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*sigh* you know what day it is. time for my weekly dose of getting lost on ao3 again. this time with the finale fix it tagged marked.

Nerves

Danny looked in the mirror. He sighed and closed his eyes. Saying he was nervous was an understatement. He was scared. He was about to marry his partner and best friend. Danny’s experience with marriage typically was not good. But he loved Steve. Has loved him since they met. And When Steve asked him to marry him, Danny could not say no. The door opened. He saw Kono and Chin walk in. “Hey. You okay?” Asked Kono. “I’m…a little nervous.” “Hey. Don’t be. This is gonna be great. You two love each other.” Said Chin. “Yes. But I also loved Rachel.” “Hey. This is nothing like that okay? You and Steve are gonna be happy.” Said Kono. “She’s right, man. Stop worrying!” Said Chin. Danny nodded. “Okay. Yeah. You’re right.” Kono gave him the flowers. “You’re gonna be okay.” She said. Danny nodded. “You ready Danno?” Grace walked in. She has offered to walk him down the aisle. “Yeah. I am.” Grace was only 13. But she knew her father loved Steve. Grace held out her hand. Danny sighed and took it. “See you out there.” Kono and Chin went out. The doors opened. They started to walk out. Grace held her flowers and smiled. Danny did too. She looked so beautiful. Danny saw Steve. He looked amazing too. He smiled at Danny. He smiled back. Grace gave Danny’s hand to Steve. He took it. Grace kissed both of them on the cheek and took her spot. “You look amazing.” Said Steve. Danny blushed. “So do you.” Said Danny. Steve took his other hand. Danny blushed. “Are you ready to do this?” Asked Steve. “More than ready.” Said Danny. “Okay. Let’s do it together.” Danny nodded and tried to not cry. “Yeah.” He said.

Have been obsessed with the song Bed of Roses lately and it gave me the idea for this short thing.

I want to lay you down in a bed of roses

"That sounds comfortable. Are you going to join me on this hypothetical bed, Steven?" Danny says leaning against the doorframe watching a singing Steve. Steve smiles at him and keeps singing.

For tonight I'll sleep on a bed of nails

"Of course you would, you self sacrificing goof"

Steve makes his way towards Danny holding his hand out at the next words and pulls him into a hug, Danny's head against his chest.

Oh I want to be just as close as the Holy Ghost is

And lay you down on a bed of roses

They keep swaying as the song finishes and the last notes ring out.

They stay close a few moments more until Danny takes Steve's hand and pulls him towards their bedroom.

"C'mon let's go to our normal, comfortable bed. No need for roses or nails tonight"

Steve chuckles quietly and just says "Ok. Love you Danno"

"Love you too, you putz"

I am a sucker for soldiers returning from duty and surprising their families and everyone cries and hugs and it's so sweet 🥺🥺

So imagine that but for McDanno. Maybe Steve and Danny met when Steve was still on active duty but on leave for like a week or two. (Maybe they meet in Jersey?) And they start a relationship and Steve meets Grace too. (And anytime he has leave he stays with them).

Fast forward to the future and Danny is freaking out because Steve hasn't called and any second now he expects a call with the worst news of his life and how is he going to tell Grace - when someone at HPD (Meka? Duke?) says someone is looking for him and when he asks who they shrug and continue on their way (but secretly follow Danny to record the reaction) and when Danny gets downstairs and sees Steve in his Navy blues and he just stops in his tracks then marches forward and starts hitting Steve on his chest and you asshole I thought you were dead. Come here. And finally kisses Steve. And everyone cheers.

And then they go surprise Grace at school (this time with Danny recording) and she runs into Steve's arms and cries and they all go home.

(They play Danny's reaction at their wedding a few years later 🥰)

Part one

I was watching game changer and-

This is Steve and Danny (except for it's New Jersey and Hawaii) 😂😂

Number of episodes since Danny was last seen: 3 0

He's backkk. And snacking on animal crackers 😂😂

They're not as unhinged anymore.

I miss their unhinged vibes

I love when the Leverage team so obviously gloats but no one believes the baddie when they point it out. So since I have been binging Hawaii five-o like crazy I want a Leverage/H50 crossover where the team brings in the H50 crew for help for a job (maybe the leverage team are in Hawaii and a job finds them and Eliot's like I have an army navy buddy that can help us) and at the end of the job the h50 crew is about to disperse and the leverage crew is like "wait no we have to go gloat" 😂😂 and obviously it sparks an argument between Steve and Danny (cause Steve is always happy to gloat about a job well done no matter how insanely they got it done)

and now thinking about it I want a conversation between Steve and Eliot where they talk about Eliot deciding against using guns 🥺

anyway I want all the leverage/h50 crossovers (and 9-1-1 😝)

a honey shade of blue buck/eddie | 8 000 words | post-season seven

“What are you doing here?” he asks his niece when she starts squirming back out of his embrace, carefully setting her down. He almost asks if she ran away from home, because he knows it would make her giggle, but thinks better of it. “Tea party? And I wasn't invited?” “She's hanging out with her uncle Eddie today,” Eddie says, leaning back on his hands. He's smiling when he looks up at Buck, a real smile, and his whole face scrunches happily when Jee-Yun crashes into his side. Buck feels like he needs to look away, but he has no idea how. or: one toddler, two conversations, and so many missed opportunities for buck to act like a guy not in love with his best friend.

Buck's not sure what he expects when he lets himself into Eddie's house on the second morning of their 48 off.

It's been a few weeks since—well, since. A few weeks of the bottom slowly crumbling out of their world, of Eddie firmly insisting that Buck can't spend all his time hanging around this house.

Of Buck running out of ways to make him understand that he has to be here.

He knows he has to respect Eddie's boundaries. He's been trying, too. It's just that he might also be falling apart a little bit, and he's not sure where to set that down if not Eddie's kitchen counter, to be picked over then discarded alongside the onion skins left from dinner.

So he shows up anyway, but leaves when Eddie asks. He works around it. Takes care of Eddie, and makes sure all the empty spaces left after Chris stay alive and dust-free, ready for him to return, and hopes that no one will call him on how much he seems to need this, too.

Some days, he finds Eddie staring out of the dining window smiling a little, lost in thought. Sometimes he's in bed with the covers pulled up over his head. Sometimes it's the kitchen, where he's breathing in the steam rising off a fresh cup of tea. And today—

“Woah,” comes Eddie's voice from the living room, but there's no alarm in it. He's—laughing? “Okay, there you go. I think that's better.”

Buck sets down his bag of groceries. “Uh,” he says to the jackets hanging in by the entrance, “Eddie?”

