NIKOLAI TOLYA TAMAR THATS IT

 NIKOLAI TOLYA TAMAR THATS IT

bring your body home to me

buck/eddie | 5k | in which the love (so much love) is stored in the ravioli for @thatbuddie. happy birthday, maria! 💖🥳💐

It starts on a Thursday afternoon. 

It's a particularly gnarly one, too, where Eddie feels more like a sack of bones than a human being when he drags himself over the threshold, unmade and put back wrong. He'd had to get himself together a little too fast, with his guts on the table when Frank's watch beeped their five-minute warning, and now—

He kind of wants to walk in and go straight down the hallway into bed, no greeting, no food. 

No Christopher, because it feels like there's still darkness seeping out of his fingertips, the kind of thing he can't wash away before he touches his son.

No Buck, because Eddie can't even look the fact that he's here straight in the eye. He doesn't—deserve to see him today, and Frank would tilt his head in that calculating way he has if Eddie ever told him that, but how could he ever, ever goddamn explain—

“Dad!” Christopher yells from the living room, stopping Eddie where he's trying to sneak past the door without being seen. “Buck's making pasta.” 

Eddie sighs. He exhales, counts to four, inhales again, and reminds himself of the floor under his feet, the familiar walls that don't usually feel like they're closing in on him this way. He's home. He's home, and he can breathe. 

“Pasta, huh?” he asks, stepping into the doorway. Christopher is on the couch with his Switch, a stack of notebooks and a closed pencil case on the table in front of him. “You make it sound like it's an event. We have pasta all the time.” 

“He's been making pasta,” Chris says, squinting at his game, “for two hours.” 

As if on cue, there's a clatter from the kitchen, the tell-tale sound of metal on metal. 

“Two hours,” Eddie says, his head tilted to listen out. “And you didn't want to help?” 

“He said it's a surprise,” is Chris's reply, but he laughs a little under his breath like he knows something Eddie doesn't. 

Against all odds, the knot in Eddie's chest loosens. He's nowhere near enough to being able to breathe normally, isn't even sure his lungs are in the right place, but this is always a sight for sore eyes: Christopher smiling, happy, safe. 

He steps into the living room, just far enough to ghost his fingers over the top of Christopher's curls, not quite ruffling them like he wants to, not pulling him close; but Chris lifts his head and smiles at him anyway, and Eddie carries it with him through the dining room and into the kitchen, where Buck's making more noise. 

His hand shakes a little when he puts it on the door, hesitating before he pushes it open. He knows he should turn around; feels it like an itch all the way in his bones, the urge to go straight through to his bedroom and throw the comforter over his head. 

Buck wouldn't mind: he'd finish cooking, clean up after himself, pack up the leftovers, make sure Christopher gets ready for bed, like he's done so many times in the past few weeks. He'd probably line up the shoes Eddie kicked off, would pick his hoodie up off the floor and hang it up, and then he'd come knock on the door - open just a sliver, because closing it feels like severing something every time Eddie tries - and tell Eddie he's okay to stay or go. 

Today feels like one of those days when Eddie wouldn't know how to ask him to stay. 

But he's not in bed. He's here, even restless, pushing the kitchen door open. By the time he does, Buck is already looking over his shoulder with a careful grin. 

He's wearing his ridiculous I'm Kind of a Big Dill apron, and his arms are covered in flour nearly up to the elbows. There's another smudge of it on his chin, and by his ear, and he definitely has some in his hair, but he doesn't seem to mind as he looks away from Eddie and turns down the water bubbling on the stove. 

“Hey,” Eddie says, carefully leaning against the fridge. The kitchen's a mess, with flour all over the countertops, a pile of bowls towering in the sink, and what looks like a smear of egg on one of the overhead cabinets. “I heard you're making pasta.” 

Buck grins again, a little wider. He wipes his hands into his apron and turns to face Eddie head-on, his hip against the counter.

“He's starving, isn't he,” he says, scratching the back of his neck, probably leaving floury fingerprints there. “I didn't think it'd take that long, but I swear dinner's almost done.” 

