”

They settle into a circle in the backyard of Uncle Buck and Eddie’s house, some funny shaped clouds in the sky just before it rains, ice cream melting into soup, and Eddie really can’t help it, he has to kiss Buck as he picks up his cards.

“You know, there’s a rule about that,” Mara says, her face contorted in disgust when Eddie doesn’t move too far from his best firefighter boyfriend.

“Oh yeah?”

“Five card penalty for kissing!”

And Eddie Diaz had a lot of problems, but right now his only one is this:

He really has to figure out a way to win Go Fish with fifteen (he’s not even sorry about it, have you seen his boyfriend?) extra cards.

He doesn’t get it figured out this time.

But there’s always next Tuesday.