“Hey,” Eddie replies, easy. Like it's been a good day so far. “We're in the living room. Careful where you step.”

Buck doesn't even think to ask why. He takes his shoes off - mandatory in the Diaz house - and takes a couple of steps, just enough to peek around the wall.

And what he finds is—

“Uncle Buck!” Jee squeals, and abandons the toys she's surrounded with to rush over for a hug. Buck grins automatically, extends his arms and scoops her up the way he knows always makes her laugh, and as he spins in place to make her fly, he catches sight of Eddie.

He, too, is surrounded by toys. The whole living room seems to be a little upside down, actually, with furniture pushed aside to make room for Jee's things. The coffee table is all the way by the TV, and in its place is a much smaller, much pinker table set for a tea party, complete with tiny mugs and a tiny teapot and a tiny cake stand full of plastic food. Eddie is sitting on one side of it with his legs crossed, his back a relaxed curve, wearing the sweatpants Buck keeps telling him to throw out because they have a giant hole in the knee.

The other three guests are stuffed capybaras.

“What are you doing here?” he asks his niece when she starts squirming back out of his embrace, carefully setting her down. He almost asks if she ran away from home, because he knows it would make her giggle, but thinks better of it. “Tea party? And I wasn't invited?”

“She's hanging out with her uncle Eddie today,” Eddie says, leaning back on his hands. He's smiling when he looks up at Buck, a real smile, and his whole face scrunches happily when Jee-Yun crashes into his side.

Buck feels like he needs to look away, but he has no idea how.

“Uncle Eddie,” Jee-Yun confirms, going back to setting up her party by spilling a bag of plastic fruit all over the floor. Buck has never heard her call Eddie that before. He didn't even know—

“Mara is spending the day with Hen and Karen,” Eddie says lightly, picking up a shiny toy apple to toss around in his hand. “And Chim claims he and Maddie have errands to run, so—”

“Uncle Eddie to the rescue,” Buck says, with something like a small storm churning in his stomach, and he must sound off, because Eddie squints like he always does just before he calls Buck on his shit.

It feels like an age since Buck has last seen it, because of all the—everything. He's been more or less functional lately, and Eddie is back in twice weekly therapy for the time being, so it's not like he has any fingers to point.

Doesn't mean Buck hasn't missed it, though.

“Come on,” Eddie says, inclining his head like he actually wants Buck to come on and have a seat, so Buck does what he's asked. “Don't act like you guys don't have a spreadsheet of whose turn it is to supervise me.”

“There isn't a—”

“Chimney keeps inviting me to dinner, so I'm at their place sometimes,” Eddie says, reaching out to move a saucer back into place where Jee almost knocks it off the table. “Your sister's really cool, actually. I'm starting to think I threw in with the wrong Buckley sibling.”

He grins a little as he says it, the flash of his teeth sharp when he looks at Buck over his shoulder, and the first thing Buck wants to say is no dice, she's married already, which is completely fucking insane, because that's not what Eddie is saying, and if he was—

“There's no spreadsheet,” he says instead - which is the truth, because it's a group text - and swallows around his heart beating inside his throat, in the tip of his tongue, restless and fluttering at him to say something he can't come back from. “But you know I'm—”

“Worried about me, yeah,” Eddie says, his smile dimming. “You probably should be. Don't know why anyone would trust me with—oh, hey, thank you,” he interrupts himself, lighting up again when Jee gives him a stuffed sheep to hold, now bent over a tote bag that seems to be full to bursting with more animals.

Here for you, is what Buck had wanted to say. Please let me be here for you.

And it's ridiculous to feel like it should be him Eddie is having dinners with. It already is him, here more often than he isn't, bringing groceries, drawing the curtains and cranking the AC before Eddie comes home from therapy overstimulated and wanting to crawl out of his skin. He plays intermediary when Chris doesn't want to talk to his dad, and takes a little too much pleasure in watching Eddie hang up on his mother, and makes sure to take the best possible care to take care of the plant he got Chris for his birthday a couple years ago, left behind with almost everything else.

He can't have all of Eddie's time. Shouldn't want all of Eddie's time. There has to be a point at which he's overstepping, and he has his own life outside of this house, but he's pulled back here again and again - by the sudden emptiness that neither of them knows how to fill, and the defeated slump of Eddie's shoulders as he says that he has to learn how to be alone but looks like all he wants is company.

“Hey now,” Buck says, relaxing back against the couch even if he feels anything but relaxed, swaying into Eddie to bump their shoulders together. “Give yourself some credit.”

Eddie smiles, lopsided, like he can't quite convince his face to make the right shape until Jee-Yun pulls out a cow squishmallow and puts it in his free hand. He probably doesn't even know what a squishmallow is, but he stares and stares and stares at it as Jee happily goes on making a mess of the living room, cradling it between his fingers like it's made of gold.

“Credit,” he says. “Come on, Buck. My kid's only speaking to me through you right now.”

Buck swallows around the familiar stab of guilt, but before he can say anything—

“And I'm so f—” Eddie blinks, darts a quick glance at Jee, then grimaces guiltily, “I'm so glad that he is, and you know that,” he says, as if it's meant to be a given. As if Buck is just supposed to accept the way Eddie settles and exhales and nods to himself when Buck tells him that Chris sent an update, that he's doing well, that his grandparents took him to the zoo. Like the news is just as good, coming from Buck. “But I'm not exactly the poster child for having your sh—Jesus, do I always curse this much?”

Buck grins. Eddie looks so disgruntled at what's coming out of his mouth that it's impossible not to. “Having your stuff together, you mean,” he says, and tries not to think about their shoulders still touching, because that's neither here nor there. It just is. “Your uncle Eddie has a potty mouth,” he tells Jee-Yun, who responds with a sunny grin and a giggle.

It's almost enough to distract him from the way the words uncle Eddie feel on his tongue, unfamiliar and fizzy, like they might burn him if he says them again.

"Yeah," Eddie says, "that. I'm not sure that getting back to resembling normal is like—some great achievement."

"Even you don't believe that," Buck fires back, because Eddie is pathologically incapable of admitting when he does something right for himself, and he has been. He'd made Buck leave a couple of hours after Chris did that day, just stood in the living room rooted to the floor until Buck had to relent, and he came back the next day not knowing what he was going to find, but Eddie had been—together. He'd stress cleaned the house and misted all the plants and had the kitchen sparkling even though there was a big pot of pasta sauce simmering on the stove. It wasn't until he went to serve it and paused holding a single bowl that he crumpled and folded and stayed, shaking quietly with his back pressed to the kitchen cabinets, head in his hands.