“Buck,” Eddie says and, as has been happening more and more often lately, doesn't know how to continue. You didn't have to do all this is always on the tip of his tongue, sleeping curled up there, trying to fight its way out when Buck takes Chris to school and comes back with breakfast, when he walks into Eddie's bedroom and throws open the curtains, when he does nothing more than exist here, ignoring the life he has outside of Eddie's house, fitting effortlessly into this one. 

“Yeah, I've heard the spiel,” Buck says, rolling his eyes. He has this particular brand of looking at Eddie that makes him feel like he isn't fragile for a change, and he feels the warmth of it all the way down to his toes. 

It makes him think, sometimes, that he might deserve this. That it might be okay for him to stand here, leaning against the fridge, and watch Buck work, still and always unsure of how this suddenly became his life. 

“But,” he says, feeling clumsy with his words after how much he'd told Frank today, “that doesn't mean you shouldn't hear it again.” 

Buck laughs, a soft, crinkly thing. “I made you dinner,” he says, turning back to the stove. “It's really not that big a deal.” 

“It's a Thursday,” Eddie replies. 

“Right,” Buck says as he picks up stray pieces of what must be dough and drops them into the cradle of his palm. “And that's relevant because—” 

“This is the third time you're making us dinner this week,” Eddie says, though Buck knows it perfectly well. “And I don't think—” 

“Eddie,” Buck interrupts. He sounds the way he did when he spoke to Eddie the night everything broke: when he put a careful hand on Eddie's elbow and said do you think you can get up?, when he went outside to talk to Christopher, when he planted himself at Eddie's dining table and asked what Eddie's afraid of.

And Eddie's been unpacking his fears. He's been doing his stupid fucking therapy homework. 

But there's a part of him, always shivering and squirming and yearning, that's afraid of this. Of the way Buck turns to him with an easy smile, with relaxed shoulders, happy to be here. 

“Why don't you go take a shower?” he asks, his smile getting a little sharper. “You look like you could use one.” 

“Wow,” Eddie says, putting on his most offended voice, but Buck's eyes spark in delight. “Give it to me straight, why don't you, Buckley.” 

Buck laughs, wiping his hands again. “Go shower,” he says, smiling at the floor. “I'll have dinner ready by the time you come out.” 

And the thing is that Eddie does feel like he needs a shower or ten, feels a little like he'd need to scrub himself for a decade to get the smell of Frank's stupid therapy chair off his skin and get the fog out of his head, but he wouldn't have taken one if Buck didn't just—tell him to. 

This is what he's come to, apparently. Days where he can barely remember how to put one foot in front of the other, and even then it feels like Buck has somehow paved the way. 

But—

“Okay,” he says, watching for another minute as Buck gently scoops flour off the countertop and into the trash, half of it ending up on the floor. “Thanks, Buck.” 

And Buck smiles the way he always does when Eddie thanks him, with crinkles by the corners of his eyes and half a dimple in his cheek. 

He takes the shower slowly, carefully, feeling creaky with exhaustion that is anything but physical. The mirror is fogged all the way up by the time he's done, a sign that he'd indulged without meaning to, but the hot water has turned his skin a little pink, and when he smears some of the condensation off and looks at himself, he almost looks alive. 

By the time Eddie's dressed, Christopher is already in the dining room, one of his feet bumping into a chair leg. There's a vase in the middle of the table with flowers Eddie definitely didn't buy, big, pale yellow things; the glasses Buck set out are ones that Eddie dragged over here from Texas, a set of six that's dwindled to three over the years. He's even unrolled the placemats that Abuela gave them last Christmas, handmade in a dizzying number of colors. 

It's—nice. Pretty, even, with so much effort put in just for the sake of it, and for a second, Eddie is frozen right where he's standing. 

“Right on time!” Buck says from behind him. Eddie instinctually steps out of the way just in time for him to breeze past with a plate in each hand. “There you go,” he says as he sets Christopher's food down, with a silly little bow that Christopher pretends to roll his eyes at, then puts the other plate on the next mat over. 

“Come on,” he says, with a gentle tilt of his head, and it's only then that Eddie realizes he's changed into a soft, worn button-up. He's clean, too, with his hair a little damp where it'd been dirty, and no flour anywhere except for the very tip of his eyebrow. 