He has those moments, still, but he always guides himself back, with what he'd never admit is compassion. Buck has seen the way Eddie acts when he's determined to destroy himself, and this is not that - but he'll still sidestep talking about it, roll his eyes, shrug one shoulder in that way he has that almost makes him look shy, and tell Buck to go do something better.

It's been becoming clearer and clearer to Buck that there is no better. That even if there was, he probably wouldn't want it.

Eddie sighs. "I'm just," he says, and then tilts his head like he's looking for the right word. "This sucks."

"Sucks," Jee-Yun agrees, slurring the cks into one adorable sound.

Eddie laughs. "Your dad's going to have my head," he says, reaching out to poke the tip of her nose. "The one time he leaves you with me, and you'll come back all corrupted."

Then the laugh freezes on his face, like he's only just realizing what he said. His hand falls back to the floor.

"Eddie," Buck says.

"It's okay," Eddie shakes his head. "It's—you know that's exactly why Maddie and Chim did this."

Buck knows. He might go and have a talk with them about it.

Except—he's not Eddie's keeper. That's not what he means. Just—

"But I'm glad they did," Eddie says, so quietly Buck almost misses it. He's half turned away, watching Jee as she finally finds what she'd been looking for - a sort of lumpy, four-limbed creature that looks like someone sewed it for her by hand. Even Buck aches a little looking at it, wondering if it was Mrs Lee or Maddie or maybe Chimney with a YouTube video. Wondering if Chris ever had something like it, something lumpy and imperfect that stood for all the love felt for him. If he still has it. If he left it behind in his room.

And it's not even his place. He's not Chris's father, he's just—something, and still thinking of him so far out of reach knocks the air out of his lungs every time. He has no idea how Eddie's managing to smile at Jee-Yun and help her arrange the toys on their chairs made out of stacks of books and couch cushions. How he grins and says thank you when she clumsily clamps a flower-shaped hair clip to the front of his hair.

Buck looks at him, with a stuffed sheep in his arms and a lump-shaped cow sitting on his knee, surrounded by plastic fruit and things his son left behind that he hasn't dared touch, being so very, very gentle with a little girl, and something in him shifts in a way that feels wholly and terrifyingly permanent.

When Chimney comes to pick her up a few hours later, he and Eddie do a sleeping toddler handoff so smooth it looks like they practiced it, and all Buck can do is stand there and think oh God, oh fuck, except for when Chimney raises an eyebrow at him, and then all he can do is mouth a thanks in his direction.

*

Tommy, of course, notices the shift. Or maybe it's that Buck has been steadily drifting, always a little to the left of who he's supposed to be as a guy in what's still a relatively new relationship, and he's veered too far off course for Tommy to ignore.

He has things to say about it. Buck can't begrudge him that, not when Tommy isn't even a little bit wrong about how Buck's never there, and Eddie is an adult, and maybe the person you're dating should be the one you're cooking dinners for, at least once in a while.

So Buck sits there, in Tommy's bed with the sheets pooled around his waist, and bows his head until his nape hurts. He takes what he deserves, and wishes he could find it in himself to really, really mean it when he says that he's sorry it's ending this way, that he hopes they can stay in touch sometime down the line.

What he really wants to say is you don't understand, because Tommy doesn't, but then he'd have to explain himself, and that, well—

It's probably better to just pick his shirt up off the floor and get the fuck out.

*

He keeps showing up, after.

Very little changes, really, in the way he goes about his days, because they revolve around his job and around Eddie, and looking back at it, he's not sure he ever put in actual effort to change any of that.

He shows up, and Eddie rolls his eyes a little but opens the door wide. They do the usual song and dance, dinner, dishes, annoying chores Eddie has been putting off for when he has more time. Beer, and half-heartedly watching whatever the TV lands on, and their knees knocking, or their hands, the whole room taking a breath every time they do.

Eddie asks if there's somewhere better for Buck to be. Buck puts his feet up on the coffee table, just to make him squawk; says no, takes a drag of his beer, and sinks back into this couch he knows down to the worn-out springs that squeak every time he tries to be subtle about bringing the two of them touching distance, just because.

"Oh," Eddie says, and "damn, I'm sorry," and then he stops asking Buck to leave.

*

It takes a few weeks, but somehow, it becomes commonplace for Eddie to hang out with Buck's niece.

He doesn't really notice for a while, because she's only over at Eddie's house sometimes, but then pictures start popping up in the A shift groupchat of Eddie sitting next to Chim with shaky whiskers drawn around his nose in face paint pen, and when Maddie and Jee come to see them at the firehouse, she runs first to Chimney, then to Eddie, and then to Buck.

And it's not that he minds. Jee-Yun has a bigger family than he could have ever dreamed of as a kid, and she seems to have infinite patience for all the hugs and kisses. He's not getting cheated out of his uncle time.

It's that he looks at the two of them, Eddie in his uniform walking around the firehouse kitchen and Jee hanging onto his neck, messing up his hair every time she thinks he's distracted, and the last pieces of the picture he'd been missing finally slot into place. He wakes up that morning knowing only that he'll be going to spend their 48 off at Eddie's, and that something about his life is a little lopsided, and that he's happy with what he has anyway.

He ends it leaning back against the kitchen counter, waiting dish towel-in-hand for Eddie to hand over their wine glasses to dry, in love with him.

The thing to do, obviously, is to acknowledge it, look at it, turn it this way and that, then tuck it away. He's been doing it for this long without knowing. Nothing has to change, because Eddie has other things to worry about and Chris has started replying to his texts and Buck basically has the life he wants, anyway. At some point, Eddie will figure out how to carry Shannon's memory instead of her ghost, find someone else. Some parts of what they have now will have to be left behind, but they're things Buck was never entitled to in the first place.

He doubts anyone will ever hold his heart quite as carefully as Eddie does, so he'll take it while he can, and the rest doesn't matter while he has a key that fits into this door.

It works, too, to start with. For weeks, he carefully avoids pointing out that Eddie's smiles are getting brighter, that he's started whistling as he reshuffles the cereal boxes on top of the fridge after breakfast. He absorbs the truth of this new way of being, and finds out that it's no different from before, except that back then he'd look away from Eddie doing the most mundane things - scooping up spiders to take them outside, pursing his lips at his phone, trying to write neatly on the calendar while it's still on the fridge - and feel a bizarre kind of shame at how much he wanted to see it all.

Now, Eddie will crouch in front of the dishwasher to figure out a place he can cram a couple more plates, and Buck will think I love you, breathe around the enormity of it, and hope that Eddie can feel it, that he can take from it whatever it is that he needs Buck to give him that day.

It works perfectly fine, until Buck finds himself watching Chicken Little on a Friday night, holding a half-empty bowl of popcorn, with Eddie all the way on the other side of the couch, almost out of touch, because—God.

Because Jee-Yun is fast asleep and curled into his side, and his arm is carefully wrapped around her. He's pretending to pay attention to the movie, but Buck can see the way his chest barely moves, afraid of breathing too deeply and disturbing Jee. She'd had a whirlwind of a day, with Maddie at work and Chimney being too good a person to say no to helping out the hopelessly shortstaffed B shift, and a busy afternoon running Eddie and Buck ragged at the park and at home. She'd put on her own PJs earlier, waited for them to tell her how grown up she was, ordered up a movie night, and then fell asleep fifteen minutes in.

They finish the movie anyway, maybe because they're both remembering when Chris would still do this with them, and Buck keeps sneaking glances until he gets a crick in his neck. Eddie graciously doesn't ask what's wrong - doesn't speak at all until the end credits are done and the Disney+ homepage appears again.

"Chris called today," is what he says.

Buck's breath stutters in his chest, and he looks over again, carefully, knowing that this time, he'll find Eddie looking back. "Eddie," he says, always the first thing on his tongue.

"I mean, he's been texting," says Eddie, quiet so he doesn't disturb Jee, but the smile that takes over his face could power the whole block. "But today he—" he takes a breath, trying to get himself together, but he just keeps grinning, "he said he wants to come home in time for school to start."

"Eddie," Buck says again, and the shell of hurt he's been carrying around his heart cracks into pieces. "That's—"

"Soon, I know," Eddie says, ducking his head to hide his smile in the top of Jee-Yun's head. She snuffles and shifts, her little hand closing into a fist in Eddie's worn t-shirt. "I don't even know where to start. You ate all the crunchy peanut butter, we've gotta restock that, and—I guess we have to clean his room, huh?"

"He'll get a kick out of that," Buck replies, but he barely hears himself speak, full of Chris and home and we, we, we.

"Yeah," Eddie chuckles, low in his throat. "Yeah, I—" and his smile falters, then, as he looks back up at the TV, "I wonder what new stuff he's going to be weirdly specific about. For all I know, my mother taught him hospital corners. "

"I'm sure he'll let us know as soon as he walks in," Buck says, and means to leave the rest unsaid like he usually does, except his mouth has other ideas. "And whatever it is, we'll just—we'll figure it out together, okay? All of us."

And he stops before he spills the next words taking shape in his throat, as a family, but he thinks Eddie might hear them anyway.

"Buck," he starts, one of his I'm sorry for taking the help you literally offered spiels, but Buck can't listen to it. Not after the way Eddie laid himself bare that day he called him, begging Buck to talk to Chris and all the rest, unsaid but perfectly readable in his face. Begging Buck to make it better.

He can't bear to hear him take it back. Sometimes, when he's feeling clumsy and misshapen, he thinks this might be what he's made for: to make things better for Eddie.

"We'll figure it out together," he repeats, cutting Eddie off. He wants to touch, at least to knock their ankles together, but the idea feels newly dangerous. "And he wants to come home. He misses you. Everything else is just—"

"Thank you," Eddie interrupts. "For, uh," he swallows, looks up at the ceiling light, "you know what for."

"Yeah," Buck says weakly, and thinks, I love you.

"I'll..." Eddie starts, but his eyes are wide and earnest and searching like he has no idea how to continue.

Buck wishes he had words to fill the space - ones that wouldn't give him away, wouldn't push him off the knife's edge he's standing on.

But then Eddie moves; Jee-Yun moves with him and, jostled one too many times, blinks awake.

"Oh, Jee, I'm sorry," Eddie says, his voice immediately different - low, certain, soothing. Present. "Didn't mean to wake you. I guess it's bedtime, huh?"

"But—movie?" she asks in a tiny voice, rubbing her eyes. She's still holding on to Eddie, so he scoops her into his arms and stands up, like he knows how cranky she can get when she's sleepy, which Buck had to find out the hard way.

"We can watch the movie tomorrow before your mom picks you up," Eddie says, carefully stepping his way through the toy explosion that is the living room. "You'll tell us what your favorite parts are."

Jee sighs hugely, like she's thinking about protesting, but by then Eddie has reached Christopher's door, where the blinds are drawn and her stuffed animals are waiting, arranged around Christopher's pillow inside a freshly washed pillowcase.

Buck had hesitated earlier, when Eddie had asked him to change the sheets, because they've inadvertently been treating Chris's room like some kind of shrine, undisturbed except for when they come in to water the plants or open the window, and the times Buck smooths out the divot left in the duvet by Eddie's body and pretends he saw nothing.

But this, he thinks as he watches Eddie carefully tuck Jee in, makes sense. Chris would want her to have his bed, if he were here.

"'Kay," Jee-Yun says, already mostly back to sleep. "Tomorrow."

"I promise," Eddie says with a smile in his voice. "We're just out here if you need us, okay? Goodnight, Jee."

"Night," Jee says, trailing off halfway through the word, probably asleep by the end of it.

Eddie doesn't move for a while: he stands with his arms crossed in the light coming from the hall, only lit up by the few spots that make it through Buck standing in the doorway. He considers coming in, but his imagination is running away in the sudden quiet, showing him a night just like this one in another reality, where he steps inside and waits, where Eddie looks over his shoulder and smiles at him and lets himself sink backward into Buck's chest, pulling Buck's arms tight around him.

He hates that, for a few confused, breathless moments, it actually feels like something within reach.

It might be seconds, minutes, or a whole lifetime later that Eddie turns around, not at all surprised to see Buck blocking the light.

"Alright, come on," he whispers, his face soft as if he was still talking to Jee. "Before she decides she does want to watch it right now."

But still, he stops in the doorway and turns around one more time, smiling at the sight of her.

"You're good with her," Buck says, startled to hear himself speak.

He hadn't meant to say anything at all, much less—

Eddie ducks his head and says nothing, leading the way into the kitchen. Buck follows like he always does, watching Eddie survey the damage, dishes all over the place left over from dinner and cups lined up on the table because Jee kept forgetting where she'd put them and had to grab a new one every time.

They move silently, on autopilot - Eddie pushing the dishwasher pile aside and running the water boiling hot as always, rolling up his sleeves; Buck rooting around in the drawers for a fresh dish towel, because the one he'd used earlier is covered in tomato puree - and Buck wills it to feel the way it usually does, settled and comfortable, with nothing between them that needs saying just then.