Eddie suddenly can't breathe with how much he wants to reach out and rub it away. 

But Buck disappears into the kitchen, leaving Eddie to cross the room and sit down just in time for Christopher's ear-splitting “Woah!”

Which is when Eddie, finally, looks down into his plate, and forgets how to do anything else. 

“Buck,” Chris says on his right, his voice a little high-pitched with excitement. “You made dinosaur pasta?” 

Buck's chair scrapes as he sits down. “I, uh,” he says, then laughs a little, his legs sprawling under the table as always and knocking into Eddie's, “yeah. With cheesy filling. We had those cutters we bought for your birthday cookies, remember?” 

“Yeah,” Christopher says, and Eddie takes his eyes off his plate for just long enough to see him spear a dinosaur with his fork and hold it up in front of his face, its little pasta legs wobbling. “Awesome.” 

“Yeah?” Buck grins, and Eddie looks at him, then looks down at the t-rexes gearing up to fight each other on his plate. Their little eyes, probably poked in with a toothpick, are still visible under the slowly-melting mountain of cheese Buck has sprinkled over them. “I saw this chef on TikTok making star-shaped ones, and I figured that probably means I can make any shape work. Sorry it took so long, though.” 

Then Buck nudges his ankle under the table, so Eddie meets his gaze, meets him smiling but a little worried around the edges, like he's uncertain about all this color and life and joy he leaves on everything he touches, all things Eddie couldn't muster without him right now, and he—

He thinks it with a painful, piercing clarity: I love you.

But he doesn't say it. He doesn't say much of anything, because words feel like they've suddenly become impossible to shape, and instead he presses into Buck's touch and doesn't pull away all through dinner, a warm point of contact. 

Instead, he clears his plate, very aware that it's the biggest portion he's eaten in weeks. 

*

Christopher, in a turn of events so wholly unsurprising it makes Eddie laugh out loud, becomes a shaped pasta enthusiast overnight. He insists on helping the next time Buck makes it, and Eddie comes home to a dinner of colorful candy filled with spinach; the week after, it's stars, cut out and sealed with a special stamp that gets pride of place in the cutlery drawer. 

The time after that, he's finally home to watch the process they've perfected. Christopher, wearing his own apron, joyfully takes over flouring while Buck gets a couple of dough discs out of the fridge, then gets put on filling stirring duty. 

Eddie, relegated to the kitchen table with a cup of decaf and banned from trying to help, watches as Buck rolls out the dough, the quick movement of his hands and the soft bumps of his knuckles under the skin. It's practiced, repetitive, and something about it soothes Eddie down to the marrow. 

Though it's very likely that's just Buck, still stubbornly showing up to help out at least a couple of days each week, cleaning or grocery shopping or coordinating school pickups with Christopher directly so Eddie doesn't get a chance to talk him out of it. He's been looking peaceful, almost, more relaxed with every night he spends on their sofa drinking beer and making Eddie laugh at his terrible reenactments of whatever shitty movie they managed to catch. 

Eddie hasn't told him yet. He's not really sure how to broach the topic after everything, even with all the talking he has under his belt. He doesn't know what Buck's reaction is going to be, whether it'll be more of that tentative, beautiful peace that looks so new on his face, or whether he'll fret and try to hide it - but the fact remains that his paperwork's been approved, and the Service Center has received his notice. In three weeks' time, he'll be putting on turnouts again, and he hasn't told Buck. 

There's a lot of things he hasn't told Buck. 

But, as that night's dinner - cars and rocketships - is set in front of him, he thinks that, for the first time in his life, he might have time. Buck is here, spilling through the door at random times of day, sometimes driving all the way over to Eddie's place just so he won't have to watch a cool new documentary he found by himself; Christopher is safe and happy and set on becoming a pasta chef, and Eddie is still mostly overwhelmed by all the ways they love him, by the fact that he keeps finding himself calm and utterly content when he's with his boys, but he thinks he might be making his way to safe and happy, too. 