But Eddie had ducked his head, and Buck feels blindsided, disarmed by the sight of Eddie with Jee in his arms, by the gentleness with which he moved. He'd carried Chris to bed plenty of times, but that was years ago, when Chris still allowed that kind of thing and Buck moved around their house with tension always coiled at the base of his spine, ready to be asked to leave. He's forgotten, in the months and years of Chris putting boundaries on the kind of touches he allows without grumbling, what it looks like when Eddie holds someone's entire existence in his hands.

"I'm serious," Buck says, just as Eddie passes him a mug. He has no idea how long it's been since they last spoke. "Eddie. You're good with her."

Eddie sighs. Blinks at his soapy hands. Relents.

"Sure," he says. "Whatever."

And Buck can't stop himself, then. Doesn't want to.

"Remember when we met?" he asks, not quite finding the words he wants.

The corner of Eddie's mouth jumps. "The part where you were basically pissing all over the station like a puppy marking your territory, or—"

"The part where an earthquake hit," Buck says, "and you wouldn't let go of your phone even though it was useless, and I asked who you were trying to get a hold of."

Eddie turns off the water.

"You showed me a picture of Chris," Buck says, replaying every moment of that day, all at once, in vivid color. "And I said I loved kids—"

"Understatement," Eddie says sullenly, his hands curled around the lip of the counter.

"And you," Buck says, setting down the dish towel, taking a careful step closer, "said that you love this one, like you weren't sure how you feel about others. So I need you to tell me that you know exactly how much that little girl loves you."

"I barely did anything," Eddie replies, staring out of the window over the sink at the dark street. "I'm glad that she feels safe here, and she wants to come back, but it's not like—"

"It's you," Buck interrupts. "She wants to come back here to hang out with you. She feels safe here because you make it safe, and you listen to her, and every time you tell her she can't do something you explain why, and you took ten minutes today to unpack her stuffed animals and put them in her bed so sleeping somewhere new wouldn't scare her. For fuck's sake, Eddie—"

"Okay," Eddie says, and then his hands, suds and all, are wrapping around Buck's wrists. He hadn't even realized he was getting worked up. "I'm sorry."

"You're being dense on purpose," Buck says, and Eddie's grimace is answer enough.

"A little bit," he says, and then he smiles. "But that's what I have you for."

Buck doesn't want him to let go. Doesn't want to do anything other than stand here, with a damp spot on the back of his t-shirt where he'd leaned against the counter and his heartbeat held safe in Eddie's fingers. Eddie is looking up at him like he's thinking back through their history, from the very first time he held out his hand for Buck to shake, smiling and sunkissed and careful, and received a death grip in return.

"It was because I didn't even know how to take care of Chris back then," he says, and Buck's arms drop to his sides when Eddie reaches out to touch the faucet instead of him, filling the room with the rush of water again. Buck picks his dish towel back up, feeling like he has fresh brands around his wrists. "When we met. I had my mother leaving me voicemails every night, and Pepa made this face at me every time she saw me like she wanted me to get my shit together, and the schedule was even more insane than I realized, so it was just—all that, and trying to be there for my seven-year-old right after uprooting both of us. And I was trying to convince myself that I didn't come out here because of Shannon."

Buck wonders if he could tell, back then. He remembers most of it, the noise of the engine and his nose full of the familiar smell of dust and metal and rubber, heading into his first major disaster, and Eddie. Eddie in the middle of it all with that familiar deep-set wrinkle between his eyebrows, except back then it was brand new. Everything about Eddie was brand new.

"All I knew," Eddie says, "was that I had to do whatever I could to show up for him. And I didn't think—I don't know," he sighs, scrubbing at something stuck to the side of the sink. "Didn't seem like I was the type kids would take to, you know? Warm and fuzzy, or whatever."

"You're the warmest, fuzziest person I know," Buck blurts. Eddie freezes for a second, breathes in, then laughs, belly-deep and loud against the muted sounds of the kitchen.

The tips of Buck's ears burn a little, but it's not like he's wrong. Edde is overwhelmingly, disarmingly gentle. It took a while for Buck to get close enough to see it, and years for it to bleed out past all the barriers Eddie put up, but it's always been there, impossible to avoid. Impossible to resist.

"Maybe," Eddie says, turning off the water, putting the sponge back into the mouth of its frog-shaped holder and knocking on its forehead as he goes as if to say job well done, a move so automatic he probably doesn't realize he's doing it anymore. "But it's hard to—she told me she loves me the other day."

"She does."

"Yeah," Eddie nods, and he turns around to mirror Buck, away from the sink, the kitchen counter in the small of his back. He has water stains all down his front. "And it's a little hard to believe. You get that, don't you?"

Yes, Buck wants to say, and no, because he's had enough of thinking he's hard to love to last him a lifetime, and he hates that Eddie has too. That he can't change anything about it now, because loving Eddie is the easiest thing he's ever done. He's never had to think about it, the same way he never told his heart to start beating. It just does.

And when it didn't, Eddie was the one to restart it.

"Yeah," Buck says, in the end. "But you better believe it quick, because she's gonna cash in on that promise tomorrow. You're gonna have to sit through Chicken Little for a second time somehow."

"Oh, I'll be fine," Eddie says, grinning softly. He almost meets Buck's eye, but ducks at the last minute and squints at the fridge calendar instead. "Chris had a Wreck-It Ralph phase when he was a kid. Had to sit through some part of it every night for weeks."

And Buck just—

He's not sure what it is, exactly. Maybe it's all of Eddie's careful edges softened by the kitchen light. The fact that he almost called them a family earlier, or the image of Eddie holding Jee printed on the back of his eyelids, or Chris coming back in a couple of weeks, or—

"Have you ever thought about," he starts, then falters, but even if he stopped now, Eddie wouldn't let it go. It's not what they do with each other, not anymore. "Have you ever thought about having another?"

Eddie sucks in a breath through his teeth. "Kid?" he asks, not even pretending that he doesn't understand.

"Yeah," Buck says. It's barely audible, but he can't imagine speaking any louder. His heart must be beating still, but he can't feel it, and his skin is abuzz all the way down to his fingertips, where he's twisting the towel into knots.

Finally, Eddie looks at him again. Just looks, in that way he has where his eyes come to rest on Buck like he's the most interesting thing in the room.

"Why do you ask?" careful, careful.

What is Buck supposed to say? That he thinks he might have imagined it, or maybe dreamed it and decided to forget? That it was so easy, terrifyingly easy, to look at Eddie over Jee's head and imagine another little girl who'd be their own?

"I don't know," he says, and knows perfectly well. He's told himself, over and over, that he wouldn't go there. Wouldn't do this. He's not even sure what this is, because even if Eddie has thought about more kids, it's not like they'll have them together. It's not like Buck would be in their lives the same way he is in Chris's. There wouldn't be room. "Forget it."

Eddie keeps looking, all over Buck's face then down at his hands. He hunches his shoulders, and Buck thinks for a second that he might shut down, wrap his arms around himself and say goodnight and disappear the way he does sometimes, but instead—

Instead, Eddie laughs.

It's not amused, not really, more hysterical than anything, but he gasps for air and puts his hands over his face and laughs and laughs, until Buck has to put a hand on his shoulder to make sure he's okay.

"Sorry," he says through a wheeze. "Sorry, just—I can't believe this is my life."

"Which part?" Buck asks, and he must sound more pathetic than he intends, because Eddie sobers immediately, and reaches out, and just—keeps reaching. He wraps a warm hand around Buck's elbow, and looks like he means to move the other one too, but it stays curled around the edge of the counter, anchoring a part of him away from Buck.

"I'm sorry," Eddie says again. "I didn't mean to laugh, but it's just—the fact that you asked me that.”

Buck tilts his head. Waits.

"I fell in love with Chris," Eddie says, "the second he came into the world, but with everything that came after, I figured—I thought me having more kids would just be more people to disappoint. More lives to screw up."

"Eddie."

"And when Shannon thought she was pregnant again, I was so fucking scared of it. I was going to be there this time, I was going to fix everything I did wrong the first time around, but the thought—it was so fucking scary, Buck."

Buck remembers, a little bit. Eddie had been a closed book about Shannon then, keeping her away from the rest of his life. He only ever got the cliffnotes - Shannon's good, Chris is super happy, things are going great - but those eventually stopped, too.

"And I don't know when it changed, or how, but there was this one time we were watching something and Chris got too sleepy so he asked you to carry him to bed—"

"Jurassic Park," Buck interrupts, because he can't not. He remembers the pajamas Chris wore that night, and Eddie's ratty red blanket that barely covered them all. "It was Jurassic Park."

Eddie's eyes shine looking back at him.

"And a few weeks after that,” he says, “there was this call where a toddler got stuck up a tree, and you stood there for an hour talking to him about how cool trains are. Never even looked away."

He remembers that, too. It had been a huge tree, and it took a long time to get into position to get the little boy down, but by the end, he didn't even remember that he was scared. He ran to Buck as soon as Chimney put him on the ground, wrapped his arms around Buck's neck, and Buck got to spin him around a few times before the mom ran up. He doesn't remember where Eddie was, but he would have been somewhere near, because he always is.

"And I thought—" Eddie shakes his head, takes his hand off Buck's elbow to rub at his mouth. "I spent the whole drive back just calling myself a fucking idiot in my head, because I looked at the way you were with him, and I had the thought, and it didn't terrify me."

Buck frowns. "And that's bad?"

"Buck," Eddie says, and then again, "Buck," as he steps closer, lets go of the counter. His palm lands on the side of Buck's face, cautious and a little bit unfamiliar. Buck's throat closes, painful for the few seconds it takes for him to breathe again.

"I laughed," he says, looking straight into Buck's eyes and so close, when did he get so close? "Because I have thought about having another kid," he says, "probably more than I should. Or at least I did before all this happened with Chris, like—doodling about it in my nonexistent journal kind of stuff."

His fingers move, a ghost of a touch on the tip of Buck's chin, the corner of his jaw, and Buck thinks, oh, and his stomach freefalls. Eddie has touched him before. He hasn't touched him like this.

"But," Eddie says, and his eyes close, just for a breath, "I only ever thought about having them with you."

And Buck falls too, then, suddenly weightless. "Me," he says.

"Yeah," says Eddie. His touch softens, like he's giving Buck room to step back, as if he ever would. "Of course. Who else?"

Which is a question so absurd that Buck almost laughs, because the answer is literally anyone else. The person who's supposed to come along when Eddie is ready, when the time is right. Someone who won't be temporary.

"You show up for Chris, you know that, but," Eddie swallows, tilts his head. There's something fearless, something beautiful, in the way he refuses to look away even though Buck can feel his hands shaking. "You show up for me, and it makes me imagine ridiculous things like having a baby girl and braiding her hair and driving Chris to start college and going to farmers' markets on our days off and you're there—"

Buck kisses him, then, stealing the rest of that future off Eddie's lips, all for himself.

He doesn't mean to do it, exactly, but there's nothing else, because Eddie—Eddie has been imagining. Has been dreaming. Eddie is wrapping a hand around Buck's elbow, running up his arm to his shoulder, down to his side, like he can't decide where to settle, or maybe like he doesn't know what to do because Buck took him by surprise.

He pulls back.

"Oh shit," Buck says, and Eddie laughs a little, but it doesn't really register. "I wanted to—I didn't mean to—I mean I wanted to make sure—"

"You thought I was saying all of that platonically?" Eddie asks, and he smiles so, so beautifully with Buck still on his lips, with every reservation gone. He touches the tip of Buck's eyebrow, presses soft fingers to the corner of his lips. "Best buds forever?"

Closer. He comes closer, and doesn't stop, doesn't even flinch when their hips bump into each other, their chests. He's close enough for Buck to wrap his arms around, properly, the way he's never dared try before. He can hold Eddie. And—keep him, maybe. Love him.

But he says - asks - none of that. "We'll always be best buds," is what comes out, and he bites his lip, not sure how to make words that mean something for all the bubbling, blinding joy.

Eddie laughs, gorgeous and loud with his hair a little messy from where Buck must have run his fingers through it without realizing, and he leans in again, closes the distance like it's not their second time at all. They take a step back, the another until Buck's back hits the fridge and things clatter to the ground and Eddie drinks the laugh right out of Buck's mouth and Buck has no idea how to take in all of him, how to understand Eddie's lips on his and his hand on the back of Buck's neck and the smiles that break in and separate them eventually, leaving Buck breathing embarrassingly heavily, his palms on Eddie's chest.

“You know," Eddie says, curls his hands into the hem of Buck's hoodie and just holds them there, “you make me feel like I'm still worth something. And you always keep us stocked with cereal. Turns out that I don't know what to do with that, other than fall in love about it."

“Eddie,” Buck says, suddenly pinned by the weight of what is happening.

“I love you,” Eddie says, his head tilted just so, and he looks open, easy, held inside the circle of Buck's arms and making no move to leave. Like he'll never be close enough now that he's allowed. Buck knows the feeling. “If that's okay.”

“If that's—” Buck starts, but every word in the world is suddenly on his tongue, demanding to be said. Eddie half-shrugs, and he looks shy, disarmingly so, as if he's not handing Buck everything he's ever wanted. “I was just watching you put Jee to bed and thinking about how I can never have that with you fifteen minutes ago.”