In the meantime, he counts the passage of time in pasta nights: turtles and fish, new dinosaur shapes for Christopher's birthday, giraffes, rubber ducks. They make gingerbread men leading up to Christmastime, the first time Eddie is allowed to help, which ends with all three of them covered in flour and bits of pasta dough stuck to the fridge, but they also eat in the living room next to the tree, and Eddie almost tells Buck that he might be the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, laughing under the Christmas lights with a smear of tomato sauce on his chin. 

And then Christopher decides he's too cool for pasta-making. 

*

“Stop sulking,” Buck says, his back turned as he gets the big pot out of the cabinet. 

“Not sulking,” Eddie says, pouting down into his wine glass. “Just—”

“Sulking,” Buck cuts in, throwing Eddie a grin over his shoulder. “We all had dinner together yesterday, Eddie. You're going to be okay.” 

Eddie puts his chin in his hand and stares at what he thinks is nothing - except then Buck crosses the kitchen, and Eddie gets pulled into watching the dip of his waist, and the way his jeans go taut around his thighs when he squats down to find the strainer. 

Which is—maybe another reason he's a little afraid of Christopher not being here. He never could allow himself to think too much with Chris right sitting next to him, talking about homework or their weekend plans, even as they included Buck without asking him and Buck smiled down at his plate with a flush. Eddie's pretty sure they've been living one life for months now, and for months now he's been telling himself that he'll know when it's time, but the Christopher-shaped hole in tonight's plans says different. 

It's just him, and a Buck who decided to cook for them, and the bottle of wine Eddie opened for something to do with his hands. It's already dark out; they have the lights on, and Eddie's dying yellow bulb gives Buck a little golden outline, making him look a little like Eddie's just conjured him out of his wildest, most indulgent dreams. 

But he's real. He's real, and grimacing at a pot of sour cream that's definitely past the best by date, and Eddie has been desperately in love with him for longer than he really cares to define. 

Time, though. It's a volatile thing. 

“Can I at least help you?” he asks, already knowing what the answer will be. 

Buck snorts. He takes something out of the fridge, hiding it from Eddie's sight with the sheer breadth of his back. 

“Actually,” he says, keeping whatever he's holding close to his chest, “you can help me by taking your sad little glass of wine to the living room and watching something for half an hour.” 

Eddie gasps, but it dissolves straight into a laugh as soon as Buck starts laughing too, turning in place to lean back against the counter and look at Eddie, his face full of light. He runs a hand through his hair, still loose after the shower he took when they woke up after their shift, the way Eddie likes it best. 

“Come on,” he says, grinning, with his head tilted. “This is excessive.” 

And the thing is, Eddie knows that. He's talked this through with Christopher, with Buck, with Frank, with Bobby. He's about as prepared as can be for his son to become his own person. 

He's just—a little afraid, and he's not exactly sure of what. 

“Just for that,” he says, topping off his glass before he stands up, “I'm going to watch Brave Wilderness without you.” 

Buck frowns. “But—” 

“You told me to go watch something,” Eddie says, then takes a sip. “So that's what I'm going to do.” 

“Eddie,” Buck says, but Eddie turns his back and marches out of the kitchen, letting his face split into a grin as soon as he's over the threshold. “Eddie, come on!” 

But he doesn't come out, just as Eddie knew he wouldn't. He makes it to the living room and settles on the couch, then puts on an episode of Buck's weird ghost hunting show that they've already seen together. He can really only focus on it if Buck's providing running commentary, so it takes all of two minutes for the hosts' voices to blur in his ears, and another two for his eyes to start dropping, his body craving more sleep after the unusually busy shift they had. 

He doesn't mean to fall asleep - doesn't want to, knowing Buck is in the kitchen making the occasional noise, because it's one of his favorite things to listen to, the evidence of the life they've made together. 

But he wakes up to Buck squeezing his shoulder, his face the first thing Eddie sees when he blinks awake. 

“Dinner's ready,” he says, hushed like he always is when Eddie's half-asleep, waiting for him to be present. 

There's something about him, though. Eddie's mind is a little foggy, probably pulled back from the edge of actual sleep, but he'd know Buck with his eyes closed, and there's definitely something nervous in the way his mouth is tilted, in his blinks coming just a little too fast. 

“Okay,” he says, smiling, the side of his face warm from being pressed into the couch. “Thanks.” 