“We can,” Eddie says. He runs a thumb under Buck's eye, leaving a tickling smudge, and when Buck smiles, Eddie's answering grin is the brightest Buck has ever seen. “I think maybe we can do anything we want from here on out.”

Buck shakes his head. “That might take me a minute,” he says, and then Eddie curls into him, wraps his arms about Buck's waist, tucks his nose into the warm spot behind Buck's ear, and exhales. Like he's been imagining this, too, filling in some of the very last spots he hasn't touched. “I guess I always thought someone better would come along.”

But he says it, and now that he's here, with Eddie so very alive and breathing and his, looking at the puzzle pieces of their lives that have been adding up to one picture since long before he noticed, it suddenly doesn't seem so inevitable. He's here, and nobody else is. Maybe there's no such thing as overstepping when Eddie grins at you like that and kisses you until you forget how your hands work.

Eddie pulls back, far enough to look him in the eye. “Sweetheart,” he says. Buck's ears fill with the dizzying sound of his own heartbeat. “Come on. There is no better.”

So Buck kisses him again, again, again, until he tastes the truth of it on the back of his own tongue.

*

When Maddie shows up the next afternoon, Eddie pouts a little about Jee running straight out of the house without even looking back. Not something he'd normally do until the door was closed, maybe, but he's been that since they woke up. Since he kissed Buck awake and grinned at him and told him he loved him all before they even got out of bed.

And then he says, “come on, you've gotta say bye to your uncles,” grinning and unselfconscious, and while he squeezes Jee and lifts her in the air, Buck catches Maddie's eye.

She tilts her head. Raises one eyebrow.

If there's something that you need to tell Eddie, you will, she'd told him months ago, and he only realizes now, watching a slow smile take over her face, that she understood long before he did.

“Okay, time to go,” she says, and gives him a Look. “Say bye!”

Jee reaches over to pull Buck in by the neck and smack a kiss to his cheek, and then Eddie hands her over, reaching out to ruffle her hair.

“Thanks for watching her,” Maddie says, “both of you,” but she's only looking at Eddie, also giving him a Look, but this one Buck can't decipher. “We'll see you at the barbecue on Sunday?”

“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot,” Eddie says, and what he means is he'd been planning on not going because he didn't want to be, quote, a sad sack. “We'll be there.”

“Okay,” Maddie says, dragging out the O. She forgets to close her mouth when Eddie puts a hand on Buck's lower back, light enough to be absentminded, though Buck has his doubts. He's not entirely sure what to do with his hands, overheated in his skin, every nerve singing because Eddie is touching him, easy and casual and intimate, right on the front step. In front of God and the neighbors and Buck's sister, who may or may not have had ulterior motives in having Eddie watch her child. “Bye!”

They wait out front until Jee-Yun is strapped in her car seat so she can wave at them through the window, and then the rest of the day stretches out in front of them, sunny and endless. They can do whatever they want. Clean Chris's room, make dinner the same they always have but romantic, somehow. Kiss against the fridge or the dryer or the bathroom door.

Dream anything.

“Subtle,” Buck says, with the sun burning the bridge of his nose.

Eddie squints at him in the light, bright and soft in his old t-shirt with the collar halfway ripped off.

Buck wraps an arm around his waist, kisses him right on the doorstep.

And when Eddie runs fingers through his hair, deliciously slow, probably offending the elderly couple that live across the street—

Buck thinks about sprinting to catch Maddie at the nearest intersection and telling her, just so she knows for sure.

Just to brag.

[Zosan Modern life AU] Routines

Zoro version

Sanji version

fuck it friday

tagged by @smallandalmosthonest

happy friday y'all, here's a snippet of the buck/tommy/eddie road trip fic. the previous snippet can be found here.

Buck turns around, his dimple accentuated as he grins and says, “I know a flight would’ve been easier, but I feel like you needed this – getting out of the house in the most extreme way.” Tommy snorts in amusement, Eddie sees him reach a hand over the center console to rest on Buck’s knee. “Babe, a flight would’ve been so much faster. And Eddie,” Tommy removes his hand from Buck, and Eddie’s stomach flutters as Tommy’s hand lands on his own knee, “no need to thank us. You and Chris are important to us.” The way to us sounds coming out of Tommy’s mouth sends another, stronger thrill through Eddie’s body. He doesn’t know why it’s been happening lately. Maybe it’s because he’s so starved for closeness, and Eddie’s been spending a lot more time with not just Buck and Tommy, but BuckandTommy – the two of them as a unit. Eddie’s seen them hold hands when they’re out, cuddling on Buck’s couch when hanging out at his loft; once he’d shown up early at Tommy’s for Muay Thai and let himself in through the garage and found them making out in the kitchen, their hands up each other’s shirts. Eddie’s pretty sure they hadn’t noticed how long his gaze had lingered. He’s been chalking it up to feeling extra lonely these past few weeks.

no pressure tagging (pls let me know if you want to be added/removed)

@hipsterdarcy @alliaskisthepossibilityoflove @zeraparker @pxrxmoore @bummie4dummies @buckhastwohands

@bucksgettinbi @theotherbuckley @evanbi-ckley @firehose118 @neverevan

@wearethecyclones @casismybestfriend @slightlyobsessedwitheverything @bucksboobs

They literally spent half of the adventuring party simping over the fairies 😂😂😂😂

Murph (about the simping): can't believe how long this bit has gone on

Everyone else (shouting): It's not a bit! It's a discussion!

HES ALL DRESSED UP!!!!!!!

"You won't find love until you're burnt by a firework"

- Lou Wilson, Adventuring Party

Fic Update: like a bird stealing bread out from under your nose

Please enjoy chapter five :)

Summary:

Eddie and Buck finally talk.

Snippet:

“I owe you an apology,” Eddie says finally, moving to sit across from Buck.

Buck lifts an eyebrow, like, no shit. 

“Okay, I owe you several apologies,” Eddie sighs. “And an explanation, because I know I should have done more. Done anything.”

Buck’s mouth twitches, but he still doesn’t say anything. 

“What I did to you was shitty and-and unfair, and… And I could say it was just because I was drunk, and out of it, but the truth was that I was being incredibly self-destructive. I have been for a long time.”

Most of his life, probably, with intermittent sparks of lucidity.

---

Tagging:

@epicbuddieficrecs @theotherbuckley @sevenweeksofunrepression @slowlyfoggydestiny @buckleybabyblues

@diazsdimples @exhuastedpigeon @aquamarineglitter @loserdiaz @steadfastsaturnsrings

@your-catfish-friend @incorrect9-1-1 @hawaiianlove808 @babytrapperdiaz @watchyourbuck

@lyricfulloflight @tizniz @aroeddiediaz @estheticpotaeto

@buddieswhvre @l0v3t0hat3y0u @mage8

CHAT YOU GUYS NEED GO READ THIS ITS ABDOULTEY BEAUTIFUL

seven sentence sunday

a lil something from nonverbal buck fic <3

"Hey, uh are you doing anything on Saturday?" Eddie asks shyly. Christopher gives him a not so subtle thumbs up. Buck can't help but smile. Nope, I'm free. What's up? "We– Christopher was wondering if you'd want to go to the zoo with us? You can say no, it's okay if you don't." Buck feels all warm and fuzzy. They want to spend time with him. Are you kidding? I'd love to.

thanks for the tags 💜 @disasterbuck @tizniz @wikiangela

@smilingbuckley @spotsandsocks @exhuastedpigeon @bigfootsmom

npt 💕 @moonsharky @steadfastsaturnsrings @monsterrae1 @loserdiaz @dangerpronebuddie

@hippolotamus @diazsdimples @underwaterninja13 @father-salmon @watchyourbuck

@bi-buckrights @bekkachaos @theotherbuckley @jesuisici33 @queerdiaz

@evanbi-ckley @neverevan @honestlydarkprincess @the-likesofus @rainbow-nerdss and anyone else who wants to share <3

Gorgug: Imagine if someone handed you a box full of all the items you have lost throughout your life

Riz: Self-esteem, haven't seen you in years!

Adaine: Oh wow, my childhood innocence! Thank you for finding this!

Fig: I knew I lost that potential somewhere!

Fabian: My moral code, is that you?

Gorgug:

Gorgug: I was just gonna show you this cool trunk my dad gave me but do you guys need a hug?

real quick? you're my best friend.

Buddie + "I love you, but I've never been this angry with anyone than I am with you right now" or smth like that

"I love you, but I've never been this angry with anyone like I am with you right now," Eddie fumes as he checks over Buck's injuries.

They're fairly minor - a split lip and a cut above his left eyebrow that slopes into his birthmark, and there's a few scrapes on his forearm, but that doesn't stop the anger, the fear that's bubbling in Eddie's stomach right now.

"C'mon Eds, I'm fine," Buck mumbles as he tries to dodge Eddie's fussing hands. His head throbs at the sharp movement and he winces. " 'S just a scratch."

"It's seven scratches," Eddie counters as he finishes the catalogue of Buck's injuries. "And you've probably got a concussion."

Eddie pinches between his eyes, breathing heavily through his nose. It's not like this is a surprise; Buck's never been one to think through his actions to the logical conclusion, being more of the "act first, think later" type, but Eddie wishes that for once, the man would engage his brain before throwing himself headfirst into a burning building, chasing after a drunk driver on a tiny bicycle, or climbing a tree to fish out the frisbee Christopher had lost moments earlier.

Buck pushes himself up onto his elbows, surveying the broken twigs and leaves that litter the ground around him. The branch that had snapped beneath his weight lies about a foot to his left, and Eddie can see the porous insides, the wood rotten and crumbling. It's any wonder Buck tumbled out of the tree like a kitten learning to climb - that branch would have given way the second he put his weight on it.

"Probably should have checked the branches as I was coming down," Buck says with a strained chucked, his attempt at lightening the mood with humour falling flat when Eddie doesn't respond, his jaw ticking cause yeah, Buck really fucking should have been more careful.

Buck's face falls as he sees Eddie's tight expression.

"A-are you really that mad at me?"

Eddie softens. He's not mad, exactly. His fear and panic often manifests itself as anger, and when Buck had come barrelling out of that tree, crashing to the ground with enough force it could have registered on the Richter Scale, his heart had leapt to his throat.

"I'm not mad," he says gently, and the tension in Buck's shoulders disappears. He reaches out to touch Buck's face, thumb stroking over a thankfully unscathed cheekbone. "I just...you scared me, that's all."

Eddie can feel the weight of Buck's stare, can hear his heartbeat loud in his ears, and then Buck is smiling softly, the look on his face so gentle that it takes Eddie's breath away.

"You don't have to worry about me," he reassures Eddie, turning his face into his boyfriend's hand and kissing his palm.

Eddie can't help the disbelieving snort that leaves his mouth.

"Buck, you choked on bread so hard you nearly died, you've been crushed under a ladder truck, you had a pulmonary embolism and then got washed up by a tsunami, and you've been struck by lightening. You get into trouble more often than not."

Buck laughs, the sound warm and sweet, and Eddie wants to kiss him. He wants to kiss him better, to seal up his wounds with his lips, to kiss away the pain and promise to always be there with him when he hurts.

"Well, when you put it like that..."

Buck's eyes sparkle and his lips are so soft, and Eddie doesn't have it in him to stop himself anymore.

The kiss is light and barely there, but Buck's lips are so warm and pliant against his own, and his heart feels like it's going to beat out of his chest. He can feel the stubble on Buck's chin against his skin, can smell the sharp scent of the lemon bodywash Buck loves to use, and when Buck sighs against him, Eddie feels it down to his toes. There's a slight wince as Eddie presses over the cut on Buck's lip and he pulls away, resting their foreheads together.

"Are you sure you're okay?" he asks again, licking his lips. He tastes the slightest tang of metal - blood, from Buck's lip - and it sets his teeth on edge.

"Baby, I'm fine. Promise."

Buck leans forward and presses another, far gentler kiss to Eddie's lips.

"Now, can you help me up, please? It's cold down here."

Eddie rolls his eyes but complies nonetheless. He takes Buck's wrist and hauls him to his feet, and is about to drag him inside when Buck sways against him, the blood draining from his face so fast Eddie's surprised he doesn't pass out immediately.

"Sweetheart? Are you okay?" he asks, grasping Buck under the arm as he swallows thickly, his knuckles turning white as he clings onto Eddie's forearm.

"You know what?" Buck says as he suppresses a gag, "M-maybe I should go get checked out."

"You think? C'mon, let's get you in the car."

Eddie at least has the common sense to grab an ice cream container before he ushers Buck out the front door, making fast tracks towards the ER.

The d20 caption people are great 😂😂

Are we celebrating something? Ah, we do have a surprise.

There was no reason for Buck to be at the Diaz house when Chris left unless he's family, but he was there because he is family. He's not just Eddie's best friend, he's a co-parent. He's a partner. He's someone that the Diaz boys rely on and who relies on them in return.

He's the person Eddie trusts so much that he can let himself break in front of him, and my god is Eddie breaking. He's coming apart at the seams.

He loves Chris so much and he loves Eddie so much and they're a family and their family is hurting and their family is broken but not beyond repair. Not if they work together to fix it.