Buck smiles back, and then goes ahead, probably to put the food on the table. Eddie watches the achingly familiar shape of his back as it disappears in the doorway, then takes a swig of wine, hoping he might find some extra courage floating at the bottom of the glass. 

It's just the two of them. They're having a home-cooked dinner, probably one of Bobby's recipes that Buck is trying to perfect, for no reason other than they wanted to be with each other. And Eddie has time, but he thinks maybe, just maybe, he doesn't want it anymore. 

He finishes his drink, and clutches the stem of the glass a little too tight when he makes his way to the dining room. He doesn't even know how to begin rehearsing what to say, how to bring up the enormity of what they've been doing here, because Buck deserves that; he deserves to know exactly how Eddie feels about him, if only he could find some words. 

Only—Eddie stops in the doorway, and forgets how to speak entirely. 

“Don't be mad,” is the first thing Buck says, ridiculously, because the dining room is lit with a bedside lamp brought over from Eddie's bedroom, and a single tall candle in the middle of the table.

The table, covered with a tablecloth Buck must have bought. The table, which has another vase of flowers on it, soft pink with delicate, scalloped petals. The table, set like this is—

“Buck,” Eddie says, for want of a better word, and thinks he might need to grab on to something to stay upright. “What's—” 

“It's dinner,” Buck says, and now that Eddie's so very awake, he recognizes the tics: Buck rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, his arms in front of him, his canine sunk into the very corner of his lip. 

He's nervous. 

“Dinner,” Eddie repeats, because he's not doing much better. “You did this?” 

Buck's lip slips out from under his tooth as he smiles with the usual, teasing edge. “Unless you know someone else who'd panic buy a tablecloth at Target. I'm pretty sure it's a fire hazard, but it's the best I could do under the circumstances.” 

And he stills, then. Relaxes, his shoulders drooping, and Eddie's heart trips over itself picking up speed. 

“The circumstances,” he says, and almost rolls his eyes at himself for parroting Buck again. “Which are that—” he takes a step closer, closing his hand around the back of a chair in a death grip, “we're alone.”  

“We are,” Buck says, and the smile that settles on his face then nearly sweeps Eddie off his feet. It's slow, but Buck's eyes shine with it; slow, but certain. “And, uh—I just thought it'd be nice. To have, you know. An atmosphere.” 

Eddie takes another step. Slowly, he lets go of the chair, and finds that his legs are happy to carry him, as long as he's going in Buck's direction.

He opens his mouth to say something, to take a step over the line that now glistens in the air between them like a tripwire, but before he can, his eyes fall to the plates waiting on the table. 

The plates of ravioli in the shape of hearts. 

“Buck,” he says, and his voice sounds strangled that time. “You—” 

“I know it's cheesy,” Buck says, but there's a smile in his voice, and Eddie looks at the mountain of cheese on his pasta and thinks oh my God, “or like—way, way over the top, I've never really done this before—” 

“You've never been on a date?” Eddie cuts in. He turns away from the table, turns to Buck so they're facing each other, almost close enough to touch. He feels steady and liquid all at the same time, feels like every inch of his skin is on fire, because Buck—knows, probably. Has known, for all the hand-wringing Eddie did about picking the right moment. 

Buck blinks. “No,” he says, and then ducks his head with a laugh. “No, I mean—I have, but not like this.” 

It's dark in the room, but not dark enough to miss the flush on Buck's cheeks, probably matching Eddie's. All the blood and grit that brought them here, and they're standing opposite each other stuck on the last two feet of floor, blushing like they're kids. 

That's the thing about Buck, though. He's saved Eddie's life more than once, has been here to pick him up when the mess inside his head finally exploded, has stuck out things Eddie never wanted him to see - and still, there are moments Eddie looks at him, watering the plants or sticking out the tip of his tongue as he reads a book, and swears he feels butterflies. 

“Me either,” he says, his heart in his throat. Buck moves, closing half the distance between them. “But I swear I've been—I've been trying to tell you for months, but I had to get better first. I had to get better, so I could be as good to you as you deserve—”

“You are,” Buck interrupts, and when he reaches out, Eddie takes his hand without hesitating. “Eddie, you have to know.”

“I do,” Eddie says with a careful nod, watching the candlelight shimmer in Buck's eyes. “I think I do, but I needed—to learn that first. That I have something to offer you that you could want.” He bites his lip. “Maybe.” 

The corners of Buck's mouth curls up. “I made you heart ravioli.” 

“You did,” Eddie says, and exhales, and suddenly doesn't understand why there's still space between them at all. “God, Buck, you—I love you,” he says, and then he's taking the last step, wrapping his arms around Buck's shoulders, bumping into him with enough momentum that Buck has to grab him by the waist to keep them upright. “I love you,” he says again, with his forehead pressed against Buck's, because he suddenly can't say it enough. “Buck, Christ.”

“Yeah,” Buck says, and it sounds like a breath of relief, feels like it when it breaks against Eddie's lips in a warm rush of air. “I'm sorry I did this via pasta—”

“I'm not,” Eddie says as he pulls away, holding Buck's face in his hands. 

“But I love you,” Buck says, and smiles like the sun rising. “And I made us a date, if you want.” 

His hands slide off Eddie's waist, run warm and solid up his back, holding him so, so close. Eddie almost feels small, and it sends a shiver down his spine, pools warm in his stomach as he hides his face in the crook of Buck's neck. 

“No one's ever done this for me,” he says, so quietly he's not sure Buck will even hear, because that's the heart of the thing, the reason he feels like shivering. “Any of it, but I want—” 

“Yeah,” Buck says again, and then they're moving, a couple of steps back to the table. Eddie lets out the most embarrassing noise he's ever made when Buck grabs him by the thighs and helps him sit, right on the Target tablecloth. He opens his legs wider to let Buck in, hauls him in by the shirt, and—

“Wait,” he says, “did you—”

“I moved the candle,” Buck grins, and some of it still lingers on his lips when he leans forward to kiss Eddie, a hungry noise trapped in the back of his throat. Eddie digs his fingers into his back, tangles his other hand in Buck's hair, soft and loose the way Eddie likes it best, and kisses him back like he's never kissed anyone, burning for him just a little. 

“What were you going to say?” Buck asks when they separate, both of them breathing hard. 

“I don't remember any of what happened before you did,” he untangles his hand from Buck's hair to wave it, to Buck's immediate protest, “all that.” 

“You were saying,” Buck replies, pressing a kiss to the soft skin behind Eddie's ear, making him shiver so hard his stomach clenches, “something about wanting.”

Eddie waits for him to come up for air, for their eyes to meet. “You know what I want,” he says, and hopes it sounds as monumental in his mouth as it feels on its way out of his chest, scraping him clean of every half-formed love confession he's thought of over the months. 

Buck bites his lip. “Yeah,” he says, not sounding all that sure at all, “but you could tell me again.” 

“I want you,” Eddie says, running a thumb over Buck's birthmark, over the corner of his mouth. “I want you with us, with me, every day, doing exactly what we've been doing. I want the impossible to read grocery lists, and your giant freezing feet in my bed, and I want to keep feeling the way you make me feel just because you exist.” 

“Eddie,” Buck says, and kisses him a little softer this time, except it feels deeper, like it reaches into some long-forgotten part of Eddie and sets something right. 

“And,” Eddie says when he pulls away, “I want to go on this date with you. I want to try the heart ravioli.” 

Buck laughs. “They're a little—much.”

“No, baby,” Eddie replies, running his hand through Buck's hair, “no they're not.” 

Buck looks at him, just looks, for so long Eddie starts feeling like he should be squirming. He doesn't, though, because there's nothing to hide anymore, and he probably wasn't doing a very good job in the first place. 

He looks back, certain, steady. 

“Well, in that case,” Buck finally says, “I have good news.” 

“Yeah?” Eddie grins, squeezing Buck's waist with his knees. 

Buck leans forward to kiss him, soft, one-two-three pecks to Eddie's bottom lip that make him a little giddy. 

“There's no garlic in there,” Buck grins, “because I am an excellent planner.” 

✨ communication ✨

The Death Tunnel of Waverly Hills Sanatorium • Ghost Files Season 1 Episode 1 Sep 23, 2022

Best shot you ever took? The one I didn’t take.

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